Star Wars Rebels owes as much to Joss Whedon as it does to George Lucas
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Version 0 of 1. George Lucas sold his billion-dollar baby to Disney exactly two years ago and it feels like there’s been a Star Wars-related announcement almost every week since. From JJ Abrams reuniting the original cast and taking the helm of Episode VII, to cult directors Gareth Edwards and Rian Johnson signing up to expand the franchise in unexpected directions, Disney has been laying track for new projects at lightspeed, convinced that what the universe has been crying out for is more Star Wars, and lots of it. Every new Star Wars spin-off is guaranteed attention from hardcore fans, but as the first official chunk of Disney-curated content since the regime change, Star Wars Rebels has been scrutinised more than most. Set during the relatively unexplored period between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, the animated series premiered last month to 6.5m viewers worldwide – unusually high ratings for children’s programming. (In the UK, new episodes screen every Thursday afternoon on cable channel Disney XD.) Star Wars Rebels opens with the classic image of a Star Destroyer filling up the screen, and the universe has the same grimy, lived-in feel of the older movies – all the dings, dents and dust streaks lovingly recreated by state-of-the-art computer animation. Similarly, the familiar soundtrack and iconic sound effects are soothing throwbacks to the original trilogy, while the production and character designs deliberately evoke the 1970s Star Wars concept art by the late, great Ralph McQuarrie. Kanan, a primary character voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr, feels like a conscious mash-up of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker: he’s a cocky rogue with a battered starship, who also happens to be have Jedi powers. So at first glance, the show seems deliberately designed to reassure fans of “classic” Star Wars that it’s going to be more faithful to George Lucas’s original vision than even Lucas himself. The legions of parents who never warmed to the previous Clone Wars animated series but had to sit through five seasons of it due to pester power can breathe a sigh of relief – Imperial stormtroopers actually look like proper Imperial stormtroopers in Star Wars Rebels, rather than the odd, flat-faced soldiers introduced in the prequel movies. (Also comforting: they still can’t shoot straight.) If the overarching plot is designed to build toward the founding of the Rebel Alliance against the Empire, things starts small. After an Imperial entanglement, orphaned tearaway Ezra falls in with Kanan and his ragtag crew – a gifted pilot, a graffiti artist with a Boba Fett helmet, a gigantic grumpy alien in the Chewbacca mould and a wilful astromech droid. Crammed together on Kanan’s Millennium Falcon-esque ship, they operate as outlaws, thieves and smugglers, chipping away at the might of the Empire while also bickering and bonding. A few episodes in – probably around the time Ezra hotwires a TIE fighter during a chaotic escape – you realise that the producers have quietly taken their cue from another sci-fi godhead. Shambolic heists, an emphasis on wisecracks and the unplanned formation of a surrogate family? Star Wars Rebels is the Firefly remake fans have been crying out for ever since Joss Whedon’s space western got cancelled. Of course, Whedon took a lot of inspiration from Star Wars for Firefly. But viewing Rebels as an unofficial continuation of the adventures of Mal and his merry band adds another layer of meta-enjoyment – it even has the equivalent of the ruthless Operative from Firefly’s movie spin-off Serenity, in the form of zealous rebel-hunter Agent Kallus (voiced by David Oyelowo). It also helps that Star Wars Rebels is already an entertaining watch, assembled with a cinematic eye and punctuated by decent gags and skilfully assembled action scenes. Even Kanan’s goatee can’t spoil it. If there is one bad omen, it’s that it didn’t take long for Disney to “do a George” and go back and tweak Star Wars Rebels, much as Lucas did with his crummy Special Editions of the original trilogy. The premiere episode recently got upgraded from the Disney Channel and screened on ABC and Sky1, with an additional scene featuring a Darth Vader cameo and introducing Jason Isaacs as an icy, Force-wielding Inquisitor. Could this sort of tinkering be Disney’s first step toward the dark side? Let’s hope not. Have you been watching Star Wars Rebels? Let us know in the comments below |