Category: Simple Tricks

Alexandra Bracken on the Symbol, the Skeptic, and the Sponge

Posted on September 23, 2015by

starwars-450x556[1]On Monday, I presented Part One of my interview with Alexandra Bracken, where we discussed her relationship with Star Wars, her approach to writing, and her literary interests. Today brings part two of this interview, where we discuss her adaptation of Star Wars A New Hope — released yesterday — called The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy. The title of the novel signals its focus on the “Big Three” of Leia, Han, and Luke, so naturally I wanted to ask her about her approaches to characterizing the most iconic figures in Star Wars.

Not only has the novel itself come out since the publication of Part One of the interview, but StarWars.com posted a beautiful, heartfelt essay that Alex wrote about her late father. She discusses her experiences growing up with Star Wars and how she associates it with her loving family, and how the Star Wars fandom, too, is a family. It’s a very moving piece, and I highly encourage everyone to read it if you haven’t already… The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy itself reads like a love letter to family and fandom. Scenes where Leia confides that she copes with trying times by remembering the fun and hope she associates with her parents or where Luke imagines his departed loved ones as beams of sunlight have this emotional heft to them, especially read in context of where Alex was writing from. This book is something special — from the mythic grandeur to the funny little additions and observations (ever thought about who put down the Falcon‘s landing gear on the Death Star? She did!), a lot of love and thought went into this book and it shows.

But that’s enough from me! Let’s hear from Alex and get her insights on Leia, Han, and Luke! As before, my questions are in bold and Alex’s answers are in plaintext.

X. Okay so on to The Princess, The Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy at last. You were brought in to the project to adapt A New Hope–what are your thoughts on ANH and its place in the OT?

Oooh, this is an interesting question. I’m not sure I’ve ever really thought about this before…

You know, for the longest time, ANH was actually my least favorite film of the original trilogy. I love endings for whatever reason—I guess the sense of resolution and watching all of these disparate threads get tied together, so ROTJ was my favorite for many years. The scene in which we see Luke lighting Vader’s funeral pyre is one of my favorites in the whole saga—visually, it’s so striking, and emotionally, it’s a catharsis.

I see ANH as having so much more innocence than the other films; it inspires a kind of wonder in you, because, like Luke, you’re being thrust into a much larger world that’s so very unlike anything you’ve known. Truths are much more simple in this part of the story: a found family of friends comes together, heroes are heroic (and if they’re not initially, they make the right choice by the end) and good does triumph over evil, despite crippling odds. And then, much like Luke going into the cave on Dagobah, ESB draws you into the story’s heart of darkness. The other side of the coin flips up, and we see heroes fail, friends separate, and we question the very themes and ideas that ANH established. It makes for some intense drama and twists, but I’ve always wondered if they’d be so impactful without the shining light and triumph of ANH.

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Alexandra Bracken on A New Hope, the Expanded Universe, and the Fit of Han’s Pants

Posted on September 21, 2015by Interviews

SW_Jackets-ANHTomorrow sees the release of another three Star Wars novels, to add to the five released earlier this month on Force Friday. These three novels are special, written by three different authors with three wholly different adaptations of the Original Trilogy for a middle-grade (ages 8-12) audience. If you’ve read any of my reviews of middle-grade books on this site, you’ll know by now that I think that the Star Wars middle-grade novels are basically the best of the new canon and should be read by adults just as well as kids. A few months ago, I wrote a rave review of a three chapter sample of the A New Hope adaptation by Alexandra Bracken, The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy. I can’t wait to dig into the final book. The other two books in the series, which I hope to review in the near future, are So You Want to be a Jedi? by Adam Gidwitz and Beware the Power of the Dark Side! by Tom Angleburger, adapting Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi respectively.

Alex was kind enough to take the time to answer a bevy of questions about her love of Star Wars, her writing, and her stellar adaptation of A New Hope. Her book brought me back to a lot of what I really loved about Star Wars, so I had a lot to ask her! I’ll be running this interview in two parts: today’s piece is about Alex and her writing and Wednesday’s piece is about The Princess, The Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy itself. The book releases tomorrow, September 22. Please look into the book, I promise you won’t regret it — especially if you have kids or if you want to feel like a kid again (and don’t we all, when we watch Star Wars?).

My questions below are in bold, Alex’s responses are in plaintext.

I. What do you love about Star Wars? What drew you in initially, and what draws you back?

Honestly? The characters, forever and always. It’s why, when given the opportunity to retell ANH any way I’d like, I knew I wanted to play a bit with the characters themselves and really peel back their layers. I pitched this retelling to my editor as the “Star Wars Breakfast Club,” and the title is a little nod to that.

I also really appreciate how grand the scale of the story is while still maintaining that intimacy with the central characters. It carries you through the full range of emotions—it’s thrilling, heartbreaking, uplifting, romantic, funny. I guess the better question is, what’s not to love about Star Wars?
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In which we chat about the post-Endor war situation but really TFA

Posted on September 4, 2015by , , and Aggressive Negotiations

tfa-isdcrash

If you’re new to Eleven-ThirtyEight this may be the first real Aggressive Negotiations piece you’ve seen here—unlike most of our content, Aggressive Negotiations are raw, largely unproofed live chats among our staff and occasionally others. Being so very off the cuff and unscripted, they can sometimes get a little out of control (this one in particular tops out at over seven thousand words, which just might make it the longest piece on the site), but the goal is to present fandom in its most pure form—and this is absolutely that.

Today’s topic: the post-Endor political status quo, prompted by the latest round of The Force Awakens bits and pieces from Entertainment Weekly and elsewhere. I couldn’t make it to this one myself, and in fact as of this writing I haven’t even read the damned thing yet, so this ought to be fun for all of us. Force Friday ahoy! – Mike, EIC Read More

Portrait of an Oldbie

Posted on August 14, 2015by

ventress-sideshowIn my interview series Better Know a Fan, I find people I know outside of the Eleven-ThirtyEight staff who I nevertheless find interesting—either for their unique point of view, their tone, or their overall personality. My subject this time, Tracy Gentile, has already made her stamp on ETE in the form of last year’s guest piece The Case Against Mara Jade Skywalker.

While that piece was without a doubt one of the most controversial things I’ve ever run here, Tracy justified my faith in her both in the article itself and her patient engagement with the intense feedback. To those of us who know her at the Jedi Council Forums as anakinfansince1983, she’s a lively debater whose opinions are nothing if not intense themselves, but like my last two interviewees, I’ve never seen her take an honest disagreement personally or blow it out of proportion. As a member of the original Star Wars generation, after all, Tracy’s got nothing if not an abundance of perspective. Read More

Tsar Wars: The Hapans Strike Back

Posted on August 12, 2015by Aggressive Negotiations, Imperial Court Circular

Hapans-GOI[1]Here’s the third entry in our series on monarchy in Star Wars! On Monday, Bria and I discussed why Star Wars had so many monarchies. On Tuesday, we took a trip to idyllic Naboo and tried to make sense of their political system. Today, we’re visiting the EU and looking at the very strange place (even by Star Wars standards!) known as the Hapan Consortium. We may have had a little too much fun with this one, but we have no regrets.

 

Bria: So you’re going to start this by softly singing ‘Hapes Hapes Hapes’, right?

Jay: I’m not sure what that is, and if I’m singing anything it’s gonna be a Disney song… which is entirely appropriate I think. Although we’re not quite at a matriarchal Disney princess movie yet.

Bria: Someone needs to go back and reread Courtship of Princess Leia.  That’s what all the pretty people are singing when the Hapan delegation arrives to offer Isolder as tribute uhh I mean husband to Princess Leia.

Jay: And here I thought Mon Mothma was selling Leia for the good of the Republic! But honestly, I do need to re-read it. For all the (occasionally justified!) crap CoPL gets, the politics are intriguing.

Bria: Yeah, without CoPL, we never get Hapes or Dathomir or Tenel Ka of House Djo, First of Her Name and Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium.

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