SPOILER Rebels Season 4: Ep 3 & 4 "In the name of the Rebellion"

I quite liked these two, although they are more like two linked episodes rather than a real two parter.

The good

* Phoenix remnants resurrected into Dodonna's Yavin cell.

* It's so good to finally see some Mon Mothma. It's about time she got a meatier role.

* Ezra's fake names and history with Brom with a fun story beat

* Kanan and Hera. I really trust them both <3

* I liked the snarky Ishi Tib

* Exploded SSD was beautiful.

The bad

* stupid chopper, his comic relief never works for me.

* "Installing a spike", while no spike is installed, just sabine hitting buttons.

* Saw's fighter seems to take out a cruiser super easily

* Death troopers were too easy to take out. Why include them if they are going to be just as wimpy as stormtroopers. Reminds me of the dark troopers last season. What a letdown.

* Chopper takes out two stormtroopers.

The weird

* We don't mistreat our prisoners....because we don't ever take them. The rebels always just mow down the empire, while the empire frequently has the compassion to just capture the heroes.

* Kyber in carbonite? Neat visual, but kinda strange.

* Can you stab a Kyber with a lightsaber? Lightsabers come out of kybers without damaging them.

* Can Kyber's store energy now? I thought lightsabers had a power source, and kybers were more like magic power amplification.


* Why does Ezra keep on that speeder helmet? Is it to save on animation cost?

 

i was so excited to see Edrio, but where was his eggmate??? or was that Benthic?

seriously: this totally distracted me through the whole 4th episode.
because i get hung up on stupid things.
like worrying about why they were separated. : o p

 

Kyber has been described as almost a living being, So it made sense in that frame of mind. Making them "bleed" calling out, etc.

--- Double Post Merged, Oct 24, 2017, Original Post Date: Oct 24, 2017 ---

Kyber is a power source as well. Think death star, the weapons on Finalizer.

 

I thought it was pretty decent. Honestly I liked the premier a tad bit more. This had some very interesting plot elements, and seeing Saw and Rebel Kallus was great. My prediction about Ezra being tempted to leave the Rebellion by Saw because he's pissed the Rebellion is dragging its feet with Lothal was spot on, though I didn't really get the character stuff I wanted. Maybe it's just me but it also seemed way shorter than normal. I know it wasn't, but the first episode in particular just flew by. I am glad there were no goofy Ezra comedy moments. I hope that stuff will be over with. Overall it was pretty great and it did move some important plot stuff forward, but like I said, the character stuff I really look forward to wasn't quite on par with what I was hoping for.

I do wish there were more Ezra and Sabine character moments. They're my two favorite characters and I like seeing them together. Having them out doing mission stuff is pretty great, but I was still hoping that the writers would have found the time between two episodes to have them have an actual conversation, but alas, there was too much going on. It's understandable as like I said before, it was a pretty plot-development-heavy set of episodes and gave a ton of exposition and details about stuff that's going on, but I'm still a sucker for the more character driven stuff, especially between Ezra and Sabine.

I saw a few people in the elsewhere complaining that they thought the TIE Defenders weren't as cool and powerful as they were built up to be, but I disagree. They are still just fighters. A one person fighter is never really going to be this super ultra badass weapon that can wipe the floor with everything. I think they presented enough of a threat to be plausible and no more. The Ghost did have to run away from them and use trickery to defeat them. Unlike regular TIEs which are usually dealt with easily by the turrets, the Ghost couldn't just shoot them out of the sky and really did have to think through how to escape them in their first encounter. That's just the right amount of threat to me from a new single person fighter. And that was just two of them. Imagine if instead of regular TIES, the swarms of fighters we see elsewhere were replaced with Defenders. That would get dicey fast.

And lastly, I'm far from one of those people who wants to see grizzly death and destruction in some sort of Game of Thrones in Space kind of way like it seems some are, but I do wish they would take a slightly more mature approach to the violence. They don't have to show it on screen, but the cutting of blasters with the lightsaber stuff needs to stop, or at least be used less often. That last Death Trooper at very least who was giving them problems the whole time needed to catch the blade to the torso, not just get knocked over. I'm not saying show her getting cut in half, but like seriously Ezra, she's shooting at you, the rescued prisoners, and your hopeful/would-be girlfriend. Cut her down. Even wise and gentle "wars not make one great" Master Yoda didn't hesitate to throw his lightsaber into a clone trooper when the situation called for it.

 

Where does it say that the kybers are a power source for the death star? Is the main reactor the power source? And why do lightsabers have a power source, if kybers are a power source? Before they had a name, they were just called focusing crystals, IIRC.

They do kill a lot of troopers, but doesn't it make sense for jedi to avoid slaughtering an opponent if disabling them is an option?

 

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Superlaser

 

You're not wrong. But at the same time, we do see Yoda decapitate the clones who were gonna 66 him, and he probably could have pushed them off the platform. Plus he killed those ones at the Senate building when he probably could have done it otherwise as well. Seeing Jedi kill when it might not have been absolutely necessary isn't a new thing. I guess I mean more from a writing standpoint than an in-universe standpoint. I just want the show to be slightly more mature. It doesn't have to go over the top and flat out show bodies being cut in half, but the A-Team esque way they handle some of the fights is getting a little off putting. Only a little though. I've seen elsewhere where people are flat out pissed that we're not seeing death everywhere, and I don't fall into that group, but I'd like them to show that things are a little more serious, a little more adult, a little more grim, etc.

 

Rebels Recon:

 

After 10 viewings on each episode, I enjoyed them. Saw the episode stealer as always.

 

As someone who enjoyed the premier, I have got to say that these two episodes were even better in my opinion. I really liked all the tie ins with Rogue One with Yavin Base, Mon Mothma, General Dodonna, and Saw Gerrera. Saw is certainly progressing towards the deranged state we see him in in Rogue One. Jalindi was a very beautiful looking locale, and the fight on the radar dish was unique and pretty interesting too, I'm also glad Ezra's plan to impersonate Brom Titus backfired as it gave us that fight and it succeeds way too often. Captain Slaven also made a reappearance only to be done away with as well. I also was pleasantly surprised to see Jennifer Hale voicing the Deathtrooper Commander, sadly we probably won't see her in that role again. Lastly, Hot Kallus! Overall, I thought these were two really good episodes.

Edit: Apparently Jennifer Hale voiced one of the prisoners in the episode as well.

 

I try to watch the episodes twice before commenting, since I am usually doing something else while I am watching.

3/4 were definitely better than 1/2, and I like how they're tying the events of RO into the story.

Saw Gerrera was never a fan of a diplomacy-based rebellion, and I love how he calls out Mothma & Co. for playing by the rules. We see this again in RO when Gen. Draven tells Cassian Andor to kill Erso instead of capturing him. I like the conflict between his partisans and the "traditional" Alliance - in a real conflict, you're going to have different movements that are trying to accomplish the same things.

For folks who have read (canon) Thrawn, it's completely plausible that the Empire would use civilian means to transport materials for the station. The plot element was completely plausible to me.

Was the I the only one that thought the noises Ezra was hearing were Purgill and not Kyber Crystals?

The Death Troopers are not living up to the image presented in RO - they use Basic, and don't seem elite at all in their combat actions.

 

I literally just got done listening to the Ahsoka book last week, so I immediately remembered the crystal singing.

And I think the Death Troopers using Basic was for the audience's benefit.

 

For Rebels, this was excellent. Absolutely excellent. One of the several moments that hits the high quality level of the Clone Wars.

Although Rebels is a sequel to Clone Wars, I do think Disney's modus operandi regarding the show has obviously been more undeniably childish than Cartoon Network's with its predecessor (that's not a bad thing, just a target-audience fact). But then CN has Adult Swim and don't believe Disney has a respective counterpoint to that, so without its own adult market for the channel, everything is on a par with typical Disney Channel fare. Therefore I do treat my critique of the show at how it represents itself at that level.

So for a show at prepubescent Disney Channel level, for me this was fantastic. I like Rebels I really do, but don't love it (but I want to); it often farts around in childish territory, with game-changing episodic solutions quicker than any Star Trek TNG episode at its absolute worst, but maybe it helps that I'm a father of a 7 year old so I watch it with him and am glad to be able to have a legitimate Star Wars TV show I can watch with him (post-Clone Wars all its contemporaries are Lego productions) that provides me with some won't-insult-your-intellgience television enjoyment, which otherwise is typically Thundermans and Henry Danger if he has the controller. Ugh.

And this is where my issue with Clone Wars and Rebels really stands. In fact it's a bit of a catch 22. I'm old school Star Wars and (unashamedly) Disney Star Wars, I love the Galactic Civil war movies and hated the prequels. I thought the prequels' world-building was absolutely fine (see my other posts), in fact when external media such as Republic Commando tackled it I thought it was literally awesome, but thought those three movies themselves just utterly sucked to me. Now I love the Clone Wars show, but for me it's a show that acts as Polyfilla and plastic surgery for 3 films I thought were complete crap, as such, no matter how much it improves the movies, my love for that world isn't as high as the world of the original trilogy. Rebels is in the original trilogy's time frame (or close enough) but it's a weaker show than Clone Wars. So when it does well within the world of the movies I do love, I'm all the more appreciative even if I'm acknowledging it's not doing it as well as The Clone Wars would have had it tackled the same material. I can't deny I wish this show was at both Clone Wars-quality and maturity whilst dealing with the Galactic Civil War era, but the simple fact is, it's not and it's made for Disney XD, which typically is designed for the under 12s.

And based on that bench mark I thought it was Rebels at its very best.

Plus I love Rogue One and the more ties to it and further development of its world & characters outside of the movie, the better.

And one little thing that I loved most of all was that Two Tubes was just as naturally alien sounding as ever. It may seem such a minor thing but quite often Rebels' alien languages are dealt with at toddler-quality at best, often descending to Phantom Menace-level Anakin space-talk:

... Such as when they were playing around with Zeb's species' magic stick. It's usually all "widgey wobbly, zabbidy zin, woo-wha" crap instead of sounding natural like Greedo, Jabba or Rey yelling at Teedo. 'Click Clack' sounded especially appalling compared to the natural and inhuman linguistic sound-design of Poggle the Lesser in the prequel movies. So I was delighted hearing more of Two Tubes' very sinister sounding language and voice. What can I say, I love that gas-masked locust-bot to bits haha.

I wish Rebels could maintain this level of quality, thought it was a great episode, but doubt it will, but I won't condemn the show for it. I know it's not targeting 35 year old me, it's more in line with targeting my 7 year old son, but moments like this did at least make me thoroughly love a little bit of televised Star Wars whilst waiting for the next big movie.

But then again maybe, even just grading it as a Disney cartoon, is overly-harsh. I, like I'm sure many of you also did, grew up watching 'Droids' and 'Ewoks' when they first aired, and they were absolute complete and utter sh....

... so maybe we're just spoilt these days. I'll take Rebels at its naffest, silliest and blandest over any episode of Droids or Ewoks any day. Well done Mr Filoni, a superb episode. Keep it up

Other little takeaways - loved having a female death trooper (even at the loss of their incomprehensible communications, the more female villains the better). Also loved seeing a U-Wing in Cavern Angels paint-scheme. A tiny touch, but a fantastic one.

Oh and Ezra's fake English accent was terrible. Like literally one of the worst I've ever heard. I did have to seriously cringe there. But considering it at least failed even in-universe, I guess I can let it slide. Let's just not do that often again shall we? Know your limits, voice actors.

 

I agree, Rebels has been rather childish. Especially this season so far. But, it’s Disney. Ugh. This is one of the reasons I hate having Disney owning Lucasfilm. I am torn apart between the original Lucasfilm and Disney Lucasfilm. Disney is doing pretty good with the movies so far, and because of Disney we have these new movies and series.

But here are my problems with Disney:
Rebels isn’t living up to the same level to TCW in my opinion. Plot has been weak in some places, the CGI is not as great, (Disney’s fault! Not Filoni’s). Not only that, the animation guys who are behind Rebels are being payed peanuts by Disney compared to what George payed them. (Another thing I hate about Disney). And then we have Forces of Destiny which is terrible, I have no idea what these guys were thinking.

So hopefully, Disney will listen to us original Lucasfilm fans as well and bring back some of the glory from that era. Becuase, while they are succeeding with the movies, the tv shows are being crippled on some ways.

 

Terribly written "we mustn't mention the Death Star yet!" style vibe to this whole fourth episode. A bad one

 

I thought Pt.1 was pretty good, and Pt.2 wasn’t so hot.

I’ll endure some crumminess in the first half of this season in hope that the next half is going to be excellent.

The writers are demonstrably capable of some really good stuff.

...Fingers crossed.

 

Now that was a explosion. Palpy asked for ultimate power, he got that from that crystal,