STAR WARS Rebels new animated series!

Mara Jade's Father said:

Nothing except for...

...With a sequel still two years away from theaters, Lucas had been sold on the idea that a Star Wars holiday television special—to be broadcast on CBS the weekend before Thanksgiving, when Nielsen audiences were plentiful—would sustain interest in the franchise, move more toys off the shelves, and maybe even pick up some new fans who hadn’t seen the movie...

...Though Lucas would not be involved in the actual shooting of the special—Smith and Hemion would oversee that—he knew the tales he wanted to tell and planned to work with the show’s team of seasoned TV writers to develop his ideas into a viable script...

...But when Vilanch heard Lucas’s storyline at a development meeting at Smith and Hemion’s L.A. offices, he quickly realized that a “big challenge” lay ahead. Lucas was intent on building The Star Wars Holiday Special, as it would be called, around Wookiees—specifically, the family of Chewbacca, Han Solo’s shaggy sidekick, as they outwitted Imperial forces to come together on Life Day, the Wookiee equivalent of Christmas. Suddenly, Vilanch says, the special was in danger of looking like “one long episode of Lassie.”

“I said: ‘You’ve chosen to build a story around these characters who don’t speak. The only sound they make is like fat people having an orgasm,’” the 250-plus-pound Vilanch recalls. “In fact, I told Lucas he could just leave a tape recorder in my bedroom and I’d be happy to do all the looping and Foley work for him.”
Lucas met these comments with a “glacial” look. “This was his vision, and he could not be moved,” Vilanch says. “And of course Star Wars was so gigantic that he had been validated a hundred times over. So he had what a director needs to have, which is this insane belief in their personal vision, and he was somehow going to make it work.”...

...But the deal had been struck, and Lucas and the writers got down to the business of roughing out a script. “We would ask him questions [like] ‘Would a Wookiee slap his knee—do they laugh the way humans laugh or is there some other way?’ Because, you know, we didn’t want to **** on the Bible,” Vilanch says. “We knew that he had his rules. And we didn’t know what his rules were. Mostly, he was just passing judgment. He had constructed the framework for the show, and we were basically just throwing things onto it and seeing if they stuck.”

Vilanch says it was Lucas who named Chewbacca’s father and son, respectively, Itchy and Lumpy (though Star Wars nerds will note that the names are actually abbreviations of Attichitcuk and Lumpawarrump). The filmmaker had an even more interesting appellation for one of the Cantina aliens. While flipping through a book of production stills, Vilanch says, the Star Wars creator came across a particularly provocative-looking creature. “Lucas, who had been pretty stolid the whole time, turned to me and said: ‘Oh yes, we call him Cuntface.’ And that’s what it looked like, actually...​

...Lucas was well aware of what was happening, too, but, Kurtz says, “I don’t think he thought much about it, really. We were working on a lot of other things at the time and there was a lot of effort in preparing Empire, so nobody had any time.”...
​

Hmm... does not seem like "next to nothing".

Click to expand...

astroboy said:

Personally, I never bought the idea that the rebel ships were built by a "sympathetic " manufacturer.

That doesn't happen with rebel cells here on earth and I don't see it happening there either. It makes so much more sense that they were older repurposed civilian ships or security escorts. Or even older military vehicles from the clone wars

Sent from my SM-N910W8 using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

Wolfsburg said:

I think you're wrong and you think I'm wrong. You think I'm clueless and I think you are.

Click to expand...

Inquisitor Peregrinus said:

Somewhere between where we are now and ANH, these scattered Rebel cells, including the Organa-Tano Network we're finding out about now, will coalesce into what I think is still accepted to be formally known as The Alliance to Restore the Republic. I'm hoping we see some of the earlier resistance groups at least mentioned.

--Jonah

Click to expand...

Wolfsburg said:

I'm wondering if any of this "Rebel cell" business is intended to set the stage for Rogue One. I imagine that movie will go a long way to elaborate on what they've come up with.

Click to expand...

Riceball said:

Something that came to mind recently is the name of the Rebellion, it's the Rebel Alliance, which suggests that the Rebellion isn't a singular organization that's made from one rebel organization spread throughout the galaxy. My theory is that the Rebellion is made up of any number of different rebel cells that previously had nothing to do with each or were even necessarily even aware each other, then, over time, they slowly came together to form the Alliance. So it's possible that the Rebels we see with Leia were just one part of the Alliance, one that, at the time, only had X & Y wings and few capital ships. That's what Tarkin & Vader were after, one particular Rebel organization, possibly one that was the face of the Rebellion or possibly the main one, the glue that held the Alliance together. So, while Leia's group only represented one part of the Rebellion if you took it out the Alliance would surely fall apart thus making the Rebellion something much easier to deal with and making their days numbered.

The beauty of my theory is that it satisfies both sides of this argument, those who believe Yavin and Hoth represented singular bases or large cells while others go with the assumption that they were The bases. It satisfies the belief that the Rebels were spread out and did not or would not have all of their eggs in one basket, so to speak because Yavin & Hoth while important, aren't The bases that the movies would have you believe. On the other hand, it goes with this idea of their importance because while they may not be the only Rebel bases out there they were, however, very important bases and their destruction would likely, in the eyes of the Empire, would effectively mean the end of the Rebellion.

Click to expand...

Wolfsburg said:

Given the path the Story Group is going down, I really like this idea and I hope they go with something like this.

Click to expand...

Inquisitor Peregrinus said:

We saw it in the Clone Wars microseries...

--Jonah

Click to expand...

astroboy said:

Really? At what point? I've been watching bits and pieces of it recently

Sent from my SM-N910W8 using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

Inquisitor Peregrinus said:

We saw it in the Clone Wars microseries...

--Jonah

Click to expand...

astroboy said:

I'm hoping we finally get to see dantooine on rebels!

Sent from my SM-N910W8 using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

Inquisitor Peregrinus said:

Somewhere between where we are now and ANH, these scattered Rebel cells, including the Organa-Tano Network we're finding out about now, will coalesce into what I think is still accepted to be formally known as The Alliance to Restore the Republic. I'm hoping we see some of the earlier resistance groups at least mentioned.

--Jonah

Click to expand...

Sluis Van Shipyards said:

I seem to remember something either from Pablo Hidalgo or Lucas that said that (at the time) the retrieval of the Death Star plans were the first official Alliance battle that the ANH crawl was referring to. That was also the first time the Rebel Alliance was officially together and took credit for a mission. Not sure if that's canon now or not though. So I imagine if this is still true that all kinds of Rebels were off doing their own thing, the rebel cells were united, and then they began doing coordinated missions.

Click to expand...