Hello, I am Dave Filoni, Executive Producer... of Star Wars Rebels.
I am going to be talking about "Heroes of Mandalore: Part 1."
I remember starting work on this episode, and I was actually in London at the time when I was working out this storyboard.
I believe I was visiting the set of Episode 8... and in between takes and sh**t, I was over in our Lucasfilm HQ doing these storyboards and sending them back to California.
And I was actually talking, via Skype and whatnot, with the team back on Rebels.
Uh, so that was kind of an interesting thing.
It was very inspiring to be over there and watch Rian work.
I thought it was really interesting to see.
It's been very interesting to see these other directors working and then, you know, be inspired and challenged to do better.
This episode arc really was about... resolving, uh, Sabine's family situation, saving her father... getting her family back together... so that she would have more stable ground to go back and be with her other family, the rebels.
So, I never thought, when we began Rebels, that we would be on Mandalore.
I thought we had left all of that behind... on The Clone Wars, but here we were.
And, you know, it's a challenge because this battle... in the end, you always feel like it could be two, three times as big as it's represented in what we were able to sh**t.
As big as it's represented in what we were able to sh**t.
In Clone Wars, it would have been much bigger. Here...
I have to be very economical with how many stormtroopers I have in a scene, how we spread the Mandalorians out to make this feel like a bigger combat.
But it is a series of skirmishes that you feel is building towards something a lot bigger later on.
Jetpack stormtroopers versus any type of Mandalorians or Jedis, not much of a competition.
But it's interesting to see it happen, showing Sabine and all of her action prowess.
Again, that's something you see throughout Season 4, and something that we evolve her into being a character that isn't just of brawn and might and skill with action, but also of her mind throughout the season.
And then you have to find different gags.
After 12 years, I've done a lot of different gags in Star Wars, visual gags, you know, dialogue gags, to differing degrees of success.
Sometimes it turns out, sometimes, like, well, I liked it more in my head, but, you know, you try to play some comedy against, uh, whatever else you got going on.
I like these, I mean, despite them being no match for Mandalorians, the jetpack troopers certainly look cool.
It's always good to have new troopers and...
Gar Saxon's brother Tiber here was interesting in that he's someone that's really adopted the Imperials' ways.
He's kind of a, really, a massive traitor to everything Mandalore at the end of the day because he is given over to wanting his own power.
He's not as interested in preserving his history, preserving his house, those things.
He's more interested in absolute power.
And again, it's another version of all power is corrupting... even for Mandalorians, who are these warriors.
At least true Mandalorians have a degree of honor to them in the way they fight.
They have a sense of family, obviously.
And a bit of this season was showing more of Mandalore, and then also breaking it down a bit.
And starting to build an explanation for why we don't see so many in the original trilogy, and what were they up to.
There was a big space there that we could occupy, and we'll actually be able to tell some of that story on Star Wars Rebels, which is very unique.
'Cause you don't, the only Mandalorian armor that you see is worn by Boba Fett in the original trilogy.
So here, we have a bunch more people running around in, you know, almost the same time period, which is a big deal.
Katee Sackhoff came back playing Bo-Katan, which was really thrilling.
I thought she was excellent here.
We were able to give her a lot more to do, especially dialogue-wise than her Clone Wars days.
And she was brilliant.
It's something bizarre and also wonderful to see some of these characters that my team and I worked with on Clone Wars, now appearing in Rebels.
You didn't know if we would ever see them again, have scenes with them again.
And yet here we've been very fortunate to find ways to make it work, ways that made sense, and I think the audience has enjoyed it as well, having these characters included in Rebels.
It's just been an unexpected kind of thing that happened, and this.
What a bizarre moment.
Again, I have Sabine looking at Bo-Katan, these two female Mandalorian warriors that, you know, I've helped put into the Star Wars universe, and, man, I don't think I ever thought that they would be talking to each other, let alone have this important role to play.
This arc in some ways also is about this younger woman needing some support, and to have an older woman challenge her and stand up for her when it really mattered, to not have this combative attitude, but a supportive attitude.
You know, I talk a lot, not just with my co-workers here, like Carrie Beck and Kiri Hart...
I talk with my wife about female representation and roles and films.
And it's... It's not something that's obvious to me at first, but I've come to understand that it's not something you see a lot in films, this role of, in an action movie, women supporting other women.
You're lucky if you get one female character in a movie, and sometimes they're in the role of a warrior.
But there's not a lot that makes them unique otherwise.
And so to have multiple roles of female characters all portraying, not just their ability to wield the w*apon or to be involved in action, but to have a deeper sense or commitment to who they are as people, how they interact with other people, how they share screen time with other female characters.
That you can have lengthy dialogue conversations and interaction between these characters and show growth and evolution of these characters.
You know, I think it's becoming more the language, it's becoming more common, and it just needs to, because this is when we really start creating what's referred to, I think, as strong female characters, when they're dimensional female characters, when they're characters that have an arc, that have purpose and meaning, that aren't just there to be action orientated, they have a real story, real motivations.
And here, a motivation to save your family, to bring your family back together, to save your father.
You know, Sabine's mother is a very fun character to have.
She is definitely tough, and I wouldn't say she's independent, she's the matriarch of the family, she's the leader of the family.
She's the matriarch of the family, she's the leader of the family.
She's actually the harder edged one, where her father is the more artistic one.
I don't think her father is very much the warrior.
I think that's okay, you know.
Again, you need a wide range of characters and character types... and you shouldn't have all one thing for one type of character... or one group of characters.
This was an important scene because Hera and Kanan share such little screen time in the beginning two episodes, and they're very important characters, as we all know, later in the season to have together.
So, we started building that here... where Kanan is, even now at the beginning, kind of alluding to a relationship between them more strongly than he has perhaps before.
And Hera's still very on point, on mission.
And only Chopper is the one that's really like, "Come on, guys, we have...
"Is this really happening?"
And that's just the insight to the fact that Chopper has seen this more than any of the other characters over the years, that he knows the depth of which these two have a relationship... what the reality is between them.
Chopper knows, he's on the in, but the rest of the crew not so much.
They don't really know.
Here we need a big action scene, action set piece, to really kind of kick this episode up a bit, to keep it moving.
It was, of course, I think you're always influenced by films that you watch growing up, great sequences stick with you.
There is an element, when I would talk to the group, I was saying, "Remember Indiana Jones when he's trying to steal the ark from the truck
"and go look at that.
"Pay attention to the way it's sh*t, pay attention to the timing of things."
The editors even look at that stuff, and, you know, just use it as a touchstone, as George would use many films to influence him over the years.
And I'm lucky to have grown up, as my whole team was, with a bunch of great films, kind of a heyday of action adventure films done by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, and Robert Zemeckis.
And so, a lot of great references out there and influences.
An important thing in this one is speed.
To have the speeders constantly moving adds a sense of somewhat tension to the entire movement of the action sequence.
Introducing the father character here to make it very clear who he is and where he is in this little group of vehicles would be very important to keep the audience aware of what's going on, and keep them right at the edge of...
Are they going to make it out? Are they going to rescue him?
So, again, a big moment for Sabine as we watch her dive into battle.
These are some very big sets for us to do on Star Wars Rebels.
A lot of real estate we're covering here.
So we have to also at the same time be economical with how we're trying to technically achieve this.
And, you know, Joel Aron, Keith Kellogg, Paul Zinnes, these are people that have been with me for many years, dating back to Clone Wars.
We worked out so many sequences like this, but it doesn't mean they become any easier.
Each one is challenging and different.
You have to keep trying to do different things.
The audience is always ever more sophisticated with what they've seen, what they've experienced.
I think it's very fun to see Sabine steal this speeder bike and use it to shield herself.
It's always a problem of why aren't people getting blasted?
How do you suspend this belief that they should be taking her out at any moment?
A lot of that's credited to the editors... keeping the cut very tight as everything is moving.
A nice heroic moment for Kanan.
Again, these, each moment then changes the rhythm and the tempo of the sequence.
Now Kanan has entered it.
It's a heroic moment and a turn in the battle.
Things get a little bit better.
There's a really intense moment where Chopper just knocks the heck out of a stormtrooper coming up.
And, boy, I wasn't sure that one was going to go through, but yeah, I think so 'cause when it's a droid, people don't seem to worry so much.
This here is fun.
We had a lightsaber just take you right out the back.
It would cut right through, so it's a nice bit of editing there to have Ezra disappear up the side of the car.
Again, everything's moving all the time.
And cutting everything very tight, things being very reactive helps you out here.
Trimming your footage down to keep the pace up, really, really helps.
This fight used to be so long in its story form, and we just trimmed and trimmed and trimmed to make it hopefully as exciting as we could get it.
And you try to put little gags in there, little verbal bits.
Oh, here it is with Chopper.
Watch, this is just something.
I mean, that's... Wow.
But it's funny 'cause it's Chopper, I guess.
That guy's going to have a headache, though.
But you know, there's something for everyone in a scene like this.
That's always good.
It reminds me of when Luke cuts off the front of the speeder.
And I thought that was just a great idea.
I think Sterling had boarding when Kanan lands on the front of the speeder bike, and they have a conversation. That's a nice little moment there.
Again, we've done different speeder chases.
What can we make to have this be different?
These guys should have opened fire.
They're a bit foolish. I don't know why they're waiting, but we all know Kanan gets it later in the series, so I guess it's okay.
I don't think many people could jump off a moving speeder like that and keep running, but he's a Jedi, so let's keep that.
That little shield device she has is something we put in Clone Wars.
Just a little neat kind of gladiator kind of shield.
It was kind of fun to do.
This is one of my favorite little words, little dialogue, scenes here words, "I'm not with her, with her."
That was a great moment.
And I think definitely, you know, plays at Sabine and Ezra's relationship is becoming more like a brother and sister instead of some kind of cliched notion that just 'cause they're two young people, cliched notion that just 'cause they're two young people, they should somehow be together... which was never really our intention in this show.
I think early on, it might have seemed like it was going that way, but we were able to steer them clear.
This sequence was something that reminded me, we did a similar gag actually with Mace Windu in Clone Wars when he's on Ryloth, and he does a trick somewhat like this.
So we have some experience doing these kind of things, but this one really, you don't know if he's going to make it.
That last jump looks like a heck of a jump.
And I love that it's Ezra and Sabine.
They kind of trade off saving each other throughout this season, which is quite a lot of fun.
So, that turned out to be a nice moment.
And there, I never thought I'd see that place again...
Sundari, the capital of Mandalore.
That takes me back to the Satine Kryze days and the Darth Maul days and the Obi-Wan days of Mandalore, and all of this is built on top of what that continuity was, and you know, how this...
How Mandalore has wound up in the situation.
I actually did a large diagram that took me a bit, that mapped out the history of Mandalore, all the way from the Satine, young Satine, Obi-Wan days, all the way through now, just to figure out how it all worked.
But, this scene got extended.
I thought this was originally not made a big enough deal... but, you know, this is one of your parents, this has to be a moment.
They left under uncertain terms, and I wanted to feel this type of forgiveness.
I think the surprising thing for Sabine here is really how accepting her father would be of her back into the family.
Sometimes as a young person, you know, you underestimate your parents' ability to forgive.
You just see that they're angry at you, or disappointed, and you don't really understand that, you know, they are older and wiser, and that they forgive you because ultimately they love you.
And, you know, I know that's not everybody's experience, but it's what I wanted to show on this show.
You know, I don't think that every Star Wars character has a bad childhood or comes from an odd orphaned place.
Sometimes they just have misunderstandings, sometimes they build terrible weapons and almost get their people destroyed.
But that's all part of the growing experience, uh, as a young person in Star Wars, and your parents can forgive you of these things.
So, fun to have them start talking about painting and armor.
You know, again, to show that her father is a different kind of person than we've known in Star Wars, someone that's interested in art.
And so I was kind of, it would fit well for Sabine.
Here she still has her old hair too, her Season 3 hair... which was a nice thing for the cosplayers for a little bit.
But that soon changed as her hair changed later in the season.
This sequence, again, I love that helmet her mother wears, it's one of the cooler helmets that we did.
I like the patterns on it, too.
But this sequence needed more added to it.
We actually did some retakes to add more stormtrooper reinforcements attacking, just to make this again feel like, why isn't the Empire throwing more at them?
You know, why isn't it a bigger battle coming up?
So we tried to make it feel like it's a larger scale thing.
A lot of the smoke and fire also cover that and buy you that there was a bigger conflict than there was.
This was a bit of a color timing that Sean Wells would have done with Joel to try and give you the feeling of this bizarre w*apon that we had never seen before.
And we set it up there, through sound, design, and lighting that something's happened that we're not familiar with.
Again, now we just want a sense of dread and foreboding, and this was a pretty tricky scene.
It's pretty heavy stuff, but we finally learn now in the final moments, what was it that Sabine had done, why was she not with her family, why was there this big disagreement?
What was at the root of her leaving the Academy, finding Ketsu?
How... What caused all this?
And we find out that it's a w*apon that she had developed.
The w*apon that takes the very thing the Mandalorians pride themselves on, this armor and, uh, destroys it... makes it a vulnerability instead of a strength.
So it's a terrible thing when you think of it that way.
And you can see there clearly kind of the silhouette of a person in the b*rned armor.
So the armor becomes brittle, but it also becomes a conductor for this electrical pulse which super heats and disintegrates you.
It's a terrible w*apon.
And now Sabine has to kind of face her past.
Not just her family, but her whole past and the person that she was in order to become the person that she may yet be.
And that is the first part of "Heroes of Mandalore."