A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

When Yoda says 'there is another Skywalker' in Return of the Jedi, is he referring to Rey from the Force Awakens? No. Going strictly by what we see in  Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi,  it is obvious that Yoda is  not  referring to Rey from  Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Yoda’s last words to Luke before crossing over to the other side of the Force are: “There is…another…Sky…walk…er.” In the  very next scene,  which is what writers sometimes call an “exposition dump,” we find out who  the other  is: LUKE I can't kill my own father. BEN Then the Emperor has already won. You were our only hope. LUKE Yoda spoke of another. BEN The other he spoke of is your twin sister. LUKE But I have no sister. BEN Hmm. To protect you both from the Emperor, you were hidden from your father when you were born. The Emperor knew, as I did, if Anakin were to have any offspring, they would be a threat to him. That is the reason

Which is better: the J.J. Abrams Star Trek films or Star Wars: The Force Awakens? All things being equal - and leaving aside the fact that other comparisons between  Star Trek  and  Star Wars aren’t  relevant, I’d venture to say that J.J. Abrams did a better job with Lucasfilm’s Crown Jewel franchise than he did with Paramount’s. I like J.J. Abrams. I like his genuine affection fo r the medium of film. I like his ’80s Kid, 21st Century Adult ethos. I like the fact that he, too, listened to John Williams’ scores as a teenager the way  I  did. He’s a  Star Wars  fan of my generation, even though he’s a few years younger than me. All of this makes Abrams a good choice to direct  Star Wars  films. His detractors may not agree, but it’s a free country and my opinion is just as valid as theirs, I think. Now, understand this. You don’t have to be a Trekker or a franchise actor to direct a  Star Trek  film. In fact, several of the  Trek  features filmed before  Star Trek

Cover illustration by Nicolas Delort. (C) 2017 Quirk Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) TO BB-8 OR NOT TO BB-8? THAT IS THE QUESTION! The curtain rises on a galaxy-wide drama! New characters take the stage as Rey, Finn, BB-8, and Poe Dameron clash with Kylo Ren and the vile First Order. Star-crossed lovers reunite, a lost knight is found...and tragedy befalls the house of Solo.  The fault, dear Brutus, is in our Starkiller...What's past is prologue! A new chapter of the Star Wars saga begins, with The Force Awakens reimagined as a stage play from the quill of William Shakespeare - featuring authentic rhyme and meter, woodcut-style illustrations, and sly asides that will delight pop culture fanatics and classic-literature lovers alike, Join the adventure in a galaxy far, far away, penned in the style of the Bard of Avon. There has been an awakening in the verse! - Dust jacket inner flap blurb, The Force Doth Awaken: Star Wars Part the Seventh On October 3, 2017, Qui

Cover art by Drew Struzan. (C) 2015 Del Rey/Random House and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) On January 5, 2016, Penguin Random House's science fiction/fantasy imprint Del Rey published the hardcover edition of Alan Dean Foster's Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the novelization of the film written by Lawrence Kasdan, Michael Arndt, and J.J. Abrams, directed by Abrams, and based on characters and situations.  Though Lucasfilm's corporate parent, The Walt Disney Company, allowed Del Rey to release the e-book edition on December 18, 2015, the same day of the film's theatrical release, it asked the publisher to delay the publication of the hardcover for a few weeks. Disney feared that if it followed the long-standing tradition of releasing the novelization of a Star Wars film before the theatrical premiere, fans would leak the film's plot - especially the "big reveals" that Abrams strove to keep secret - all over the Internet.  However, Disney-owned Lucasfilm p

On December 18, 2015, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures released Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the seventh live-action film in the long-running series created by George Lucas and the first of three films that comprise the Sequel Trilogy. This first Star Wars movie since 2005's Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith stars Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, and Oscar Isaac, The Force Awakens is set 30 years after the events depicted in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. The film was a huge success at the box office (earning $2.068 billion world-wide, which makes The Force Awakens the third biggest earner in movie history) and introduced a new set of heroes (the Resistance) and villains (the First Order) locked in the conflict between good and evil in a galaxy far, far away. On the same day that The Force Awakens premiered in wide theatrical release, Walt Disney Records also dropped Star Wars: The Forc

(C) 2017 Quirk Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. William Shakespeare’s Star Wars fans, prepare yourselves. The verse will be with you this fall when Quirk Books publishes Ian Doescher’s highly anticipated William Shakespeare’s The Force Doth Awaken: Star Wars Part the Seventh. As fans of Doescher’s Shakespeare-meets-Lucas mashups are no doubt aware, the Portland (Oregon) based author became nearly an overnight sensation four years ago when Quirk Books released William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope, a retelling of 1977’s Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope in the style of a play by the Bard of Avon himself. Doescher took George Lucas’s screenplay and rewrote it as a five-act work for the stage, complete with soliloquies, asides, and even a narration by an all-seeing, all-knowing Chorus – presented in glorious iambic pentameter. This unlikely little volume earned rave reviews and became a fan favorite. It was followed up in 2014 by William Shakespeare’s The Empire Stri