One ‘Star Wars Rebels’ Design Choice Is Making ‘Ahsoka’ Hard On The Eyes

Forbes Innovation Games One ‘Star Wars Rebels’ Design Choice Is Making ‘Ahsoka’ Hard On The Eyes Erik Kain Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I write about video games, entertainment and culture. Following Oct 1, 2023, 03:48pm EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Rebels vs Ahsoka Credit: Disney Post updated 10/01/23.

See update below. It’s been quite a wild ride watching the latest Star Wars show on Disney Plus. The first few episodes were simply not very good, filled with janky dialogue, poor pacing and oddly wooden characters (outside of the magnificent Baylan Skoll and his apprentice Shin Hatti).

Then something changed. Around Episode 4 , the pacing picked up and the action got better. I started connecting with the characters in ways I hadn’t, and that only improved when Anakin returned for a bit of beyond-the-grave training for Ahsoka that brought her back to the Clone Wars days and gave us some of the best Hayden Christensen Anakin ever.

After this, Ahsoka herself seemed to lighten up. The weirdly wooden performance Rosario Dawson had been giving eased up a bit. She could smile and laugh again.

I’m still a little confused why she was so guilt-ridden in the first half of the season given she seemed more chill in her Mandalorian and Boba Fett appearances, but that’s neither here nor there. The titular character became a lot more watchable, which definitely helped. But one thing is still driving me crazy.

I know I may come across as a terrible picker of nits here, but I can’t help it. The show’s design team has done their level best to make our heroes look like their cartoon versions. Up above, you can see cartoon Hera side-by-side with Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s live-action version.

They sure do look alike! The attention to detail is almost too much, however. I’m speaking here about the contact lenses. They’ve given every character the same eye color as their animated counterparts and it looks bad.

It just looks bad! Mary Elizabeth Winstead has lovely brown eyes: MORE FOR YOU A Ukrainian Officer s Captured Russian Tank Wasn t Working So He Called Tech Support In Russia The Top 10 Richest People In The World October 2023 Flashing Red Warning 33 Trillion U S Debt Death Spiral Could Suddenly Trigger A Bitcoin Price Vicious Circle Mary Elizabeth Winstead Credit: Universal She has used these eyes to great effect in her roles in Fargo, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and Scott Pilgrim vs The World (pictured above). Something is lost in her performance and in her ability to emote naturally when her eyes are turned into this: Hera Credit: Disney This looks really terrible and it makes every scene with Hera weird. But she’s not the only one! I think Rosario Dawson’s performance as Ahsoka also suffers due to her fake eyes.

They just don’t look natural and not in a cool alien way, but in a way that actively inhibits the conveying of real emotions: Ahsoka Credit: Disney Here’s Dawson with her natural eye color: PASADENA, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 11: Rosario Dawson attends the 2020 NBCUniversal Winter Press Tour at . . .

[+] The Langham Huntington, Pasadena on January 11, 2020 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Tommaso Boddi/WireImage) WireImage Her eyes are darker but—and this is important!—there’s more light in them. I think part of this is going from darker eyes to lighter.

That’s tough. It’s harder to dye dark hair blond than the other way around, and eyes are even trickier, and without a really big CGI budget you get stuck with, well, okay let’s look at Thrawn. Here’s Thrawn from Rebels: Thrawn Credit: Disney Here is Lars Mikkelsen’s live-action Thrawn: Thrawn Credit: Disney This looks a bit better simply because Thrawn is so alien-looking (though comparisons to Elon Musk are on-point, sadly).

I think Mikkelsen is terrific in this role, but the blue skin and red eyes just look. . .

goofy to me. It’s too much. It’s taking a cartoon and just directly applying that look to live-action without any attempt at making these characters look real.

Of all the eye-color changes, I think Ezra’s are the best. Here’s the live-action Ezra: Ezra Credit: Disney But even these seem unnecessarily fake-looking. Why not just have Eman Esfandi’s natural eye color? We can still accept that he is live-action Ezra! He’s playing the part perfectly and frankly I just can’t imagine the eye-color issue would matter.

Hell, we are frequently changing the skin color of characters in various adaptations and if that’s okay why can’t eye color be changed just to keep it natural looking??? AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 12: Eman Esfandi attends The Robert Rodriguez Film School and “Red 11” Premiere . . .

[+] during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 12, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Mike Jordan/Getty Images for SXSW) Getty Images for SXSW I admit, my qualms go beyond just the eyes. It’s the whole approach to adapting the animated characters with a 1:1 visual ratio in mind.

All the costumes look too clean, like they’ve never been lived in. Also, real people don’t wear the same outfits every day! Sure, it’s easier to animate Hera wearing this all the time but when you port that over to live-action you start to think “Does she never change clothes? Does she just have this one outfit all the time?” Hera Syndulla Credit: Disney In the original Star Wars movies the characters appear in different outfits regularly. Some are iconic, but they change.

Cartoons are different. Cartoons often feature characters in the exact same clothes. South Park’s characters wear the same outfit year after year and basically never grow old.

That works in a cartoon! But adaptations have to adapt. Surely an older Hera, now a general, would have a few more outfits laying around. Maybe even a New Republic uniform! I was going to comment on her son, Jacen, as well but honestly that’s just a whole other story that gets deep into alien/human crossbreeding and plausibility and I’ll save it for another time.

For now, I will end this by strongly urging Disney and Lucasfilm and Dave Filoni and the costume and SFX departments on these shows to do three things: Make these worlds feel lived in. Obi-Wan’s cloak should feel worn and dirty. Andor does this very well.

As always, take notes from Andor. Don’t try to adapt everything 1:1. You can be faithful to Rebels and Clone Wars without this strict adherence to visual continuity.

The eye color thing is just one example, but given how important eyes are in conveying human emotion on the screen (and in person, obviously) making sure that the actors can do their jobs properly is more important than making sure Hera or Ahsoka’s eyes are just so. This also applies to the hair department. I’m speaking now of Katee Sackhoff.

Just because Bo-Katan had terrible hair in the animated shows doesn’t mean you have to do this to Katee’s hair in live-action. Are there no hair-stylists in a galaxy far, far away? Yeesh. Bo-Katan Credit: Disney Hey, at least she got to keep her natural eye color! Update: 10/1/23 Update: The response to this post has been both expected and a little surprising.

For one thing, I didn’t expect it to soar past 200,000 views, or for my Facebook post to get over 450 comments. I did expect some pushback, but I didn’t expect quite the level of vitriol and anger over something so . .

. basic. Critiquing the visuals or aesthetics of a visual medium is pretty par for the course, but then again certain subsets of any fandom tend to believe that any critique whatsoever of the thing they love is a literal assault on their identities.

Some of the pushback I’ve gotten has been considered and thought-provoking, and I appreciate that, but much has amounted to little more than personal attacks. I will respond to some of these arguments. One I’ve seen come up more than once is that this is “superficial”.

I would argue that there is nothing superficial about critiquing visual design choices in film and television. That’s saying that critiquing graphics in a video game is “superficial. ” Maybe graphics aren’t the most important factor, but they matter and so do design choices in a Star Wars TV show.

I’d argue that many of the aesthetic choices in the prequel trilogy cheapened those films and made them feel less like Star Wars. The speeder bike kids in Boba Fett also looked nothing whatsoever like Star Wars. Meanwhile, Andor did a terrific job with every costume, hairstyle and set, crafting a world that felt lived-in and real, but also fantastical and alien.

Another reaction that I see regularly—doing my job, as a critic—is a version of “If you think you could do better why don’t you try!?” As I’ve noted in the past, I am a critic not a filmmaker. It is no more a film critic’s job to make movies than it is a food critic’s job to make dinner. A food critic, however, would have an easier time with it.

At least you can cook dinner on a critic’s budget. I can’t possibly go and make my own Star Wars show just to prove to angry fans that I can do it better. Do I need to go make a new TV show or movie every time I critique one? That’s preposterous.

So is the irony of everyone complaining that I’m complaining. The best argument I’ve heard for the fake eye coloring is that fans would have been incredibly upset if Disney hadn’t matched the eye color. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” is certainly true, but I would suggest that is skews the balance toward a very small but vocal contingent within the Star Wars fandom.

Yes some of the hardcore fanbase would have been angry. My reply to that? Who cares? Most people watching wouldn’t even realize that the eye colors were wrong. I think an adaptation should be made as good as possible even if some small sacrifices to fidelity have to be made, like not using super fake looking contact lenses! Most people who watch Star Wars live-action shows on Disney aren’t hardcore Clone Wars and Rebels fans.

Make a good show and those hardcore fans will quit grumbling eventually. I do think Thrawn should have the glowing red eyes, but every other cast member would have been just fine with their natural eye colors. Ultimately, I think we should be able to have healthy disagreement about this stuff.

I admit, I get baited into stupid arguments online and get heated and say things I probably shouldn’t myself. But I do dream of a time when you can offer up a critique like this and not be called all sorts of names or have people call for your head. I’m constantly shocked at the levels of vitriol, especially since I’ve been quite positive about Ahsoka .

“If you don’t like it don’t watch it” is always a stupid thing to say, but to say that to someone who has made it quite clear that I do like the show is just bizarre. What’s your take on this? Am I nit-picking? Is this distracting to you as well? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook . You can follow me and reach me via Threads , Twitter and Facebook .

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