From Rebellion to Resistance – Discussing The Rebel Files With Daniel Wallace

Posted on December 13, 2017by Interviews

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Tomorrow night, our journey to The Last Jedi is complete! Before we see the next chapter of the war between the Resistance and the First Order, we decided to reach out to Dan Wallace for an interview on his recently released book, The Rebel Files Deluxe Edition. Our readers should be very familiar with Dan, who continues to be one of the best storytellers and developers of Star Wars lore.

In The Rebel Files, we are introduced to an almost sacred tome of Rebel knowledge, secrets, and insights. Arranged in a scrapbook style, the history of the Alliance to Restore the Republic is charted from its earliest years up to the day before the Battle of Endor. Old Rebels like Leia and Ackbar relive key moments, while younger members of the Resistance like Poe Dameron get a first hand look at the trials and tribulations of the Alliance. So, grab your flight helmet, strap in, and let’s fly into the interview.

Dan, thank you again for taking the time to answer our questions. Let’s talk a bit about the premise for The Rebel Files. Tell us a little about the development of this book and how you ultimately settled on using Hendri Underholt as the character who helps “tell” the story?

As most people probably know, Star Wars: The Rebel Files is a continuation of a series that began with The Jedi Path in 2010. The basic premise is that the book is an in-universe document written by various Star Wars personalities about a particular aspect of the universe. The Rebel Files is the first to be published under the new Disney canon, and it focuses on the formation and early years of the Rebel Alliance. With Rogue One and Star Wars Rebels out there, this seemed like the perfect time to tackle the Rebellion. Read More

Something Truly Special: We Revisit Our Early Rey Theories

Posted on December 11, 2017by , , , , and Not A Committee

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Twenty-three long, speculation-fueled months ago, in the immediate aftermath of The Force Awakens, I asked the staff for their best early guesses and hopes as to the origin of Rey. Jay Shah was Team Solo, mostly out of affection for the legacy of the Expanded Universe’s Jaina Solo and a desire to see Rey channel that role in the new canon. David Schwarz was Team, ah, Durron—his point being that Rey should be the child of new characters, preferably a promising student or students from Luke’s first crop of trainees. Rocky Blonshine was Team Skywalker for all the familiar evidentiary and legacy reasons, and Ben Wahrman, while preferring “that she not be related to anyone”, chose Team Kenobi as a poetic way of splitting the difference between a protagonist coming out of nowhere and one forced to deal with all the story baggage of the Skywalker/Solo family.

I myself was Team Snoke. I go into detail in the original piece but my basic idea was that Snoke was once similar to Aftermath‘s Yupe Tashu—an adviser to Palpatine who gained access to a mysterious source of dark side power and ultimately intended his powerful child to lead the First Order on his behalf, only to have Luke Skywalker steal her away and hide her. TFA, therefore, was not about Snoke looking for Luke as much as Snoke looking for Rey, who he assumes is with Luke. As an aside I mentioned the possibility that she wasn’t his biological daughter, but rather a second attempt at the same experiment that created Anakin Skywalker; thus Snoke would be her figurative father and her actual lineage would be the Force itself—what better birthright with which to claim the mantle of Supreme Leader?

Fast forward a couple years, and that aside is looking much more likely. At nine feet tall, Snoke is pretty definitely an alien, and Rey is pretty definitely a human, meaning a biological relationship seems pretty implausible. I stand by the rest of the theory though—if we meet Rey’s biological parents at all, they could even be First Order loyalists who volunteered for Snoke’s experiments rather than having a baby just pop up randomly in the galaxy. Thematically, what appealed to me about it was the question “what would Luke have done if his father has been Palpatine rather than Vader?” If Rey owes her existence not to some conflicted underling but to the devil himself, what would that mean for her destiny, her “place in all this”? I’m still hoping to find out. Read More

What EA Can Learn From Star Wars: The Old Republic

Posted on December 8, 2017by Guest Editorials

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The Star Wars gaming industry has had its fair share of controversy in 2017. These types of grievances are not unknown in Star Wars gaming. In recent memory, Star Wars: The Old Republic has suffered through similar issues and yet the game is still chugging along like an old Corellian freighter. SWTOR, as it is commonly referred to, will be celebrating its sixth birthday on December 20th.

SWTOR has had numerous controversies over the years that have dwindled its player base, from players leaving the game due to many things such as the lack of new story-driven experiences, the implementation of microtransaction loot boxes, an overall lack of content and a poor progression system. All of these issues have also plagued other recent Star Wars games, including the Star Wars Visceral game that was delayed, and, according to EA, was shaping up to become a linear, story-based adventure game. EA seemed to decide that was no longer what they wanted, ultimately closing down Visceral and delaying the game to make adjustments to better fit their vision. Battlefront II has been criticized for its microtransaction and progression systems, and Battlefront I launched in 2015 to numerous complaints surrounding its lack of content. SWTOR was developed by Bioware and produced by EA and it has experienced all of these aforementioned controversies in its six years.

When SWTOR first launched in 2011, gamers were unaware that less than a year later George Lucas would sell Lucasfilm, and therefore LucasArts, to Disney. We had no idea that we would be given the opportunity to watch a new Star Wars film in the theater! We were also blind to the fact that the slate of Star Wars canon was going to be wiped clean of the Expanded Universe. Yet SWTOR has survived it all in this ever-evolving landscape that is Star Wars of the twenty-tens. Read More

The Expanded Universe Explains, Vol. XV – The Origins of the Jedi

Posted on December 4, 2017by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

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With The Last Jedi seemingly poised to spend a good chunk of time in the environs of the first Jedi Temple, it is likely to include revelations about the history of the Jedi, or even the Force itself, that affected Luke Skywalker profoundly and perhaps contributed to his belief that “it’s time for the Jedi to end.” We’ll have to wait a couple more weeks to find out what those revelations might be, and just how much detail we’re given. But in the meantime, did the Expanded Universe ever get into this?

You’d better believe it did—though impressively, Lucasfilm resisted the impulse to fully explain the Jedi’s beginnings for almost thirty-five years. In 2012, the comic book series Dawn of the Jedi by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema finally pulled back the curtain and stitched the few scant details we did have into a much larger tapestry of brand-new characters and conflicts that still felt true to their trademark brand of Star Wars melodrama. The series was successful enough that a tie-in novel, Into the Void by Tim Lebbon, was released about a year later (and only one year before the reboot was officially announced, meaning the whole project came in pretty close to the wire). Let’s talk about what they came up with. Read More

How We Choose To Fight – War and the Force

Posted on November 27, 2017by The Works

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“The Mentor believes that Rebellions are built on hope, but I don’t believe it. Rebellions are built on hate” – Staven, Battlefront II: Inferno Squad

Last year I wrote about the ways in which the value system of Star Wars as defined by the Force apply not just to the journeys of its Force-sensitive characters, but also to its politics. Movements of power and self-interest – whether the greedy exploitation of the Trade Federation or the militaristic authoritarianism of the Empire – represent the fear, hatred and selfishness of the dark side, while peace is found in the compassion, harmony and symbiosis of the light.

With Rogue One as its centerpiece, Lucasfilm’s recent work has largely focused on the build-up to the Galactic Civil War, adding new political context to the iconic conflict that defines the original trilogy. Yet for all the talk of new “shades of grey”, the core values of Star Wars have ultimately been reinforced rather than subverted.

With Saw Gerrera’s return to Star Wars Rebels in “In the Name of the Rebellion,” his conflicts with Mon Mothma and with Jedi philosophy were brought to the forefront. This article will look at why, in the moral universe of Star Wars, his conduct and motivations are such a problem, and the wider dilemma of understanding a story that teaches us both that evil must be fought, while also warning that violence is the path to evil.

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