An unexpected turn of events

I had intended this post to be about the unexpected resurgence of my interest in Star Wars. It was supposed to be about how the simple announcement about the EU being jettisoned had rekindled my enthusiasm for the Saga. I was even going to talk about how I, after a long-time and publically-documented indifference to the EU, was considering reading some of the "new canon" books, and was even eager to do so.

I even had a name for the post — Yesterday's News.

Then things changed.

As I began to write, the fine folks at starwars.com finally did what Star Wars fans around the world have been waiting for months for them to do — they announced the cast of Episode VII. 

I immediately penned some initial thoughts, determined for once to be A) quick, and B) timely. Unfortunately, through a combination of family and work concerns, I was neither. However, I'd still like to put my thoughts out there, so that my dedicated audience of Canadian pharmacies and work-from-home opportunities aren't deprived of my witty and wise repartee.

First, I know next-to-nothing, if not actually nothing, about new cast members John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, and Oscar Isaac. I also have no clue about what roles they are supposed to play; whether they are good guys or bad guys, etc. My initial impression from their IMDb pages was that they were a vaguely diverse looking group. They are also, to a man, relative unknowns — just like the original trio was back when. I'm actually happy about this; unknown actors mean a clean slate. It will be much easier to see them as their characters, rather than "that guy from x"

I'm very happy about the new names that I do know. Domhnall Gleeson is on my radar because he played Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter films, and Andy Serkis is a modern-day Lon Chaney who's very presence on this film is, for me, highly reassuring. I don't who, or what, he's playing, but I can't wait to see it.

Finally, there is Max Von Sydow. Again, I'm not sure what role he will be playing. I'm guessing it's a heavy, but as he's known for villains (his turn in Needful Things was a particular favorite) and good guys/mentors (he's played both Jesus and St. Peter, for crying out loud), it could easily go either way.

Finally, there were a few names that brought a broad smile to face just by reading them: Kenny Baker, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and, most importantly, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill.

I've written elsewhere of my desire to see Leia Organa-Solo, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo as older, wiser versions of their young selves. Now it appears that I will get that chance. Whether I will like it or not when I do is another matter. For now, for today, I am going to pretend that I will, and hope for the best.

While I have always been, and shall always be, much more of a fan of Luke Skywalker than of Han Solo, I am actually just a little bit happier that Ford has returned. For one, he was always very vocal about disliking the character, and never wanting to do Star Wars again. So just the fact that he's gotten past that, for whatever reason, is good news. (I'm sure there was a large check involved at some point, but I hope it's more than that).

The second reason is more selfish. I never really "got" the character of Han until much later in life. When I did, the sheer "wrongness" of what happened to his character in RotJ became much more painful. He was a different character, and largely good only for comic relief. And I still cringe at his final 'romantic' scene with Leia — from the way he kissed her at the end, you'd think he was her brother, and not Luke. He started out a dangerous space pirate who accidentally fell in with the good guys; he ended as an emasculated buffoon.

I try to rationalize it by saying Han came out of two-plus years of carbon sleep a radically changed man, but I suspect most of the blame can be laid at the feet of the late Richard Marquand, the director, although George Lucas probably bears a good share of the blame himself.  My wife thinks it's because they wanted to make Solo safe for kids in Jedi, which is also a good theory. I think it probably came from a combination of bad directing choices, and an actor that just threw up his hands, and resigned himself to getting through filming so he could move on to other roles.

Whatever the reason, it no longer matters. Because now, finally, Harrison Ford is going to have another crack at Han Solo. Hopefully, we'll see flashes of the same guy we knew from A New Hope and Empire. Time will tell. Whether we do or not, I am excited about the possibilities for this film, and still largely (albeit cautiously) optimistic for the future of Star Wars in general.

Having their cake...

I just went to starwars.com for the first time in a while, and I admit to being equal parts excited, disgruntled and confused.

I'll deal with the excitement part first. I just noticed that they've updated the front page of their website, which for some reason, gave me a little thrill of excitement when I saw it. I've been following Star Wars long enough to have been through home page redesigns, so I don't know why this one is any different. Maybe it's because I've been doing it long enough that "new look" is somehow associated with "new Star Wars movies." I only know that it was the first flair-up of the old excitement for the Saga that I've felt in a long time.

The confused bit came from two stories on that saidsame website. The first was the official announcement that the massive Expanded Universe of novels, comics and games that take place after Return of the Jedi officially, once and for all, is not canon. J.J. Abrams & Co. will not be forced into trying to incorporate Grand Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade into whatever story they're making if they don't want to. They can do so if they wish, but the filmmakers, wisely, have been given a clean slate to create a new, and hopefully, exciting story.

So far, this is exactly what I've been hoping for. My official position on the EU can be found here, but in short, I follow the same take that Lucasfilm claims to be taking; namely, that the six Star Wars films are, once and for all, IT when it comes to the story of the Skywalker family. That is the only part of the massive fictional output of massive narrative factories of Lucasfilm from the past 37 years that cannot be ignored. Sorry, Jar-Jar haters — that means the Prequels, too.

Except that they left themselves a rather large loophole. The filmmakers are free to use whatever part of the EU they wish. If they want to use elements from the EU, they can — the same way that Lucas himself took the name of Coruscant for the capital planet of the Republic/Empire from the Zahn trilogy.

The confusing bit comes from the fact that they have, in one stroke, thrown out the entire EU for the filmmakers, but allowed them to keep the parts they wanted to use, while creating a NEW EU that will be overseen by a new story department to keep it in harmony with the films, but they're still going to keep publishing stuff from the OLD EU because they can still make money on it.

Did I miss anything?

So now we have two EUs, not one. One is a "real" EU, and the other is basically professionally produced fan-fiction. It is not the canonical Saga that the people who have loved it for so many years have maintained that it was. That is now the job of the new EU, which will produce officially sanctioned back story for the characters.

Forgive me for being cynical, but Lucasfilm has tried this before. When Star Wars fiction came out, they took a hard look at the morass of unconnected stories that made up the Star Trek novels, and decided they were going to have all the EU novels be part of one, big story. My main problem with the EU stemmed from this decision, because what was laid down by these authors as canon was, in my humble opinion, unworthy of so great an object. So even if you hated one of the books, you were stuck with it, because it became canon for the other writers. This was especially true for the granddaddy of the EU, the Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn, which created characters and situations (Luke's wife, Han and Leia's kids, etc.) that dominated all the other books, good or bad.

So now, all that is gone, and we're going to try again with a new set of books. Only it's going to count this time. I understand that this is probably being done to give the books an added sense of weight; of importance. With fan fiction easily and cheaply available, both really, really good, and really, really bad, the stuff that you pay for has to be worth it; you have to get something extra from it. So the first book will be an official backstory for two primary characters in the new Rebels series. We'll see how it goes, but the whole thing smacks of having your cake, and eating it, too.

The disgruntled part comes from the great, gaping void of news about the new Star Wars movie. It has, according to most reliable sources, has not only been cast, is set to begin shooting in May. The official site has next to nothing on this fact. The only information on Episode VII was this press release, which promised a "trio of new young leads along with some very familiar faces."

I really, really like following selected things about the filming of any new Star Wars film. It helps feed my interest over the long haul, and even helps get me excited about it, in moderation. I try to stay away from spoiler-ridden sites like theforce.net, especially as the release date nears and entire shooting scripts find their way onto the site, and instead confine myself to the Official Site. Usually, about a month before release, I decide even the Official Site is too dangerous, and adopt a strategy of plugging my ears, putting my hands over my eyes, and saying "La-La-La-La-La" as loud as I can. Which makes driving kind of tricky, as you might guess.

I have the exact opposite problem right now. There is absolutely NOTHING out there to whet my appetite for a film that will supposedly be released at the end of next year. Rather than turn to dubious "news" sites, or even the semi-official Force.net, I am, for the moment, opting to wait. I'd really like to start thinking about the "what ifs" of this film; to pleasantly mull the future from a few tantalizing clues about what is to come. Apparently, Mr. Abrams and Ms. Kennedy have decreed that we must still be patient. Unfortunately, for the moment, I have no choice but to do otherwise.

Maybe I should read an old Star Wars novel while I wait.

Still here

It's Opening Week here at my house; only the second I can remember paying attention to. When Opening Day broke last year, I was a baseball neophyte. I was getting reacquainted with the team, the players, the stadium and nearly everything else about this new version of the Pttsburgh Pirates. There was also a metric ton about the game itself that I was ignorant of. 

To my surprise, I had the good fortune to re-discover the game during the best season the Pittsburgh Pirates had had in two decades, getting all the way to October before falling to the very skilled, and very determined St. Louis Cardinals. I have the good fortune to know a fiercely loyal Cardinals fan through my work, and I spent much of last year, and have started this one, with an enjoyable mixture of friendly rivalry and mutual respect.

All through last year, and through the winter I expected the love for baseball to disappear, only to be replaced by something else. My typical pattern is to be captivated with a subject like, say, Star Wars, for a brief and intense period, only to see it slowly diminish, and be replaced by other subjects. For some reason, I always kept expecting that to be the case with baseball — "last year was fun, but I'm kind of over that; that was then, this is now."

Brother, is that not the case.

This year, I seemd to have graduated from neophyte to acolyte. For the first time, I watched Spring Training, and actived the MLB At Bat 14 app the morning it was released. I followed the Bucs, not through just a few spring training games, but through the entire 30 days — a period that another vastly experienced fan at work disdains as "practice." By doing so, I got to know some of the players in our future, and was even sorry when some were sent back to the minors. Last year, I was somewhat amused by fans who knew minor league prospects — now, I are one.

Last year, I was timid about started my subscription to At Bat, worried that I'd never use it enough to justify it. This year, I am eyeing both the MLB.tv Internet streaming service and the MLB Extra Innings package on TV. I doubt my finances will allow me either, but if money were not a factor, I would do it in a heartbeat. 

So, here I am, grateful to still find myself a fan, and for the second straight year, looking forward to the new season with a sense of optimism and excitement. Let's go Bucs!