Star Wars, Geek Culture, and Power Converters
http://youtu.be/kge3SFvUIVM
Carrie Fisher showed up on CBS’ The Talk yesterday and was, of course, asked about Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm and what that might mean for Princess Leia. There’s not anything new here news-wise, but it’s always fun to see Fisher’s trademark wit on display.
It’s been a busy few weeks (Episode VII? What!?) and I’ve let this feature fall by the wayside. But it’s back! Trope Tuesday is our regular feature that dives into Tropes, literary themes, devices, and elements that make our favorite pieces of entertainment chug along. This week, we’re looking at one called Epileptic Trees.
A term for wild, off-the-wall theories. Named after a leading tinfoil-hat theory explaining the mysterious shaking, rustling trees on Lost during the first season of that program. The theory? The trees are having epileptic fits. Can be traced back to H. P. Lovecraft‘s story “The Colour out of Space”
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Not only common, but expected for Mind Screw series. A major species of Tree is Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory. An ongoing series which uses Chekhovs Guns to the point of becoming a Chekhov’s Armoury encourages Trees because all newly introduced objects/people/skills/etc will be suspected of being a Chekhov’s Gun. Horrible epileptic trees are known as Poison Oak Epileptic Trees.
See Stock Epileptic Trees for other common examples.
Epileptic Trees suggested by characters are a sign of Scully Syndrome. When an Epileptic Tree is rendered null and void by the official Canon, it’s said to be Jossed. When an Epileptic Tree becomesCanon, you’re allowed to say, “I Knew It!” – unless it became Canon because it was an Epileptic Tree, in which case it’s Ascended Fanon. See also Inferred Survival, Urban Legend of Zelda and Schrödinger’s Butterfly.
Boy howdy, is the Star Wars fandom getting swamped in this lately. There’s all sorts of conjecture and theories as to what Episode VII might be. We’ve got everything from the Expanded Universe being overwritten (because George Lucas hates Mara Jade*) to Darth Vader’s coming back from the dead (because why not). Fans are busy trying to find any sort of clue or hint from the films, books, and television that they might be able to use to divine the future of the franchise.
Brace yourselves. It’s going to be a long three years.
*No proof of this claim
Since certain people attached to this blog are off having fun this weekend, it falls to me to report what Club Jade reported yesterday: the rumors are true: Micheal Aredt, screenwriter of Toy Story 3 and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire will be writing Episode VII. For more information, you can see our previous post about Aredt and the rumors.
What I find particularly interesting about this is my memory of Toy Story 3; I bawled for almost an hour straight after seeing that film, and anything from The Hunger Games is likely to be similarly particularly emotionally wrenching. Could the choice of Aredt for Episode VII suggest a more philosophical, more pathos-based approach to Star Wars?
StarWars.com released another video featuring George Lucas and new Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy. This time around, the duo talk about directors and the process behind starting Episode VII.
As always, the usual caveats apply when an “informed insider” reports anything to an entertainment rag, but Vulture is reporting that Michael Arndt has put together a 40-50 page treatment for Episode VII.
Informed sources tell Vulture that Star Wars: Episode VII has found a leading candidate to write the film’s screenplay: Michael Arndt, the Pixar favorite who was nominated for an Oscar for Toy Story 3, won an Oscar for Little Miss Sunshine, and wrote The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which is currently shooting. Insiders confirm that Arndt has written a 40- to 50-page treatment for the film and is likely to be at least one of the writers when the Disney/Lucasfilm project begins shooting in 2014.
As far as rumors go, I dig this one. It’s sort of a marraige that makes perfect sense. A writer with an immensely successful project with Disney being turned lose on Star Wars would be all sorts of interesting.
But of course, this is just a rumor for now.
Since reality has turned itself upside down and the impossible is happening left and right*, here’s another report that fits that bill. According to Entertainment Weekly, a “highly placed source” has said that Harrison Ford is open to the idea of donning the vest and bloodstripes again.
Harrison Ford is open to the idea of bringing Han Solo back to life on the silver screen in 2015, according to sources close to the just-announced Star Wars sequel, but don’t be surprised if his contract includes a mandatory death scene for the sly old space smuggler.
“Harrison is open to the idea of doing the movie and he’s upbeat about it, all three of them are,” said one highly placed source, referring to Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher, the trio that made a hyper-speed jump to global fame on May 25, 1977, the opening night for George Lucas’s original Star Wars film.
Usual caveats here. A “highly placed source” could just be a janitor over in Marin County. But hey, there was a point in time where it seemed absurd that Ford would take up the mantle of Indiana Jones again.
*Seriously, Episode VII. That’s a thing.
Over the weekend, Nanci appeared on a bonus episode of the Wrong Opinions About Movies podcast to discuss the Big Frakking Sale and what this means for the future of Star Wars, the Expanded Universe, and Disney. You can give the show a listen here.
Of all the various Episode VII and Star Wars rumors that emerged over the weekend (and you can head over to Club Jade for excellent coverage on that front), only one seemed to have legs and looked plausible. According to the LA Times, several screenwriters have been in contact with George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy in order to pitch their own ideas for the new live-action films.
In the months before Disney announced it would acquire “Star Wars” studio Lucasfilm, several different screenwriters paid visits to Lucasfilm’s Northern California compound to pitch George Lucas and his co-chair Kathleen Kennedy their ideas for the new live-action installment, the series’ seventh, according to a person familiar with the talks who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about them.
Now you might be wondering, why is Lucasfilm doing this? Didn’t Lucas give Disney his story treatments as part of the sale agreement? It could be that the treatments aren’t concrete rules for what the films will be and that whoever is brought in as director and screenwriter will have some say over where the new trilogy goes. Or it could be as simple as these meetings being an audition of sorts. They’re not going to divulge the content of the treatments, so right now they just want to see if there’s a screenwriter that will mesh with what Lucasfilm has in mind.
Or maybe they’re turning the bulk of the writing over to the screenwriter.
It’s too soon to tell exactly what the motivations are, but of all the rumors lately, these meetings are definitely in the plausible-to-likely category.
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Pablo Hidalgo wasn’t the only person who’s been keeping this bombshell a secret. According to an interview at Entertianment Weekly, Mark Hamill says he and Carrie Fisher have known that a new trilogy was coming since August.
Of course, Entertainment Weekly tried to get more out of Hamill, but he doesn’t have much information to give up:
When you had lunch with George, did he get into any details with you about where the story would go in the next three films, or whether you would have a part in them?
Well, no, he was just talking about writers and the fact that he wouldn’t be directing. I guess he wanted us to know before everybody else knew. He said, “Now you can’t tell anybody!” [Laughs] Even now I’m nervous about saying anything. I just don’t know!
Let the fan speculation continue, I suppose.
“Oh man the Internet is going to explode when you sign this thing, George.”
Earlier today I posted a long and rambling mess of an article looking at my thoughts and gut feelings on what the Big News means for the Expanded Universe as a whole. Originally, this post was going to be part of that article but for the sake of readability, I had to break things up. In any case, here’s the second part of me trying to figure out just what the heck all this news means and how I feel about it all.
A new movie? New ownership? What in the world does this mean for publishing contracts? Is Disney going to put a flourish on Star Wars? Head over to the jump and watch me try to process all of this.