Category: Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

Let’s face it: at least among adult Star Wars fans, there aren’t a whole lot of people who unreservedly love the Starkiller plot thread in The Force Awakens. To those, like myself, who do love the movie overall, it’s seen as a necessary evil or at worst an isolated misfire, while those who dislike the movie see it as perhaps the worst of a long list of haphazard original-trilogy knockoffs.

In the months leading up to the film’s release, as the existence of a superweapon became apparent, I made my feelings clear that I’d have been happier without it, or at least with a different spin on the idea—it being a bluff for propaganda purposes, for example, rather than a functioning weapon. Nevertheless, the film came out and boy, was it ever functional.

While I’d still say that it’s the weakest element in an otherwise very strong movie, the more I’ve thought about it, and the more I’ve learned about the First Order, the more I’ve come to terms with the Starkiller—what it represents out-of-universe, and what it suggests about the sequel-era GFFA in-universe. Read More

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.

Read More

A few weeks back, after the “Wings of the Master” episode of Star Wars Rebels aired, a little tizzy broke out on the Jedi Council Literature forum over a supposed contradiction in the new canon: according to an editor over at Wookieepedia, the reference book Ultimate Star Wars had canonized the Expanded Universe detail that B-wings were developed by Admiral Ackbar. In the most superficial, obtuse sense, this seemed to contradict the role of the Mon Cal engineer Quarrie in the episode, and for a little while there, the community was hard at work alternately brainstorming retcons and debating the degree to which the Lucasfilm Story Group had failed us.

Naturally, something as complex as a starfighter can easily have multiple significant developers, and one idea that I thought was particularly interesting was that Quarrie and Ackbar, upon the former’s arrival in the mainstream Rebellion, developed a relationship along the lines of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison—where one was the real genius, and the other, Ackbar in this case, used his superior marketing and networking abilities to ultimately receive most of the credit and popular recognition.

Ackbar in canon is something of a gruff busybody (if not a true asshole like Edison), and that sort of professional rivalry between him and Quarrie made sense for both characters, I thought, and added an interesting level of complexity to Rebels‘ straightforward account of the B-wing’s origin. In the end, of course, it was a pointless conversation—the claims about an Ackbar credit in Ultimate Star Wars appeared to be flat-out wrong, and there was no contradiction, just an object lesson in fannish overreactions, and the perils of using a wiki as your primary source. Read More