Happy Star Wars Day, everyone! In celebration of May the Fourth, the first full-length trailer for the upcoming animated series, Star Wars Rebels has been released. For those who don’t know, the show takes place between Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Episode IV: A New Hope, and examines the rise of the Rebel Alliance against the newly formed Galactic Empire.
The show will air on Disney XD in the fall, and though it comes from Dave Filoni, the executive producer on the excellent Star Wars: The Clone Wars, it appears that Rebels aims for a bit of a younger audience.
The animation style is similar to what we saw in The Clone Wars, but not quite as polished, and the characters are all geared more towards children than diehard adult Star Wars fans. We’ve got the young street-rat Ezra (voiced by Taylor Gray), the pink-helmeted Mandalorian Sabine (Tiya Sicar), Twi’lek pilot Hera (Vanessa Marshall), a Jedi-turned-rogue Kanan (Freddie Prinze Jr.), and the tough but smart alien Zeb (Steve Blum). Filoni has said that the series will play homage to the original trilogy, relying on a focus of its core group of characters and more action-oriented, fast-paced stories.
For all of its cartoony antics, I’m hoping that Rebels will still be an enjoyable series. The time between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope has been completely un-explored in film or television thus far, and should provide an interesting and exciting new period of the Star Wars saga to follow. Rebels will also be the first new Star Wars product to emerge from the new Disney/Lucasfilm deal, so it’s important that it succeeds, critically and commercially.
Tell us, are you excited to see Star Wars Rebels? Or do you think the series is aimed at too young a demographic for your tastes? Let us know in the comments below!
