Star Wars: The Disney+ Empire Strikes Again and Again and...

I remember as a young fan in the 80s/early 90s being convinced there'd never be another proper Star Wars thing...

xpost

average convo in a Gen X household in Dec

"bought $100 worth of Star Wars toys"

"oh, the kids will love that..."

"right....the kids..."

I hope, completely and unironically, that the Rangers of the New Republic series does nothing but remake old CHiPs episodes, and somehow stars Estrada, Wilcox, Dorn and Chris Pine's dad.

Yyyyyyyyeah, mandalorian is one thing as a fun retro treat but fuck if I’m clearing out a fucking mall size space in my memory palace for this avalanche of trademarks.

misread one of the projects as Star Wars: The Bad Bitch

wait the Obi-Wan show is gonna have Hayden Christiansen as Darth?

wtf - JEJ is still gonna do the voice, presumably, so....are they just paying him to walk around in the costume?

xp Me too

Supposedly he's retired from doing the voice, but I don't know if that was just a rumor or not. At the least there's been no handoff as with Chewie yet.

oh god if Hayden does the voice

Darth "Stoned" Vader

this is a controversial opinion, but I think this is too much star wars

A Lando show is just too good, man i loved me some Solo.

Star Wars: The Bad Bitch

yeah gonna be a lot of demands for this now - Sy Snootles finally getting her due

this is like when as a teenager I went to a bookstore in the 90s and saw dozens of star wars books. Suddenly something I like becomes way too much and not something I want to keep track of.

The Star Wars franchise should just be non-stop announcements of things that are never delivered.

every single one of these things is going to feature a puppet baby version of a preexisting character

Baby Palpatine

I can't believe this shit

Man, even as a huge fan of Star Wars, this is too much. And I really miss the days when this was all slowly revealed, not spat out in one massive investor call data dump.

Baby Jabba

Baby Palpatine

This would ... rule?

I'm pretty cool with just continuing to treat the pre-Disney material and the Filoniverse as the only SW stuff worth paying attention to. Granted, wrt the latter that would still have me on the hook for half of these new shows.

I feel like there's a very real chance "The Acolyte" will have baby Sheev.

there's gonna be a movie about how Sheev conceived his son

called Palp Fiction

*Friction

Sheev's Gotta Have It

Droid Six

The Emperor's New Groove

Imperial Bedroom

Sidious Kinky

holy shit a+

Why would anyone come onto a thread to express negative thoughts about Disney properties

http://i.pinimg.com/originals/c6/3f/33/c63f33f578bb17f7be8f96d6f9822b61.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yix_9g_Ob74

Kind of interesting article (with a minor spoiler about future plans, if you haven't finished The Mandalorian yet): https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/disney-star-wars-marvel-studios-1234866986/

I'm just going to post this now because I can see that I'm going to get a lot of requests -

Yes, Rian's SW trilogy is still on. No dates or timelines because he has other projects going on, but it is happening.

THAT IS ALL I KNOW ABOUT IT. 😁😁😁

— Sariah Wilson (@sariahwilson) February 16, 2021

Not sure where this goes (it’s not tv or movie related, but relevant): https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/star-wars-high-republic-novels/2021/02/22/adbb4338-72e3-11eb-85fa-e0ccb3660358_story.html

The incredible cast includes Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Moses Ingram, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Kumail Nanjiani, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Sung Kang, Simone Kessell and Benny Safdie. pic.twitter.com/VltHs5Aw6r

— Star Wars (@starwars) March 29, 2021

that is a pick names out of a hat cast there

Hayden C. unrecognizable in that pic

lol Benny really sticking out there

cast certainly is... incredible...

Edgerton returning as Uncle Owen. Nice. (and uh, Bonnie Piesse as Beru)

So is Christensen gonna be running around sans mask and Scarred Eggplant Man makeup through most of this or will he be wearing full Vader gear? Which, if it’s Full Vader, means *anyone* could’ve played The Dark Lord. The mind boggles. Also, looking forward to more blue milk gags.

Yeah - cool to see the "ROTS" Owen x Beru team back

xpost I assume it'll be like the scene in Empire where we briefly saw the back of Vader's helmet-free noggin only this time we'll briefly get to see the front, as well.

Benny Safdie?!?

the second lead of Good Time, who's also in the new PTA?

I suspect Kenobi will be seeing a lot of Anakin's screwed up face in his dreams or some fucked up Force projection (as per Luke in TLJ). Hard to see how any direct confrontation with the real DV could be good in this.

Yeah - as someone in that Twitter thread commented, it feels like it would be weird for Obi-Wan to encounter Vader before ANH. Has that happened in the comics or anything?

Per pgwp's point, that really is a hell of a strong move; if Jude had just been goofily bad still things would be on more of a familiar glide path. When the series started I admit to finding Wim verging on the wide-eyed 'gee whiz' side of things a little too much and was wondering how much special-boy treatment this was just going to be if Jude was just rogueish in the end -- Neel still has a little of that, but it suits, and I think the wider lesson of disillusionment and 'growing up' without being tedious about it that's developed is what's needed. Oddly, that's not too far removed from The Acolyte in ways, but that calls into question larger motivations of real Jedi, as defined, where the out here is that Jude isn't one. I suppose arguably there could be some random final twist but again noting pgwp's point, flat out shooting the other pirate captain in the head and then ripping into and threatening the kids on the ship, when there's absolutely nobody else around to hear it and they're clearly horrified, doesn't strike me as being one with the Force. Guess we'll see what exactly next week brings.

Separately, I was amused to see who's playing the Supervisor per the credits, even if we haven't actually seen the character yet. Should have clocked the voice immediately.

I feel certain the Supervisor is going to be some kind of robot/wizard of oz reveal.

I'd say this is the best SW show since Andor (although it's not quite on that level)

Still haven't seen this week's ep, but I'd agree with f. hazel's post - def the second best SW show behind Andor. (NB I haven't seen The Acolyte yet, but nothing I've heard makes me think it's in danger of topping either of these two.

Kinda underrates The Mandalorian that way, though I understand given how the show went over time if people would rather split out seasons of it more. (If we're talking whole runs so far, The Bad Batch kept getting better and better, and I don't separate it out from the live action work in terms of quality at its best.)

My personal ranking:

Andor
Bad Batch
Skeleton Crew
Mandalorian s1
Rebels
Clone Wars
Ahsoka
Acolyte
Mandalorian s2-3
Book of Boba Fett
Obi-Wan

But listing like that underplays how superior Andor is.

Clone Wars final season I would separate from the rest of it and put above Bad Batch

yeah Andor, Mando & Skeleton Crew are the only ones i really rate (but i kind of hated mando s3)

like Obi Wan was ok, Acolyte was somewhere between mid and briefly really good, and like Ahsoka Boba Fett & everything else for me was like omgggg i dont caaaaaare please stop

Kenobi is the only one-off I never rewatched (tho I keep meaning to) which is pretty damning given the generous Vader quotient. Still wouldn't write it off totally, just a hot retcon mess that didn't really justify itself.

Both Boba Fett and Obi Wan are especially terrible because not only are they bad in and of themselves, but their stories actively pull the rug out from previous films and make them worse too.

The gap between my inner old 8-year old self absolutely GEEKED about the mere existence of an ENTIRE SHOW dedicated to Boba Fett and the actual enjoyment I felt while watching it could be measured in parsecs.

otm

Perhaps an unhelpful frame of reference that sometimes leads me to be more charitable to some of these shows than I should otherwise be, but I frequently try to imagine someone telling me back in 1983 that one day, in the distant future, there would be not only one but multiple Star Wars shows to watch, any time I wanted, with just the push of a few buttons. My damn head would have exploded all over my Kenner collection.

It's a much smaller level (thankfully) but this is kinda how my podcast cohosts and I feel about Tolkien adaptations these days -- both Warner Bros and Amazon still trying to chase the original Jackson trilogy high and just not getting there, where back in the 1980s if you had told me "Multiple films and a TV series?" I would be so onboard.

I groaned at the Supervisor voice tbh

i just looked it up & omg of course! duh i knew i knew it when i heard it but my brain would not cooperate lol

feel like the fact the pirate guy who masterminded the way to get to At Attin years ago only appearing in a glitched out holograph might be a thread they come back to, or maybe a cute misleading bit

Great final episode. If they want to do another season, I’m for it, but it’s a fun fillip as it stands.

yes! really great. and the restraint in not explaining the whys of everything was such a good choice.

Exactly. No unexpected last minute cameo/bigger connection or anything, just using the template and running with it to a great conclusion.

Yes, when Jude Law started talking about his jedi master, I was just waiting for him to say something dumb like "and her name... Ahsoka Tano!" Thankfully he never did.

also really want to re-read Treasure Island again now <3

Speaking of reads

https://ew.com/star-wars-skeleton-crew-creators-inside-finale-future-of-show-8774862

And while we wait on more Andor...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkywNANueew

Meantime, vaguely watching the Star Wars Celebration stream and the Shawn Levy/Ryan Gosling film is going to be called Star Wars: Starfighter and the setting is post-Rise of Skywalker. So, guess we'll see.

(Release date May 2027.)

Owen Lars and the Real Droid

Mikey Madison turned down a role in it? Madness

Next SW film should be a Sean Baker joint anyway

Appreciating the jokes that it’s just Drive but in space

My first thought was "surely there's a house rule that says you can't call something Star Wars: Star Something", because it sounds clumsy. I mean, imagine writing "Ryan Gosling stars in Star Wars: Starfighter as starfighter pilot Starr Krendo".

But there was a Star Wars: Starfighter video game in 2001. It was called Star Wars: Starfighter. So perhaps it's okay.

In fact I learned something! Google used to give you exact results if you enclosed something in quotes. But now it doesn't. However if you enclose the string in quotes and click tools -> all results and switch it to verbatim, it does it back again! I learn that there was also Star Wars: Star Pilot, which was a Phantom Menace tie-in book by Dorling Kindersley. And an officially-licensed boardgame from 1987, Star Wars: Star Warriors. So it's not forbidden, just uncommon.

Famously Dorling Kindersley had the official licence for Star Wars books in the late 1990s but lost a fortune because no-one was particularly keen on Phantom Menace tie-in media. Somewhere out there is a tribe in Africa dressed from head-to-toe in unsold Phantom Menace pyjamas that were unsold and eventually donated to charity.

depressing to see Gosling in a Star Wars movie

I can not lie i saw shawn levy and assumed it was ryan reynolds

“Yes i can see why the girl from anora would not want to be in a movie with ryan reynolds…” i nodded to myself.

Meantime new animated series incoming next year:

https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/star-wars-maul-shadow-lord-swcj-hero-container-mobile_81561452.jpeg?region=0,0,1600,900&width=960

depressing to see Gosling in a Star Wars movie

Literally saw this the day after learning he was attached (as producer) to a "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" reboot.

started out in the mickey mouse club, aged into the star wars club

Enjoy an updated map!

https://www.starwars.com/star-wars-galaxy-map

https://jasonfry.substack.com/p/about-that-new-star-wars-galaxy-map