Category: Opinion

The Case Against Mara Jade Skywalker

Posted on April 21, 2014by Guest Editorials

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When Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire hit the shelves in 1991, it brought us out of a long drought of Star Wars material and gave us an idea of what the post-Return of the Jedi Empire might have looked like. It also gave us two characters that grew very popular over time: Grand Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade.

Mara was introduced as the “Emperor’s Hand”, who could hear his voice anywhere in the galaxy and did his bidding. She was tough, ruthless, one not to be crossed.

This characterization is good. Star Wars has always done well with strong female characters, was in fact one of the first franchises to do so. Lucas took a lot of criticism in 1977 for giving Leia strength, sarcastic wit, a feisty attitude; for making her into a person who would rip the blaster out of her incompetent rescuers’ hands because “someone has to save our skins” instead of just saying “Thank you, you wonderful men, for risking yourselves to rescue me off this battle station.” Read More

What Star Wars Can Learn From Disney

Posted on April 15, 2014by

In case you weren’t quite sure, my piece a couple weeks ago on What Star Wars Can Learn From Glee was an April Fools gag. But buried within it were a couple nuggets of truth; it’s hard to craft a satirical argument like that unless at least a tiny part of you can see its way to believing it.

To wit: the Disney purchase really does mean a new era for Star Wars, in which the old rules don’t apply—or at least don’t need to. Just ask Marvel. The film slate exemplified by 2012’s The Avengers and continuing into the foreseeable future was hard for an independent studio to even imagine, but much like the Avengers themselves, Marvel’s vision combined with Disney’s financial backing brought about something that just couldn’t have worked otherwise.

I truly believe that this desire to take a successful property to the next level also motivated Disney’s purchase of Star Wars. There’s certainly an argument to be made that Star Wars can’t sustain a new movie every year, or every other year, or whatever the reality ends up being, in perpetuity, but if you’re willing to entertain the alternative (by which I mean a success rate at least on the level of the Expanded Universe’s storytelling), then at least in theory, the possibilities are greater than many realize. Read More

Wedge Antilles: On the Origin of Heroes

Posted on April 10, 2014by

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As heroic journeys go, Star Wars has always stood out as a particularly memorable one in many ways. From its unique blend of science fiction aesthetics and fantasy themes to its focus on the perspectives of two utterly ordinary utility robots, inspired by the peasant-protagonists of Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, the saga has never been reluctant to take risks and experiment in ways that others would hesitate to even consider.

This willingness to gamble on the unknown carried over to the Expanded Universe, which, true to its name, recognized the potential profit in telling stories about more than just what Luke, Han, and Leia were up to between the movies. In fact, one could say that it has taken the concept of tie-in work to extremes, going to extraordinary lengths to craft detailed backgrounds for and make use of seemingly insignificant characters on countless occasions, most prominently in the case of the only rebel pilot to appear throughout the entire Original Trilogy: Wedge Antilles.

Unlike his initially more important comrade-in-arms, Biggs Darklighter, Wedge Antilles was not an old friend of the main character. Unlike Luke Skywalker, he was not blessed by the Force. Unlike Princess Leia, he had no royal or noble blood running in his veins. Unlike Han Solo, his transportation of choice was nothing more than a common starfighter, and he was no renowned figure in the galactic underworld. Wedge Antilles was, quite simply, a perfectly ordinary human being. And yet, despite his utterly unremarkable nature, he survived the attack on the first Death Star where so many others perished.

It would have been an extraordinarily simple thing for his role in the saga to end there, along with the likes of General Dodonna and Vanden Willard. It’s difficult to say whether it was by intentional design or mere whim, but the character returned in The Empire Strikes Back, and then lived to fight again in Return of the Jedi, where he enjoyed the privileged position of flying into the heart of the second Death Star alongside Lando Calrissian in the Millennium Falcon.

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Bastards of the Dark Side

Posted on April 8, 2014by Obiwomble's Outlook

People liked the “You Don’t Know the Power of the Dark Side!” How does it work?” piece enough to want a follow-up. One that looks at those unrepentant, irredeemable master bastards. Be careful what you wish for….

A certain array of characters come to mind, for the purposes of this one I propose to look at the likes of Exar Kun, Darth Bane, the Emperor and Darth Krayt. Each has elements in common, yet each are quite distinct in how they go about their dark business. What links them? A yawning, ever demanding sense of desire and ego. The wish to dominate an entire galaxy or more, all for their own benefit.

It might be asked how these individuals lack any sense of empathy for others so completely? The answer tends to be that these individuals are sociopathic personalities. Could they not be psychopaths? Each of these Sith Lords hatches long-term plans, they think strategically on how to achieve their goals – this behavior is not that of the psychopath, who is inclined to more impulsive and unplanned actions. Read More

Revisiting Last Stands and Final Moments

Posted on April 4, 2014by Halcyon Days

Looking back at my previous article Last Stands and Final Moments: When Killing Your Hero Works and When it Doesn’t I feel like I did a disservice to Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston by not including people from the X-wing Series. I was trying not to go overboard with characters and didn’t feel like I could pick just one without going for an in depth discussion of all of them. So thus, Part II of Last Stands and Final Moments was born. My last article on this topic sparked some good discussions along with requests to look at a few other characters so if you have other requests please pass them along. As crazy at it sounds, I still enjoy nothing more while reading a book than having an author correctly kill off a beloved character while making me feel the loss as if I were there in the story with the other characters. I believe this is one of the reasons I continue to pick up Star Wars books. The beginning of the EU saw several character deaths that were so well done that it is possible I’ve been spoiled with a high standard of how a character should be written to exit a series. Read More