Author: M. Dean Cooper

Unsullied: The (Utterly) Spoiler-Free The Force Awakens Experience

Posted on January 18, 2016by

finndesert

Dedicated readers of this site may be familiar with my friend Pearlann Porter, the “casual Star Wars fan”. She never really got into the Expanded Universe, but we’ve had no shortage of long conversations about the background details of the films, which ultimately led to the ETE series The Expanded Universe Explains.

Having once felt strongly as George Lucas did—that The Story ended with Return of the Jedi and nothing was worth getting into beyond that, she nevertheless decided to give The Force Awakens a go. Since she’d been so tuned out to current Star Wars output for so long (I dragged her to The Clone Wars in theaters and she’s never forgiven me), she made the decision early on to completely ignore all news relating to Episode VII; not just serious spoilers, but even who the cast was. No posters, no trailers, not a single luxury—and with almost no exceptions, she stayed that way right up until December 18th.

As rare an experience as hers was going to be, I knew I wanted to document it here. As we sat in the theater moments before the movie started, I asked her a few questions about her feelings thus far, and then a few weeks later she answered a few more looking back on the whole ordeal. She’s also working on a full review that I hope to publish here in the near future, but for now, enjoy our discussions. If you note a different feel between the two halves of the interview, that’s because the first really was conducted in the theater, and transcribed later—while the second batch was via email.

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Fifty Ways to Leave Your Daughter: Rey Durron, and Other Fun Ideas

Posted on January 8, 2016by , , , and Not A Committee

reymask

Let’s get this out of the way: even many detractors of The Force Awakens concede that Rey is the wonderful, nuanced female Star Wars lead we’ve always wanted but never dared to dream we would get. That was the case from the moment she popped up on our movie screens, and it’s enormously unlikely that any new information regarding her origins would change that. Her being a Skywalker would not diminish her value any more than Darth Vader being a Skywalker diminished Luke’s.

That said, I’ll be damned if it isn’t fun to guess! Speaking for myself, it all comes down to the execution; I can see a version of Rey Skywalker that I love just as easily as I can see one I hate, and that applies to all the possibilities. There’s more than enough evidence to go around (there’s even a spreadsheet out there, because of course there is) and keep us guessing and debating for the next eighteen months—at least!—so I wanted to see where we at ETE stand right now. Think of this as a snapshot more than battle lines; I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two of our minds are changed as the months go by. Mine has already.

Speaking of which, I’ll be back at the end with my own totally batshit theory, because that’s how I roll, but where are you guys leaning right now? What’s the most important piece of evidence as you see it—or is it more your personal hopes than an objective analysis? Read More

First of the New – Why Episode VII Needed to Happen

Posted on January 4, 2016by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

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When the Disney purchase and the sequel trilogy were announced, my immediate reaction was to be much more excited about the prospect of non-Episode “spinoff” Star Wars movies than about The Force Awakens, then just Episode VII. The Expanded Universe had told all manner of interesting stories in the Galaxy Far Far Away through the tropes and traditions of other genres, and not only did that sort of grab-bag approach appeal more to me off the bat, it just felt safer. Making an “Episode VII” was at best a necessary evil, something that had to be done to establish that this new generation of Star Wars films was as big of a deal as the first six and not just “The Further Adventures of…”; never mind the seemingly monumental task of getting all the original actors back and up to snuff, and never mind what that story might mean for the EU.

For a long time, though, I’ve been hearing whispers (and, I’m sure, lots of baseless speculation) that Disney had no intention of just making a sequel trilogy—the sequels weren’t just a thing they had to get out of the way, they were going to steer the boat, and if all went according to plan there’d be not three but at least six of them. Oy, I thought, Episode XII? Even leaving aside the presence of Anakin Skywalker, Chosen One and Almighty Main Character, making an “Episode” of Star Wars is a high bar, and brings with it all manner of expectations, from an in media res opening crawl to a John Williams score all the way to shot composition and wipes. Releasing an indefinite number of those would at best be a much bigger challenge than the spinoffs (which could at least succeed or fail on their own terms), and at worst, in comparison, would become boring.

Anyway, that was how I felt up until maybe six months ago. And now that I’ve seen The Force Awakens and lived with it for a bit, I think I get it: Star Wars is a serial again.

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Victory Lap – Whatever Happened to Padmé Amidala?

Posted on January 1, 2016by Simple Tricks

padmescream

It took me a minute to decide what to say about this one. Some of the pieces we’ve highlighted this week took off like a rocket, while others performed respectably at first but have maintained a steady pace ever since—and this piece, a response to a RetroZap! article by Joseph Tavano, is the latter.

Usually, a piece that surges the second it comes out and then mostly sputters out does so for obvious reasons; controversy in particular. But it’s harder to discern what keeps people coming back to, say, a fourteen-month-old review of a twenty-year-old PC game day in and day out. Sometimes it’s just a case of accidental search engine optimization, but sometimes the subject matter is truly evergreen. Unlike my Jedi Temple piece, which was largely a matter of timing, I think the subject of Padmé’s death has enjoyed a bottomless well of fan interest and speculation as long as it’s been out there.

Joseph’s original piece, Padmé Didn’t Die of a Broken Heart, posited essentially that Palpatine proactively killed her and used her life energy—which is probably a thing in Star Wars, let’s face it—to keep Anakin alive instead, making both Sith culpable in her death in a way. While I don’t give the “broken heart” explanation any more credence than he did, my own theory is that it was in fact the gestating Luke and Leia who were dying from the day’s stresses, and Padmé intuitively gave her life to them with the cooperation of the Living Force. This accomplishes the twin goals (heh) of giving Padmé some agency in her own demise and explaining how a nigh-omnipotent Palpatine could have been so convinced Anakin’s offspring hadn’t survived: the Force lied to him.

This being Star Wars, we’ll probably never get a complete answer to these questions, but this piece has convinced me that people will never stop asking.

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Victory Lap – There’s Something Weird Going On With the Jedi Temple

Posted on December 29, 2015by

temple-comic

Maybe it’s weird to call this one a “Victory Lap” when the original article was partly about suggesting a theory that ended up being incorrect, but the fact is, a successful piece isn’t always about staying power—sometimes it’s more about vocalizing the right questions (or suppositions) at just the right moment, even if you don’t have the answers yourself.

In hindsight, it all boils down to what appears to be simply a case of James Luceno describing the Dark Times-era Jedi Temple in a confusing, and/or misleading, and/or flatly erroneous way. The new canon was only a few months (and two novels) old at this point, and many were still feeling out the status quo—it was new territory for us continuity geeks, and I think I just happened to give voice to the questions a lot of people were asking: when something looks like an error, is it an error, or a deliberate change? Or even more interestingly, is it laying ground for something in the sequel trilogy?

Well, in this case, it looks more or less like an error; or at least a very common misreading. While we can say pretty definitively now that the Jedi Temple in Tarkin still looks (structurally, anyway) the same as it did in the prequels and stayed that way through Return of the Jedi, the mysterious well of dark side energy deep below the temple remains just that—a mystery. It may just be an interesting new bit of background detail, or it could yet factor into Lucasfilm’s now-unfolding storytelling plan; we’ll just have to wait and find out.

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