Author: Ben Crofts

Eleven-ThirtyEight Looks to the Future One Last Time

Posted on June 26, 2023by , , , , and

After years of uncertainty regarding the future of Star Wars screen content (with the exception of lots and lots of The Mandalorian), a picture is beginning to take shape at last. With solid runs from The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch and a stellar showing by the first season of Andor, television content is breaking free from the iron grip of Baby Yoda at last, a process only expedited by Ahsoka, Skeleton Crew, and The Acolyte all debuting in the next year or so.

But we’ve known about all of those for years now—even if it takes a teaser these days to really believe a project is coming. The bigger question mark has been the future film slate, and only now do we finally know the name of the game there: something for everyone, with three new films announced in three disparate eras of the Star Wars timeline—one on the origins of the Jedi; one picking up Rey’s story after the sequel trilogy; and even one loosely adapting Heir to the Empire (imagine telling yourself that would happen after watching The Force Awakens!). Video games and publishing are also claiming distinct territory of their own, with The High Republic about to enter its third phase stronger and more prominent than ever; Jedi: Survivor delivering an improved continuation of Cal Kestis’s story and teeing up a likely third installment; and the newly announced open-world game Outlaws carving out a big new space during the original trilogy (hopefully) free from the entanglements of the movie characters.

With Eleven-ThirtyEight’s final days looming and the publishing schedule filling up rapidly, a group piece seemed like a good opportunity for the staff to speak their minds one last time independent of the demands of a solo article. The topic: with all these new projects on the horizon, what are you looking forward to the most? After years of uncertainty, what gives you (ugh) hope for the future of Star Wars? Here’s what they had to say.

Read More

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga – The Game Star Wars Didn’t Know it Needed

Posted on April 27, 2022by

For all that I was expecting great things of Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, it still managed to exceed them. It did particularly well in its version of the main story, bringing new emphasis to certain aspects and expanding and improving upon others. Above all, it did something entirely unexpected: not only did it treat the nine films as a series of nine films, it made the story flow from the start to the end. Yes, that does include the sequel trilogy.

My route through the set was originals then prequels then sequels, but by all accounts, the game is rather smart in enabling any structure. You want to play in the machete order? Off you go. Two ace cards the game plays early and frequently are the assumption that the audience knows the material and a very smart sense of humour. The humour turns up all over the place in surprising ways and, at times, takes a very meta tack. For instance, one Phantom Menace level is called Better Call Maul. Similarly, a quest in The Rise of Skywalker that you play to unlock Beaumont Kin is called Second Breakfast, a sly nod to Dominic Monaghan’s role of Merry in The Lord of the Rings films. These jokes and others show that Traveller’s Tales (henceforth TT) were aiming this game at everyone. Sure, kids are the primary audience, but not exclusively.

George Lucas’s approach was mostly on the big-picture, grand-themes stuff — details, consistency, these were not his forte. This was demonstrated in how he syncs up the end of Revenge of the Sith and the start of A New Hope — it kind of works but when you start looking at the details it gets a bit iffy. The sequels, in some sort of weird homage to Lucas, replicated this freewheeling approach to its component parts. The result was three films but not a trilogy. It had the pieces to be so but the films just do not work together. The game cannot entirely fix all this but it has a very good go at it.

Read More

The Unexpected Optimism of The High Republic

Posted on January 4, 2021by Obiwomble's Outlook

Announced some time ago, I have to admit to a certain amount of skepticism about The High Republic. With the last few years seeing some quite spectacularly awful real-world politics, a sequel trilogy of films that decided its best move was killing off Luke, Han and Leia, plus – and how could this one be forgotten? – a global pandemic, I was lukewarm about its claims to being a more optimistic Star Wars story. At the same time I had some reason to be wary of the writer kicking it off, which Charles Soule would I be getting? The one that did some smart work on the first Lando comic miniseries or the one who takes the corporate gigs like killing off Wolverine? Finally, there is the cynicism born of numerous brighter, happier superhero relaunches that end quickly with some character getting eviscerated.

It’s therefore a rather delightful surprise that Light of the Jedi defies all of this to do something entirely different, very, very unexpected but not at all unwelcome.

One question that comes up with regard to stories is if the heroes have all the advantages how can there be any real conflict or challenge? How can the villains get any victories or even represent a genuine threat? The first answer to this question comes in the face of the disaster that opens this story, and from the very start it defies expectations in a positive way. When reading it, some of what you expect does happen; you may well foresee that a particular new character is not going to be around long and, while you might be right, you may also end up caring about them far more than you thought you would. At the same time, Soule does not play the darkness card here – it’s a disaster sure, many, many people die, but the plot does not overly dwell on it. Instead we see what The High Republic is about in its response to this disaster.

Read More

The 20 Most Memorable Moments of the New Star Wars Canon, Part II

Posted on May 29, 2019by , , , , , , and

Welcome to Part II of our Memorable Moments feature–Part I can be found here! This thing is long enough already so let’s get right to it…

sloaneposter13. Admiral Sloane Orders the Retreat, “The Levers of Power” (Jay Shah)

Initially, my entire list of favorite moments consisted of key events from RAE SLOANE’s story across different media and throughout the timeline of novels in which we’ve seen her. That would have been a little silly for a list of moments, even though I believe RAE SLOANE’s journey through the new canon has been the most remarkable and every moment we saw her in another context was a surprise and a sheer delight. But if I had to pick a single moment, I would choose her appearance at the Battle of Endor in the short story “The Levers of Power” — it’s the pivot point around which her whole career orients and changes.

Before the Battle of Endor, RAE SLOANE is a dutiful Imperial true believer who does the right thing as she sees it but is unable to rise as far as she merits due to the Empire’s internal politics and her unwillingness to play those games. After the Battle of Endor, RAE SLOANE is one of the most powerful forces in the Empire and becomes the very face of its surviving military as a grand admiral (literally, in the case of propaganda posters).

“The Levers of Power” shows Admiral RAE SLOANE on the precipice, just as her Empire is. It is a harrowing story. The Battle of Endor felt like it could go either way, until disaster mounted on disaster and it couldn’t. We see all the classic hallmarks of RAE SLOANE: her tactical skill, her dislike for power games (exemplified by a particularly odious ISB loyalty officer), and her ability to cut through the expected to get things done. She does not suffer the loyalty officer’s second-guessing as she leads as ably as any Imperial officer could. More than that: when she has to make the key decisive call that the battle is lost and duty requires the fleet to be preserved, she shoots the loyalty officer dead and gives the order to retreat. She has to. Read More

The 20 Most Memorable Moments of the New Star Wars Canon, Part I

Posted on May 27, 2019by , , , , and Feature Articles

While Eleven-ThirtyEight was founded in 2013, the earliest piece of writing hosted here is much, much older. In the summer of 2005, soon after Revenge of the Sith “completed” the saga, Star Wars Insider magazine published a feature by Abel G. Peña and Enrique Guerrero entitled “The 20 Most Memorable Moments of the Expanded Universe”. The piece concluded with a prompt for readers to share their own lists, and that was just the excuse I needed to begin a new blog at StarWars.com, which was a thing they let people do in those days.

The final product was my first major piece of Star Wars writing outside of TheForce.Net, and while I didn’t end up doing much else over there, I remained pretty fond of it, so with the official blogs long since defunct I took the opportunity of ETE’s birth to port the thing over here, where it has lived happily in seclusion ever since.

While I’m normally not a fan of “listicles” (gag) or retrospectives on content long past, that “memorable moments” concept has always stuck with me as one of the more acceptable ways of approaching both things—so with the five-year anniversary of the Star Wars continuity reboot last month I decided this would be a good opportunity for us to stop and look around a bit.

While the ranking that follows is of course despicably subjective, it is the result of an obnoxiously elaborate ranked-choice voting system: each of our nine regular contributors offered their own list of ten moments, with everyone’s top choice counting for ten points, their second choice counting for nine points, and so on. That left us with sixty-two distinct “moments” and several ties, which we then voted on until arriving at a conclusive top twenty.

With no further ado, enjoy, and be sure to check back on Wednesday for Part II! – Mike Read More