Star Wars: Resistance Was Also Hindered By Its Own Premise

In Monday's entry I mentioned rewatching the Star Wars animated series The Clone Wars, The Bad Batch, and Rebels.  And then I figured since I did that, I might as well rewatch Resistance too.  And like I said about The Bad Batch in that entry, Resistance is hindered by its own premise.

Whereas The Bad Batch is largely hindered by the characters all being clones of the same dude, Resistance is hindered by decisions made in its setting and just the overall sloppiness of the sequel universe.  If you haven't watched it, the series is to date the only animated show to take place after the original trilogy.  It starts a few months (I think) before The Force Awakens.  Poe Dameron recruits a young New Republic pilot named Kazudo Xiono to infiltrate a refueling platform on the remote planet of Castilon.  The platform is home to races of modified starfighters piloted by the "Aces" who also double as the station's protection from pirates or other threats.  Kaz is given a job at a former Rebel Alliance soldier's repair shop, despite that he really knows nothing about repairing ships, and starts to find out the truth about the First Order.

There are problems right from the jump.  First, you have your main character working as a mechanic.  Who, especially little kids, is going to want to watch a show about mechanics?  Did they really think kids were going to want to watch Kaz half-assedly fixing ships or fetching parts?  Which is why they have to get him off the platform a few times on missions with Poe.

The other problem is the First Order can't be exposed as bad guys until almost the end of the first season because the New Republic wasn't at war with them at the start of The Force Awakens.  That makes things kind of hard when you have bad guys who can't really be shown as bad guys.  And again, this kind of intrigue and stuff isn't really what little kids are going to want to watch.  When I was a kid what were the three main things about Star Wars?

1. Lightsaber duels!
2. Space battles!
3. Bounty hunters!

We have almost none of that in this show because we can't have Jedi because Luke Skywalker is off feeling sorry for himself and Mary Sue Rey hasn't had her Force Awaken yet.  Setting the series on a platform in an ocean made it kinda hard to have space battles--until they moved it into space in season 2, which was too little, too late.  And strangely there was a lack of bounty hunters except for two second season episodes, something they probably regretted once The Mandalorian was a huge success while this was canceled.

I do not entirely blame creator Dave Filoni for the problems as the sequel trilogy was so messy and ill-thought-out.  They probably figured they had to set it out in distant space and keep it relatively free of referencing other Star Wars stuff (there are really no cameos from previous shows or movies except for General Leia Organa showing up a couple of times) because they weren't really sure what the movies were going to do.  And then Rian Johnson came along and fucked up everything and the whole thing was a train wreck.

If you've followed this blog and paid attention, you should know that usually when I see problems like this I also like to find ways that they could have been fixed.

Here are a couple of rough premises for shows that might have worked better:

• The first one I thought of was to focus on a squadron of New Republic X-wings with Kaz in it.  They try to chase down some pirates who are terrorizing some Outer Rim planets.  In looking for the pirates, Kaz starts to find out that they're backed by the First Order.  This has a lot of the same elements as the TV show but is more action oriented for today's ADHD kids.  You could basically have the same cast with Neeku, Tam, and the Aces as fellow pilots, Yeager as the squadron commander, and Doza as the captain of the ship they're on.  You could even still have the plot with Synara the pirate Kaz "rescues" who becomes a spy until she has second thoughts about betraying them.
• The second one would be more like Speed Racer in Spaaaaaaace!  Poe recruits Kaz to go undercover as a racer on some circuit in the Outer Rim.  As he competes in various races, he finds clues about the First Order and they maybe recruit someone to try to kill him and stuff.  The advantage of this is you could create some neat race in asteroid belts or planetary rings or nebulae or whatever.  But I'm not sure how long you could really sustain the story line.  Again you could keep most of the same cast with Neeku and Tam as Kaz's pit crew, Yeager as the boss of the team, and Doza could be the head of the racing league or whatever.

Anyway, hindsight is 20/20, right?  But also when you're writing, you want to make sure you don't box yourself in with a premise that doesn't work all that well.  And you should try to write to your audience, which if it's kids, they don't want drudgery and intrigue; they want laser guns going pew-pew! And shit blowing up!  Why do you think those awful Transformers movies made like $10 billion?