General Star Wars Animated Series

Most of Vader's failures don't even look like failures, they look like Dragon Their Feet.

Jovian: Well duh. Realistically, the Rebellion should have been destroyed about 10 minutes after the Empire found out about them. But you do have to account for the fact that this is a movie, and they're the bad guys. They don't get to win in the grand scheme of things, but "minor" victories like putting the heroes on the run for an entire movie, catching them off guard at Cloud City, and definitively capturing a main character who does not escape by the end of the film do go in their "win" column.

I'm pretty sure that Vader let them get away that time.

To what end? He half-assed the finish there. He shows up with one ship, destroys a freighter and four or five A-wings, and the others all escape. With the stolen equipment and three fucking Jedi

I don't care how ace a pilot is, if he shows up alone to battle a fleet of destroyers and frigates with their own fighter craft, the concentrated fire will blow him out of the sky.

In the end, the Rebellion has six shiny new military-grade deflector shields, and is down a ship and some fighters.

edited 2nd Dec '16 8:58:19 AM by blkwhtrbbt

Maybe so, but the way you described it seemed to suggest that it wasn't a deliberate move on his part. Quality of the plan aside, it was his plan to track them back to the Rebel fleet.

I believe the overall goal was "remove the Rebel presence on Lothal". Granted, it didn't work to the fullest extent possible (because if it had, the series would be over), but they did at least succeed in that objective.

edited 2nd Dec '16 9:24:22 AM by KarkatTheDalek

If I may:

That wasn't just a freighter; it was the command ship. It probably held the majority of Phoenix Squadron's resources. In addition, they had a grand total of eight A-Wings; the loss of a single one would be a crippling blow. Vader took out six.

And as for him letting them go, when he realized that Ahsoka was on the Ghost, he changed his objective from "Destroy all Rebels" to "Capture the Jedi alive." There's also the matter of Hera luring him into Konstantine's tractor beam — had he tried to outright destroy the Ghost, there's little doubt he could (and would) have done so.

edited 2nd Dec '16 11:08:14 AM by TempestKnight

Loss or not, it wasn't crippling. The rebellion wasn't wiped out, and given Vader's resources, it should have been trivial to wipe out the entire fleet.

I do agree with your assessment that Vader's goal had changed by the end though, so perhaps that justifies it.

Was it not crippling? Doesn't the rebellion start scrambling for resources after that point?

Good news everyone! Taken a while but it's starting to look like Nu Thrawn's intelligence is finally starting to move out of the informed and into the actual. He even does his trademark 'art scan' but in a way that actually makes sense and not relying on the 'planet of hats' Legends style.

Clearly not. They're able to mount attacks of their own very soon after. They come right back from it. I wouldn't call that crippling. Pretty bad, to be sure, but they recovered. And kept fighting.

Though looool all those episodes about Jedi not being blind in the sandstorm

and one line that Kanan delivers about Jedi not needing eyes to see hurt a hella lot worse now don't they

edited 5th Dec '16 8:15:55 AM by blkwhtrbbt

IIRC, they spend all of that season after Siege outgunned and running, and only being capable of pulling small scale infiltration missions without fleets support. The only real exception was the blockade running bit (the B-Wing episode with Hera), which they only had a snowball's chance with when they got wind of a special new weapon to let them start turning the tides.

Likewise, they were able to defeat a pair of AT-AT's immediately after Vader's attack, but only because they met people who happened to live in an old war machine, and because the Fifth Brother incompetently called away the Star Destroyer that was explicitly poised to wipe them off the planet just before it could curbstomp them.

The only start getting the ability to really strike back against the Empire late in the season, when they steal the carrier, and the big turning point back to them being presented as well organized was them establishing Chopper Base at the end of it.

edited 5th Dec '16 3:15:55 PM by KnownUnknown

It's liking increasingly likely to me that Thrawn is going to capture the rebel base this season. He knows Sato's weakness for his nephew, and now has a way to feed the rebels false information.

I know the saying is "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity," but the Fifth Brother's move there wasn't incompetent. It was good, old-fashioned Sith glory-hounding.

And before anyone starts whining about "bad writing," that's a move that's perfectly in line with the characterization for Sith (or their acolytes). They're notoriously bad at playing with others. Yes, it leads to some shockingly bad decisions, but selfishly making bad decisions is kind of a trademark of villains.

I just saw the episode with the Interdictor cruiser. One more Legend brought into canon. The whole thing was hilarious, but the best part of the episode was when Ezra announces that he's Jabba the Hutt, and the Imperial is all like "Oh, that means you're Ezra Bridger." He's used that line so many times people know that when you capture a mouthy kid who claims he's Jabba, he's automatically Ezra Bridger.

edited 5th Dec '16 5:21:24 PM by WillKeaton

Ew the model they use for Anakin in Rebels is very different from the one they used in Clone Wars. That one training Hologram in the holocron the Kanan possesses had Anakin looking like a complete goober.

Yoda also looks gross in Rebels. Holograms of Obi-wan are also really weird looking.

Me no likey

Relative to Clone Wars, Rebels is operating on a shoestring budget; The reason so much of the later Clone Wars animation is so fantastic is that George Lucas was funneling a huge amount of money straight from his own pockets. That said, in addition to a few hideous models I am not a big fan of the textures and palette for most of the show.

Dude the animation is fine in Rebels. I have some complaints about how not-stiff the armor is, but the ships flying, the stuff blowing up, the interdicter cruiser? Those were awesome.

Just Anakin's goober face is terrible.

Not what I meant-I was referring to personal preference of aesthetics, as from an objective view most everything is fine. My personal issues are the stretched look of some of the models-tall/narrow as opposed to more rounded or irregular framing; a palette too heavy on blue and gray, with washed out colors rather than vibrancy; a lot of direct shading rather than reflection, and somewhat static rather than dynamic framing- especially in action sequences.

The swordfights did always seem a little stiff. Whenever sabers made contact, it felt as though the fight were centered around making the blades touch, rather than that being a natural consequence of swinging sabers at each other. When deflecting blaster bolts, the jedi sometimes rather stiffly make the blade jump right to the bolt, rather than the fluid motion that catches multiple bolts with precise timing that we see in the films, and ironically enough, which Anakin describes in the Jedi holocron video that Ezra watches.

You can thank Ralph McQuarrie for the less vibrant colours. The art style is heavily modelled after his original concept art for the movies.

This is perhaps most noticeable on Vader, as his mask is narrower and more angular than is typically depicted, and is almost a match for McQuarrie's artwork.

Also, I think Obi-Wan's Rebels model actually looks more like Ewan McGregor than his TCW one did, so I'm not going to complain about it.

edited 6th Dec '16 10:42:50 AM by BadWolf21

The old Clone Wars one looked more like Obi-Wan though. Or rather, it felt more Obi-Wan/

I just can't get over what a goober Rebels Anakin looks like. Why did they even need to change it? Did they not have the original model left? It was a friggin holocron recording.

Hey, remember back in season one when Lobot/Greedo said Ezra's parents were alive? Well I'm halfway through season two and they still haven't done anything with that information. Was that plot point dropped or what?

Because it's a completely different style. It's not supposed to look the same. Rebels' style is generally less stylized than TCW's. That's why Yoda looks so strange. Because he looks more like the movies, but not perfectly, so it's weird.

Also, by definition, if it looks less like Ewan McGregor, it looks less like Obi-Wan at that point. There's also a time difference. I find that the Rebels model looks more like Obi-Wan did near the end of Episode III (when his message was recorded) than TCW's looks like a transition between II and III. Which is fine. Because TCW often wasn't trying to look like the movies. Case in point: Dooku.

His name's Tseebo, and if you don't want spoilers, you really shouldn't ask questions like that.

edited 6th Dec '16 3:04:37 PM by BadWolf21

So...umm , the Ghost showed up in the latest trailer for Rogue One.

edited 6th Dec '16 4:12:14 PM by ManchuCandidate

Maybe it's a different ship?

Or... I suppose if Saw can be a major character, the Ghost can show up. I don't want any of the crew to be alive, though.

edited 6th Dec '16 4:26:30 PM by yellowturtle