Is post Star Wars related parodies of pop music. Or in this case, 3d animation of Stormtroopers dancing to pop music. For those curious and somehow unaware, the song is by LMFAO (God I wish I was making that up) and the animation is a piece of student work from the University of Lethbridge (Canada), New Media Department.
Tosche Station Radio #13: Flame War
Podcast: Stream Here | Download
Sometimes we as fans can afford to behave better. This week we delve into some behavior we can all learn how to prevent to be better stewards of our fandoms.
Starting off the show, Nanci and Brian highlight some new articles up at the official blog. Shane’s got a look at what Scoundrels could mean for the Expanded Universe moving forward. Brian posted his retrospective of Fate of the Jedi and looked back at a history of questionable Star Wars video games. Emily (newest writer and Shane’s better half) had an academic look at fan fiction. Be sure to also check out Nanci’s latest for EUCantina, her retro review of Survivor’s Quest.
Over in Fixer’s Flash, Nanci talks about the latest movie she caught in theaters: Wrath of the Titans. Verdict? Not that great. She’s also started reading Apocalypse, the last entry in the Fate of the Jedi series. Brian’s still wrapped up in the Marvel universe, but managed to take some time off to meet up with a longtime fandom friend. Some of the best people you’ll ever meet will come through fandom. Both of the hosts were featured on the Star Wars Book Report podcast.*
*We’re so sorry for all the tangents. So. So sorry.
Slow News Week: Brian Liveblogs his iTunes Library on Shuffle
Update #15 2:09 PM
There’s no getting around it. This has been an extremely slow news week and bloggers are getting desperate for content. So desperate that many of us are resorting to some non-traditional posts to keep our front pages alive*.
*Someone that’s actually doing something cool is Dunc over at ClubJade who is currently running an Ask Dunc Anything open thread.
So yes. Desperation. I threatened this on Twitter but alas, no one listened. Strap in, I’m about to blog about music. Tune in for a continually updating thread on my bad taste in music. Make fun of me in the comments, or suggest good things for me to listen to.
To the jump!
‘John Carter’ Breaks Even
Good news for Disney, John Carter managed to make back what was sunk into it thanks to overseas revenues.
BoxOffice Mojo reports that John Carter has grossed $254.5 million, a $4.5 million over its budget—currently not technically a profit, considering its advertising budget, but it’s far better than the epic loss that many had feared.
Unsurprisingly, most of this coin has come from overseas. While John Carter earned over $66 million here in the United States, international markets have pulled in over $188 million. Film Buff Online writes that John Carter was #1 in box office receipts for two weeks in a row in China. This profit will keep increasing, as John Carter has yet to be released in Japan, where it will surely put the movie several million dollars in the black.
While it’s good that the film didn’t wind up costing Disney their collective shirts, they’re likely never to escape the bad press it garnered for them. Make no mistake, a $66 million gross in the United States is an embarrassment. The media reviews seemed to get caught up in a revolving narrative of how poor the film was, perhaps overplaying the criticism and driving some theater patrons away. Ultimately, the reason it failed lies squarely at the feet of Disney and the film’s creative staff.
It was a poorly marketed movie. Just about all of my friends who saw it had no idea going in that it was a science fiction film*. Or that it was based on a book that was foundational for sci-fi as we know it. More than that, it just wasn’t that special of a film. The narrative was disjointed, the acting was wooden. It had some pretty visuals going for it, but that was easily the highlight of a very forgettable movie.
*Dropping the ‘Mars’ part of ‘John Carter of Mars.’ Not the most savvy marketing you’ve ever done, Disney.
If you’re looking for a good book-to-film adaptation, you might want to give this a shot instead.
Forbes via Aaron Allston
Check Out Nanci’s ‘Survivor’s Quest’ Retro Review at EUCantina
Our own Nanci has a new review over her other gig at EUCantina. This time around, she takes a look back at Timothy Zahn’s Survivor’s Quest.
As a self-contained story, Survivor’s Quest doesn’t add much to the main storyline. As a standalone novel, it could easily be passed over if one is trying to catch up with the main storyline.
However, skipping the book entirely would be a grave disservice.
SQ is a must-read for fans of the Chiss, the Empire of the Hand, the Fels, and the 501st Legion. In fact, SQ is the novel that first canonized the 501st, named for the fan costuming organization. We meet two new prominent Chiss, Formbi and Drask, and learn more about Chiss culture and hierarchy. This novel first identified the Empire of the Hand, the government established by Grand Admiral Thrawn in the Unknown Regions.
Check out the rest of Nanci’s review at EUCantina.
‘Star Wars Insider’ Short Story Updates
Who wants updates? You guys do! Or at least some of you do. There are lots of you. With many different tastes. I’m clearly stalling at this point so let’s just get into it. Star Wars Books released a list of upcoming shorts you can look forward to in future issues of Star Wars Insider.
-Issue #132 (on sale now) features Jason Fry’s short story “The Guns of Kelrodo-Ai” and stars the “Rebel Destroyer” Shea Hublin (with some beautiful art by John VanFleet!).
-Issue #133 will include the tale of Parella the Hutt, hunter extraordinaire, from Star Wars: Scourge author Jeff Grubb.
-Issue #134 is your first taste of post Fate of the Jedi action as author Christie Golden brings you a story starring Jaina and Jag.
-Issue #135 sees Karen Miller return to the SWEU with an exciting story starring Myri Antilles.
I’m definitely looking forward to issue #135. Myri Antilles as the lead of her own short? Yes, please.
If there’s a short you’d like to see, leave a comment on the announcement post.
An Academic’s Defense of Fanfic
Hi! No, I’m not Brian. Or Nanci. Or Shane.
My name’s Emily, and I’m Shane’s other half, among many other things. Among those many other things, I’m a graduate student close to finishing my Ph.D. in English at a university which has a very open department that is well known for studying popular culture. I’m also a huge nerd, which one would have to be if one is to marry Shane. I’m also a fan of fanfiction.
Let me preface this discussion with the following: I despise Twilight for many reasons, I’ve not really been keeping up too much with the E.L. James and Fifty Shades of Gray hullabaloo, as I’ve been studying for exams lately, but I’m still plugged in enough to hear about all of the incredible flak that’s been going around and aimed at the fanfiction community, primarily by the mainstream media. I’m not going to get into the intellectual property issues here—I’m most assuredly not a lawyer. I don’t even play one on TV. What I want to talk about is the flak that’s attacking the fanfiction community as a group of deviants who are solely concerned with the erotic possibilities fanfiction offers.
But like so many other things, the mainstream media once again has it all wrong. They’re only telling one side of the fanfiction story. It’s time to shatter some of the preconceptions about fanfiction and start dealing in facts. So, I present to you an academic’s defense of fanfiction in layman’s terms. Continue reading
Children of the Jedi, Part 4 and Conclusion
There are a few things that I expect when I’m reading a published book from a major series from a major publisher.
One of those things is editing.
Another one of those things is that when I read it, I don’t feel like I need to be proofing this for my fourteen-year-old brother for a freshman English assignment. The writer submitted this, which is one problem. The second problem is that someone then approved it.
And I just want to make this clear: at this point, I am not talking about the things I talked about before—story elements that don’t make sense, characters not acting like they should, etc. I’m talking about literal technical writing ability.
My expectations were obviously too high.
Trope Tuesday: Red Shirt
It’s another edition of Trope Tuesday, the segment where we highlight a literary theme or device that makes our favorite fictional entertainment work. On the docket this week is an old standard: Red Shirts. Hit it, TV Tropes!
The color of shirt worn by the nameless security personnel on the original Star Trek series. Their only job was to get eaten, shot, stabbed, disrupted, sped up and killed, frozen, desalinated, or turned into a cuboctahedron and crushed. Their death would give William Shatner and DeForest Kelley a corpse to emote over, and Leonard Nimoy a corpse to, well, not emote over.
A Red Shirt is the Good Counterpart of Evil Minions and Mooks — set filler for our heroes’ side. Their purpose is almost exclusively to give the writers someone to kill who isn’t a main character, although they can also serve as a Spear Carrier. They are used to show how the monster works, and demonstrate that it is indeed a deadly menace, without having to lose anyone important. Expect someone to say “He’s dead, Jim“, lament this “valued crew member’s senseless death“, and then promptly forget him.
As you can tell, the trope namer is That Other Star Franchise. Isn’t that right, Ensign Ricky?
This trope tends to be used a great deal in the Star Wars Expanded Universe to prove that the heroes are in grave mortal peril (even though the only way the Big Three will ever die is if The Maker allows it to happen). Michael Stackpole’s X-Wing novels loved this trope. See someone new on the roster that wasn’t there in the previous book? Chances are fair that character is going to suffer a Red Shirt Death.
Of course, Star Wars has also subverted the Red Shirt once or twice …
Paul R. Urquhart Talks ‘Essential Guide to Warfare’
Were the endnotes from Jason Fry not enough for you? Suvudu has a lengthy piece from Essential Guide to Warfare co-author Paul R. Urquhart discussing all sorts of fun little details that went into crafting the book.
But what do you do when you’re writing a book that needs to describe the technicalities of how an Ewok defeats a Stormtrooper? You have to come up with straight-faced explanations that don’t seem completely crazy or compromise the inherent fun and lightness of the saga.
That’s the situation I found myself in when I was asked to co-write Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Warfare – a new guide to the warriors and weaponry of the Star Wars saga. Of course, I jumped at the chance, and thus, I became a sort of kilted Boba Fett sidekick to lead author Jason Fry’s baseball-bat-wielding Darth Vader.
And then I realized just what I’d gotten myself into.
How do you describe the technicalities of how an Ewok defeats a Stormtrooper?
The authors clearly had fun putting this book together and you do have to admire how they straddled the line between taking things too seriously and preserving the often amusing absurdities of the epic space opera. Occasionally the Expanded Universe feels like its too caught up in making itself edgy and dark. Essential Guide to Warfare is a lovely change-of-pace.
For more, head on over and read Paul Urquhart’s first Suvudu post.