New Rebels Videos Impressions

This year at San Diego Comic Con Star Wars made an all out push for Rebels without a single showing of Episode 7, which is understandable considering Rebels comes out in October.

At the Rebels panel they debuted three new clips and a new trailer.

One of the clips shown at the panel has annoyingly still not shown up online.

Luminara?

Ok. I was expecting to see Shaak Ti but I really liked
Luminara’s character in The Clone Wars. She was a huge counterpoint to Anakin’s unwillingness to let go of his padawan. She had the detachment and calmness that a Jedi needs down.

Kanan is brash and reckless since the Jedi were exterminated while his training was incomplete. I expect she’ll be a good counterpoint to him as well. If she even lives that far.

The Inquisitor is obviously using her as bait. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.

Let’s talk about Ezra’s “space slingshot.” A lot of people are hating on it, and that’s understandable. It’s pretty dumb. But this is the way I see it, Ezra is a poor boy with no family living on a poor planet that is being oppressed by the empire.

Of course all he has is a stupid little slingshot! It would be impressive if he managed a better weapon.

In the “We’re Even” clip we see him shoot two storm troopers with it and it doesn’t even phase them. Storm troopers go down easy but this thing just plinked off their armor, further reinforcing my idea that his slingshot is just a child’s-toy.

Taylor Gray, the voice of Ezra, pointed out in an interview that Ezra will in fact be getting an armaments upgrade once he joins up with the crew of the Ghost.

Speaking of weapons, the Inquisitor’s lightsaber is… interesting.

The hedge trimmer mode doesn’t seem to have a lot of offensive potential. Seems like even a skilled fighter would just cut himself in half trying to attack with that thing.

It might hold a lot of sway as far as being intimidating goes though. It could also be powerful defensively.

At the panel Dave Filoni said this saber was an old design that was unused on The Force Unleashed. So far I think it’s kinda lame, but I have a lot of faith in the team at Lucasfilm Animation to pull of something great so I’ll hold out judgement until I see the Inquisitor in more action.

I am extremely excited for Rebels. Brand new characters means we will have a lot more suspense regarding their fate than we had in The Clone Wars, where most characters were guaranteed to live through the show.

Reports from people who saw an advanced screening have been overwhelmingly positive. Apparently this show has perfectly recaptured the magical feeling of the original movies.

I will be watching Rebels very closely.