Why Do We Love Star Wars?

Posted on by

There’s a discussion going on in the Club Jade comments (as well as on Twitter) regarding why people read Star Wars books. I took exception to a comment that people don’t read Star Wars books for characterization, but rather for action, because that’s exactly why I started reading the EU. I was 11 years old and had just watched the Original Trilogy. I loved Luke Skywalker (actually all the characters, but Luke especially) and wanted to know what happened to them after the movies. Thankfully, right around that time Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy was released. I learned what happened to these characters I loved, as well as got to know new characters, who are still some of my favorites (Mara and Karrde).

As far as action is concerned, I can take it or leave it. My judgment usually falls upon whether or not the action scene did something rather than just drive the plot forward. I’m thinking of the first scene of Rogue Squadron, introducing Corran Horn; any of the action scenes involving Luke in Shadows of Mindor; or the fight with C’baoth in The Last Command,  to name a few. Mindless action in films and television don’t bother me as much, because it’s pretty (or it can be). But in a book, there is nothing that makes me fall asleep faster than action with no plot or character development included.

There’s nothing wrong with lightsaber fights, starfighter dogfights, or chase sequences. I love those, if done correctly. But even in the films, Star Wars has never been just about action. Let’s take a look at the film that started it all,  A New Hope.

  • Starts out with a bang, as Darth Vader captures Princess Leia. The plot is driven forward, but we meet Vader, Leia, the droids, and get a sense of exactly who they are.
  • We move to Tatooine. More character development with the droids. Eventually we come upon the Lars homestead. Basically, this sequence is entirely character development, ending with the death of the Larses and Luke’s decision to go with Obi-Wan to Alderaan.
  • The Cantina. Introduction of Han and Chewie, establishment of conflict with Han and Jabba. The plot moves forward again and we get off planet.
  • Escape from Tatooine. Finally, another action sequence, during which we learn more about Han’s personality and Luke’s “aww, shucks” farm boy nature.
  • Destruction of Alderaan. Is this considered an action sequence? To me, it’s all character development and plot advancement.
  • The Death Star. The action eventually begins, after learning more about Obi-Wan (“there are alternatives to fighting”), Luke (willing to rescue the Princess at any cost), and Han (he just wants a reward). Leia is rescued, and then grabs a gun and decides to take matters into her own hands. Obi-Wan and Vader face each other again. Even without having seen the prequels, we knew that there was something between those two. In the end, Obi-Wan sacrifices himself so Luke and the others can get away.
  • Tie Fighter Attack. This is another pure action sequence, but it’s fun! And it works on film, with clever lines (“Great, kid! Don’t get cocky!” “You hear me, baby? Hold together.”), great music, and eye-popping effects.
  • Arrival at Yavin. More character development and plot advancement. We see Luke jumping headfirst into the Rebellion and Han wanting to get out of there. Leia pushes aside her sorrow to focus on being a leader of the Rebellion.
  • The Battle of Yavin. The climax of the film is one long action sequence, but how boring would it be if there was no dialogue, no music, no concerned looks as the camera flashes to Leia, no cheering when Han Solo returns to blast the TIE fighters off Luke’s tail, no determined expressions as Luke turns off his targeting computer to “use the Force”? In this sequence, we learn that there’s more to Han than money, Luke has what it takes to be a Jedi, Leia is a leader, R2 is the true hero of the saga, and Vader is going to be angry come the next movie!
  • While A New Hope doesn’t have any explicit romance, the hints are there with Han and Leia, and possibly Luke and Leia (yes, ew, but they didn’t know, give them a break). But besides romance between characters, the film itself could be classified as romantic in the broadest sense of the word. I mean, you have Luke getting a kiss for luck, then swinging across the Death Star chasm with John Williams music blaring in the background. If that’s not “romantic”, I don’t know what is!

So there you have it. Does Star Wars, as a franchise, contain action elements? Yes. Is it an action franchise? I say no. There are elements of action, drama, romance, and humor, combined with a ton of character development. In my opinion, the best Expanded Universe novels are the ones that echo this tone. Too much action, and you bore me. Not enough , and it’s not exciting. And if your characters don’t drive the story (rather than characters acting stupid to fit the plot), then I’m not interested at all.

What do you say?

Joss Whedon Sits Down With Fansite, Thanks Fans and Answers Questions

Posted on by

It’s been a long road for Joss Whedon, but with the Avengers blowing up the box office, it seems like he’s finally achieved the mainstream recognition fans have long thought he’s deserved. To thank his long-time fans, he did a Q&A with fansite Whedonesque and opened it with a letter.

Dear Friends,

Well, it’s been quite a weekend. Someday, long from now, I will even have an emotional reaction to it, like a person would. I can’t wait! But before I become blinded by this “emotion” experience, there’s a few things I’d like to say. Well, type.

People have told me that this matters, that my life is about to change. I am sure that is true. And change is good — change is exciting. I think — not to jinx it — that I may finally be recognized at Comiccon. Imagine! Also, with my percentage of “the Avengers” gross, I can afford to buy… [gets call from agent. Weeps manfully. Resumes typing.] …a fine meal. But REALLY fine, with truffles and s#!+. And I can get a studio to finance my dream project, the reboot of “Air Bud” that we all feel is so long overdue. (He could play Jai Alai! Think of the emotional ramifications of JAI ALAI!!!!)

What doesn’t change is anything that matters. What doesn’t change is that I’ve had the smartest, most loyal, most passionate, most articulate group of — I’m not even gonna say fans. I’m going with “peeps” — that any cult oddity such as my bad self could have dreamt of. When almost no one was watching, when people probably should have STOPPED watching, I’ve had three constants: my family and friends, my collaborators (often the same), and y’all. A lot of stories have come out about my “dark years”, and how I’m “unrecognized”… I love these stories, because they make me seem super-important, but I have never felt the darkness (and I’m ALL about my darkness) that they described. Because I have so much. I have people, in my life, on this site, in places I’ve yet to discover, that always made me feel the truth of success: an artist and an audience communicating. Communicating to the point of collaborating. I’ve thought, “maybe I’m over; maybe I’ve said my piece”. But never with fear. Never with rancor. Because of y’all. Because you knew me when. If you think topping a box office record compares with someone telling you your work helped them through a rough time, you’re probably new here. (For the record, and despite my inhuman distance from the joy-joy of it: topping a box office record is super-dope. I’m an alien, not a robot.) So this is me, saying thank you. All of you. You’ve taken as much guff for loving my work as I have for over-writing it, and you deserve, in this our time of streaming into the main, to crow. To glow. To crow and go “I told you so”, to those Joe Blows not in the know. (LAST time I hire Dr. Seuss to punch my posts up. Yeesh!) Point being, you deserve some honor, AND you deserves some FAQs answered. So please welcome my old friend and certainly not-on-my-payroll reporter/flunky, Rutherford D. Actualperson!

For the Q&A, head on over to Whedonesque.

The Star Wars Avengers

Posted on by

So, hypothetically speaking, Nick Fury shows up in the Galaxy Far, Far Away and makes some allusions to an all new Big Bad looming out of the distance. He says he’s putting together something called the Avengers Initiative and needs five heroes to form a team with a high badassery quotient. We asked you who you think should make the cut. You delivered.

See the suggestions below the cut!

Continue reading →

Timothy Zahn’s ‘Icarus Hunt’ Coming To Ebook Readers

Posted on by

Let’s hear it from the man himself!

Over the past few months several of you have asked about ebook versions of The Icarus Hunt. I’ve just learned that it’s going to be released for Kindle and Nook (and possibly other platforms — my information source was a bit vague) on May 23.

Thanks to all of you who pushed for this for your help in making it a reality.

If there is one non-Star Wars novel of Zahn’s that you absolutely must read, it’s The Icarus Hunt. Nanci, Emily, and myself fully endorse it and if you need a bit of persuasion, you can read my spoiler-free review of the novel here. Or you can just take our word for it and pre-order your copy from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Retro Review: Darksaber Part 1

Posted on by

 

           For those of you that have looked at my reviews in the past, you know that I have a propensity for hyperbole.  And snark.  Lots of snark.  Kevin J. Anderson is a writer that I’ve thrown a lot of flak at in the past.  Really, he’s been one of my favorite targets, and I’ll say this, he really does seem to bear a good bit of it.  At a time not so far back, I’ve referred to him as being a kind of nemesis to me.

But to be honest, that was before I read some of the SWEU material that I was steered around the first time I was going through the Bantam/Spectra era books, which has been a long time ago.  You know that the last review I did was for Children of the Jedi in a series of posts that went on for a bit too long.  Barbara Hambly is likely not as bad a writer as she came across in that book, but it really seemed like she was pretty far outside her wheelhouse.

That book gave me a big dose of perspective for the concept of bad Star Wars.  I had held that Anderson’s books were bad Star Wars up to a point, but something else has come to my attention.  There’s a difference between bad Star Wars and not good Star Wars.  Children of the Jedi was bad.  Darksaber isn’t bad Star Wars; in fact it fits in with my usual prerequisites for being pretty good, but it has a pretty long list of bad features that throw it out of that.

I can say something good about Kevin J. Anderson up front.  I swear, just watch.  The Jedi Academy Trilogy established some very important aspects of the Expanded Universe at large.  I didn’t like it.  I didn’t like the way it was written, but for anyone who is coming into the EU from the start of the Bantam/Spectra era, it’s pretty much required reading.  For anybody who is wondering where the Academy came from, it’s important.  Let’s be honest, if you’re looking at anything except the core of the New Republic Era, anything later pretty much encourages you to read it.  The characters and concepts that get to be important later on have their sources there.

Now, you don’t want to read this; it isn’t the funny bit.  Me talking about the stuff that’s wrong–that’s what you want.  So, here’s where we stand, I’m going to break this down into just two parts, I’m not running a page by page analysis, you’re going to get the problems at large as I see them.  For me, Darksaber has two fronts of problems.  There’s the distinct storytelling issues and there’s the technical issues.

For today’s post, we’re going to focus on the former of the two.  Hit the jump to see the story elements of this book that crawl under my skin.

Continue reading →

Trope Tuesday: Darker and Edgier

Posted on by

It’s Tuesday, which means I’m about to bludgeon you over the head with another entry from that great timesink in the cloud, TV Tropes. This week, we’re examining one we like to call Darker and Edgier.

A Tone Shift that seeks to make a work of fiction “more adult”. Usually, this is practically interpreted as “add more sex, profanity, heavy violence, and controversial content”.

This trope usually means that a show will attempt to shift towards seriousness, cynicism and grit. In theory, archetypes which we are usually accustomed to acting in a more noble setting will have to act in one where they must think and act grimly in order to make progress, thus forcing re-examination of the tropes involved and making a different sort of character. In practice, though, writers often are too lazy to make use of what most of those words mean, and ending up randomly “spicing up” a work with gratuitous gore, cursing, and sex. See Not A Deconstruction

When a show uses this trope as a tagline, expect anything that can go wrong will go wrong, the setting to be a World Half Empty, everyone to be bastards, lots of unpleasant things happen to the characters or backstories giving the characters a particular issue they can spend time angsting about.

As we can expect, this is fairly easy to screw up and poor use of these tropes can just result in Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy and Narm instead.

Thankfully, the Expanded Universe hasn’t fallen victim to this trope. I mean, it’s not like fans are keeping a running tally of how many major characters get killed, abandoned the tone and philosophy of the source material, or shifted the villains from tactical geniuses to more trite Eldritch Abominations or any…

Erm…

Cat Taber Confirmed for Star Wars Weekends

Posted on by

Rancho Obi Wan publicist and all around awesome person Consetta Parker announced another guest for Star Wars Weekends, Clone Wars voice actor Cat Taber.

If you’re in the Orlando area that weekend, you can catch Taber and other guests at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Maurice Sendak Passes Away

Posted on by

Beloved children’s author Maurice Sendak passed away today at 83.

Known for breaking children’s books norms by incorporating somewhat dark illustrations and tone into his works, Sendak was considered by many to be the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century. Many of us are familiar with perhaps his most famous work, Where the Wild Things Are.

I loved this book growing up, but I admit this isn’t my fondest memory of Sendak’s work. For me, it was December every year when my family would go to Benaroya Hall to watch the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s world-class production of The Nutcracker. It was Sendak’s costumes and sets that transformed the classic production into an extraordinarily visceral event.

Sixth Batch of ‘EG to Warfare’ Endnotes

Posted on by

Author Jason Fry released another batch of Essential Guide to Warfare endnotes on Monday. This time around he’s covering the Separatists and Order 66.

Order 66: The Road to Empire: Lucasfilm passed on a very cool diagram drawn by Dave Filoni of the galaxy’s powers and institutions and their role in Sidious’s plot; it was extremely helpful in seeing this section clearly. Making Kol Skywalker the narrator seemed like a natural move, helping tie the Legacy era into the more-familiar era here and adding a poignant note to the story of the Skywalker clan.

Finally, I like the point that Sidious was telling the truth when he accused the Jedi of plotting against him, trying to kill him and scheming to take over the Senate. He’s leaving out some key details — such as, oh, being a Sith Lord — but he isn’t lying. The best plots depend not on lies, but on manipulating your opponent to do what he’d rather not.

For more tidbits from this batch, head on over to Jason Fry’s Tumblr.

‘The Old Republic’ Loses 400,000 Subscribers

Posted on by

Bad news for Electronic Arts, Bioware, and Lucasarts. Their massively-online Star Wars IP is having a very hard time retaining subscribers as 400,000 have left the virtual universe according to an EA earnings statement.

To put this into perspective, subscriber totals peaked around 1.7 million and have crashed down to 1.3 million. Nearly 25% of subscribers have bolted since the game’s launch. Those are numbers that no one involved with the development of the game ever wanted to see, especially this early in the game’s life.

You have to wonder, would a proper Knights of the Old Republic III have been a better choice in the long run?

Via Kotaku