A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Star Wars: The Black Series #69 Rebel Trooper. © 2018 Hasbro, Inc. and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  In February 2018, Hasbro unveiled three new figures from its Star Wars: The Black Series collection at its showroom in the International Toy Fair , which was held in New York City at the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center. Based on characters from Solo: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars: A New Hope , and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back , the trio was made up of #68 Tobias Beckett #69 Rebel Trooper #70 Han Solo (Bespin) The six-inch scale figures hit shelves in both online and brick-and-mortar stores in the United States, Canada, and Mexico that July, joining the growing number of the coveted Black Series collectibles introduced by Hasbro in 2015, the same year that saw the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens . What's In the Package?  Recently I decided to splurge on a few Star Wars figures of The Black Series collection; in addition to Emperor Palpatine and ...

On Quora, Mike Austin asks: Why has Disney-owned Lucasfilm focused so much attention towards the time before Star Wars: Episode IV with all of their spin-off material? And here's my reply:  That’s not entirely accurate. But we’ll get to that in a bit. I’m not an employee at Lucasfilm Ltd., the folks at the creative end, nor am I privy to the corporate doings at The Walt Disney Company (other than those that we know about from reports in the media). Thus, any answer I give is purely speculative, though it’s based on observation of how the franchise has evolved since 1977. I think that Lucasfilm has chosen to focus on the period that leads up to the Galactic Civil War and the Battle of Yavin because, for many fans, that is  Star Wars.  The Rebel Alliance’s conflict against Emperor Palpatine’s New Order is what the Generation of 1977 grew up/grew old with, and even though the non-canonical Expanded Universe told one possible version of the aftermath of the E...

In Star Wars: The Radio Drama, there are episodes that tell how the Death Star plans were stolen in detail. Why weren’t these ideas used in Rogue One? © 1981 National Public Radio and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) There are several reasons why the Brian Daley-created bits of  Star Wars: The Radio Drama  were ignored when John Knoll, Lucasfilm’s VP for Creative Affairs and former special effects head at the studio pitched his idea for   Rogue One: A Star Wars Story  to his boss, Kathy Kennedy. One of them is purely conjectural on my part, but the others are based on the movie industry reality. Daley’s expository material for  Star Wars’  Princess Leia was not cinematic enough: Sure, the Imperial invasion of Raltiir, Leia’s initial encounters with Vader and Lord Tion, and Tion’s subsequent (and fatal) visit to Alderaan work well as a radio story, but it’s hard to see Lucasfilm shelling out a huge budget for a film with not that many action scenes. ...

On Quora, member Alex Meed asks: Why didn't John Williams compose the scores for the Star Wars spin-off films? My answer:  There are several reasons why Maestro John Williams didn’t compose the scores for  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story  and  Solo: A Star Wars Story. First, Williams is, even at age 87, the five-time Academy Award-winning composer is still a sought-after guest conductor for at least two orchestras (he is the Boston Pops Orchestra’s Laureate Conductor, 25 years after stepping down as its principal conductor and music director). Health issues have forced Maestro Williams to reduce his travel schedule; this is why he has recorded the Sequel Trilogy scores with a Los Angeles-based studio orchestra instead of crossing the Atlantic and performing the music for the  Star Wars  films with the London Symphony at the Abbey Road recording studio. Second, Williams is still an active composer with a busy schedule that limits his availabi...

Many Star Wars EU/Legends fans would love to have seen films based on Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy. But the window for a live-action version closed long, long ago. © 1991 Bantam Spectra & Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  Quora member Michael Justin asks: Will Lucasfilm ever do a Star Wars movie set between Episodes VI and VII with a de-aged CGI Han, Luke, and Leia? And I say:  No. First of all, as it stands now, the technology for such a complex project is too primitive  and  extremely expensive, plus the results simply would not be convincing. Just look at  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story  from 2016. which uses CGI technology to superimpose the likeness of Peter Cushing (who died in 1994) on actor Guy Henry (who wore motion-capture headgear while filming) to play Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin in a film set shortly before the events of  Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope.  Ditto for the brief appearance of Norweigan actress Ingvild Deila (with...

Is  The Rise of Skywalker  the last  Star Wars  movie? No. While  Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker  will bring the curtain down on the Skywalker Saga that began with 1977’s  Star Wars,  it is not going to be the  last  feature film set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” To be sure, it is the swan song, as it were, of the film series that bears - for good or ill - the DNA of George Lucas’s  The Star Wars.  The Big Three - Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher have moved on: Harrison and Mark have had their characters killed off or transformed into Force ghosts, and Carrie died in late 2016, so her role in  The Rise of Skywalker  has been minimized into scenes that can make use of existing footage shot for  The Force Awakens  and (perhaps)  The Last Jedi.  And, as George himself once said, the only characters that are in the entire Skywalker Saga are C-3PO ...

The Galactic Empire's Death Star 1 battle station in its final stages of construction. © 2016 Lucasfilm Ltd. Why wasn’t the Death Star re-engineered after the Rebels exploited the flaw with the thermal exhaust port? Actually, the Death Star  was  modified heavily after the destruction of Grand Moff Tarkin’s DS-1 at the Battle of Yavin. Although the movies don’t address this - there’s a three-year time jump between  A New Hope  and  The Empire Strikes Back -  it’s extremely likely that the Emperor called his most senior advisors and formed an Imperial Death Star Investigative Committee to discover how a single Incom T-65 X-wing fighter was able to destroy the Empire’s ultimate weapon with two proton torpedoes. Such an investigative body would have had access to archival copies of the DS-1 plans, perhaps provided by the Emperor himself. The original plans were destroyed along with the Imperial Citadel on Scarif shortly before the Battle of Yavi...

Front cover art: Production painting of K-2SO by Doug Chiang. © 2016 Abrams Books and Lucasfilm Ltd/ (LFL) On December 16, 2016, New York-based Abrams Books published The Art of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a 256-page hardcover book of concept art created during the making of director Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first of Lucasfilm's standalone "Anthology" films  set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Written by Josh Kushins ( The Art of John Carter: A Visual Journey ), the book features concept paintings, set designs, sketches of new spaceships, weapons, and other props, as well as art depicting Rogue One' s cast of Rebels and Imperials. This book is a visual chronicle of the Lucasfilm art department’s creation of new worlds, unforgettable characters, and newly imagined droids, vehicles, and weapons for the first movie in the Star Wars Story series— Rogue One: A Star Wars Story . In the same format and style as Abrams’...

Cover art by Phil Noto. (C) 2017, 2018 Marvel Comics Group and Lucasfilm Ltd.  On July 11, 2018, Marvel Comics published the hardcover edition of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a 176-page volume that collects issues 1-6 of writer Jody Houser’s adaptation of the 2016 Star Wars Anthology film and the standalone Star Wars: Rogue One – Cassian & K-2SO Special #1. Scripted by Houser ( Star Wars: Thrawn ) and illustrated by Emilio Laiso (issues 1-2, 4-6), Paolo Villanelli (issue #3), and Oscar Bazaldua, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story follows reluctant Rebel Jyn Erso’s perilous mission to redeem her father, Imperial scientist Galen Erso, by helping a small group of freedom fighters, an Imperial defector and two acolytes of the extinct Jedi Order steal the plans to a planet-killing superweapon – the Death Star. Th e Rebellion is here! The Rogue One crew makes the leap from the big screen to the comic-book page in this action-packed adaptation! All looks lost for the gal...

(C) 1994 Del Rey/Ballantine Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) When Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story premiered five months ago, many Star Wars fans - especially those who grew up with the Prequel Trilogy - were ecstatic. In this stand-alone Anthology prequel to 1977's Star Wars (aka Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope, John Knoll (who pitched the story to Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy), Gary Whitta, Chris Weitz, and Tony Gilroy tell the "untold" story of how the Rebel Alliance obtained the plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star.  Older fans of George Lucas's space-fantasy series set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," including Your Humble Correspondent, enjoy Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It is a gritty and exciting war story with a The Guns of Navarone- meets- A New Hope vibe and makes a great first half of a double feature billing that includes the original 1977 Star Wars.  Yet, Rogue One was not the ...

(C) 2016 Del Rey Books/Random House and Lucasfilm Ltd. On December 20, 2016, four days after the theatrical release of director Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story , Del Rey Books (an imprint of Random House) published the novelization by Alexander Freed ( Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company ) Based on the story by John Knoll and Gary Whitta, and the screenplay by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story chronicles a pivotal event in the mythos created by George Lucas: how the Rebel spies acquired the plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon - the Death Star.  Set, of course, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away before the events in Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope, Rogue One fleshes out the title crawl seen in the original 1977 movie: It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to ...