Star Wars 7x7: A Daily Bite-Sized Dose of Star Wars Joy

Well, we may not be getting a Star Wars Celebration this year, but a bunch of podcasters have rallied together to create a 60-panel event called ForceFest this weekend. "Star Wars Celebration has always been a huge part of Star Wars fandom," said Sarah Woloski, one of the event's organizers. "Fans gather from all over the world to celebrate the Star Wars saga and meet up with new and old friends....

I thought the short stories of Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark were good, but via audio, they're even better - and for a unique reason. Most audiobooks are performed by a narrator who does all the voices. Sometimes you get a full cast performance, like with the Dooku: Jedi Lost or Doctor Aphra audio dramas. The nearest thing, perhaps, to what we get in this collection is what...

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark is a new collection of 11 short stories, each inspired by a Clone Wars episode or story arc. (Thanks go to Disney Lucasfilm Press for sending along a review copy to check out in advance.) It's been advertised as a set of stories for middle grade readers, but in fact it reads above its pitched level. It's satisfying for a YA or even an adult audi...

This is it! The final episode in our "winners" and "losers" series covering the Skywalker Saga, looking at the fortunes of the characters (and groups of characters) in those movies, and whose fortunes improved the most, or sank the hardest, as a result of the events of a given movie. Today, we're looking at the losers of The Rise of Skywalker. Without revealing the order, here's the list alphabeti...

We're in the final stretch of our look at the winners and losers of the various Star Wars Skywalker Saga movies! Following a series we had done for the Original and Prequel Trilogies many years ago, this set closes the circle. Today, we're looking at the winners of The Rise of Skywalker - the people whose fortunes most improved as a result of the events of the movie. In alphabetical order, we're t...

The "Winners and Losers" series for the Star Wars movies continues! We're on to The Last Jedi, and in yesterday's episode, we talked about the winners. So naturally, today we're going to talk about the "losers" - the characters whose fortunes took a turn for the worst as a result of the events of the movie. But in yesterday's episode, we noted that middle movies in trilogies tend to have an intere...

The "Winners and Losers" series continues! We're moving on to The Last Jedi, and this movie presented a bit of a challenge. Bad things do happen to characters in Star Wars movies, but when they come out on top, it feels fully triumphant. There's something about the middle movies in a trilogy, though, that don't make for clean victories. The "Winners" episode is where we talk about the characters w...

As I was prepping the "Winners" and "Losers" episodes for The Force Awakens, I realized that Finn appeared on neither list. Why? On today's episode, I'm going to explain why Finn is a special case, and resisted (no pun intended) an easy classification as a winner or loser as a result of the events of the movie. It has something to do with his wavering loyalties... Punch it! ***I'm listener support...

Yesterday, we revived a series that began in 2014, which detailed the seven "winners" and "losers" from each Star Wars movie. At the time, the Sequel Trilogy hadn't yet appeared in theaters - now that they have, it's time for the circle to be completed! We started off with a look at the winners of The Force Awakens, and today, we're flipping the coin to look at the top seven losers - the character...

Back in 2014 - when Star Wars 7x7 episodes were two-digit numbers instead of the four-digit numbers they are today - we did a series of looks at the Original Trilogy and Prequel Trilogy movies through an unusual lens. We did episodes about the winners and losers of each movie - specifically, the seven characters whose fortunes were the most improved as the result of the events of a given movie, or...

Today, the conclusion of our interview with Sarah Kuhn, author of the Star Wars: Doctor Aphra audiobook exclusive. As a refresher, these are the questions I'd had prepped for her: 1. You've written novels from a character's first-person perspective before. Knowing that Doctor Aphra would be specifically produced as an audio drama, did that affect the way you approached Aphra's narration of the sto...

I'm thrilled to welcome Sarah Kuhn to the podcast today for the first of a two-part interview! Here's Sarah's bio... Sarah Kuhn is the author of the popular Heroine Complex novels—a series starring Asian American superheroines. The first two books were 2016 and 2017 RT Reviewers' Choice Award nominees for Best Urban Fantasy. Additionally, the first book is a Locus bestseller and one of the Barnes...

It may seem crazy to suggest watching something as utterly unwatchable as the Star Wars Holiday Special. And yet, from a certain point of view, it really is worth your time, especially if you've never seen it before. Also, in a recent bit of news, it seems that Lucasfilm under Disney is looking to revive the Life Day celebration in an all-new way. On today's show, we'll talk about the merits of wa...

There's a story in Star Wars Myths and Fables called "Gaze of Stone," and it tells the cautionary tale of a Twi'lek named Ry Nymbis, who is adopted at an early age by the nefarious Darth Caldoth. The story details how Nymbis came to be Caldoth's apprentice, and what happened to the two of them when Nymbis - as Sith apprentices are often wont to do - decided to try to kill his master and take his p...

Thematically (sort of) continuing our conversation this week, which began with a review of George Mann's Star Wars: Dark Legends, I got to thinking about a line from George Lucas I'd once heard, and I found the source of it - a 2014 article in the New York Times about the impending release of Star Wars Rebels: 'Star Wars Rebels' got its start in spring 2013, not long after Disney bought Lucasfilm....

Star Wars: Dark Legends is that rare set of Star Wars stories which can't be taken literally - as in, can't be considered "canon" as presented. But unreliable stories have a long history in Star Wars... On today's episode, I'll be talking about the books where we know we're dealing with a story that isn't "true," per se, to the stories where the narrator can't be fully trusted, to scoundrel charac...

Let go your canon-conscious self to enjoy the tales of Star Wars: Dark Legends by George Mann, spooky tales and ghost stories that would go great for kids around campfires... On today's episode of the show, we'll talk more about the desire to try to place stories like these within the Star Wars canon; the elements that drive the reader to do so; what to expect from the seven stories in the collect...

Of all the kinds of Star Wars storytelling out there, live-action production is the riskiest in terms of keeping people safe during the coronavirus pandemic. Film and TV production in Hollywood was shut down for months, and aside from daytime soap operas, filming - or principal photography, for our purposes - is still largely stalled. That said, the way Lucasfilm created The Mandalorian - and the...

More has been revealed about the storyline for Tales From the Galaxy's Edge, a new experience coming to the Oculus VR platform later this year. We'll talk about that today, as well as what's been said about "iconic" characters and how they might factor into the storyline. Punch it! ***I'm listener supported! Join the community at http://Patreon.com/sw7x7 to get access to bonus episodes and other i...

In another of our "Watch to Watch Now" segments, we take a look at how Willow (the 1988 film from Lucas and director Ron Howard) connects to Star Wars, and why it's important now. Here's the gist of Willow, from Wookieepedia: A young farmer named Willow Ufgood is drawn away from his sheltered home to save Elora Danan (a baby girl with a destiny) from the evil sorceress Queen Bavmorda who would see...

It's one thing to read a Star Wars story. It's quite another to experience it as an audiobook, with the sound effects and the music and all of those other intangible aural elements that create the magic of Star Wars. As I say in the show today, I think all the audiobook reviews to date that I've done have been for the adult novels, and that this may be the first time I've done one for a young adul...

When we first meet Zorii Bliss in The Rise of Skywalker, it's clear that there's some bad blood between her and Poe Dameron. In the novel Poe Dameron: Free Fall, thanks to the assiduous time documentation by author Alex Segura, we know that she's been holding that grudge for a long time - about 18 years, to be specific. But why? Well, to answer that question, we have to go into spoiler territory....

The novel Poe Dameron: Free Fall takes place within a pretty specific period of time. Author Alex Segura is actually very explicit about the timeframes - not just for the novel overall, but even for the amount of time that lapses between specific adventures depicted in the story. On today's episode of the show, we'll talk about exactly when the novel takes place, and how it fits in with other sign...

If you were shocked - shocked, I tell you! - to learn that Poe Dameron used to be a spice runner before joining the New Republic and later the Resistance, well, then, the story of how that happened needs to be believable and compelling. If not, then it's a bit like a house of cards - it wouldn't just reflect negatively on the telling of the backstory, but also on how that storyline connects to The...

A number of media outlets reported it as a "surprise" that The Mandalorian received 15 Emmy nominations for its inaugural season. (One creator's reaction from the official press release may have driven that take.) But when you look at the categories for which The Mandalorian has been nominated, you'll see an overlap with the kinds of categories for which Star Wars movies are often nomination for O...