Author: Ben Crofts

Menace_480.mov, and Other Trailer Memories

Posted on December 8, 2014by , , , , and

Mike: Apparently I’m unusual.

And not just in the “runs a Star Wars blog” sense, but even amongst Star Wars people—I say this because when I pitched today’s topic to the staff—describe your earliest memory of seeing a Star Wars trailer—the majority either had no relevant memories whatsoever, or in one case, had never actually watched one!

Maybe it’s because my major in college, visual effects, happened to involve making a couple myself, but I’ve always been a huge fan of trailers—and I have numerous strong memories of my favorites, both Star Wars and otherwise. Ironically, while the Special Edition trailers were almost certainly the first ones I technically saw, I don’t remember them at all. It’s funny; I remember the two guys behind me laughing maniacally at Threepio in A New Hope, and I remember getting to Empire a couple minutes late and missing the opening crawl (still the only part of a SW film I haven’t seen on a big screen), but the advertising beforehand? Nothing. Read More

The Tragedy of Del Rey’s Star Wars

Posted on November 26, 2014by Obiwomble's Outlook

As discussion over the Great Reboot has raged these past few months, one particular strand of thought has become noticeable. This argues that the books that comprise the Denningverse – Dark Nest, Legacy of the Force, Fate of the Jedi and Crucible – practically ran the Star Wars Expanded Universe into the ground. It made such radical moves with the central characters – killing off a wife and a son for instance – that those developments could not possibly be upheld by Episode VII! I am reasonably convinced by it too.

So, if that is the case, then what is so tragic about Del Rey’s running of the Star Wars franchise? What is tragic is that those 22 books over the course of 2005-2013 have come to define the entirety of DR’s run and it is manifestly is not the case. Why does this matter? Because the evaluative criteria people are favouring in looking at the new books is with reference to that infamous set of books. With such a comparison standard in place the new cannot fail to be better than the old! But what if there were other books issued by DR that enable a very different contest? What then? It would be quite, quite tragic for those to be eclipsed by the Denningverse! Read More

Hey Star Wars – Hire These Women

Posted on October 31, 2014by , , and

While I’ve long taken up the banner of diversity in Star Wars as one of my pet causes, I have to confess that while I’ve gone to great lengths to quantify its in-universe demographics, I’ve never really spoken up about perhaps an even more important aspect—the demographics of the people making Star Wars.

Part of it is that my sci-fi/fantasy interests have never extended much beyond SW and I’m just not familiar with a lot of female creators, and I think the other part is that—like with the lack of gay characters—the white guys have such an enormous lead that it’s hard to even know where to start.

Luckily, Star Wars’ real-world component has made some decent strides on its own in the last several years; the departures of Karen Traviss and Sue Rostoni from the publishing program were followed by the arrivals of Karen Miller and Christie Golden and Jennifer Heddle, Lucasfilm’s public face is increasingly that of women like Kiri Hart, Amy Beth Christenson, Andi Gutierrez, and Vanessa Marshall, and of course, the whole damned thing was bequeathed by George Lucas in 2012 to Lucasfilm veteran Kathleen Kennedy.

There’s still lots of room for improvement, however—notably, not a single female writer or director has yet been linked to any future SW film—and this awesome piece on women in comics over at that other “ThirtyEight” website inspired me to ask the gang for their recommendations on new female faces to join the Star Wars ranks. Here are their thoughts. Read More

What Star Wars Can Learn From Marvel’s Secret Wars 2015

Posted on October 27, 2014by

Announced at the recent New York Comic Con, Secret Wars will be Marvel’s big 2015-16 event. Marvel have followed that up in over the last fortnight with a barrage of teasers for even more events for summer 2015. What does it all mean? For right now, two things are obvious: If you are on the inside of Marvel’s continuity and have been following it for a while, this will look like the most ambitious undertaking ever. If you are on the outside, having kicked the habit and stayed off the books in the main, it will look entirely incomprehensible!

So, what’s the problem with it? The problem with Secret Wars 2015 is it will be a line-wide event, now with an array of satellites, which appear to be specific to each group of titles, but also eras too. The problem is nothing gets to avoid it! The Ultimate books? It is going to cover those too! If you buy into the idea for the event, it sounds great, it sounds like something you want to read. If you do not buy into it? Too bad, you’re going to have to if you keep reading the books up to a certain point in 2015. That’s the problem. This is practically polarizing consumer interest into two directions – towards or away from Marvel’s entire line for a year or longer. (Plus, once you are out of touch with Marvel superheroes for that kind of duration, you may not hop back on-board.) Read More