The First 'Star Wars: Galaxy Of Adventures' Shorts Have Debuted, And They're Pretty Damn Cool

This short shines a light on Darth Vader, specifically the scene from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story where he dispatches with a group of Rebel fleet troopers. However, they add some lines from the original Star Wars trilogy for good measure, and they add some new perspective and focus in on certain moments in this sequence more than in the original scene from the movie.

R2-D2 stars in another animated short that shows how loyal the astromech droid is to our heroes. What's cool here is that the recreation of the scene in animated form offers some new shots and perspectives that we don't see in the movie. It also continues to use real audio from the movies to go along with it.

This one takes a cue from The Empire Strikes Back and shows Luke Skywalker escaping from a cave on Hoth where a Wampa has taken him prisoner with plans to eat him later. Much like the Darth Vader short above, this one has some added exaggeration to the action, giving Luke a much more heroic shot when he pulls himself down from the frozen cave ceiling and slices the wampa's arm off with his lightsaber.

Then there's Chewbacca, who is introduced as a trusty co-pilot. This short takes audio from the original trilogy and uses animation to make a bit of a funny, cartoonish scene as Han instructs Chewbacca how to fix the ship. It's an interesting liberty taken with the scene from the movie, and it goes to show you how some of the elements are being repurposed slightly to be more engaging for younger viewers who are more enticed by animated than live-action.

Initially, it seemed a little odd that these scenes were being presented without much context for who these characters are and what they're doing. However, some kids just like seeing the flashy animation and cool action without really needing to know more. But at the same time, StarWarsKids also has these kind of videos which are meant to be more informative and explain to kids who characters are by giving them an extremely abridged version of their character arc across the Star Wars saga. Here's how the history of Darth Vader is explained in about a minute:

There are videos also explaining Luke Skywalker's story arc, as well as the different kinds of starfighters of the Star Wars galaxy. For kids who maybe don't understand the human relationships, political dynamics, or even the complex nature of good and evil in the Star Wars universe, this feels like a good way to introduce them to the key characters.

What's really cool, at least in the case of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, is the folks at Lucasfilm have been smart enough to preserve certain details so that kids can find them out when the time finally comes to watch the movies. In both of the abridged character profile shorts, they avoid the fact that Darth Vader was once Anakin Skywalker, and they don't reveal that he's Luke's father. That's pretty cool, if you ask me, since it allows kids to experience that epic reveal the proper way when they're old enough.

There are some other Star Wars Galaxy of Adventures shorts that we didn't post here, but you can check them out at the StarWarsKids YouTube channel, which will be updated with more shorts in December, and have much more content to offer on a regular basis starting in 2019.