Category: Opinion

So, how much of Rogue One have we seen already?

Posted on December 2, 2016by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

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Well, it’s that time again—a new Star Wars film is only two weeks away, and promotion, once considered by some to be worryingly sparse, has reached the “unavoidable” stage. According to ComicBook.com’s YouTube channel, there are at least sixteen discrete Rogue One TV spots, plus two behind-the-scenes featurettes, three “international” trailers, two standard trailers, the original one-minute teaser from last spring, and last but not least a full 39-second clip that was released literally as I was writing this paragraph.

With all this stuff floating around, some inevitably start to wonder aloud if they’re showing too much. This was an even more pronounced concern a year ago, when spoiler aversion for The Force Awakens was at an almost religious intensity, so it occurred to me, a moderately spoiler-phobic fan myself, to actually sit down and do the math. After adding up all the distinct content I could find, I ended up with a figure of about five and a half minutes, or about four percent of TFA’s expected running time. That didn’t seem like very much after all, and furthermore, it turned out that the later a scene was situated in the film, the less of it we’d seen—almost half of the content was from Jakku, in fact.

But TFA was a special circumstance by any measure; an utterly blank canvas where simply the existence of stormtroopers, for example was Major New Information to be doled out carefully. With Rogue One, we already know how the damn thing ends: the Death Star plans are handed off to Princess Leia with Darth Vader in hot pursuit. The stakes here are not in the mission’s success but in the ultimate cost in the lives of the team, none of whom seem to be around later—but even the most revealing trailers generally have enough sense not to reveal who dies. So all things considered, it’s reasonable to expect a much lower bar for withholding the details of RO from us, and for that to be reflected in the material they’ve released. But there’s only one way to know for sure, so it’s time once again to dive deep into the footage and see what’s what. Read More

The Manipulation of Galen Erso – Catalyst: A Rogue One Story

Posted on November 18, 2016by

catalyst1It’s a unique time in the life of Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel. The book is, as the name indicates, a direct tie-in to Rogue One, a movie which is not even out in theaters for another few weeks. We still do not know the extent of how the two works will tie in together, what from one will show up in the other or how much one work may lean on the other for support in character development or story. Thus, this will be an examination of the book on its own merits rather than as a tie-in.

Let’s start with overall impressions before we get into what might be considered spoiler territory. Catalyst is written by James Luceno in the grand tradition of Luceno Star Wars novels, in that it ties to the larger events of a film or other project while still telling its own story. Catalyst is very much a prequel, but it tells its own tale well enough to not need the help of the film to support it. It does, however, give context to larger events by taking us behind the scenes, as it were. In this case, we go behind the scenes of the creation of the Empire’s first superweapon.

Through the novel we follow three characters, Galen Erso and his wife Lyra, along with their “friend” and greatest supporter Orson Krennic. The relationship between the three is complicated and ever-evolving as the galaxy spins, events unfold and everything changes around them. We follow our dysfunctional trio from the midst of the Clone Wars through the end of the war to the midst of the Galactic Empire, but the true strength of the book isn’t in the myriad of references or hints at things yet to come; its strength is the leads and the choices they make, the characters themselves bearing the weight of the story.

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Star Wars Propaganda: Worldbuilding Through Art and Story

Posted on October 26, 2016by Imperial Court Circular

Star_Wars_Propaganda_New_Cover[1](Programming note: this piece is the first of three about Star Wars Propaganda. On Friday and next Monday, I’ll be posting a two-part interview with the author, Pablo Hidalgo.)

Like a lot of people, I’ve been looking forward to the Star Wars Propaganda book ever since it was announced. WWII-esque propaganda posters for the Empire and Rebellion have been a part of Star Wars merchandise (and fan creation) for a long time, because they just fit into the old-timey milieu of Star Wars. There’s a certain sense of familiarity to the Star Wars setting – that despite the space opera dressing, the galaxy far far away actually feels rather like ours. Star Wars echoes our history, myth, and fairy tales. And while fairy tales and myth may seem different from familiar history, it’s the myth-making of propaganda that makes the World Wars (or the nostalgic ad campaigns of the 1950s) seem like cultural touchstones as familiar to us as the stories we grew up with.

Star Wars Propaganda is written by Pablo Hidalgo, and is illustrated through the efforts of artists gathered by Becker & Mayer, and is published by Harper Design. But after the publishing pages, everything about the book treats it as if it’s an art history treatise written inside the Star Wars galaxy. See, the central conceit of the book is that it’s written in-universe and all the propaganda posters seen within it are actual pieces composed by actual in-universe artists (even the captions for the pictures refer only to these fictitious propagandists and/or sponsors). The book’s notional author, Janyor of Bith, is a propagandist whose career saw him through an era of patriotic Republic and Imperial paintings to protest paintings on behalf of the Rebel Alliance and the Resistance (it’s worth pointing out that Janyor was mentioned as an artistic inspiration for Star Wars Rebels’ artist-provocateur Sabine Wren in the episode “Idiot’s Array”). The in-universe storytelling is my favorite conceit of this book, because it allows Star Wars Propaganda to weave together the body text and art into a work of storytelling in its own right: telling the story of propaganda, galactic politics, and even of Janyor’s own personal journey in a way that’s more fun and compelling than out of universe narration might have been.

The book begins with an introduction by Janyor, where he states that propaganda is a true form of art, and that art and war are tied together in the same way that politics are tied with war. He’s discussing a fictitious universe, but the observations he makes ring true to life. The book’s about Star Wars propaganda, and the history is the history of that galaxy – but it echoes our own history and myth. The artwork illustrates that story in a literal sense, but it tells its own story through the evolving art styles and subject matter. Someone could get the whole story of the book focusing on the art alone or the text alone, should any such reader be inclined. The art and text help make the setting feel more genuine and lived in; it’s a verisimilitude that the films and television shows have which helps the world the characters inhabit feel more real.

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Luke Skywalker: The Hero Who Ran Away?

Posted on October 21, 2016by The Works

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“Luke Skywalker has vanished”

So begins The Force Awakens. Hold on, though – shouldn’t Luke be fighting with Leia’s Resistance against the First Order, taking on the villainous Snoke and his fallen apprentice Kylo Ren, rather than running away from his problems? For many fans, to whom Luke was a childhood hero, this narrative choice seemed at best out-of-character, and at worst a betrayal of everything he stood for.

Luke’s disappearance is indeed a long way from the swashbuckling young hero we saw in A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. But Luke’s journey in the original trilogy is to become a Jedi, the Jedi – the one to correct the mistakes of the previous generation. From this perspective, his choices following Return of the Jedi make perfect sense.

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Doctor Aphra Goes Solo: Marvel Changes it Up and Why it Matters

Posted on October 19, 2016by Guest Editorials

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With the release of its December 2016 solicitations, Marvel ignited a firestorm of speculation. Among its usual Star Wars titles was Star Wars: Classified, a new ongoing series. Given its December launch and the secrecy surrounding the project, fans guessed it could be one of two things: a Rogue One tie-in or a series featuring Darth Vader’s Doctor Aphra.

Now that Darth Vader has concluded, the speculation has been laid to rest.  Doctor Aphra, penned by Darth Vader scribe Kieron Gillen, will focus on the not-so-good doctor’s exploits after escaping death at the hands of her former boss.

The news that Aphra will be headlining her own series marks a number of firsts, both for Marvel’s line of Star Wars comics and for the Star Wars franchise as a whole. It’s also a welcome addition to Marvel and Star Wars’ growing number of stories centering on women and people of color.

Aphra’s status as the leading woman of her own series is an exciting prospect, not just for her fans, but also for fans of a growing new expanded universe. Doctor Aphra will be the first ongoing comic series since the reboot to focus on a homegrown comics hero (one not first appearing in the films or TV shows). For fans who cut their teeth on Dark Horse’s stable of original characters, her new series is the first sign that Marvel is willing to step away from the on-screen playground. Read More