General Star Wars Animated Series

I wonder if Rebels viewers will go up in the second season. It's averaging under a million, while TCW (lots are missing), in the later season was almost always around 2 million.

Wasn't the Clone Wars canceled due to low ratings? Maybe the Wissman curse will catch up with this series after all? I hope not.

No. TCW was canceled due to the Disney buyout. At the beginning George Lucas announced TCW would have 100eps, no matter the ratings.

Season 6 AKA 'The Lost Missions' was just going to be a another season airing on CN before Lucasfilm was bought. And for a while after that, the fanbase didn't know if they were going to be seeing the remaining episodes or not, until (what was it, 1/2 year or something?) they, the movie, and all other seasons were released to Neftlix, and 4 unfinished episodes were released on Star Wars.com.

Weisman quit, so hopefully no

Ohhhh. I guess factoring that, it does have more views. That's encouraging. Would you think it'd count XD viewers viewing it out of the US? I don't know where XD coverage is, but they might not count it.

I agree. I hope Disney doesn't let that discourage them.

Heh, I don't know, I think TCW made the prequels 95% better, it enhanced the story for me.

edited 18th Mar '15 2:15:53 PM by yellowturtle

I think the ratings on the Rebels wikipedia page belong solely to the Disney XD premiers. It doesn't count the viewers of early releases to apps, nor those who followed it on the Disney Channel. Since DXD is an extra, cabel-only channel it has a generally smaller viewerbase than Cartoon Network does. So the 1 million/episode rating is actually pretty solid.
Also TCW's viewrship was actually low compared to it's cost. 2 million viewers for a show that costs 2-3 millions USD/episode is not exactly encouraging for investment. For comparison that's about one-third/half of Game of Thrones' average episodic budge of 6 millions USD, and about the same as Agents of Shield's, and many times higher than other animated shows (I think I read somewhere that Legend of Korra had a budge of 500K-800K, but don't quote me on this). The sole reason TCW could go on as long as it did, was that Lucas was enthusiastic to do at least a 100 episodes no matter what, and go on even beyond that as long as there was an ounce of interest towards it, and he had a deep enough pocket to finance it.

edited 18th Mar '15 1:15:09 PM by Werebazs

Really, I remember some article saying that the clone wars was bound to be canceled due to falling ratings, around the time people were complaining about Season 5 ending the series. Though for the record I think the Clone Wars ended exactly when it should have. My parents were fans of Frasier, Monk and the like, so I know what happens when shows go on for 10 or 12 seasons, it ain't pretty.

One of the reasons why I acutely kinda miss George Lucas is this. Anyone who thinks Disney would allow a drain on it's profits like that to go on would be kidding themselves, the house of mouse hasn't done those kinds of things since Walt Died,I think. I like to think The Clone Wars was Lucas's way of saying goodbye to the fandom,that and returning himself to the light after the prequels. Yeah I'm getting all sentimental.

[1]

I got an Imperial Speeder Bike, which I think would be rather fun

The most awesome bucket of bolts!

edited 18th Mar '15 5:34:24 PM by yellowturtle

I got the Millenium Falcon

However, I kind of have a suspicion that it wasn't just the Disney buyout that lead to The Clone Wars' cancellation.

Modern Cartoon Network has a notorious reputation for getting a lot of its good action cartoons cancelled by means of limited show times and questionable timeslot decisions. This happened with Green Lantern: The Animated Series, Young Justice, Symbionic Titan and Beware the Batman.

Namely, they were shoved to the Saturday Morning timeslot, which limited viewership a bit. Not to mention that Cartoon Network's current executives are living by some horribly outdated marketing ideals about demographics (Why do you think My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was successful with the Periphery Demographic and staying around for a decently long time? Hasbro learned to accept their unexpected audience with open arms.)

When The Clone Wars got to its fifth season, it got relegated to the 9:30 A.M. E/P Saturday Morning timeslot (which certainly didn't help matters if you were living near the middle of the U.S.). In other words, I get the feeling that CN was deliberately trying to kill the show when they realized the last few seasons were getting darker and more popular with the older demographics (It's Star Wars, what did they expect?!). Disney just fired the mercy bullet.

So let me get this straight, Cartoon Network realized that a show was getting popular and decided to kill it WTF

Ok, official press release for Rebels at Star Wars Celebration:

• New Allies and New Villains in Star Wars Rebels Season Two (11:00 AM – Noon)Location: Celebration Stage / The Arena
  • Get a sneak peek at the second season of Disney XD’s animated hit series Star Wars Rebels, which continues the epic adventures of the crew of the Ghost and further reveals the early days of the rebellion against the Empire. Dave Filoni (Executive Producer, Supervising Director), Freddie Prinze, Jr. (Kanan), Vanessa Marshall (Hera), Tiya Sircar (Sabine), Steve Blum (Zeb), Taylor Gray (Ezra) and other special guests will discuss the startling story developments revealed at the end of season one and offer some can’t-miss exclusive previews of what’s to come in season two!

• The world premiere screening of season two will take place on the Digital Stage in room 300 from 5:00-6:30 pm. Star Wars Rebels Season Two Global Premiere Screening (5:00pm – 6:30pm) Location: Digital Stage (3rd Floor) / Ballroom 300
  • Witness the global premiere of Star Wars Rebels season two, which launches a whole new set of adventures for the Ghost crew and hints at the challenges to come under the shadow of their new adversary, Darth Vader. Attendees will be the first to see the two-part second season premiere following an encore screening of the thrilling season one finale.

http://rebelsreport.com/2015/03/18/celebration-anaheim-star-wars-rebels-panel-and-season-two-premiere-details/

edited 18th Mar '15 4:45:38 PM by ManchuCandidate

Conspiracy Theory much? TCW wasn't doing that well in it's previous slot either, in fact it was treated as a good thing when it was moved out of the late Friday Night Death Slot, and although it didn't raise the ratings significantly, they didn't drop either. The reason it was cancelled is simple: Lucas was the driving force behind it. A show that delivers not-fully 2 million viewers at the average cost of 2,5 million dollars/episode is not profitable enough, especially since Disney wouldn't have let the rival CN to keep the airing rights, and they knew that on their own channels (which have a smaller viewerbases altogether than CN does) it would deliver even less. Filoni and Hidalgo also mentioned that the creative team didn't really want to keep TCW going without Lucas either.

In other, somewhat yesterday's news I just discovered that Ahsoka has beaten Luke in the play-ins for the third annual "This is Madness" tournament.

edited 18th Mar '15 4:54:06 PM by Werebazs

True, like I said, it's one of those shows that ended when it should have, hell it got to great series finale's instead of just one.

Chopper's branching out:

• Fixed link

edited 18th Mar '15 5:36:31 PM by ManchuCandidate

link doesn't work

Edit: Link now works

edited 18th Mar '15 5:38:19 PM by JackOLantern1337

I'm not sure if I agree. If CN moved TCW because they realized it was getting darker and more popular, then they would have suffered a 'lack of viewers', I guess, at night. It may have just been an poorly thought decision?

Yes! I'm regretting I'm not going to be there, but hopefully the preview will go up on Star Wars.com afterwards...

Anyone who's going and planning to watch the premier... I can't live without any spoilers!

edited 18th Mar '15 5:44:21 PM by yellowturtle

Something that always bothered me... Has anyone else noticed that in TCW Yoda's 'curly' ear was on the right, when in everything I've seen, it's been on the left?

Hrmmm...

Fire Across the Galaxy:

• I wonder when this show will stop treating the Stormtroopers like jokes. Kinda ruins the drama when you put the motley crew against a bunch of them and expect us to take them seriously.
• "Maybe this mission doesn't make military sense" - Of course it does! You guys routinely beat dozens of Stomrtroopers while doing one-liners and laughing at them. They're a joke! See what I mean when they expect us to take them seriously?
• Kanan might be the only non-insufferable character in the cast. He's got a pretty cool scene here with the torture and prodding from the Inquisitor. Also, why are the lightsabers so pointy?
• Oh look, they shut down an entire Star Destroyer on their own. Why is Luke the hope of the galaxy again and not these guys? Because I'm pretty sure these guys would have Palpatine beat in a pretty comedic fashion.
• Oh shi-! Steve Blum troopers! Yeah! Oh... oh. They're losers too. Oh.
• Cool, master and apprentice vs a Dark Side-user. Hopefully this doesn't end as badly Maul vs Obi-Wan and Qui-Goin. Of course it won't. This show doesn't want actual consequences ruining it's swashbuckling action. I like how neither the Inquisitor nor Kanan could sense Ezra was still alive... or even just look 10 feet down.
• Man the Inquisitor is shitty. I hope Vader chokes him. Oh... he's dead. Good. He deserves it. What an awful villain he was: he couldn't even force Kanan to cut him down. Or rather, the writers didn't want him to execute the Inquisitor, so they had him off himself. That's terrible. Also, an entire Star Destroyer and thousands of Troopers taken down by three non-Force sensitives. My suspension of disbelief is six feet under.
• Vader. SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! I sure hope he has a reunion with Ahsoka.

Overall, apart from the lack of tension because the Stormtroopers have been portrayed as completely incompetent, I liked it. Which is to say, I liked Kanan-Inquisitor, Ahsoka and Bail, and Vader and Tarkin. I also really like no Galen Marek in sight.

edited 21st Mar '15 5:10:51 PM by Cruherrx

@Werebazs18th The ONLY reason The Clone Wars was canceled was the disney buyout. They had incomplete episodes and story boards that were in production right up until that happened. It wasn't going to be canceled until that happened.

"Also, an entire Star Destroyer and thousands of Troopers taken down by three non-Force sensitives. My suspension of disbelief is six feet under."

Blowing up the engines on a ship tends to do that.

edited 21st Mar '15 10:20:27 PM by Joesolo

An entire Death Star was blown up by one force-sensitive. A second one was blown up by a non-force sensitive. Stormtrooper competence has never been anything other than implied offscreen.

And Disney mainly chose to not finish those episodes because they deemed the cost-to-ratings ratio unfavorable.

@ Cruherrx, not that you aren't entitled to your opinion but you are missing the point here dude. Their plan was to stop stormtroopers being summoned... which Tarkin had countered before it was even an issue, their cutting the signal just caused the other ships to send more mooks over - mooks who basically had our heroes running around in circles and pinned down in pretty quick order, save Ezra with his magic 'ventilation navigation' skills.

The star destroyer was only blown up because Inky contrived to drop his lightsaber right into a totally unprotected and extremely explosive bit of engine. The Ghost people (even Kanan who beat the dude in the first place) had absolutely no idea that was going to happen, they didn't make it happen they didn't even account for it happening. Their plan was to grab Kanan and run, and this plan failed. If Chopper hadn't decided to stop being a troll and take a bit of initiative they would all have been captured/killed by the four remaining Star Destroyers and the swarm of TIES in pretty short order, only the other rebels pulling a Big Damn Heroes/Deus Ex Machina saved their butts.

I am not saying your wrong to view the Stormtroopers in general as jokes this series but in this instance the heroes have been lucky, quite clearly to me their escape was a fluke not any kind of plan. And Stormtroopers have ALWAYS been mooks/butt monkey brigade of the Galaxy Far Far Away, right back from A New Hope. Remember the Doorframe Of Doom? 'Close the Blast Doors!... Open the Blast Doors!"/The Scooby Doo Chase starring Han and Chewie as Shaggy and Scooby? Incompetent Stormies is not a Rebels invention, at all.

Remember that

1: The Empire has the resources of an entire galaxy at it's disposal, the loss of one Star Destroyer is nothing to them,other than an embarrassment.

2: For those of you saying that such a small group taking down a cruiser is impossible, keep in mind Boba Fett was able to do it basically all by himself,as a small child, and with two of the best Jedi in the order on board. I mean I know the Venerators' were toy's compared to the Imperial Class, but that has to count for something.

@Were- Because those episodes would have belonged to Cartoon Network. The Clone Wars was their show.

There's no way they'd have lost money on finishing touches. The voice work and most of the animation was finished. Detailing was all that was left for most of them. Most of the costs were spent.

edited 22nd Mar '15 1:12:11 PM by Joesolo

Cartoon Network and WB only "rented". They owned nothing, everything belonged to Lucasanimation. The fact that Lost Missions went to Netflix without a hitch is proof enough of that. And no, the animation was nowhere near to being finished. It's precisely taking stuff from the story reels like the Utapau-arc to the finished look, that takes the most work, and as such costs the most.

In other news, here's the synopsis for Dark Discpile.

edited 22nd Mar '15 4:12:03 PM by Werebazs

Girl, those disc piles are so dark. You don't even know .