Re-Writing "Rebels"

So, I’ve seen the first season and the first eleven episodes of the second season of Rebels (that’s including the premiere TV movie), and suffice it to say, I find it incredibly meh. The potential for greatness is there, but the villains and the juvenile trappings of the writing are both incredibly lame.

I’m interested in re-writing Rebels to give it more gravitas, but I’ll probably never get around to doing so. In lieu of that, here are my ideas on a revamped Rebels.

GENERAL ADDITIONS/ALTERATIONS/ETC.

• The title of the show would be changed from Star Wars: Rebels to Star Wars: Rebellion, in keeping with my more serious take on the subject matter.

• The show would last five seasons, consisting of thirteen hour-long episodes each.

• Dispensing with the incompetent stormtrooper garbage, I’d do a complete 180 with the troopers; I’d make the stormtroopers as deadly and formidible as possible – crack shots with their blasters and skilled hand-to-hand fighters – to make them credible threats to our heroes.

• Universe shrinkage would be kept to an absolute minimum. While Leia and Bail would make occassional appearances – what with them being connected to the nascent Rebellion and all – that’s where encounters with characters from the films would end; Lando, Tarkin, Vader, etc. would not make direct appearances in the show.

• Lothal would be reimagined into a once-beautiful and prosperous world that the Empire has poisoned and is slowing killing through strip mining and exhaustion of the world’s resources, a real dire place with a high mortality rate ravaged by famine, disease, murder, and rape – a place which makes Tatooine look like a paradise by comparison.

• No light-slingshots.

• No spinning lightsabers.

CHARACTERS

• Ezra would be older, about ninteen years old. He’d start the series as someone who has become so disillusioned and jaded over the years due to the harsh, ugly life he’s lived on Lothal that he’s become an aloof, amoral asshole – someone who stopped caring about anyone or anything but himself long ago. It’s only after he joins the crew of the Ghost that he learns to care for others and believe in a greater cause again.

• Sabine would likewise receive a makeover. She’d be older – about twenty-four – and moderately muscular, someone who – while still feminine – is physically imposing, not someone you’d consider crossing. While she’d remain a former Imperial cadet who went AWOL, the whole superflous Mandalorian stuff would be jettisoned; instead of wearing Mandalorian armour, she’d wear cobbled-together elements of Imperial armour. Furthermore, while she’d remain a woman with an artistic streak, that aspect of her character would be toned down considerably; she’d work on paintings in her spare time, dye her hair, and apply henna tattoos to her arms and hands to express her creativity, but she wouldn’t go around wearing Day-Glo armour or turning TIE fighters into abstract works of art.

• Kanan would wield a yellow lightsaber and be in an open romantic relationship with Hera.

• The Pau’an inquisitor would look like this

and weild a standard-hilt lightsaber with a blue blade.

• Ahsoka would remain a part of the series, but she’d be a Sith instead of a former Jedi (in keeping with my personal canon) and she’d wield her green and chartreuse lightsabers instead of white-bladed replacements.

• The Seventh Sister would be taken out of the show entirely, her role filled by the character Sariss.

• The Fifth Brother would wear a different uniform and wield a green lightsaber which can be re-configured into a razor-edged flying disc when in bladeless mode.

• Jerec

would serve as a main villain later down the line, the chief inquistor to whom the Pau’an inquisitor, Sariss, and the Fifth Brother all answer to. He’d also be an old nemesis of Ahsoka’s, someone she has bad history with.

The rest of the main characters would remain the same.

I’m exhausted for the night, so I’ll leave things here for now. I’ll go into more detail about where I’d take the series storywise in a follow-up post tomorrow.

I’d only have one Inquisitor in the entire show.

DuracellEnergizer said:

I’m exhausted for the night, so I’ll leave things here for now. I’ll go into more detail about where I’d take the series storywise in a follow-up post tomorrow.

Damn, if that wasn’t a long sleep. 😉

I’ve revised some of the ideas I had for a re-written Rebels since I created this thread.

• The show would last five seasons, consisting of thirteen hour-long episodes each.

Not anymore. In fact, I wouldn’t make it a series at all. I’d make it a trilogy of feature-length films. Why? Because the Rebels Trilogy would serve as a mirror of the OT. The number and types of characters, their motivations, their trials and tribulations – they would all parallel those of the OT, only approached from the whole opposite direction. Whereas the OT was fundamentally optimistic, the RT would be fundamentally pessimistic. Luke began as an optimistic kid, went through some low points, but completed his Jedi training and lived happily ever after? Ezra starts as a pessimist, evolves into a cautious optimist while running with the Ghost crew, but ultimately fails as a Jedi and does not have a happy sendoff. The Rebels won at the end of the OT? They do at the end of the RT, too, but their victory is joyless. A villain redeemd themself at the end of ROTJ? Happens in the RT as well, but a hero also succumbs to the darkness, rendering that small triumph moot. Etc, etc, etc.

• Dispensing with the incompetent stormtrooper garbage, I’d do a complete 180 with the troopers; I’d make the stormtroopers as deadly and formidible as possible – crack shots with their blasters and skilled hand-to-hand fighters – to make them credible threats to our heroes.

I’d like to amend this a wee bit. In the first episode of the RT, the stormtroopers on Lothal would begin as incompetent – a cowed backwater slave world isn’t exactly a place the Empire’s finest troops would be stationed – but by the second episode, those jackasses would be replaced with the formidable killers mentioned above.

• The Pau’an inquisitor would look like this

and weild a standard-hilt lightsaber with a blue blade.

• The Fifth Brother would wear a different uniform and wield a green lightsaber which can be re-configured into a razor-edged flying disc when in bladeless mode.

On second thought, I’d just combine the two characters. That’d bring the dark side characters down to three: Jerec, the Pau’an, and Sariss – a perfect unholy trinity.

• Ahsoka would remain a part of the series, but she’d be a Sith instead of a former Jedi (in keeping with my personal canon) and she’d wield her green and chartreuse lightsabers instead of white-bladed replacements.

I’d jettison Ahsoka altogether. I like her, but her presence would only bog the narrative down.