Darth Vader's New Look (Rebels)

Forgot to mention my movie rankings in my survey-answer post a few pages back: ESB, tie between ANH and ROTJ --- slight edge to ANH, TPM, ROTS, AOTC.

I'd have rated ROTS higher than TPM if.........there had been no goofy palpatine facial expressions and noises, no huge awkward pauses before he cut down the Jedi trying to arrest him, no goofy Frankenstein NOOOOOO at the birth of Darth Vader scene, a better voice for Grievous (and no unnecessary cough carried over from the anime series), no "love has blinded you" scene, no scene where palpatine states to Yoda that Vader will become more powerful than even him (way out of character for palpatine), more Jimmy Smits, a more plausible turning point moment for Anakin after assisting in Windu's death, and most importantly no Hayden Christensen.

 

Oh, yes, mine is: RotJ, AotC, TSW, RotS, ESB/TPM.

 

No one is saying that in the least. But he's done far more right than he has wrong, and nicely recovered the franchise from a few of George's less than stellar ideas.

I snipped the rest of the post rather than Fisk is as is my want because all it did was demonstrate the over-the-top sort of hatred of Filoni that makes people not take arguments seriously.

 

What's with the sarcasm implying that no reasonable critical discussion is taking place, Todd?

I've said in a bunch of different ways that my criticism of Filoni and his team's decisions doesn't imply that I know what EVERY Star Wars fan should like. Yes, variety is the spice of life and fresh takes on Vader and other things is important at the right times.

When you are producing the only new Star Wars canon tv series that is bridging the time period between the PT and OT, and that will lead up to the first Star Wars spinoff movie ever made, IMO it is not the right time to be "creative" in questionable ways.

There is a responsibility to maintain an authentic feel for the show that comes as close to bridging the PT and OT as possible. Why is it so provocative on here to suggest that a perpetually-scowling Vader (McQuarrie-inspired or not), emaciated wookies, an Aladdin lookalike and a pink Mandalorian do NOT maintain an authentic feel that would mesh well with Episodes III and IV?? Why is it so unreasonable to suggest that with a better team and better leadership, that a more authentic, higher-quality product could have (and still could be) produced?

McQuarrie did some amazing technology (vehicles, weapons etc.) and scenery artwork. He also kicked off the creative process for the character designs, but most of his original designs were never used.

If Filoni had just stuck with using Filoni's artwork for his scenery/settings and vehicle/weapons art style, I would LOVE it. In fact, I love the look of Lothal and how it bring old McQuarrie art to life.

Filoni, though, as usual, took it a huge step too far and is now applying it to a character profile in certain ways. His character art style already doesn't seem to mesh well with the brilliant McQuarrie artwork. It's a distinctly Disney-fied character style and reeks of low-budget (read: low-effort and/or low-talent) production. Throwing in unused concepts for major characters like Vader (slapping a scowl on his brow) is the kind of decision that I can't stand behind. There is a happy medium when you are the only Star Wars show on TV and are setting the stage for future Star Wars canon............Filoni just can't seem to appreciate that and insists on going against conventions as often as possible.

 

Disagreement doesn't always equal hate. Glad to see some like his direction and choices still doesn't make those who don't wrong either.

 

Yes, with Disney's resources, THAT is the kind of animation that Star Wars deserves (the Old Republic trailer kind). It is 100% possible and is what Star Wars needs/deserves.

If that's not going to happen then at least look to the quality of shows like Avatar The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra. Rebels doesn't hold a candle to either of these, from the artwork to the story to the music to the character profiles. With a different team and better resources, we may have been able to get that kind of quality for Rebels.

LOL --- what, you didn't want to drink the blood of Filoni, fall into the black sleep of the Filoni-ma, and become a True Believer with me?

I think I'll do that right now --- 'night all

 

That animation was way to expansive to make more then 30 minutes out of it

Also the one last thing you still forget is that it being silly is your opinion and not everyone has that opinion.

 

$1 million per minute to be exact. Granted that is a premium price, it would be unlikely to cost that much if they did an TV show, but still a single season would cost more to produce than a blockbuster movie which is bad economics for a TV show. I wish they could do that kind of animation, but it just isn't economically feasible currently.

 

Shows how much money EA/Bioware has.

 

I'm surprised this thread still isn't locked.

 

you jinxed it know.

So far even though the thread is not really close to the topic anymore people have only been sharing opinions and not yelling at each other yet.

 

Really? C'mon, man, do you not remember what you wrote a few hours ago?

You literally wrote exactly what you just said you didn't write.

No, you're just incriminating a "large portion" of the fanbase." What is that portion? 30%? 50%?

No, you're merely arguing that the fan base at large doesn't care about Star Wars as much as you do:

And...speaking of holier-than-thou, here you are declaring something a "sin". Didn't I declare the word of the day to be "Irony"? I can't remember.

Or maybe, it is popular, and also produces the $$$? Why is it that you assume that people only like the show because it's the only Star Wars on TV? Maybe it's because they actually like it? But either way, it's not your responsibility to save the the fans from their own preferences, as you've suggested previously. If you have an opinion, good. If you want to tell me what your opinion is, good. But when you tell me that your opinion should override what the fanbase's opinion is, that's kind of ridiculous. The fact is that your opinions and my opinions are equally valuable and worthless in the grand scheme of things.

The fanbase as a whole will shape the future of Star Wars. You seem to believe that the Filoni, the Story Group et al are going to cram something down the throat of the fanbase that they don't want. It's not going to work that way, because people overall are smart enough and capable enough to eventually walk away from things that they don't like. And Disney will respond to that.

 

Ok, bypassed and hopscotched through several pages of back and forth to speed up my thread read. Here's what I picked to respond to:

No one is "pissing" on anything. Nothing about Rebels in any way detracts from enjoying the OT (or the PT, or CW for that matter).

Only because it IS a 2-hour movie. CW (and Rebels) is actually truer to the format that Star Wars was designed to emulate: the short subject/serial of the 30s/40s.

No, in context, it was pointing out that both drew from similar "wells" of inspiration, so their pluses and minuses are the same in terms of thematic usage, etc. To hold up the OT as some sort of high-brow "art" that stands head and shoulders above the hoi-poloi sneering down it's nose at the plebians is not only incorrect, but completely missing the point of the OT.

And "the same" in this case is of course only something superficially similar, details that would distinguish them from each other get ignored. I find it pretty annoying.

Four "10s" and a "3" from the Romanian judge in the first ever Olympic Back-pedalling competition.

Lets assume they did do photo-real Vader on Rebels...then he'd really look out of place! And there'd be griping about how he "doesn't fit the style of the show"...same stuff, different day...

Including Filoni himself. He loves Star Wars, just like we do. He is a fan...one of us. This is probably the most directly insulting thing you've said yet about Filoni.

1) Thank you.

2) Yes, I love Star Wars. Period. Even when it doesn't 100% fit what I might have done if I had been in charge. You don't seem to be able to look past your "ideal" Star Wars and see the Force-y goodness that Filoni's efforts do bring to the table.

To answer the informal "survey": I'm 45. 4,5,6,1,2,3 (and firmly believe that is the right order to see them in). Favorite is ESB, then ANH, then a tie between Jedi and Sith, then AOTC, then Phantom Menace. My favorite musical cues are any to do with the Jedi/the Force. One of the things I disagree with George on is the notion that "bringing balance to the Force" simply means getting rid of the Sith/the Dark Side.

More data for you: the only change Lucas made in the OT for the Special Editions that I disliked was Greedo shooting first. Also, I would have added more ships to the Rebel Fleet Scene at the end of ESB and at the Battlet Endor.

 

If Filoni ever gives Vader a special set of battle armor, would you guys be for it or against?

 

Does the armor have a jet pack and/or mini-nuclear bombs?

 

Maybe vader will pull one of these out

 

Jedi Knight Fett

I approve. If a nuke doesn't solve your problem, it's simply not big enough.

It's not that I need to see Vader's Vigilantes dropping out of an ISD named the Roger Young, onto Geonosis, but.... That could be a thing, right?

 

Certainly.
My first Star Wars experience that I remember was the episode I video game. For it's time it was a really well made game and it got me curious about all the things in it, like the Jedi or Naboo. I watched the OT on tv when I was about thirteen and was immediately enthralled with. I also began reading EU novels because I wanted to know more about my favorite characters, but they were so-so. Watching Phantom Menace was disappointing, it just couldn't fulfil the promise from the game. AOTC was even more disappointing. But I liked ROTS and went to the cinema twice to watch it, once the german and once the english version.

 

I lost my connection so I'm adding one other thing.

As to the charge of inappropriate "genre blending/merging" based on Ezra's visual similarity to Aladdin, I call "bull"!

Is Star Wars "blended" with the Jack Ryan movies because JEJ played Adm Greer? Is it "blended" with the old Hammer Horror films because Peter Cushing starred in many of those? How about the Batman: The Animated Series? Hamill was the voice of the Joker after all.

Not even Mr. Fantastic could make that stretch...

 

I watched Empire Strikes Back on TV one day in the early Nineties, and then watched Star Wars on TV not long after. I was immediately hooked on Star Wars. My dad took me to see Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back in theaters when they were re-released, and seeing the Special Editions was such a cool experience from me. I never got a chance to watch Return of the Jedi for quite some time, so when I finally did get to see it it was really special, and that is in part why it is my favorite Star Wars movie. The next two years I survived by reading Star Wars books and playing Star Wars video games. Some highlights of this era include listening to the Dark Empire audio drama and playing Shadows of the Empire for the N64. I remember hearing songs that I'd never heard in any of the Star Wars films in that game, and I was convinced that they were working on a Shadows of the Empire movie. That was before I knew about the Prequel Trilogy. I went to see each one of the newer films with my dad. I was always disappointed I my youth that they weren't aesthetically the same with the OT films, and though I stayed loyal for a while I wrote them off in my early college years. I then came back around and not long after began watching the TCW series, which I absolutely loved. Having sampled nearly all of the Star Wars multimedia juggernaut I have recently concluded that there is hardly any Star Wars that I do not enjoy.

 

Kanan is the Genie while Inquisitor was Jafar:





Hera is the Princess:

 

No really, I am not. Because those comparisons seem pretty wacky but I cannot for the life of me work out if that's intentional. Mea culpa, I guess.

 

Seriously, what is with the call for this thread to be locked? The other Filoni critical analysis thread was locked after a very short time even though civil discussion was taking place (and I hope that it is soon reopened), and there is nothing happening in this thread to warrant the harsh measure of thread locking.

Are people that afraid of critical discussion on here that thread locking must be resorted to in order to quash any criticism-heavy threads?

OD, you seem to be particularly combative and keen on word-mincing, as well as not reading my posts clearly. I'd suggest re-reading al my posts again, and read them carefully so as to not inject your own skewed interpretation of what I'm trying to say (e.g. accusing me of labelling ALL fans as lapping up anything related to Star Wars when I have explained myself in a bunch of different ways that I am not labelling all fans, not even a particular set of fans, and just meant that the fanbase was large enough such that there will always be enough support for a given Star Wars product to mask its potential mediocre-to-poor quality, if one were to try to judge that based on sales #s alone).

I used the word "sin" in a post in response to someone else's post who first used the word "sin" ---- it was in direct reply to that post, and I wouldn't have used it outside of that reply since I personally thought it was an exaggerated word for that poster to use.

Regarding the fanbase at large and how I don't feel they care enough ----- yes, I personally feel that the fanbase at large is settling for mediocrity on the one crucial new canon product that we are getting. Most fans just don't care that much either way and/or don't understand how critical Rebels is to the future Star Wars canon and to upcoming movies. They are the "silent majority". Then there are those, like some in this thread, who actually really enjoy Rebels and all its quirks and shortcomings. What I can't understand is how all of you folks that appreciate Rebels and scowly Vader in this thread can be that one-dimensional, just like scowly Vader is, and refuse to acknowledge that a different team of artists could have potentially come up with a product that is leaps and bounds better than the Rebels that we currently have? How can you possibly be convinced that Filoni is the one and only man for the job and that no one could possibly do Star Wars animation better? Somehow, people on here rationalize that thought process and refuse to entertain dissenting opinions regarding Filoni and his team's decisions.

You are absolutely wrong that the fanbase as a whole will shape the future of Star Wars. Of course we won't ---- we don't work for Disney or Lucasfilm. We're not Filoni or the Story group. Yes, they have the potential to cram crap down our throats if we let them. Sure, they may care about Star Wars as well, but as an example that I keep referring back to, Ziro the Hutt and Stinky ------- that was certainly crammed down our throats without asking for it. I doubt that those characters were the dream characters that the fanbase at large had wanted. If those characters had shown up in any of the OT movies, I very much doubt that we would be chatting on this board right now, because Star Wars would not be the iconic series that it is today. Sure, plenty of fans will walk away if it's crap, but as I said, the fanbase is so large that Disney et al. can survive a complete dud of a Star Wars product and still make a reasonable profit, because there will always be enough fans to watch the show at least once, and then enough very young fans with less mature and less experienced tastes to beg their parents to let them watch the show each week regardless of how silly or how far in tone and quality from the movie series it strays.

 

Breaking my decision to not respond to you but anyways, this thread has gone so far beyond and off topic from what it was intended. What I said was far, far from a call to lock the thread. Also there hasn't been much, if any, critical debate. Abd dibar ( and maybe jakobits) asked you several times to support a claim you made, which if I remember reading, you have yet to do. All this really seems to be is a whine and complain session. Not only that, but each time someone calls you out on a sweeping claim you made you back track, excuse me "clarify your position" trying to say that we misunderstood your position.

Perhaps it isn't Octavian Dibar fault, but rather your failure in clearly explaining and presenting your position.