Category: Simple Tricks

Walking the Razor’s Edge – The Staff Revisits Infinities

Posted on April 18, 2014by , , , and Not A Committee

The Infinities series of comics, recently highlighted here by Alexander Gaultier, was basically Star Wars’ version of Marvel’s infamous series What If? Each of the miniseries started with one of the Original Trilogy films, then changed one key moment to see what would happen. The end results were…varied, in this writer’s opinion, but the mere concept of deliberately altering movie continuity was unheard of before then, and it’s a premise that still holds, as Alexander said, unlimited possibilities.

Unfortunately, a few months back, writer Peter David revealed what I’d long suspected—that the series weren’t really as “unlimited” as it seemed. David was originally approached to write Infinities: A New Hope, but his idea was rejected for being “too dark” The story, according to Lucasfilm, still had to end with the good guys winning.

This makes a tiny bit of sense when viewed through Star Wars’ mythological lens; it was foretold that the Force would return to balance somehow, so to go against that would contradict somewhat the very premise of the overall film saga. Nevertheless, why bother with Infinities at all if you’re not willing to screw with things? On its face, the original trilogy is a nonstop razor’s edge, where the slightest tweak at almost any time could have brought ruin to the main characters and the galaxy at large. Giving too many alternate paths to ultimate victory, I believe, does a disservice to Luke, Han and Leia’s struggles—and even the role of the Force itself in the proceedings unfolding as they did. Read More

Go Figure: Casualties of the Canon

Posted on April 14, 2014by Feature Articles

chewielean

It has been announced that Episode VII will occur approximately 30 years following Return of the Jedi, or around the 34 ABY date. This has several possible consequences. The most blatant is a complete reboot of all Expanded Universe material. This seems extreme, especially as certain EU properties are ongoing (The Old Republic) or are tie-ins to material that will explicitly be preserved (The Clone Wars tie-in novels and comics mostly).

There are three other scenarios, of varying likelihood, all are based on the idea of ‘break points’ in the timeline, wherein everything after a certain date loses canonical validity. Such breaks could be hard, absolute directives based on date in-universe, or soft, with an assumption that material will stand until some explicit contradiction arises in the future EU. Regardless, it makes sense to look at these potential break points and what they would mean for the EU overall.

Lucasfilm has long organized the EU into discrete ‘publishing eras’ of which there are seven plus the non-canon Infinities “era”. These eras are: Before the Republic, Old Republic, Rise of the Empire, Rebellion, New Republic, New Jedi Order, and Legacy. The dividing lines of these eras are, not coincidentally, where we find our break points. Read More

Fixing Wookieepedia: A Helpful Guide

Posted on April 11, 2014by

Near the end of my piece on the Wookieepedia “breast” controversy earlier this week, I made the case that the best way to change the offending article is to change the culture of the site with an influx of exactly the kind of people who had been offended. Staying away from a community whose actions offend you is a reasonable response, and I would never tell someone to do something they weren’t comfortable with. But I’m kind of a confrontational person by nature, and I believe strongly in the “keep your enemies closer” philosophy. The last time I felt like a certain group of people was hostile to my concerns, I started my own discussion thread specifically for those concerns—and now, several years later, it’s made a huge difference in the tenor of that particular community. Read More

My Way or the Hyperlane – Feminism, Slut-Shaming and the New Fan Conservatism

Posted on March 31, 2014by and Not A Committee

sabine

Mike: In addition to the many, many larger conversations that sprung up in the wake of the reveal of Star Wars Rebels‘ main cast of characters last month, some of us here at Eleven-ThirtyEight noticed an odd undercurrent to people’s reactions to both Sabine and Hera; well, maybe not odd, but unfortunate. Loosely speaking, it seemed as if people had certain preconceived ideas about what a good female character should be like, and were judging the females of Rebels one way or another less by their apparent merits and more by what they found “acceptable” for Star Wars—or even for popular fiction generally.

This warranted a response of its own, I felt, but as someone who’s fully aware of the specter of “mansplaining”, I asked guest writer Mia Moretti, author of the aforelinked™ “race factor” piece, to join me for a discussion of these issues. Read More

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V: LucasArts, Inspiration and Appropriation

Posted on March 24, 2014by Feature Articles, Sidelong Glance

Being both a Star Wars fan and an avid video game player has been a rough road in the past few years. The fact that LucasArts, the videogame production arm of Lucasfilm, was closed by Disney shortly after their acquisition of the company, but even the past five or six years before that were disappointment after disappointment. In the last four years, we have Star Wars Angry Birds, The Force Unleashed II, Kinect Star Wars, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars and The Old Republic. That’s it and all. Going back two or three years more gives us Battlefront: Elite Squadron, Battlefront: Renegade Squadron, The Force Unleashed in both initial release and the “Ultimate Sith” edition, three other Clone Wars tie-in games, and Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga.

Out of that list, only five games not tying in to the Clone Wars TV show made it to the mainstream console market: TFU, TFU II, Lego SW: Complete and Kinect Star Wars. The biggest release by far, however, is The Old Republic, a game developed over a five-year cycle that cost LucasArts, EA and Bioware $200 million to make, more than many blockbuster movies. While an argument can be made for all of these games relative to how fun they are to play or how entertaining they are, no one will argue that any of them are original, exciting and new concepts in the realm of video games. Read More