I’m not sure how to feel about this latest episode. We finally get a good look at the heart of the New Republic, and it seems a bit corny and mundane. My preconceptions are heavily influenced by EU stuff where Chandrila was the New Republic capital, and there were all these politicians trying to make alliances and increase their fleets to fight Imperial remnants. In this version of the New Republic, it seems they’ve decommissioned the Rebel fleet, and are completely against using any Imperial technology. (Which is stupid, because Imperial tech is mostly just next generation Old Republic tech.)
Also parts of Coruscant feel somehow… cheap. The apartment complex looked like a parking garage. And it bothered me that when we see someone flying through the city in a flying car with no roof, there doesn’t seem to be any wind or loud ambient noise. It makes the whole scene feel very fake. At least the Coruscant chase scenes in Attack of the Clones gave off these atmospheric cyberpunk vibes. Here it just feels like a green screen.
Somehow, I feel like the best depiction of Coruscant was in this old test footage from like 2010, made for George Lucas’ planned “Underworld” show that never panned out. It had this really atmospheric, Neo-Noir vibe.
Anyway, this was a strange episode. I liked seeing the New Republic, but really not much happened. They spend all this time on this elaborate chase through a flying subway, and the payoff is simply that Dr. Pershing gets betrayed by his friend for unknown reasons. Apparently the New Republic also has no ethical problems forcing medical procedures on people, but whatever.
I also noticed that the “in Universe” music playing at that outdoor park/festival on Coruscant was the “Resistance Theme” from the Sequel trilogy.
Finally, while it’s generally always the case that the concept art they show in the credits looks better than the actual filmed scenes, the difference usually isn’t that great. This time, the concept art looked orders of magnitude better than the actual filmed scenes. I mean, the concept art for the Imperial lab looked very cool, but in the scene itself the lab just looked like a random room with some tables and bits of equipment strewn about.