Several new Star Wars: Rebels characters have been revealed during the Toy Fair 2014 taking place in New York (February 16-19). Also Hasbro officially presented their new Rebels, Command and Black Series lines...
Here's the official press release by Hasbro regarding the new lines:
The STAR WARS saga gains a thrilling new chapter in 2014 with the release of STAR WARS REBELS, an all-new animated series set in the largely unexplored time period between EPISODE III and EPISODE IV. To celebrate this groundbreaking new series, which follows the motley crew of the starship Ghost as they struggle against the evil Galactic Empire, Hasbro is launching two exciting toy lines in 2014.
The STAR WARS REBELS line features a wide range of action figures, vehicles and role-plays toy directly based on the animation, and includes Rebel heroes like EZRA, KANAN, and ZEB as well as evil villains like the INQUISITOR and AGENT KALLUS.
The brand new STAR WARS COMMAND line lets kids finally take command of the greatest battles in STAR WARS history! Kids can pit huge armies of collectibly-sized figures and vehicles against each other to determine the fate of the galaxy! And, for the first time ever, kids can harness the power of the FORCE to launch a STAR DESTROYER into battle with the wave of a hand. Combining classic army play with collectability and innovative action features, STAR WARS COMMAND puts control of the STAR WARS saga in kids’ hands like never before!
STAR WARS is forever, and Hasbro celebrates the enduring legacy of the brand in 2014 with new introductions in its incredibly successful BLACK SERIES action figure line. Launched in 2013 as the ultimate toy line for STAR WARS collectors, the STAR WARS THE BLACK SERIES proved a massive hit and returns in 2014 with new 3.75-inch and 6-inch scale action figures and a thrilling first—THE BLACK SERIES 6-inch Deluxe action figures, featuring creatures and vehicles in-scale with the 6-inch figures!
The Toy Fair gave us a much better look to on of the good guys - Zeb. Probably we could expect another presentation video with him next week.
As you can see Zeb is based on Ralph McQuarrie's early concept art of Chewbacca from 1975.
The most interesting character from the fair that caused a huge buzz was found on one of the covers of the Star Wars: Command line. It's a female Mandalorian who is obviously on the side of the rebels. Some speculations even suggested that this could be Ahsoka in disguise. Hope we get more on this soon.
UPDATE!
It's been confirmed by JediNews that it's not Ahsoka!
UPDATE 2!
So the female Mando is called Sabine.
And here's the first look of the Twilek Hera Syndulla (via JediNews):
Hera was first spotted in TCW together with Cham Syndulla. This is the first connection between the two shows.
Here are some more images from the event via newsaram who mentioned that:
"Incidentally, while they did not have them on display, Star Wars Rebels branded R2D2 and C-3PO figures were shown at the presentation, with the announcement that they will appear in the show."So will they really appear or was that indeed a mistake? Remains to be seen.
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| New Imperial Agent Kallus |
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| Kanan |
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| The Inquisitor |
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| Ezra |
Girl boba fett!
ReplyDeleteAnd she's got pink armor. Hilarious!
DeleteThis is simply a disgrace...
DeleteShe looks like the action hero lady on Wreck it Ralph. Come on Disney, quit recycling your character designs!
DeleteWow. Not only hating a show you haven't seen, but hating because there is a woman. Classy.
DeleteThat kids lightsaber is just plain ugly.
ReplyDeleteHow did he manage to get force crystals to build it anyway? Did he just come upon them like his force-powers? Did Kanan just have them lying around? WHERE IS THE EXPLAINATION TO ALL OF THIS RANDOM SHIT?
DeleteObviously he fashioned his own lightsaber however Luke Skywalker did it, because the kid is obviously a rip-off of Luke.
DeleteEhm...how could Ahsoka's "horns" fit in that mandalorian helmet? Also it wouldn't make sense to add her at the beginning of the show, due to their original-trilogy-like campaign, and with a "master" jedi like kanan and this new kid apprentice there's no room for other jedi, I think. This mandalorian will be just a new female teen character...
ReplyDeleteMy gosh, hope Rebels doesn't turn out too childish...the best clone wars' season in my opinion was the fifth, the perfect balance between dark and light tones, 4-episodes-long story arcs (even if the ones with the younglings and the droids were a bit useless)...Rebels is obiouvsly not gonna be like that, due to all the "humor" OT-like they want to put in it, it's gonna be much lighter in tones, but I really hope this doesn't mean the show will turn out as a cartoon, with two or three episodes per story arc, like the first seasons of the clone wars.
exactly my first thought also, a normal mandalorian helmet it to small for her horns, first of all her head is not smooth on the top with pikes on each side, so a normalsized made for humanlike headshapes would only cover half of her face & the horns would stick outunder as well & isn´t those horns stiff & not bendable?
DeleteWell, i definetly don't see Ralph McQuarrie's concept in Zeb. ;) But that's my opinion. :P
ReplyDeleteI see it in the face, but they've given him a completely different costume. It would look better if they had maintained the crossing bandoleers.
DeleteWhere is the green twi-lek character shown in the lego sets? Why in the hell is r2d2 and 3po in this show? Who is the girl in the helmet?
ReplyDeleteI am not liking this.
The green Twi'lek is Hera Syndulla
Deletehttp://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=114562
Male characters get their own action hero displays... female characters get... cheap little pictures. Wow. Not only is Disney going back to the OT's visual style and feel, but they're also going for the traditionally-unfair gender balance as well.
DeleteDisney has so much potential and they are squandering it by doing the same old thing over and over and over.
is this another inquisitor i see ?
ReplyDeletethat is the worst saber design ever, unless it has some special features because of that design they fucked up bad
ReplyDeletetheir lightsabers look so retarded!! but I'm interested to find out who this mandalorian female is. Maybe it's Bo Katan?
ReplyDeleteBad bad bad
ReplyDeleteZeb = Chewbacca, Kanan = Han solo / Obi from CW, Ezra = Luke Skywalker
besides C3PO and R2d2 was at this point in the star wars universe the property of Antilles so please don't fuck this up!!!!
You know, that's a pretty good point. In fact, if you look at the pic of the Inquisitor, down by his feet, it looks like a Vader-esque helmet.
DeleteIs this turning out to be a kind of low-rent imitation of OT?
They're obiouvsly trying to recreate the tone and feel of the OT, with Rebels as with the sequel trilogy, and they said that over and over, but I don't believe they're gonna succeed...what Lucas & co achieved with the OT is something that is not possible to make re-happen, because this is a completely different time: new generations, internet, decades of cinema history behind us, and today everything "looks good" because of HD and stuff like that. Not saying this is a bad thing, just that they'll never be able to make something like the OT. Let's just hope this isn't as bad as it could look from this toys.
DeleteThey could do it, but they'd need to focus first and foremost on story and characters. Leave the effects alone... they'll sort themselves out quite easily. Just focus on a good, solid story and characters that the audience will actually find compelling and you're going to be a lot more likely to hit that OT sweet spot.
DeleteThe problem with the PT was, it was all flashy effects with some story thrown in as justification. Sight gags are fun and all, but they don't mean a damned thing without a good story.
I don't know that they're going to be able to pull it off with the ST, but I'm glad to hear that they're apparently going to at least try.
hahaha, good one. OT was basically one fight scene to the next (this isn't necessarily a bad thing.) The PT was the one that critics complained had not enough action. Look at the Phantom Menace; it really only had two big action pieces, the podrace and the end battle of Naboo. There was a great deal of politics in the PT, which the OT would never even get near.
DeleteSo the argument that the PT was "all flashy effects with some story thrown in as justification" makes no sense.
Fact of the matter is, a massive amount of each PT movie was filmed on a greenscreen stage, to the point where some of the actors (Ewan MacGregor comes immediately to mind) complained about what a pain in the ass it was to constantly have to react to an environment that didn't exist.
DeleteIt's not about how many action sequences a film has. It's about how much focus is placed on the effects overall, and with CGI it becomes far too easy to try to make everything -look- impressive without necessarily letting the story be told as much through the characters and their interactions. When your effects options are limited (or when you make a deliberate decision to limit your focus on effects) then you tend to have to make up the difference with story and characters, as was done in ANH and ESB (and, to a rather lesser extent, ROTJ.)
It's the same way that effects limitations made the movie Jaws work so well. The mechanical shark didn't work well enough to use it as much as they wanted to, so Spielberg built suspense and tension by not showing the shark full-on until the third act of the movie, and by focusing on story and characters more. Spielberg himself has said that it'd have been a much different movie if the shark had worked, because he'd have shown it throughout the movie.
The PT, with the almost complete lack of effects limitations that CGI granted to ILM, was basically all shark. The story didn't hold together all that well, and many of the key characters didn't go over all that well with the audience because there was very little about them or their interactions that was all that compelling. And there was always a CGI toy to try and distract the audience when things got dicey. Unbearably cheesy romantic interlude? Have ILM stick a shot in there of Anakin surfing a giant tick. Don't know how to inject humor into a story about politicians and stoic Jedi? Have an animated space duck pratfall his way through the entire movie. Can't figure out how or when to have the main character turn to the dark side of the Force? Have the CGI artists animate an old man with a lightsaber bouncing off the walls like a superball on crank until you figure it out.
Hopefully, the ST team will ensure that story and characters take precedence over endless layers of CGI.
^ sorry to contradict your very lengthy rant about prequel hate (as if I couldn't guess by now that you hated the PT,) but you have explained why "flashy effects" are bad, but you have yet to convince me that there was, to quote you: "some story thrown in for justification." The PT was not story-lite. To illustrate my point, take a look at Episode II: Attack of the Clones (I suggest you actually go watch the movie). There were many plots threads. 1) plot about Anakin's distrust for the jedi council, 2) plot about Anakin's dreams/mother, 3) plot about Obi Wan and the clone army, 4) backstory about political corruption and the distrust increasing around the senate. As you can see, there were a lot of things in play here (a little bit too much, in my opinion.) Many professional critics have said that the PT had too MUCH story and not enough "fun," which I can agree with. The OT was more linear. It didn't have a whole lot of politics, Luke's temptation to the dark side was more black-and-white, and if you rewatch the original Episode IV, a great deal of the film was spent sneaking around the Death Star. The OT did not cut back and forth between scenes nearly as much as the PT. Saying that the Episodes I-III had almost no story thrown in to justify special effects is not only untrue but an insult to people who actually liked the PT.
DeleteFinally, how dare you blame Lucas/ILM for Anakin surfing a giant tick when the OT you love so much (and I love so much) has a one-eyed monser living in a garbage disposal. For god's sake, do you not see the "cheesy"-ness of that?!?
LOL!! Ah yes, the old "How dare you!" attitude. Reminds me of the old days over at TheForce.Net when any criticism of the PT was as likely as not to get you banned. I never had much use for that level of zealotry back then and I sure don't now.
DeleteFWIW, I never said that the PT films didn't have a script. Just that the scripts were so half-assed because Lucas was so much more focused on his new CGI toys.
Not that I can completely blame him, because I know that's what he was looking forward to for a long time (at least since ILM made the "Adventures of André and Wally B." short in 1984.) Photo-realistic CGI was a brilliant new toy as of the late 1990s, and I can certainly understand why Lucas went all kid-in-a-candy-shop with it when he made his PT films.
But the problem was that yes, Lucas wrote scripts for the PT films and tried to pack a lot of plot elements into them - and that's exactly how they came across. A lot of plot devices that didn't really hold together particularly well, and that didn't tell a very compelling story.
I've watched AOTC plenty of times, and the other two as well. I have given all three PT films god knows how many chances over the past decade or so. And yes, AOTC was full of plot devices like the ones you mention. But they lacked cohesion. It's all well and good to throw a shitload of ingredients together into a pot and fire up the stove, but without enough attention and effort put toward making sure you've got the right blend of ingredients in the right proportions, you're far more likely to end up with a big pot of warm crap than you are to end up with the excellent stew that you could have had.
The creation of a compelling story and characters requires a lot more than just chucking a bunch of plot elements together and hoping that the special effects will cover any embarrassment. But unfortunately, that is exactly how the PT films have always come across to me, no matter how many times I've tried to come back to them and give them another go. They always just seem like bad fan-fic that's been given the big-screen treatment.
(Now, I'm sure you'll explain to me exactly why I'm wrong and why I actually liked the PT...)
This looks really good, love that Inquisitor uniform with shield, a bit reminds me of The Force unleashed war droids...
ReplyDeleteIt looks like those are two female characters. They SAID in official stuff that there were two female protagonists.
ReplyDeletethey certainly aren't getting any attention so far.
DeleteThat is STANDARD WITH TOYS. As proven by the update, they are both there.
DeleteThe new female character is good... right..? I think..
ReplyDeletei like what i see...it's good to see a Mando on the Rebel's team..they are not all mercenary it would seem...wish they would show the Inquisitor with the helmet on, probably looks much cooler...i am guessing they are foreshadowing Vader in a way. glad R2 & 3PO are tagging along...might be cool to see Obi Wan, Vader, The Emperor, & others make guest appearances every so often...-prymal
ReplyDeletehow would Inquisitor wearing a helmet foreshadow Vader? He already had a helmet on in Episode III.
ReplyDeleteIf we are to believe rumors, than maybe "Mara Jade" is this Mandalorian person?
ReplyDeleteNo Mara was the Empores hand at this point in the time line.
Deleteohh no wait. Disney are altering the EU, so yes this can be the wife of luke skywalker in EPVII.................... who knows.
so this means theres s huge probability of seeing bail organa
ReplyDeleteNo, chances are near 0% Bail was from the PT. The show is being made for OT fans. OT fans hated Bail and anything to do with the PT.
Delete^Even though Bail Organa was important to the Rebel Alliance, Disney will just change canon to write him out of the story. From today's trailers, it is clear that Disney has no intention of keeping continuity intact with the movies.
DeleteHow was Bail from the PT? He was only in six scenes and I think they managed to say his name less over the course of all three prequels then they did in the original Star Wars..
DeleteAnyway, why would we hate him and is three lines of reasonably well delivered dialog?
Why is the Tie-fighter toy different from the image on the box? the wings are different.
ReplyDeleteWhat we keep being told about Rebels: "McQuarrie. McQuarrie. McQuarrie. McQuarrie. McQuarrie. McQuarrie. McQuarrie. McQuarrie. McQuarrie."
ReplyDeleteWhat we keep seeing: "Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney. Disney."
Sadly I agree. It's it seems like saying the character design was based on "McQuarrie's original artowrk" is just their way of candy coating it to try and get all of the OT fans off of their backs so they can do what they want to. All I see in all of these characters is Disney. The costumes, weapons, characters; none of it is the familiar Star Wars I was expecting/promised from this series. All I can hope for is that the ST will not follow in these footsteps.
DeleteActually, dopeyjoe, as strange as it may sound, I kinda wish Disney wouldn't go the "McQuarrie" route with VII and go do something original. A clean slate. The new trilogy will be 30 years after the OT (from what we can presume) so the galaxy must be as different now as the PT was from the OT.
DeleteAs long as Disney doesn't put Mickey Mouse in it I'll be fine.
I absolutly hope the same hting and never staterd otherwise. The ST's purpose is to branch out of the story portrayed by episodes I-VI (the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker) and broaden our horizons to new threats, new heroes and new adventures. I'm just hoping they do this in a way that doesn't pathetically attempt to appeal to OT fans the way that Rebels has. I just want something that all groups of the Star Wars fanbase can enjoy together and feel comfortable doing so.
DeleteAnyone got any thoughts on the possible concept art for Ep VII in the press yesterday?
ReplyDeletehttp://metro.co.uk/2014/02/16/first-look-at-star-wars-episode-7-concept-art-4306291/
It's discussed here:
Deletehttp://www.starwars7news.com/2014/02/pic-of-day-star-wars-episode-7.html
There are always so many negative comments from a good majority of people who view this site. It's a shame really, people need to chill out. If it weren't for Disney we wouldn't have all this new exciting stuff and no new films. Be greatful
ReplyDeleteYeah, chill out. By the way, I loved the Phantom Menace.
DeleteYou, sitting in front of your computer, breaking out in nervous sweat > "must....chill.... out.... but... I hate... the prequels... and I can't.. let this guy... say something... positive.. about it.."
Gasp... choke.... obiwan + satine=sabine???! Nooooooooooo!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteYes that could be.
Deleteohh and let Sabine be lukes wife in EPVII then you have offspring with the bloodlines of skywalker's and obi's.
That could explain the recent Ep7 "Obi-Wan's granddaughter" rumours. The character rumoured could be Sabine's daughter.
DeleteThis is getting ridiculous...
DeleteIf it's true, wouldn't the conversation in ROTJ be:
LUKE: Yoda spoke of another...
OBIWAN: The other he spoke of is ... my daughter...
LUKE: You don't have a daughter...
OBIWAN: No Luke, I am a father...
True. It would be stupid. The whole idea of Obi-Wan having kids is crazy.
DeleteLUKE: "If you had a daughter then why were you spending all of your time on tattooine watching over me? You're a shitty father, Ben."
DeleteOBIWAN: "Your insight serves you well."
I see zero originality in this series whatsoever. It's making me dread the premier of this show more and more. Don't get me wrong, I'll still watch as many episodes I can until I just can't continue. Afterall, that's the only way to make a solid judgement. I'm just saying so far, what we've been told about Rebels has done nothign but give me bad feelings. My trust in Filoni's judgement is diminishing.
ReplyDeleteI never had a trust in Filoni, or Disney for that matter. What they say is just like a politician's campaign promise: empty words that have no bearing on the final product.
DeleteDon't be surprised when the first teaser to Episode VII is released and there's tons of CGI in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cAwLmyARpE
ReplyDeleteSTAR WARS REBELS TRAILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qogqaJ2aXQc