Nemarus Posted April 18, 2015 Share Posted April 18, 2015 Forgive typoes, I'm writing this from Celebration on my phone. I just saw the amazing trailer for Rebels Season 2, which honestly gives The Force Awakens trailer a run for its money. Apart from showing Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones!) being a total ace in his TIE Advanced, it also showed the nascent rebel movement using A-wings and B-wings! For those unaware, Rebels takes place five years before ANH and is part of the new canon. Now that A- and B-wings are shown as having existed before the Battle of Yavin, it throws into question a lot of the EU-generated history and tropes for these fighters--remember, we know next to nothing about these ships if you consider just what is presented in the movies. A-wings may not be the fastest Civil War era fighter. B-wings may not be bombers at all. That being said, the creators of Rebels also made Clone Wars, and and in the latter show, when they showed Y-wings in use during the latter years of the Clone Wars, they stayed true to existing EU lore about Y-wings. That was before the big EU purge though, and Clone Wars tended to respect EU lore unless specifically directed by George to countermand it. What Rebels may be doing, by showing A- and B-wings so early, is to dispel the EU trope that those two fighters are the "newer generation" of rebel fighters. After all, in The Force Awakens trailer, we see the good guys flying new, state of the art X-wings, not evolutions of the A-wing, Y-wing, or B-wing. That would make sense, if all three of those fighters are relics from before the Battle of Yavin. And from a branding perspective, the X-wing has always been the favored son of Rebel starfighters. Similarly, we have only seen the new version of TIE Fighters--no Interceptors or Bombers yet. Perhaps, as I suggested in the first Starfighter Nerd Talk thread, Bombers and Interceptors were both simply specialized TIEs that had always existed, but the true space superiority fighter was always the TIE Fighter. Discuss! Though I would suggest you not to talk smack about Clone Wars or Rebels if you haven't watched a good portion if them. I was as skeptical of both shows as anyone, but in the end, Clone Wars is some of the best Star Wars that has been put to any screen--they actually legitimized Anakin as a heroic and likeable general prior to his fall, rather than the creepy emo teen we got in the prequels. Clone Wars also created some of the best new original characters in Star Wars, and it looks like some will be returning in season 2 of Rebels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verain Posted April 18, 2015 Share Posted April 18, 2015 "it throws into question a lot of the EU-generated history and tropes for these fighters" Obviously the pre-reboot canon (EU) only shares the movies in common with the post-reboot canon (new novels, cartoons). I'm less excited about them redefining the fighters, however, because it means that there's gonna be two A-Wings, two B-Wings, two X-Wings, two Y-Wings, to keep track of, and each fan will have their favorite. So I'm not excited by whatever this implies. It's just more dual-phase crap that will junk up every discussion going forward. Plenty of the EU stuff was garbage, but it was at least nice to have something you could point to that was consistent. By putting craft before Star Wars (retconned later to "A New Hope"), it isn't really compatible with Star Wars itself, so they'll have to make up some dumb reasons why they didn't have these ships during the Death Star attack, etc. It was honestly probably an oversight resulting from their new policy and new second canon of crap. Maybe they'll tell new stories about their new A-Wings and B-Wings, but they won't have any impact on what you already know about these ships. You'll just have to track TWO fictional A-Wings and TWO fictional B-Wings, one for new canon, one for old. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nemarus Posted April 19, 2015 Author Share Posted April 19, 2015 (edited) "it throws into question a lot of the EU-generated history and tropes for these fighters" Obviously the pre-reboot canon (EU) only shares the movies in common with the post-reboot canon (new novels, cartoons). I'm less excited about them redefining the fighters, however, because it means that there's gonna be two A-Wings, two B-Wings, two X-Wings, two Y-Wings, to keep track of, and each fan will have their favorite. So I'm not excited by whatever this implies. It's just more dual-phase crap that will junk up every discussion going forward. Plenty of the EU stuff was garbage, but it was at least nice to have something you could point to that was consistent. By putting craft before Star Wars (retconned later to "A New Hope"), it isn't really compatible with Star Wars itself, so they'll have to make up some dumb reasons why they didn't have these ships during the Death Star attack, etc. It was honestly probably an oversight resulting from their new policy and new second canon of crap. Maybe they'll tell new stories about their new A-Wings and B-Wings, but they won't have any impact on what you already know about these ships. You'll just have to track TWO fictional A-Wings and TWO fictional B-Wings, one for new canon, one for old. I think the Lucasfilm Story Group (LSG) doesn't want you thinking about old A-wings and B-wings anymore. There isn't any *new* content coming that will reference the old notions. Battlefront might have been tricky, but we haven't seen anything but X-wings, Y-wings, and TIE Fighters so far. The only current property with skin in this game is the X-wing Miniatures game. A-wings and B-wings are a part of that meta, and their strengths and weaknesses follow the old traditions. A-wings are supremely fast, very maneuverable, very evasive, but lightly armed, shielded and armored. B-wings are slow (but surprisingly maneuverable), not evasive, but heavily armed and shielded (the hull is somewhat fragile though). An X-wing falls somewhere between them, though a bit tougher hull. If Rebels does not change these relative strengths, then I don't think anyone will have to "keep track" of two parallel realities for present and future content--the lore might change (no more Dodonna making the A-wing to counter TIE speed; no more Ackbar asking the Verpine to make the B-wing as a frigate-killer), but X-wing Miniatures is already full of non-canon lore. I think Rebels will likely present A-wings as light scout craft. That's what they *look* like. Will they still be regarded as faster and nimbler than X-wings? Hard to say. B-wings I'm a bit more worried about. They honestly have never looked like a bomber class. Their t-shaped s-foil wings, rotating gyroscopic cockpit, and lack of bulky fuselage suggests more mobility than heavy ordnance. I could see the Rebels animators portraying the B-wing as a dancer of the stars. I'd almost like to see that. Edited April 19, 2015 by Nemarus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tunewalker Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 The new cannon could have the X-wing and Y-wings be the more "advanced" ships.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nemarus Posted April 19, 2015 Author Share Posted April 19, 2015 (edited) The new cannon could have the X-wing and Y-wings be the more "advanced" ships.... X-wings maybe. Though how did the rebels acquire them? No Incom defector nonsense. Y-wings were featured in the Clone Wars cartoon (new canon) though. At that time, they were a brand new class of bomber. But by ANH, they are pretty old. So I'd say they are in the same "relic" class as it appears A- and B-wings will be. Why were A- and B-wings not present at Yavin? Maybe they they just don't have torpedoes, and thus serve no purpose in the assault, especially when there were too few pilots. Whereas at Endor, the Alliance had mustered every last ship and pilot it had (which was the Emperor's intent). Edited April 19, 2015 by Nemarus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caernos Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 Not to be the skeptic but are we absolutely sure those are A-wings and B-wings? For starters there are EU ships that look similar; the R-22 Spearhead and the H-60 Tempest Bomber. The rebel fighters we see in the trailer could possibly be these ships. That said, I do think it's a B-wing prototype which to me means that the Rebels are probably testing it out and trying to decide if it would be worth their limited resources to put into production. This could also explain why the ship doesn't appear until RotJ, if the Rebs couldn't afford it they probably would have decided to look elsewhere for ships, and if X-Wings and Y-Wings are cheaper to get a hold of and easier to outfit then that would make them a natural choice. As for the "A-Wings?" I'm inclined to think that they're R-22 Spearheads, and after Darth Vader trashes them they undergo a refit to become the RZ-1 A-Wing interceptor. And again, due to limited resources, they have to put that refit on the way side, which is why they don't show up until RotJ. At least that's my thought process on the whole thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramalina Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 There is no new canon, there is only ret-con apocrypha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramalina Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 More seriously, Star Wars has a very consistent history of sacrificing any coherent vision of the Star Wars universe on the marketing altar of, "try it, it might sell." For that matter, George Lucas doesn't go past the moderately consistent mark when it comes to creators of fictional worlds. EU canon was a valiant effort to provide some semblance of coherence, and it sort of worked, as long as your ship's sensor officer was having trouble seeing through the smoke from the burning wiring on the back side of the sensor display. Unless there's some sort of compelling evidence to the contrary, I'd be more inclined to believe that it's much more a matter of, "We want to draw A-wings and B-Wings, and we convinced our bosses that it should be marketable," than any sort of planned and consistent re-engineering of Star Wars lore and chronology. After a 30+ year record of inconsistency and production secondary materials that are for the most part pretty shoddy workmanship I'm not going to give any benefit of the doubt to new management no matter what they say. If we're lucky, I'll be be pleasantly surprised by what they do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianDavion Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 X-wings maybe. Though how did the rebels acquire them? No Incom defector nonsense. . actually I could well see them keeping the story, mostly because the acvcusation of the X-wing would make an AWESOME episode of rebels Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lwiggles Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 sheesh .. they wanna give any more SPOILERS in trailer .. love rebels .. that was dissapointing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verain Posted April 20, 2015 Share Posted April 20, 2015 There is no new canon, there is only ret-con apocrypha. Yea, I'm mostly of this opinion. I have no sense that they threw away their established EU lore for any reason but to make it easier to write new lore that they'll ignore. I don't have any greater sense of coordination on their part. I also disagree that the prior stuff "doesn't matter". I think that the way they are marketing their two universes is just because they don't want to fess up to having two. If the old continuity continues to sell novels, they will continue to write novels, etc. They also have far too much invested in the old stuff for them to really wipe it away, and, as Nem points out, they even have active games using some of the older stuff regarding ships to some extent. My big problem is any time the continuity has to jump through hoops to explain the movies. The EU was ludicrous for this (fun fact: at some point, someone decided to both claim that A-Wings had all had a built in ram [yes, on a highly maneuverable dogfighter, they thought to build a ram into the hull], and ALSO claim that the A-Wing colliding with the bridge was a kamikaze attack [the cut to the screaming out of control pilot was likely explicity to make it so that no one in the audience thought that] ), and it seems they'll have to be off to an early start with A-Wings and B-Wings appearing before Star Wars. If the goal of an entire second universe was to get rid of these things, that would have been okish, but it seems that that's just the bread and butter of this stuff. Certainly, they have no intention of holding themselves to a high level of verisimilitude. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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