SPOILER Rebels Review S01 E02: "Fighter Flight"

Looking forward to watching it!

 

im going to watch it tonight.

 

"Spark" doesn't have the length to justify calling it a "movie", so in my books "Spark" is episode 1 and this is episode 3.

Regardless, hopefully I'll be able to catch this in time tonight.

 

I enjoyed the episode! But to be honest, I am already kinda sick of Lothal already! I just want to see some cool new planets, but at least it makes from a story perspective and it is early too.

 

Watched this episode last night. While it was a fun ride, it really seemed like a filler episode to me.

 

Just watched the episode today, and it was pretty good for an early opening episode, so I suppose we can excuse the lack of content for the sake of character establishment. I agree with @TomVoxx , a bit of a weak episode overall, but then we have to give them a chance to pad the characters out and establish the character dynamics. I guess without this episode, we would never really have been able to establish why Ezra and Zeb had such a close, fond relationship.

Two main things caught my attention, though:

1) So we've already established they're very short on cash and supplies, a la Firefly (which, if you haven't seen it yet, you need to), and they've stolen a TIE-Fighter.... And yet it crosses no-one's mind to try and sell it to a group of local resistance fighters, or anarchists, or, hell, Hondo Ohnaka, for example. Oh well, perhaps I'm just nit-picking.

2) The armour on these guys:

So anyone who bought the boxed set of TCW season 1 will have got a concept art book with it, and if you turn to the page of the designs for the snow clonetroopers, opposite the sketches of Chairman Cho of Ryloth, you see.... These exact designs! Nice little touch, I thought.

But yeah, I totally agree with @Hermann22 on Ezra's slingshot. Dude, get rid of it, the second you're around some stormies who, as usual, aren't paying any attention, and grab yourself a blaster rifle. They might be less accurate, but then what's the point in having a weapon like the slingshot with pinpoint accuracy that packs about as much punch as a gnat?

And although we've firmly established that TCW and SWR are two completely different shows, I love the fact that they've continued using the same art style. A lot of people didn't like TCW because it was "too cartoon-y", but actually, when you ignore that and get into the content of both these shows, you tend to just see them as a stylised depiction rather than a cartoon. The same way that all artists are different and have their own styles of depicting things, like surrealism or that dabbing-your-paintbrush-instead-of-brushstrokes method whose name escapes me at the moment.

Overall, I'm just excited at the potential for the show and all the possible loose ends that it could be used to tie up. I hope they bring in Ahsoka, Ventress, Bariss, Maul and Savage at some stage. That'd be cool. And maybe show us what happens to other characters like Cody, Rex, Fives and Boba.

 

I really liked this episode too and I'm looking forward to the next episode " Rise of the Old Masters "

Can't wait for the inquisitor to finally make an appearance.

 

Saw "Fighter Flight" last night. Really funny I'm enjoying this show more and more. Also can't wait for the Inquisitor to show up. I also think the Slingshot is outdated, should either be upgraded or discarded and replaced with a lightsaber. I have a poster I used for my desktop with Ezra with a Lightsaber.

 

I'm sure he will get a lightsaber at some point.

 

Here is the picture

 

yeah I've seen clips of him with that lightsaber. I'm assuming he builds it at some point.

 

Ooooh. Nice saber design, I like how he's broken away from tradition and gone with a more unusual design - more utilitarian and functional than aesthetic, making sense of his scavenging lifestyle.

 

It almost looks like a cross between a lightsaber and a stapler.

 

I found a couple of images of the Ezra Lightsaber toy.

 

Since the next episode thread isn't up yet...here's the link to next weeks episode Rise of the Old Masters on Watch Disney:

http://watchdisneyxd.go.com/star-wars-rebels/video/vdka0_zlsb1jqu/01/03-rise-of-the-old-masters

 

Okay, well... I'm probably in the minority here, but I wasn't bowled over by last night's episode. Now, perhaps it was partly because I'd just watched the "Evil Plans" episode of TCW where Threepio and Artoo are sent out shopping for Jogan fruit (and let's face it, the basic premise of "Fighter Flight" was more or less lifted straight from "Evil Plans" - A bickering pair of characters are sent out on a shopping spree for a rare fruit, get themselves in and out of an unexpected jam, and then come strolling home, fruit in hand.) But overall, the episode just seemed like something out of the old Saturday morning Land of the Lost series from the mid-'70s (without the banjo-and-Moog soundtrack, natch.)

There were some elements I liked. The Imperials raiding the farm and arresting everyone for not simply handing their farm over felt like something that the Imperials of the OT would do, and I did enjoy seeing one of my old favorite Kenner toys from the pre-ESB years making an appearance.

But I just never felt all that caught up in the story. And this is shaping up to be a problem with the Rebels series as a whole. The stories just haven't been grabbing me the way they ought to. And I'm not sure exactly why that is. Part of me thinks that it's that specific elements of the show just don't work for me. I really don't like the vinyl-haired animation style, and the action is often... well, as bad as stormtroopers always were at marksmanship in the movies, we're getting perilously close to the point in Rebels where they're missing stationary targets at point blank range. Last night they were standing about 10-15 feet below Zeb, who was just hanging there on the side of a building directly above him, and every shot missed him. One hit right next to his hand and made him lose his grip, but come on... there's lousy marksmanship and then there's just this.

And I agree - the slingshot has GOT to go. Cheesy idea, and obviously a useless weapon on top of that.

But the thing is, I'm not sure that fixing the more ridiculous elements of the show would be enough to draw me into the story. I'm getting the feeling that maybe I just don't like Rebels as a whole all that much. I want to like it, and maybe in time I will. But so far I find myself WANTING to like it more than I'm actually liking it. I didn't have this problem with TCW. Yes, the movie was pretty bad (at least Rebels doesn't have "Stinky the Hutt") but by the first episode of the series itself I was already getting into it, although I think we can all agree that the show improved significantly as time went on.

Rebels, though... it's just not getting me there. I'll keep trying, at least for awhile. Hopefully, they just haven't found their stride yet.