Star Wars Resistance new animated series...

Pre- TFA.

I was kind of hoping it'd be closer to ROTJ than TFA, or that the series would serve to really kind of fill in the gaps between the two trilogies the way TCW filled in the gap between AOTC and ROTS, and the way Rebels fills in the gaps (some of them) between ROTS and ANH. Maybe they will but if the Resistance is already formed, it makes me wonder.

I won't judge it yet, but if it's another happy go lucky happy fun time show like most of Rebels was, I probably won't bother getting into it. I don't want another show that gets progressively more serious. Filoni did that with both TCW and Rebels. The stories only got better once the show was halfway out the door. After the last few seasons of TCW, I expected Rebels to start out strong. It didn't. It followed the same storytelling format at TCW, with silly, simple stories in the beginning and serious, complex stories at the end. For TCW I assumed it was because Filoni was new. After Rebels, I recognized the pattern. I'm not going through another 4 years of SW TV where 3/4 of the episodes involve silly, affable plotlines and a lack of imminent danger of any kind. It's just a waste of my time. But, that's Disney Wars these days. As I saw somebody put it on Facebook, "The days of seeing someone's head being chopped off, necks being snapped, and someone being blown up, all casual like are long gone." We're not going to get the good old dark days of TCW back.

I think you have to kind of expect the format. There's a design behind it.

These are shows on Disney XD, which means they're targeted towards a particular age demographic. That demographic group never changes, but the people who fit within it grow older as the show airs. So, a shot starts off kind of light and fun, to draw in younger kids, and then gradually gets darker and more serious on the theory that the audience is aging along with the program. That's my theory, anyway, as to why the format seems to repeat itself.

You're viewing it from the perspective of someone who has (arguably) already "aged out" of the demographic, but who can still appreciate the shows, rather than someone within the target demographic who, at age 8 or 9 might be turned off by the "sad" or "scary" tone of the show in its later years, but finds the fun stuff accessible to start.

I'm also not saying that younger kids can't appreciate the kind of stuff you want to see, but rather that I think the Disney XD folks want to hit a sweet spot with their target market, and are less worried about everyone else. Like, they ain't writing for the AV Club review site viewers. They're writing for the kids who will buy the Lego sets and the action figures (and actually play with them instead of "collect" them).
 
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I think you have to kind of expect the format. There's a design behind it.

These are shows on Disney XD, which means they're targeted towards a particular age demographic. That demographic group never changes, but the people who fit within it grow older as the show airs. So, a shot starts off kind of light and fun, to draw in younger kids, and then gradually gets darker and more serious on the theory that the audience is aging along with the program. That's my theory, anyway, as to why the format seems to repeat itself.

You're viewing it from the perspective of someone who has (arguably) already "aged out" of the demographic, but who can still appreciate the shows, rather than someone within the target demographic who, at age 8 or 9 might be turned off by the "sad" or "scary" tone of the show in its later years, but finds the fun stuff accessible to start.

I'm also not saying that younger kids can't appreciate the kind of stuff you want to see, but rather that I think the Disney XD folks want to hit a sweet spot with their target market, and are less worried about everyone else. Like, they ain't writing for the AV Club review site viewers. They're writing for the kids who will buy the Lego sets and the action figures (and actually play with them instead of "collect" them).
Back in my day Star Wars was for every demographic. :darnkids
 
I was kind of hoping it'd be closer to ROTJ than TFA, or that the series would serve to really kind of fill in the gaps between the two trilogies the way TCW filled in the gap between AOTC and ROTS, and the way Rebels fills in the gaps (some of them) between ROTS and ANH. Maybe they will but if the Resistance is already formed, it makes me wonder.

I feel like this is the show they should have done instead of Rebels, and then maybe done Rebels now. The novel Bloodline takes place roughly five years before TFA. From how things are in it, it seems like the "happily ever after" of ROTJ is still largely intact. Luke is still around, Ben is still training with him, Han and Leia are more together than not, Leia's still a senator, and the First Order has yet to go public. It's toward the end of the book that everything starts to go wrong. Leia's true paternity is revealed, so no one takes her seriously when she warns about the First Order, and so she quits and forms the Resistance.

Even with things like Shattered Empire, the Aftermath trilogy, and Inferno Squad's storyline in BF2, there's still so much yet to be revealed from that quarter-century span, but whatever happens in there, it doesn't seem to permanently affect Our Heroes or the larger galactic setting. So this series, picking up as Leia's forming the Resistance and trying to learn more about the First Order, is perfect for setting up the ST and actually potentially answering all those questions TFA didn't address at all. No the First Order isn't the Empire. So what are they instead? No Snoke isn't Sith. So what is he instead? How did Ben find out about the Vader-Leia revelation and what was his reaction? At what point exactly did he actually turn and become Kylo? How long after did Luke walk away? There was a lot of needed context that should have set up TFA. If it had started somewhere within the narrative of Bloodline, (with the ending of ROTJ still largely intact), it would have worked better as a transition piece from the OT.

But it didn't, and hopefully this series will.

I am also still hopeful that there will be another animated or live-action series forthcoming earlier in that quarter-century desert. Rebels, Shattered Empire, Aftermath: Empire's End, and BF2 set things up and tease too well to just leave it for books and comics to fill in. Hera, Jacen, Sabine, Palpatine's Observatories, the founding of Luke's academy, etc. Something that picks up about 8-10 years in. Jacen would be a teenager (and possibly one of Luke's students, possibly also one that goes with Ben and becomes a Knight of Ren), Rey's born 11 years into this period, and I still don't believe her parents were "nobodies", let alone broke scavengers -- that's just what she believes after being forced to confront her abandonment. I don't want her to be a Skywalker.. Maybe distantly a Kenobi... And I know the argument about everything in Star Wars being connected a little too closely (thank you Prequels), but I want her parents to have been involved in the struggle in some way, and hid her on Jakku for her protection, fully intending to come back for her, but prevented.

So we'll have to just see. About Resistance, about Jon Favreau's live-action series, about standalone films, about another animated series in another 6 years or so, about whether they do more numbered episodes past IX... *sigh* I do still strongly feel lit's a misstep, first on George's part, now on LFL's in honoring his bad judgment, to have the numbered films be "the Skywalker Saga" instead of "the Star Wars Saga", of which The Adventures of Luke Skywalker was only a part. Rogue One and Solo fit in the numbered sequence. A Kenobi film would, too. I wish they'd heed their most recent film's advice and uncouple themselves from that notion that the numbered Saga is the Skywalker story. Let the past die -- kill it if you have to. IMO, slavish devotion to the Word of George does more harm to Star Wars than good, long-term. He's a gloriously rich idea mine, but he can't write. LFL has already shown they'll honor his wishes except where they don't. This should be one of those departures...

--Jonah
 
I've only seen most of the first season of Rebels. I would like to see the rest of the seasons, but I haven't ever felt a sense of "MUST-SEE" even as the huge Star Wars fan I am.

When I heard about this new series I really don't feel all that excited about it either. Rebels seems to be great overall, but just doesn't attract me to watching as much as the films do.

Seems to me that they should be recruiting Filoni to make episodic films rather than the short-form series. He seems to know what the heck he's doing....
 
I've only seen most of the first season of Rebels. I would like to see the rest of the seasons, but I haven't ever felt a sense of "MUST-SEE" even as the huge Star Wars fan I am.

When I heard about this new series I really don't feel all that excited about it either. Rebels seems to be great overall, but just doesn't attract me to watching as much as the films do.

Seems to me that they should be recruiting Filoni to make episodic films rather than the short-form series. He seems to know what the heck he's doing....
I actually think he's better on TV. The format let's him tell more expansive stories that build characters gradually, which is what makes the shows enjoyable to me. Trying to compress that into 2-2.5 hrs is actually pretty difficult.

These days I find 10-16 hour long episodes of TV to feel the best as far as how expansive the show ought to be. Shorter than that and a story feels under developed. More than that, and they end up with filler.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
 
I love the aviation/flight focus. Automatic win for me.

I'm not a big fan of anime. I don't hate it just felt I had my fill in the 80's. However I am not one to not watch a Star Wars series because of the animation style. A good Star Wars story can be told in any style and so far I have loved all the shows.

I also like prefer OT over SEQ but since TFA, I have had so many questions about the formation of both the resistance and first order that I hope they fill in the blanks the same way that Clone Wars and Rebels did and in turn made the movies even stronger.
 
I'm loving the new ships, especially the sports car looking one:

swr.jpg
 
Oh boy...when they said "anime inspired," I was expecting Avatar: The Last Airbender, not that crappy Iron Man: Armored Adventures atrocity. I can't stand this animation style. It looks cheap.

The main character Kaz is annoying the snot out of me already. Ezra 2.0 :rolleyes

Why do all of the animated characters have to wear such bright colors? You don't ever see people in bright orange or green in the live action movies...This trailer makes it look even more kiddy than Rebels was.

As for the ships, I'm confused as to why the Resistance is using all new, completely custom ships for these young pilots. As we already know, the Resistance was formed because the New Republic was more concerned with disarming the military and reinstating peace that they refused to acknowledge the First Order as a viable threat. Leia and co split off to form the Resistance, which gets its fleet from sympathizers within the New Republic willing to lend X-wings and the like for combat, hence why the Resistance fleet is so small and made up of a handful of ship types. Why these new 'heroes' all get their own 100% custom ships instead of a standard T-70 X-wing (with maybe some custom paint) is ridiculous. Hell, even Poe Dameron, the biggest and most well known 'hero' in this series flies a standard T-70 X-wing with a custom paint job and a few minor modifications. The Resistance doesn't have the kind of funding to be creating one-of-a-kind ships for their pilots - these guys should be in X-wings! It makes Star Wars feel less lived in when everyone has their own one-of-a-kind ship.

Even in the Clone Wars, clones pilots all flew slightly different or just plain versions of the ships that are manufactured for combat. All of the gunships were exactly the same, except some pilots painted some awesome nose art to make them their own.
 
Because the ships in the trailer aren't used by the Resistance, they're used by what we can assume to be civilian pilots, and they're piloting the Star Wars equivalent of customized cars for street (sky) racing.

The show is set on a space station where "dangerous races" take place. The main character is a spy sent on a mission to the station to figure out and identify potential allies and enemies, and according to this synopsis he is drawn into joining the races themselves.
 
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Because the ships in the trailer aren't used by the Resistance, they're used by what we can assume to be civilian pilots, and they're piloting the Star Wars equivalent of customized cars for street (sky) racing.

The show is set on a space station where "dangerous races" take place. The main character is a spy sent on a mission to the station to figure out and identify potential allies and enemies, and according to this synopsis he is drawn into joining the races themselves.

Well if they're civilian racers than that makes a lot more sense. I'm still curious about this "space station" Colossus, as the trailer shows it being a floating structure in the middle of an ocean...unless that's not Colossus.
 
Multiple sources have verified that the station in the trailer is Colossus. "Space station" is a mistranslation from the original German post and I should've been more clear, sorry.
 
The show is set on a space station where "dangerous races" take place. The main character is a spy sent on a mission to the station to figure out and identify potential allies and enemies, and according to this synopsis he is drawn into joining the races themselves.
I'm still curious how they're planning on making a seasoned show out of this synopsis. This sounds more like a synopsis for a pilot than the show.

This trailer just hasn't hooked me. At least the Rebels trailer and pilot, for all my complaining about it, DID manage to pique my interest and get me to watch the show. This pilot makes this show look like a very easy pass. My interest has gone from cautionary to none.
 

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