Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001)

TV or not TV? That was the question I faced with the relaunch of Digging Star Wars. After all, this blog started by highlighting films that inspired the Star Wars films. Then, Disney happened. And then I put up the Gone Fishin’ sign to take a break.

Now that some time has passed and Disney has delivered four films and two animated TV series – with more on the way – it’s time to continue Digging Star Wars. I'll stick to highlighting individual films that influenced the Star Wars franchise and, more importantly, films I believe you should see (or re-watch!). Here's the first of nine new blog entries leading up to the December release of Episode IX. Since March 5th is now #RebelsRemembered Day, we'll start there and dig into the highly influential Cowboy Bebop.

Now, to be blunt, the Cowboy Bebop TV show influenced Star Wars and, in particular, Star Wars Rebels. But...that TV series also had a feature film midquel (the film's storyline takes place within the timeline of the TV series). Better yet, I found some unique thematic ties between the Cowboy Bebop movie and the Rebels TV series. So…on with the show!

A DisneyXD show, Rebels ran on TV from 2014 to 2018. The story centered around a young scrapper, Aladdin-like Ezra Bridger from the planet Lothal. Ezra gets swept up in a growing rebellion when he joins the starship Ghost crew, which includes mentor/Jedi Knight Kanan Jarros, Twi’lek pilot Hera Syndulla, Mandalorian graffiti artist Sabine Wren, Lasat Honor Guard Zeb Orrelios and cranky astromech droid Chopper (C1-10P). Here's the video trailer for the final episodes. This is where the spoilers begin…

Star Wars Rebels Mid-Season 4 Trailer (Official) on Disney Video

The show matured and grew in its complexity over four seasons. Various sources listed multiple inspirations for Rebels including Robotech, Firefly and, of course, Cowboy Bebop. Rebels also pulled story elements, props, designs and characters from a variety of Star Wars canon and legacy sources: unused designs from original Star Wars concept artist Ralph McQuarrie, author Timothy Zahns’s Heir to the Empire trilogy, West End Games’ 1987 Star Wars Role-Playing Sourcebooks and more. This cobbling together of inspirations and available Star Wars lore is the show’s greatest contribution to the franchise. By placing Zahn’s character Thrawn and West End Games’ Imperial Security Bureau (in addition to many, many other story elements) in Rebels, creators Simon Kinberg, Carrie Beck and Dave Filioni soothed and pleased older fans who feared Expanded Universe content would simply disappear under the Disney ownership of Star Wars. Disney continued tying everything together by including both Chopper and The Ghost onscreen in their live action film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016).

Just like Rebels follows the antics of a ragtag starship crew, Cowboy Bebop chronicles the misadventures of an eclectic group of bounty hunters: noir-ish ex-cop Jet Black, former hitman Spike Spiegel, sexy gambler Faye Valentine, androgynous child genius Ed, and eerily smart dog Ein. Their ship, The Bebop, serves as star-hopping home in our Solar System of colonized planets and moons – sort of an Old West-meets-Blade Runner backdrop. TV series Director Shinichiro Watanabe approached each episode as a genre experiment that tells fantastic stories from different perspectives – but not at the expense of an intense overall series story arc for each main character. That said, the TV show wrapped up story elements very tight for most characters. So tight, it left little narrative wiggle room when it came time to make a movie. They couldn’t simply make a sequel to the show. Instead, they just told “another”Bebop crew story (that happens somewhere along the timeline of the show), which touches upon Spike’s history and alters his present and future self. Here the trailer for Cowboy Bebop: The Movie…

The show was huge. The movie, sometimes referred to as Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door, was successful. This summer, Netflix will begin production on a live action version of Cowboy Bebop. It’s influence on Star Wars? Well, like Last Jedi or not, The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson quoted Cowboy Bebop as a “visual influence” on his films. But what of Star Wars Rebels? Here are similarities:

THE SHIP(S)

The ship makes the crew. In both Rebels and Bebop, more often than not, the main character’s adventure begins and ends on the ship. It’s basically like waking up at home, running off to work and school, and then coming back home for dinner and sleep – except “work” and “school” involves intergalactic violence. 

Both the Rebels’ Ghost freighter (a modified VCX-100 light freighter) and Cowboy Bebop’s converted interplanetary fishing trawler house smaller, one-pilot, lethal starships. For Rebels, The Ghost had The Phantom, which acted as a secondary shuttle and fully-armed starfighter. In Bebop, both Spike’s remodeled MONO racer “Swordfish II” and Faye’s MONO zipcraft Red Tail were housed within The Bebop.

FAMILY

Along with the home motif, both shows present a family of odd characters. I don’t want to split hairs between “traditional” and “non-traditional” family (that’s a thesis paper I’ll probably write in the future). Yet, Disney isn’t subtle in having the Ghost crew acting like a family. Zeb and Ezra fight like brothers forced to share a room. Ezra eavesdrop a good deal on Kanan and Hera’s discussions and arguments – which sound a lot like parents bickering over the family budget. In Season 2:  Episode 2's “The Siege of Lothal, Part 2,” Hera even commands the young Ghost crew in a space battle with, “All right, kids. Do mom and dad proud.” 

Bebop is the same way. In the beginning it’s just Jet and Spike on the craft. Jet is clearly the wiser, elder shipmate while Spike complains daily like an ungrateful teenager about what Jet has made for dinner. When Faye joins the crew, Spike and Faye bicker so much – and cause each other so much strife – that Jet is forced to keep an uneasy peace between all of them. Unsho Ishizuka, the Japanese voiceover artist who performed Jet, pulled from his own life experiences when voicing Jet saying, “It’s just like at home – I’m parenting two teenagers who hear me but don’t listen.”

INESCAPABLE PAST

Over the course of the TV series, each of the three older characters in Bebop has the past catch up to them. Spike, the main character, must come to terms with new aspects of his character over the course of the movie which, in turn, asks the audience to rethink Spike’s character in what fans have already seen in the show.

Same with Rebels, most of the characters are internally processing how their past effects their present and future. The greatest example of this is Kanan. A padawan who survived Order 66, Kanan has grown up to become a gunslinger. When fate brings Force-sensitive Ezra into his life, Kanan, who doesn’t consider himself a full-fledged Jedi, debates taking him on as his padawan learner. Ultimately, Kanan dusts off his lightsaber and mentors Ezra. This is similar to Spike, in Cowboy Bebop, agreeing to take on the delightfully quirky Ed as part of their bounty hunting crew. In the course of the movie, Ed plays a vital role in the mission the crew has decided to take on to save Mars since they feel they’re the only ones that can do it.

VISION and DEATH (and LIFE)

The BIGGEST SPOILERS I have for you involve  Kanan and Spike. Both have their sense of vision dramatically altered during the course of their stories. Kanan winds up losing his physical sight when he battles Darth Maul in an underground Sith temple in the season two finale “Twilight of the Apprentice” (my all-time favorite episode). From that point onward in the series, Kanan relies solely on The Force to guide him. He wears an assortment of eye bandages and face masks until he ultimately sacrifices himself. I warned you, BIG SPOILERS. 

Interestingly enough, Spike ALSO dies and the end of his television series. In keeping with the Digging Star Wars premise of this blog, get this: we learn that Spike has an artificial eye in the movie (something not even referenced in the TV show).What’s even cooler is that, in the movie's climatic end battle, we see Spike struggling with his vision, closing one eye to aim his gun better but not quite getting it right. Also, due to his encounter with Vincent, Spike sees luminous butterflies that (we are led to believe) only he can see. The villain in the movie also saw glowing butterflies implying that he was having a hard time determining what was real and what was a dream. This relates to an ancient Chinese Daoist philosopher/poet Zhuangzi. Hence, when Spike sees them before the show's trademark end graphic statement, we know something is different about Spike - but what is it? Now, in the TV show, the end graphic often reads “See You Space Cowboy...”. In the movie, however, the audience sees a bold end graphic asking “Are You Living In The Real World?”. Which, in turn, should make us consider what is real, or, perhaps a better question: what is reality?

And, with that deep thought, let's stop here. Or should I say start? Both! Post a comment and let me know your thoughts. See You Space Cowboy....

[To learn more about the Chinese Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi and his influence on Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, check out this YouTube video.]