- Joined
- Nov 27, 2005
- Messages
- 67,946
- Reaction score
- 3,859
- Staff
- #1
This should go without saying, but this post contains spoilers.
"Idiot's Array," the newest episode of Star Wars Rebels, was released online today. It features the return of none other than Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian. He uses the rebels to his own ends, and we start to see the beginnings of what will be his business career, with hints about his future as the Baron Administrator of Cloud City. Nothing explicit, but the episode revolves around him beginning a mining operation on Lothal.
Here is a video that Lucasfilm released about Williams' return as Lando:
[video=youtube;FiVxmWQsu-8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiVxmWQsu-8[/video]
I liked this episode. I was concerned he'd just be shoehorned in for fan service, but Lando really works in the world of Star Wars Rebels. He ends up doing a bit of mining on Lothal which I thought was a little bit of small universe syndrome, but the rest of the story made up for it, with an episode that allowed for the entire rebel ensemble to have good moments (something I think that we haven't really seen since the beginning of the show). They also left it open for Lando to return in the future. I liked that. I like the fact that we'll be seeing some growth in his character, considering he never had much in the way of character development in the OT (he had moments of revelation and heroism in terms of how he ended up turning against the Empire, but who he was as a person didn't really change in his 2 films).
One interesting note is that he had to hire a ship. Presumably this means he's already lost the Millennium Falcon to Han Solo. Which makes sense. Plus I would imagine that a Han Solo spinoff movie/trilogy would at some point show how Han got the Falcon from Lando (that's how I'd do it at least).
What REALLY concerned me was whether Billy Dee Williams would still sound like Lando. In Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast, for example, where he plays Lando, he just sounds like he's phoning it in. His voice definitely sounds a little older, but on the whole he still pulls off Lando really well. In the above video he seems genuinely excited to be playing part of his character's origin, and to have not been recast (which obviously he'd have to be in spinoff movies), and that showed in the performance.
The only downside to this episode was that the villain was kinda lame. But the episode made up for that with Lando's interactions with the crew, and how he played them in order to get what he wanted.
"Idiot's Array," the newest episode of Star Wars Rebels, was released online today. It features the return of none other than Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian. He uses the rebels to his own ends, and we start to see the beginnings of what will be his business career, with hints about his future as the Baron Administrator of Cloud City. Nothing explicit, but the episode revolves around him beginning a mining operation on Lothal.
Here is a video that Lucasfilm released about Williams' return as Lando:
[video=youtube;FiVxmWQsu-8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiVxmWQsu-8[/video]
I liked this episode. I was concerned he'd just be shoehorned in for fan service, but Lando really works in the world of Star Wars Rebels. He ends up doing a bit of mining on Lothal which I thought was a little bit of small universe syndrome, but the rest of the story made up for it, with an episode that allowed for the entire rebel ensemble to have good moments (something I think that we haven't really seen since the beginning of the show). They also left it open for Lando to return in the future. I liked that. I like the fact that we'll be seeing some growth in his character, considering he never had much in the way of character development in the OT (he had moments of revelation and heroism in terms of how he ended up turning against the Empire, but who he was as a person didn't really change in his 2 films).
One interesting note is that he had to hire a ship. Presumably this means he's already lost the Millennium Falcon to Han Solo. Which makes sense. Plus I would imagine that a Han Solo spinoff movie/trilogy would at some point show how Han got the Falcon from Lando (that's how I'd do it at least).
What REALLY concerned me was whether Billy Dee Williams would still sound like Lando. In Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast, for example, where he plays Lando, he just sounds like he's phoning it in. His voice definitely sounds a little older, but on the whole he still pulls off Lando really well. In the above video he seems genuinely excited to be playing part of his character's origin, and to have not been recast (which obviously he'd have to be in spinoff movies), and that showed in the performance.
The only downside to this episode was that the villain was kinda lame. But the episode made up for that with Lando's interactions with the crew, and how he played them in order to get what he wanted.
