#5 — Star Wars is Life
I mentioned in the previous issue about how lucky we are as fans that Star Wars is active. In a weird way though, it was kind of inevitable. Star Wars is an ever present part of life. As a new dad (she’s 9 weeks old!), I often wonder what future she’ll inhabit. What music will she listen to? What sights will she see? What progress will occur? And throughout all of it Star Wars will be there too.
Maybe some think this is a bad thing, because it reduces the “specialness” of it, but in my mind, it’s such a great thread to tie our popular culture together. I subscribe to the view that popular culture, even something like Star Wars, creates a means for us navigate ourselves and our relationship with the larger world. If you listened to the great podcast by Skytalkers last week about what Ahsoka has meant to fans, you’ll know that you can find meaning and lasting impact through something like Star Wars. Ahsoka has already inspired me in her way of standing up for herself even when making hard decisions.
As with life, the history of Star Wars, is such an interesting topic for me. How the fans and their relationship with it has changed over time. I’m sharing some cool articles related to Star Wars history today and also how our future of Star Wars should change. Enjoy!
🌚 The History of Super Shadow
This past week I got curious: what was the speculation & hype like for the prequels? I wasn’t quite old enough & wasn’t a big fan back then, so I asked on reddit at r/StarWarsCantina, if anyone remembers what that time was like? And also, what people actually knew of what’s to come? A user there, ForceWave-1139, shared this amazing article with me. Maybe many of you might know this character? But this was the first time I had heard of Super Shadow.
This was such an interesting read into the speculation (& #fakenews) of that era. Great piece of history into Star Wars fandom! Thanks for writing & researching this Jeremy!
😡 The Malachor Temple & the Nature of the Sith
A fan asked Alex, from Star Wars Explained, a really intriguing question that I hadn’t considered before. There’s some Rebels Season 2 finale spoilers in here, so I won’t go into details for those who haven’t watched it yet, but I did learn interesting Sith history here. The Rule Two really does create some interesting challenges…
I’m still not sure if that was a good idea or not. The Sith seem to always self-destruct somehow. Anyway, check it out for some neat Sith history!
🤔 Who are the hostiles?
This great article by Abigail really made me ponder the future of Star Wars. We have to analyze the history of Star Wars to understand what the future might need to look like. I share her view that there’s often colonialist undertones in a lot of Star Wars stories, and recently noticed more nuance and shifts in these perspectives. To help with this change in storytelling Star Wars needs to bring in more diverse storytellers.
A universe as big as Star Wars needs to reflect the diversity of the universe and the fanbase itself, and so should the authors & creators too. Excited for what this opens up for Star Wars and I hope we continue on this trend.
🎬 Tragedy to Comedy — Part 2: The Screenwriting Perspective
Colton, dropped another great deep dive into Star Wars storytelling, looking through the eyes of Robert McKee. He predicts some interesting storytelling beats that we’ll see in Episode IX. And, as history reveals itself, he uses The Phantom Menace as a key part of analyzing where the saga is going. All is connected it seems…
This is a really great video if you want to go a bit deeper into storytelling and how it links into Star Wars. Really excited to see how this plays out!
🔊 Nostalgia in Star Wars
Finally, the ForceCenter crew tackle a very interesting topic in this podcast: nostalgia in Star Wars. So many angles to this. I think it plays a big part in Star Wars. Not only in-universe, but also in the way we interpret Star Wars. Going forward, I think it’ll become even more apparent and perhaps a challenge for Star Wars storytellers to tackle.
Nostalgia as much as its a wonderful feeling (and wow is it amazing… looking at you twin suns!👀) it can hold us back too. I dove into this topic as well in my own video essay, where I suggest that nostalgia played a big part in how divisive The Last Jedi was.
Releases
- Comic: Darth Vader #19 (not many releases last week, but wow, I keep seeing great reviews of this issue. I seriously have to catch on these!)
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This wraps it up issue #5! Let me know what you think? I’ll be expanding & changing this with each issue. As Yoda says, always in motion the future is.
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May The Force Be With You.
