Aligned with the year’s Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, California, Disney+ began its latest Star Wars series this week, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Or did it? Maybe they uploaded a Young Princess Leia series and inadvertently swapped the reels? The choices of subject matter to feature for the story are certainly interesting, as director Deborah Chow and the writing team take some surprising turns, especially with its focus not on Kenobi, but the Skywalkers again. With two short episodes past us–of only a six-episode series–as with the original Star Wars movie and the prequels, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a secondary character. Sure, he’s the glue that holds things together, but not the character who drives the action. Will we ever see that story?
But two camps should love this series: If you are a fan of the prequels and the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars, this is your series. Also, if you like Disney fairy tales featuring the latest version of Ariel or Belle or Elsa this is also your series. As a pure Disney family show it works, and it works as a continuation of The Clone Wars as a “sequel to the prequel trilogy” mixed with significant elements and characters from the Dave Filoni-verse.
Another May the Fourth came and went this week and with the annual Disney-marketing Star Wars Day a new trailer and poster arrived featuring the return of Ewan McGregor in the forthcoming six-episode Disney+ mini-series Obi-Wan Kenobi. The first teaser-trailer for the series (discussed here at borg) revealed Lucasfilm’s decision to lean hard on the aftermath of Revenge of the Sith and the prequels style of storytelling instead of the look and feel of Alec Guinness’s character in the original trilogy. If you were a fan of the prequels and the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars, this seems made for you, as the music and characters new to the live-action side of the franchise are firmly seated in that source material.
Check out this trailer for Disney’s Obi-Wan Kenobi:
After much speculation about this summer’s big Star Wars event–the return of Ewan McGregor in a painfully short six-episode mini-series for Disney+ titled simply Obi-Wan Kenobi–the first teaser-trailer for the series reveals Lucasfilm’s decision to lean hard on the aftermath of Revenge of the Sith. This is the still blonde, 50-year-old Kenobi shortly after the prequels as opposed to the wise old Jedi wizard portrayed by gray-haired Alec Guinness at age 63. If you were a fan of the prequels and the animated Star Wars Rebels, this seems made for you, as the music and characters new to the live-action side of the franchise are firmly seated in that source material. From John Williams’ score from The Phantom Menace to the Inquisitors from Star Wars Rebels, there’s a lot to wrap your head around, but it’s clear this is going to be a dark, bleak look at the franchise, complete with a villain that looks like he was plucked from Hellraiser.
We finally got to see Luke Hamill as Luke Skywalker in full Jedi mode in The Mandalorian and Darth Vader saber-waving in Rogue One, will we finally get to see Obi-Wan let loose on the Empire?
Check out this first look at Disney’s Obi-Wan Kenobi:
Raya and the Last Dragon is the first animated movie created during the pandemic, with 900 creators working together to make a full-scale feature film from home. The result is the best Disney animated film to date, filled with a great story combining all sorts of fantasy tropes, great visual action, exciting characters, good humor, blending historic themes with modern ideas and characters. The entirely computer animated film also sports three strong female lead characters and is backed by an all female technical leadership team. The result is a movie blending elements of Asian culture on par with Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind with the action of Raiders of the Lost Ark and the fantastical elements of The Lord of the Rings. Count Raya and the Last Dragon among the creative works that shine brightly despite the adverse conditions of 2020.
Even if you couldn’t muddle through the first six seasons of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which aired from 2008 through 2014, fans of the Disney+ series The Mandalorian now have one reason to take a look back at the animated series. Earlier this year executive producer and creator Dave Filoni presented a fill-in-the-blanks, seventh and final season of The Clone Wars for Disney+. Last week on The Mandalorian, Katee Sackhoff (Longmire, Battlestar Galactica) reprised the character Bo-Katan, a Mandalorian she voiced in 2012 and 2013 on the series, with a reference to fan-favorite spin-off character Ahsoka Tano, voiced by Ashley Eckstein in the animated series, and soon to be played by Rosario Dawson (Marvel’s Luke Cage, Men in Black II) in The Mandalorian. If you want to see some interesting connections between the past in the Star Wars movies–the prequels, the animated series Star Wars Rebels, and more–and the current happenings on The Mandalorian, it’s time to revisit the 2020 season of The Clone Wars.
It’s easy to argue that the very best part of George Lucas’s Star Wars prequels was Darth Maul. All of his scenes in The Phantom Menace and especially his “Duel of the Fates” with Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi were spectacular, a cut above the rest of the three films, thanks in no small part to the physical prowess (and facial expressions) of actor Ray Park. The lightsaber scene is still unsurpassed as the best Jedi-Sith duel of all eleven Star Wars films. Yet, as we learned for the third time this past December, just because someone knocks you down a vast Imperial chasm, it doesn’t mean you’re actually dead (we should have learned this lesson from Luke in The Empire Strikes Back). The animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars resurrected Maul, first as a rebuilt man with robotic legs in season four (an amnesiac found on a “junkyard” planet like where Rey is later seen), then upgraded with more human-like cyborg legs. Maul will return in a new 12-episode seventh season, voiced again by Sam Witwer, where he will have a rematch with The Clone Wars heroine Ahsoka Tano, former Padawan of Anakin Skywalker. Maul will again be portrayed by Ray Park, this time using motion capture for the animation.
Somebody at Disney must know we love Darth Maul (we’re thinking The Clone Wars original director Dave Filoni, back again for this final season) because of Maul’s return in Solo: A Star Wars Story, revealed in the film’s climax as the ultimate villain behind the curtain. Was Emilia Clarke’s Qi-ra intended to be Maul’s Sith student? Was she about to be? Will we ever find out? Oddly enough, we didn’t/couldn’t learn the answer because the film Solo was made toward the end of Star Wars Rebels, which ended its run years after the events in Solo, although it takes place before the events in Solo. What we do know is Darth Maul is still around for Star Wars Rebels, where he tricks the young series lead Ezra into being his student, and ultimately Daul dies at the hands of… Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is hiding Luke on Tatooine, something that could also be addressed in the forthcoming, yet-to-be-titled Obi-Wan Kenobi live-action series. Confused yet? This ordering might help:
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
The Clone Wars
Revenge of the Sith
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Star Wars Rebels
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Star Wars/A New Hope
The Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
The Mandalorian
The Force Awakens
The Last Jedi
The Rise of Skywalker
Understanding The Clone Wars’ other fan-favorite character, Ahsoka Tano, voiced again by Ashley Eckstein, pretty much requires another viewing of both The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels to get fully caught up. Originally she was destined to die at the hands of her Jedi Master, Anakin aka Vader, but then in Star Wars Rebels there was some time travel and parallel world business that prevented her death, plus the return of Emperor Palpatine… even before The Rise of Skywalker. Tano is considered by many fans to be one of the strongest heroines of the Star Wars saga (along with Leia Organa, Jyn Erso and Rey), appearing in a number of novels and comics outside the TV series. Her spirit voice can be heard in the battle between Rey and Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker, where fans learned she must have died off-screen sometime before the events in that film.
First disclosed at San Diego Comic-Con last summer, Disney/Lucasfilm is bringing 12 new episodes of The Clone Wars to pay streaming channel Disney+ beginning next month. The series appears to follow the older, original series animation style versus the updated, more realistic characters and environments of Star Wars Rebels. Here’s the first trailer for the series, followed by an earlier preview:
No one could have predicted when the original Star Wars won six of ten Academy Awards in 1978 that a newStar Wars film would be nominated 41 years later. At the end of 2019 all will be known–with Episode IX to be released in December the entirety of George Lucas’s nine-part Star Wars saga will be complete. Although the Skywalker family and its legacy is done, Disney and Lucasfilm will be sure that Star Wars is very far from over. But expect this year to be full of nostalgic products looking back over the course of the four decades since we first saw the words, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away…” Two movie souvenir compilation books will take Star Wars fans across the film franchise. Solo: A Star Wars Story Ultimate Guide presents interviews and photographs behind and in front of the camera from Ron Howard’s film. And today Star Wars: The Saga Begins arrives in book stores, taking a rare look back at the Star Wars prequel trilogy. We have previews of both books for you to check out below.
In Star Wars: The Saga Begins readers will find articles collected from Star Wars Insider, the magazine that has provided fans with the latest fandom and news since 1994. In September 1997 with Issue #35, fans got their first glimpses at what would follow the original trilogy, as publisher and fan club president Dan Madsen provided updates in each issue with producer Rick McCallum. Unfolding until 2005 and beyond, Star Wars Insider provided first looks at new prequel ships, characters, and locations. Interviews explained what was happening behind the scenes of The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith from the likes of director George Lucas, actors Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Temuera Morrison, Daniel Logan, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Daniels, and Brian Blessed, plus concept artists Ralph McQuarrie and Doug Chiang, composer John Williams, costume designer Trisha Biggar, sound designer Ben Burtt and many more. Star Wars: The Saga Begins is packed with concept artwork and prototypes of creatures and props, plus storyboards and costume designs. And it has hundreds of photographs.
A similarly designed look at Solo: A Star Wars Story can be found in Solo: A Star Wars Story Ultimate Guide. Readers will find Star Wars Insider interviews and profiles from director Ron Howard, writers Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan, actors Alden Ehrenreich, Joonas Suotamo, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Woody Harrelson, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Paul Bettany, Jon Favreau, and Thandie Newton, plus composer John Powell, creature maker Neal Scanlan, and costume designers David Crossman and Glyn Dillon. The Ultimate Guide is full of good detail shots of the Millennium Falcon and sections featuring the newly designed Imperial armor and ships created for the film.
Here are previews from each book, courtesy of Titan:
Mike Mayhew, illustrator on The Star Wars series for Dark Horse Comics and an incredible cover and interior artist on many major sci-fi and superhero titles, has created new cover artwork for the Star Wars prequels. Much like the original trilogy received last year, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith will see their own hardcover editions of their comic book adaptations for your comic book library.
If you couldn’t imagine getting interested in the prequels again, just check out these three beautiful covers. Mayhew nails both the look and feel of the Star Wars universe and he gets the characters, like Yoda and General Grievous, and the actors behind the characters, all spot-on.
We’ve also included some other recent cover art by Mayhew (above and below). You can meet Mike Mayhew this weekend at WonderCon at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
When Star Wars: The Phantom Menace premiered sixteen years ago in 1999, action figure collectors had gone a decade without any new 3 ¾-inch action figures from the Star Wars franchise toy line. Hasbro released updates to the original trilogy beginning in 1995 as Lucasfilm rejuvenated the toy line. At midnight on May 3, 1999, the day of the release of the new trilogy action figures and ten days before the film’s release, Toys ‘R’ Us stores saw waiting lines similar to what we would see for the first week the movie screened in theaters.
The general public had no “first look” at the new line other than a sneak preview figure of Samuel L. Jackson’s Mace Windu, so fans had to decide quickly upon inspecting the new figures whether they were going to jump in with both feet or ignore the line altogether. Instantly appealing figures and characters included Qui-Gonn Jinn and Darth Maul. Wave 1 included eight figures: Anakin in Tatooine outfit, Battle Droid, Darth Maul, Jar Jar Binks, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padme Naberrie, Queen Amidala in Naboo outfit, and Qui-Gonn Jinn. Each came with a Commtech chip (Commtalk in Europe) which produced sounds from the movie if placed on a separately purchased Commtech reader. All card backs featured the face of Darth Maul.
September 4, 2016 is the scheduled release date for the first wave of action figures from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Somehow, the first wave of figures hit the streets this week and made it to eBay, and they reveal twelve new action figures for Hasbro’s now (again) Kenner-branded line. Is one of these going to be the next Jar Jar Binks?
You might recall, like I do, your first sighting of a copy of the new John Williams soundtrack for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, which was released two weeks before the movie was released in theaters. Before you start the requisite geek-bashing of the prequels, try to recall that back in 1999 we all could not wait to see what Lucas was going to show us, and what could be better than a new Williams score to listen to over and over again? Isn’t a new John Williams Star Wars soundtrack pretty much the best part of having a new Star Wars film released (yes, he’s signed up to be the galactic composer once again)? ’nuff said. But the problem with The Phantom Menace soundtrack that sat in a new stack at the local Fred Meyer? The title listing included a track called “The High Council Meeting and Qui-Gon’s Funeral.” Funeral. Huh? So all of us who were excited about the new film got a surprise blow. This new Liam Neeson character wasn’t going to make it out of this one alive. And that was that. Note to Williams: Could you be a little more vague in your titles for the next trilogy? Just saying.
Most of us didn’t use the word “spoiler” back in 1999, and certainly not like we do today. We’re not really talking spoilers per se, but if you don’t want to sleuth through a key question about this summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy movie with us, you might want to move along and come back tomorrow.
