I really wanted to like this more than I did. Other than the coolness of seeing characters and things that were previously animated rendered in live action there was very little to get excited about.
The pace was beyond glacial. If you edited out the scenes of people just looking at things two feet in front of them the combined running time of both episodes would probably only be thirty minutes.
The dialogue was high school play material in some places and Hera seemed to be taking sleeping pills. The character only seemed to be herself when she was piloting the ship (fitting I suppose).
The story makes no sense. An ancient artifact somehow has a map for an incident that took place about a decade ago? The new trilogy already had that same nonsense.
Suddenly Sabine is a Jedi Padawan? The show never even hinted at that. Not every hero needs to be a Jedi.
I wonder what someone who never watched Clone Wars or Rebels would have made of this? I can’t imagine they would have followed it or cared. I am sticking it out because of my affection for Rebels but I hope it gets better, soon.
I made that same point earlier, but since then I read that it is supposed to be a map of a migration route for the space whales, and they have some reason to believe that their jump with Thrawn (and Ezra) was to that destination.
I haven’t seen Clone Wars, and I think maybe one and a half seasons of Rebels. I think I could follow it fine, although I’ve probably assimilated some of the show’s plots and characters through cultural osmosis, and having played Fallen Order I was familiar with the Inquisitors and Night Sisters.
However, contrary to you, I didn’t think the pacing was slow—indeed, I thought they’d packed a lot into these two episodes, in terms of lore, characters, and setting. So perhaps things that at best were repetitive to you just registered as new for those not familiar with the precursor shows.
I’ll have to ask my wife, who watched it with me and has had a lot less exposure to the broader Star Wars universe, whether she felt lost at any point.
That makes sense about the Space Whales. It did show an image of them inside the device. It would have served the story to better explain that because 1. It’s interesting and 2. Would help people unfamiliar with the plot of Rebels understand what was going on.
One of the down sides of all this interconnected media (not just Star Wars) is it sometimes has its head up its own ass and forgets basic storytelling.
I haven’t seen any of the animated series, but I think I can follow what’s going on in this show. The question is whether I want to follow what’s going on. I’ve only seen one and a half episodes, since I can only watch 10 or 15 minutes at a time before I fall asleep. It is just that uncharacteristically slow-paced and boring. I’ve enjoyed all the other live-action Star Wars TV series that have been released so far, even The Book of Boba Fett which disappointed a lot of fans. I am not enjoying Ahsoka so far and may give up on it if it doesn’t get a lot better by about the end of the third episode.
I was only passingly familiar with Rebels and Clone Wars.
(although I did recently see a clip from Rebels that showed Sabine attempted to be trained in the force but in the scene the blind Jedi guy admits she’s not going to be any good. So it wasn’t out of leftfield that Ahsoka had tried to train her after the show)
I thought this was bad on basically every level. Plot was idiotic. It was bad for a kids show, let alone a series at least meant for general audiences.
Filoni is doing fanboy stuff and it was novel for a minute…but now its just…fanboy stuff. ::shrug::
I think that, for this one, they had to bite the bullet and admit it’s not going to be an easy one for new viewers unfamiliar with the characters from the animated series. There’s only so much background information you can feed into an episode when you’re dealing with eleven seasons for two shows.
I know nothing of Rebels or any animated Star Wars shows. All these characters are brand new to me.
But y’know what? Nowadays, that’s par for the course in so much of modern media, and I’m used to it (yeah, even at my advanced age, ya nerf-herdin’ younglings).
So I can click into any ongoing saga, pick up any comic book, plop down in front of an IMAX screen, find the Lego animated version from any continuity… and say “Okay, big pink guy clearly had a crush on the protagonist and lent her his telekinesis but the ensuing battle with the little purple cyber-orca destroyed her home planet. But her clone survived and vowed vengeance. Got it, let’s see what happens next.”
However, I can’t enjoy it if those characters are not well-written. And have a stilted delivery of Lucas-level dialog:
“You abandoned me.” “Well, you abandoned me first.” “You aren’t ready for a relationship.” “Because of you… who abandoned me.”
As expected, the end credits have been transliterated – though it isn’t Aurebesh. They are important planets (Lothal, Corellia, Dathomir, Mandalore, etc), though some seem more obscure (Duro)
Some EU info:
Some more info on transliteration (basically cryptography 101 for substitution cyphers) (has ads)
Thanks for that, I was wondering about the end credits ever since I saw the first episode – and I happen to come across not one but two videos with the planets named. I did do an earlier search for non-video info but didn’t find anything (may have been before folks figured it out)
It would not shock me if some of the planets are not visited or even mentioned in the show.
That’s the planet that the green species that looks like classic “Greys” come from. Cad Bane is one, and he’s been in both animation and Book of Boba Fett. I hope he’s not in this.
Is Ahsoka happening after Book o’ Bubba Fett? Then I guess not. Didn’t watch that one, not a fan of the main character at all. I just go by what the wiki says.
I know it’s supposed to be contemporaneous with Mandalorian season 3. But guides put all 3 series as happening the same year (9 ABY)
Fett took place between seasons 2 and 3 of Mando, just like in real life. Since Ahsoka’s show is continuation of her appearance in Season 2, we have no reason to assume that it doesn’t take place “now” - after Fett, and after season 3.
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I enjoyed the first 2 episodes and I’ve never seen Rebels, although someday I probably will. It didn’t seem too slow paced for me, and I find all the characters and performances compelling enough. I also enjoyed The Mandalorian (all seasons) and TBOBF. I kind of feel the same way I feel about all of the Marvel movies and shows. I’ve been able to enjoy it all I think mostly because I grew up with this stuff when it was not cool, and to have all of this content coming out in the mainstream still blows my mind. I remember watching Spider-Man made for TV movies as a kid and let me tell you, those were bad, but I still thought it was cool to see these characters on TV.
Maybe I’m too easy to please? Or I’m not looking for academy award level craftsmanship in everything I watch? In any case it always surprises me when I see really negative reviews about stuff that I can’t imagine being rated below average. I think people forget what really bad movies and TV shows are like. My neighbor does a “Bad Movie Wednesday” viewing each week and these are so bad you most likely never heard of any of them or any of the actors in them. There isn’t a single offering under Marvel or Star Wars so far that are, to me, worthy of a 1 or 0 star review, and yet you’ll see plenty of them for just about anything in these genres at Rotten Tomatoes. So I basically just ignore any of those reviews and that seems to work just fine for me. In fact I pretty much ignore internet ratings entirely when it comes to stuff I watch these days.