Category: Simple Tricks

Mike: A couple months back, Disney CEO Bob Iger gave a public update on the status of the Star Wars franchise, confirming that The Last Jedi isn’t being altered in response to the death of Carrie Fisher, making his oft-misinterpreted comment that the Han Solo movie will depict the title character “getting his name”, and much less reported but no less consequential, stating that discussions were underway for “another decade-and-a-half of Star Wars stories.”

This brief burst of newsiness was followed soon after by Celebration Orlando, which was of course followed by weeks of speculation on the new teaser and Luke’s fateful closing line. But while there’s been no shortage of new material this spring to go with the news, things at ETE have been pretty dry for the last few weeks. Speaking for myself, as a news junkie it’s been hard to devote much mental energy to Star Wars with so many major political developments going on here in the US—even as I slowly work my way through Thrawn and, currently, Rebel Rising. And while I didn’t attend Celebration myself, it’s not uncommon to hear talk of attendees needing a “Star Wars break” afterward, lest they end up in a full-bore burnout.

With potentially fifteen years of Star Wars filmmaking coming down the pike (if not more), burnout is a very real concern for fans these days—for some of us, maybe for the first time ever. To those of you who were at SWCO, have you found your interest slipping in the month since? And to all of you, do you find your Star Wars attention span to be cyclical, with periodic rest periods, or does it depend more on what content is coming out at a given time? Can anyone honestly say they’ve never felt genuinely burned out on Star Wars, even for a little while? Alternately, what’s the longest you’ve ever consciously stepped away from it? Read More

Jay: Last time we had a Star Wars Celebration, I was the only member of Eleven-ThirtyEight there. The site was a couple years old, the new Star Wars around the same age, and we were all eagerly awaiting the new movie. Now, we have four staff writers attending — Sarah (who hadn’t joined ETE by the time of Star Wars Celebration Anaheim), David, Ben (who I believe is attending his first Celebration?), and I. I’m officially covering the event as press for ETE, but really, all of us will be covering panels and writing about the events. I thought we’d discuss what we plan to cover, what we hope to see, and what we think of Star Wars Celebration in general. In other words, how does Eleven-ThirtyEight approach Star Wars Celebration?

I’ll get us started with my initial thoughts on Celebration. This is my fifth Star Wars Celebration — I’ve attended all of the domestic Celebrations since Celebration III with the exception of Celebration V. Primarily, I attended them as social events: as a central meetup for all of my friends and fellow Star Wars fans, with the whole convention as sort of a convenient backdrop. The only panels I made an effort to attend were the books and comics panels. Aside from that? It was cool seeing costumes and stuff, but eh. But since Anaheim, Star Wars news has been huge — overnight lines, trailers dropping, wall-to-wall coverage. Being in the room for the <i>Force Awakens</i> trailer was an experience that I’ll never forget, and I’m eager enough to relive it that I’m going to be doing two overnight lines now for the 40th Anniversary and The Last Jedi panels.

For me, the social aspect of Celebration hasn’t changed — if anything, there are even more people I’ve gotten to know since Star Wars was revived and I want to spend time with all of them. But somehow I have to manage to see all the movie, book, television, and even toy news.

What about the rest of you? What were previous Celebrations like for you? What do you expect from Orlando, generally? Read More

Mike: When it comes to home video, Star Wars fans have never been starved for options. Indeed, you’d be hard pressed to find a fan over a certain age who hasn’t at least bought the original trilogy multiple times just to keep up with modern formats—on top of which you’ve got Special Editions, box sets, new individual releases with the original cuts included, etc. And that’s just the old movies; now that we’ve got a new Star Wars film every year for the time being it looks like there are several options to consider with each: DVD, Blu-Ray, 3D Blu-ray, digital download, and if The Force Awakens is any indication, another fancy deluxe set at the end of the year with all the special features they didn’t include the first time.

With the digital Rogue One having been out for a couple weeks now and the hard copies showing up tomorrow, what calls have you guys been making amidst all these options? As if the different formats weren’t enough to keep track of, TFA and Rogue One both come in a few different slipcovers exclusive to different retailers, and wouldn’t you know it, I happened to fall in love with the neat-o BB-8 cover at the top of this article, which meant dragging myself to Walmart of all places, for the first time in several years. While it’s a bit more of a trek for me than Target (or Amazon, obviously), now that it looks like that character-focused style is going to be a recurring design thing I guess I’ll be going back to Walmart this week to pick up Rogue One. What about the rest of you? Do any of you actually buy multiple copies, to take advantage of the earlier digital release, or the better bonus features later on?

Jay: I always go for the Blu-ray, and it’s for the simple reason that I want to see Star Wars films in the best way that I possibly can. Right now, that’s Blu-ray on an HDTV. Of course, sometimes I just want to watch the movie and I can’t be bothered so I’ll watch it on the computer or phone or whatever else but that’s the trick: the Blu-ray already comes with a free digital copy, which is redeemable at the distributor of my choice (and through Disney’s rewards thing, through multiple distributors). I’ll also watch the digital version when I want to take screenshots, because while I own a BD-ROM drive as well, PC BD-player software annoyingly doesn’t let you take screenshots (and moreover, PC BD-player software is largely garbage). Read More