Scoring the Saga: The Music of Star Wars

Posted on August 20, 2014by Sidelong Glance

What would Star Wars be without John Williams? The opening blast of horns, percussion and strings in the Star Wars theme is one of the most iconic moments in all of cinema. The music score for the film we now know as Episode IV: A New Hope has more than stood the test of time, being named #1 on the American Film Institute’s list of the all-time best movie scores, and each successive entry in the series only added to that legacy. Songs like the Cantina Theme, the Imperial March, Duel of the Fates and Battle of the Heroes are hummed across the world by hardcore fans and casual moviegoers alike. The series’ collective soundtrack ranks with the most iconic and influential film scores of all time.

You don’t have to rely on imagination to wonder what Star Wars would be without its soundtrack. If you watch the first trailer cut for the first film, you see iconic scenes from the Death Star escape and the cantina fight unfold in almost complete silence aside from a stock synthesized beat. It’s an eerie experience. John Williams gave the Star Wars films a sound that is at once classic and distinctive, filled with blaring trumpets, shouting horns, soaring violins, humming cellos, pounding drums and crashing cymbals. His work is a substantial part of what has made the films such icons of pop culture for the last four decades. Read More

A New Dawn shines a light on the future of Star Wars

Posted on August 18, 2014by Imperial Court Circular

In our previous review, we discussed how Honor Among Thieves provides a blueprint for the future of the EU. Since then, there has been a rather unprecedented change in the nature of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Now redubbed “Legends,” the old EU is functionally an alternate universe continuity which serves as a large resource for the new ongoing Star Wars canon to draw inspiration from or even fully import background concepts and ideas. All upcoming Star Wars novels will be part of this new canon, vetted by the Lucasfilm Story Group in order to ensure cohesion between the novels, comics, television series, and films to a greater extent than the often ramshackle cohesion between the old EU and the films. A New Dawn (AND), written by Star Wars novel and comic veteran and fan-favorite John Jackson Miller (JJM), is the first adult novel to be released under the auspices of the Story Group.

Instead of a standard review, we’re going to take a look how AND uses and implements the old EU, and how it departs from it. To get the reviewing part out of the way though – it’s a fun Star Wars story with an original cast of characters and a fascinating villain. These factors are important to why it’s a fun story, but they’re also important in (hopefully) hinting at the style of future novels as well as the Rebels television series. Executive Producer Dave Filoni has already stated his preference for Rebels to focus on its particular cast of characters because the galaxy is large enough to show exciting adventures without needing to resort to film characters as a narrative crutch. If AND is any indication, such a thing is not only possible but also preferable.

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The Grandfather Clause: Exclusive Territory and What Makes Us Unique

Posted on August 15, 2014by

For those who might be unfamiliar with the term, a “grandfather clause” is, broadly speaking,

law : a part of a law which says that the law does not apply to certain people and things because of conditions that existed before the law was passed

Put simply, in this context, it’s when a particular work of fiction can get away with something primarily due to when it was made, while that exact same thing would not be nearly as welcomed by audiences in a more modern product: something with which I think most Star Wars fans are familiar.

That we can blindly accept psychic monks knocking laser bolts out of the air with the blades of their laser swords and still utter the title “Grand Moff” with a straight face are truly testaments to the Original Trilogy’s enduring ability to convince us to take even its most absurd core elements seriously. There is also a certain historically significant implementation of the principle which is worth noting, but otherwise of no relation to what we will be discussing today.

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The Good, The Bad, and the Funny: Villains in the GFFA

Posted on August 13, 2014by

388px-Vader_OfficersWhat really makes a good villain? We’re surrounded by them, and in a galaxy whose defining conflict is that of good and evil, we need some adequate challengers from the dark side. Some villains are best defined by their over-the-top plotting, some are something of comic relief, and some are horrifying just by how familiar they are to us. We are surrounded by villains, and it’s time for a rogues’ gallery of the good, the bad, and the unintentionally funny.

A truly effective villain must straddle the line between ominous and omnipotent. A villain who is too good or too consistently out-thinks our heroes will soon be considered too strong, but one who can’t accomplish a single plot without being foiled is no better. The team of bad guys that we meet in the GFFA combines many types of villains, and they all have different motivations. We meet some who are just doing their jobs, some who believe in their evil, and some who believe their causes are justified. We all associate Darth Vader and the Emperor with evil, and seeing the shadowy machinations of the mysterious Darth Sidious keep us interested. The Empire themselves are often a more mundane sort of evil, as they just follow orders. The more morally grey parts of the saga also provide some heroes and villains, and some who even switch sides. We’re going to need an ensemble of enemies to populate Episode VII and beyond. Let’s find some ideas.

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The Expanded Universe Explains, Vol. IX – The Shuttle Tydirium

Posted on August 11, 2014by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

As I noted last time, rather than discontinue this series in the wake of the reboot of the Expanded Universe, I’m taking the opportunity to explore some of the areas where a reboot could do the most good; namely, events referenced in the films that have since been explained…and reexplained…several times. Some of these events are outright mutually exclusive, but most are just redundant, making stray bits of story only peripherally related to the films into sisyphean tales of lost and found and lost again, fighting and reconciling and fighting again, and of course, the long-distance relay race otherwise known as the theft of the Death Star plans. But first…

20. How did the Rebels steal the Imperial shuttle Tydirium?

A lot of the bigger inconsistencies in the EU were the result of the harsh dividing line between the old material that came out during and shortly after the Original Trilogy, when continuity was less of a serious concern, and the “modern” EU that started with Tim Zahn in the nineties. The theft of the Tydirium, however—probably by virtue of its placement in Return of the Jedi, and thus near the end of most of the early EU—wasn’t even mentioned until 1994, and was subsequently re-told twice more over the next decade or so. Read More