‘Star Wars’ Rebels Reveals New Character and Setting Details: Meet Chopper!
While 'Star Wars Rebels' has nothing on the secrecy inherent to 'Star Wars: Episode 7,' fans of the eagerly anticipated animation follow-up to 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars' have only thus far been treated to a solitary character. Now, the Dave Filoni-helmed 'Rebels' series chronicling the period between trilogies has unmasked our first heroic character, along with a few new details of the series' Outer Rim setting.
Speaking with a German fansite, supervising producer Dave Filoni debuted a new design for one character of our merry band of 'Star Wars Rebels,' specifically a droid sidekick that seems every bit as feisty as R2-D2 himself. Dubbed "Chopper," the rickety new droid is described as loyal, belligerent and hard-working, something of a cat to R2's dog, according to the animators. Chopper evokes both the original Ralph McQuarrie designs for R2, as well as the overall gruff aesthetic for the series, having been assembled from all unoriginal parts.
Elsewhere, Filoni also offered up a few new details of the Lothal setting, said to be in the same Outer Rim as Luke Skywalker's Tatooine:
Rebels takes place in the Outer Rim. The audience typically thinks of Tatooine as the place where Luke Skywalker grew up, when the Outer Rim is mentioned. We are on a more civilized planet, and one that profited from the Empire’s existence in the beginning. Most of the stories take place on the planet Lothal, which is a grass planet with large monolithic stones on the surface.
The look comes from some Ralph McQuarrie concept paintings that were done for the original Star Wars films. We tried to make Lothal look and feel like a planet that would have been in the original film trilogy. It’s alien, but you feel like it’s someplace that you could visit on Earth geographically. Hoth, Tatooine, and Endor are all like this, so we think it fits in well.
We’ve already seen concept art of the mentioned Millennium Falcon-esque “Ghost,” but no voice cast has been made official. That said, we previously heard Freddie Prinze Jr., ‘The Butler’ star David Oyelowo, Vanessa Marshall, Taylor Gray and Steven Jay Blum were at least on the short list. Picking up where the now-canceled ‘Clone Wars‘ left off, ‘Star Wars Rebels’ will also feature on the creative side screenwriter and producer Simon Kinberg (‘X-Men: First Class,’ ‘Elysium‘), who’s writing the first episode.
The Chopper debut offers up our first actual new footage of the series, however crude, but still has us the most excited for the series yet? Take a a look at the first of the titular 'Star Wars Rebels' above and below, and give us your feedback in the comments!