https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeZBKFtWFQw
 A seven minute preview has just been released for the hotly anticipated CGI animated series Star Wars Rebels, due to premiere this October on Disney XD.
Didn’t know they were making a Star Wars TV series? Well they are. It’s continuing on in the same animated vein as Lucasfilm’s last venture onto the small screen, The Clone Wars series on Cartoon Network, which fleshed out the wider story behind the prequel trilogies epic inter-galactic conflict.
For Rebels, we’re back in more familiar territory for those who prefer the original trilogy (which amongst serious Star Wars fans, is pretty much everyone). Set during the rule of the Empire, five years before the events of A New Hope, the show tells the tale of a rag tag band of titular rebels, led by renegade Jedi Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr). In the preview we see a chance meeting between the rebels and 14 year old urchin Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray) – a kind of ersatz space Aladdin – on the Outer Rim world of Lothal. Naturally, the meeting leads to an almighty fight and land speeder chase between the rebels, the Empire and Bridger, who attempts to pilfer a crate stolen by the rebels for himself.
As sneak peak’s go this one is certainly impressive, action packed and full of the kind of charm that made the original trilogy so great. Personally, this humble consumer of television is not the world’s greatest fan of what they’re doing with CGI animation these days, but as the closest you can get to live action it’s ultimately what the show requires for it to really work, assuming they haven’t got the kind of money lying around to make a live action Star Wars TV show (they don’t, no one does).
The key themes of the preview certainly feel authentically Star Wars. A young boy on a remote, deserty planet in the Outer Rim, struggling to get by, is whisked away to a life of galaxy spanning adventure. Although please tell me Ezra Bridger isn’t going to turn out to be another lost member of the Skywalker clan? Their life stories seem to have a remarkable history of starting out like this.
Rebels also boasts a couple of fairly impressive voice actors worth getting excited about. Jason Isaacs – who you will almost definitely know best for playing Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films – voicing if anything an even more sinister character in The Inquisitor, an imperial agent tasked with hunting down the galaxies surviving Jedi, and as mentioned above, Freddie Prinze Jr; of Scooby Doo and being married to Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame. Fans of the Clone Wars TV series also might be glad to hear that James Arnold Taylor has reprised his role as the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi, and that Anthony Daniels will provide the voice of C3-PO; which will be welcome news for the fans of anything in the wider Star Wars universe where C3-PO appeared, although frankly, you probably couldn’t get Anthony Daniels to not voice C3-PO if you paid him, or threatened him with a sharp stick.
Ultimately, we’ll have to wait until October to make a real judgment, when the proof of the show will be in the watching. But for those of you who have consistently bemoaned the franchises alleged decline in quality since the release of Phantom Menace, and worry the new film might disappoint you yet further, Rebels might, just might, be exactly the show you are looking for.
