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Eighth Batch of ‘EG to Warfare’ Endnotes

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In this week’s batch of endnotes, author Jason Fry talks stormtroopers and women among their ranks.

A Female Stormtrooper Remembers: The femtroopers you see at cons are serious fans and work as hard on their costumes as anyone else does. Check out the work of Sith Vixen: Yes, she looks amazing in femtrooper gear, but she also looks great as Maul or a Kaleesh warrior, costumes that demanded an enormous amount of work.

That said, midriff-baring stormtrooper armor always struck me as a bit unlikely in-universe — I figured the Empire had female troopers, but I was pretty sure they weren’t wearing armor that looked like that. With this in mind, “female stormtroopers” was one of the first things I wrote down when beginning to work on the outline for Warfare.

This batch of notes has a lot of great material about stormtroopers in general. For more, head on over to Jason Fry’s Tumblr.

Live Action ‘Star Wars’ Series Still In The Works

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You can be forgiven if you’ve written off the live-action Star Wars television series.

Rick McCallum says that the project is still on the table and scripts have been written. The issue remains the cost of production. There’s an incredible amount of visual effects they want to work in, more than any of the films they’ve done in the past. Sadly, I think that this series just isn’t going to happen unless Lucasfilm is willing to scale back on the effects. Fans aren’t looking for a visual masterpiece in a television series, they’re looking for regular  installments of story and characters. You don’t have to squeeze blockbuster-grade visuals into a 45 minute television episode.

Perhaps the showrunners should call up Ron Moore for a consultation.

Via Club Jade

Avengers Sinks Universal’s Battleship

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(Shane insisted we use that title)

Marvel’s The Avengers is still flying high at the box office, claiming the top spot for a third straight week and smashing all challengers into a fine pulp. This week, it seems, it didn’t have to work very hard.

Rotten buzz and superheroic competition sunk Universal’s “Battleship” over the weekend. Costing over $300 million to make and market, Peter Berg’s “Battleship” managed to sell about $25.4 million in tickets in its first weekend in North American theaters – a second-place finish behind “Marvel’s The Avengers” (Disney), which took in an estimated $55 million for a three-week domestic total of $457 million.

While it’s been a year of incredible blockbuster successes (Hunger Games, Avengers), it’s also been a year of embarrassing flops. Battleship joins John Carter as an expensive film that has not only stumbled, but faceplanted and rolled straight off a cliff in its domestic opening. At least John Carter can claim horrific marketing as part of its problem, though it was still a mediocre film. Battleship was marketed heavily to court the summer popcorn crowd. Unfortunately, moviegoers decided that they would rather see the eye-popping and well-written Avengers for a second or third time rather than another critically panned film based off of a Hasbro product.

Carol Danvers Is Getting A Promotion

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As you may have heard on the latest podcast, we’re happy to endorse a new comic this July: the all-new Captain Marvel.

This July, Carol Danvers, once known as Ms. Marvel, will take on the legacy of a legendary hero in CAPTAIN MARVEL, a new ongoing series by writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and artist Dexter Soy.

“My pitch was called ‘Pilot’ and the take can pretty much be summed up with ‘Carol Danvers as Chuck Yeager,’” says DeConnick. “Carol’s the virtual definition of a Type A personality. She’s a competitor and a control freak. At the start of our series, we see Carol pre-Captain Marvel, pre-NASA even, back when she was a fiercely competitive pilot. We’ll see her meeting one of her aviation heroes and we’ll see her youthful bravado, her swagger. Then over the course of the first arc we’re going to watch her find her way back to that hungry place. She’ll have to figure out how to be both Captain Marvel and Chuck Yeager—to marry the responsibility of that legacy with the sheer joy being nearly invulnerable and flying really [expletive] fast.  Sporting a revamped costume to compliment the codename, Danvers not only faces unfamiliar dangers and challenges, but also delves into her own history as well as that of the late Kree soldier Mar-Vell, the first person to operate as Captain Marvel.”

I know I’m excited for this. I’m still a relative newcomer to the world of comics, but one character that has quickly become a favorite of mine is Carol Danvers. Great backstory, compelling, lots of depth. Just the kind of female character that fandom needs. And now she’s getting one heck of a (very deserved) promotion to Captain Marvel.

If you’re looking to support a great female character written by a great female author, pick up the new Captain Marvel this July.

Ian McDiarmid Confirmed for Celebration VI

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News just dropped that Palpatine himself will be attending the Star Wars convention to end all Star Wars conventions. From the official site:

Ian McDiarmid, the actor who unforgettably played the evil galactic mastermind and the ultimate villain of the Star Wars saga, will be making a rare convention appearance atStar Wars Celebration VI, appearing on-stage and signing autographs.

In 1983, McDiarmid embodied the full depth of the dark side as the Emperor in Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi, his face hidden under ghastly makeup and his eyes concealed behind sickly yellow contact lenses. When his true face was revealed as the apparently kind and helpful Senator Palpatine in Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace (1999), he projected a different kind of evil — a subtle manipulator of galactic events, a villain hidden in plain sight. As the prequels progressed, so too did Palpatine’s plans until finally, in Revenge of the Sith (2005), McDiarmid got to play evil at its fullest, and revealed the true power of Darth Sidious.

This will be McDiarmid’s first time at a US Star Wars Celebration (he made a brief appearance at the opening ceremonies of Celebration Europe), and his first time ever signing at the Celebration Autograph Hall.

McDiarmid will be joining the likes of Peter Mayhew and Carrie Fisher at Celebration VI this August.

SpaceX Set For Saturday Launch

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Apart from a love of all things science fiction and geek culture, the staff here at Tosche Station has one thing in common: we’re all space junkies.

Tomorrow morning, Elon Musk and his SpaceX private company are prepared to launch the Dragon capsule aboard the Falcon 9 launch vehicle. io9 has prepared a day-by-day breakdown of the mission. Should everything proceed as planned, the unmanned Dragon capsule will embark on an two-week mission that will include a stop at the International Space Station for a supply dropoff.

Elon Musk and the Falcon 9 Merlin-1C engines

The launch will be only the third flight of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle, a craft NASA is pinning a great deal of hopes on. If the vehicle proves to be a capable cargo and crew launcher, it will free up NASA to focus their efforts perhaps on a heavy launch vehicle that can deliver payload beyond the confines of low-Earth orbit.

A successful mission will be an extraordinary boon for the space agency. If NASA can get out of the business of being a space taxi to the International Space Station, they might be able to do something interesting with their criminally underfunded budget.

Tosche Station Radio #16: Genre Subversion

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The hosts kick off by highlighting what’s new on the blog since our last audio check-in. Emily wrote a column looking into why Star Wars needs women more than ever. Nanci discussed why we love Star Wars, and as hard as it is to believe, it’s more than just the lightsabers and explosions. Shane started up his retro review of Kevin J. Anderson’s Daarksaber. We asked you for your Star Wars Avengers. Finally, Brian checked in with his latest column that  investigates how The Legend of Korra is taking down gender stereotypes and the lessons Star Wars can draw from it.

Over in Fixer’s Flash, both Nanci and Brian have seen the Avengers (Brian several times now). Both the hosts now want some shawarma as a result. Nani has been reading through the Mageworld series, and from the sounds of it, she recommends it highly. She also has been working on her original novel and is posting excerpts over at her blog. Brian has finally gotten around to reading Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor. Of course, he’s still reading Marvel comics and trying to catch up with his friends, but he took some time out to see Dark Shadows. It’s exactly what you should expect from a Tim Burton movie that’s remaking a 70s soap opera about a vampire.

Continue reading →

First Star Wars Weekend Schedule Hits

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For those of you fortunate to be in the Orlando area for Star Wars Weekends at Disneyland’s Hollywood Studios, you’ll be happy to know that schedule for the first weekend has been posted.

For those of us who aren’t lucky enough to be in the Orlando area, we’ll be able to keep tabs on what’s going on thanks to Nanci. Who is fortunate enough to attend.

I’m not jealous. Really. I’m not.

Attack of the Clones Turns 10

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On this day ten years ago, Attack of the Clones released released to theaters. Given that I was twelve and at the mercy of my parents disdain for going to the cinema, I didn’t get to see it until about two weeks later when a friend offered to take me. In our house, I usually didn’t get to see something until it released on VHS or DVD.

My memories from the first time I saw it are somewhat vague. Something something Fetts something something look at all those lightsabers something something HOLY CRAP YODA HOLY CRAP DEATH STAR SCHEMATICS.