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

You may have heard of "The Volume" before, but what's the deal with it? How does it work, and how was George Lucas thinking about this a decade ago? The "Technology" episode of Disney Gallery: Star Wars: The Mandalorian goes into deeper detail about the revolutionary new studio setup. Jon Favreau talks about the journey from his previous movies and how it all led to The Mandalorian, and the episod...

Mild spoilers in this, our final episode that dives into the novel Queen's Peril by E.K. Johnston. I was really surprised when I dug into Wookieepedia and didn't find much in the way of details (in the "Canon" section, at least) about the Royal Handmaidens of Naboo. So that made me doubly happy that we got a *lot* of details about them in Queen's Peril, including their recruitment; the last time t...

Mild spoilers for Queen's Peril by E.K. Johnston in this episode! I'm on record as saying that I think the whole taxation of trade routes thing is a perfectly fine entry point for The Phantom Menace. After all, the dispute happens off screen, and we jump right into blockades and invasions and Jedi action. Well, speaking of off screen ... since the events of Queen's Peril take place in the months l...

We interrupt our regularly scheduled discussion of Queen's Peril to give you an update on the Galaxy's Edge theme park experience at Disneyland in Anaheim. Phased re-opening proposals have been submitted for the parks, Downtown Disney, and two hotels. But there's a bit more to the story that what you're seeing in the headlines. And by the way, what could this mean for Star Wars Celebration - as we...

Mild spoilers in this episode! The final third of Queen's Peril by E.K. Johnston runs concurrently with The Phantom Menace. Apart from a plotline that fills in a backstory hinted at in Queen's Shadow, most of this section serves one of two purposes. One of these purposes is to give us a look at characters from the movie, in scenes that play like moments from the cutting room floor. Mind you, this...

Queen's Peril, by E.K. Johnston, is the prequel to last year's Queen's Shadow, and a breezy read best suited for Padme, handmaiden, and prequel fans. It also does something remarkable - delivers a story about teenage girls learning to bond and achieve in positions of influence, and against the backdrop of major galactic events. That said, from a plot perspective, nothing of major consequence happe...

Yes, as Pedro Pascal recently noted, Star Wars succeeds on the strength of its characters and relationships. But... From the war crimes of the Trade Federation on Naboo, to the Republic's war with the Confederacy of Independent Systems (essentially a false flag secession leading to the fall of the Republic), and later to rebellions less extreme (Mon Mothma) and more extreme (Saw Gerrera), and stil...

Episode 3 of Disney Gallery: Star Wars: The Mandalorian features - as one would expect from the title of the episode, "Cast" - discussions with the big three members of the cast: Pedro Pascal, Gina Carano, and Carl Weathers. As in past episodes, we also hear from Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, and we also hear from some of the directors. There are additional voices highlighted as well, and on today'...

Books delayed and moved up, comics in flux, a clue about that new lightsaber to be revealed, and more casting rumors! It's been a while, so let's catch up on Star Wars story news. Punch it! ***I'm listener supported! Join the community at http://Patreon.com/sw7x7 to get access to bonus episodes and other insider rewards.*** 

It's hard to believe that it's only been eleven days since the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer on a Minneapolis street. Since then, America has broken in ways beyond anything we could have imagined - and there's a strong case to be made that it was already broken, and we're finally seeing what it looks like when change can't wait any longer. But this is a Star Wars podcast, so on...

Carrie Fisher was the social conscience of the Original Trilogy, calling attention to women's rights and feminist issues. John Boyega is the social conscience of the Sequel Trilogy, calling attention to racial justice. On today's show, I'm featuring his speech yesterday at a London protest related to the killing of George Floyd. The audio (as recorded and published by the Evening Standard) appears...

If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you may recall that I was invited to deliver a talk at an official TEDx event in November 2019. The event was recorded, and I got word late Monday night that the talk had finally gone live on the TEDx YouTube Channel. Today's episode of the podcast is a short one, with a couple of observations about the timing of the TEDx talk's release; about m...

We were going to talk about the launch of Queen's Peril today. A couple months ago, I felt compelled to step out of the stream of our usual Star Wars talk, and we talked about the coronavirus pandemic, when the lockdowns were in their earliest stages. I never planned to make a habit of stepping out of the stream, and I still don't plan to. But as civil unrest has engulfed dozens of cities across t...

From novels to reference books, comics to documentaries, here's what we know is coming for Star Wars in June 2020 - and speculation about movies, live action series. animation, and more. Punch it! ***I'm listener supported! Join the community at http://Patreon.com/sw7x7 to get access to bonus episodes and other insider rewards.*** 

"Legacy" is the second episode of the Disney+ series Disney Gallery: Star Wars: The Mandalorian. A snippet from that episode has been making the rounds on social media, wherein executive producer Dave Filoni talks about the meaning and the stakes of the lightsaber battle in The Phantom Menace. And I thought that's what we'd be talking about today... But as it turns out, there's also a rather impor...

So here's how this happened... In looking at The Rise of Skywalker and comparing it to Return of the Jedi over the past few days, I've been thinking a lot about the theme of redemption in Return of the Jedi, and how it's the main theme for that movie, but only a secondary theme for The Rise of Skywalker. Well, the more I started thinking about Vader "redeeming" himself in Return of the Jedi, I got...

Imagine with me, if you will, a different Return of the Jedi. The primary protagonist/antagonist conflict is not with Luke and Palpatine, it's with Luke and Vader. And yet they don't spend a heck of a lot of time onscreen together. It's only near the end of the second act and into the third that they finally confront each other. Can you imagine what it would have been like if they encountered each...

When we looked at The Force Awakens, it was remarkable how much it lined up with the events of A New Hope. Then we looked at The Last Jedi, and while it had elements that lined up with The Empire Strikes Back, it also shook things up. Today, we look at The Rise of Skywalker. It has a lot in common with Return of the Jedi, but it actually explodes the structure of ROTJ, spreads it out across the mo...

Return of the Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker start their bad guys in similar places. No one walking into Return of the Jedi ever thought that redemption was in the cards for Darth Vader. And - if you pretend you never saw the original trilogy - you would likely say the same thing about Kylo Ren while walking into The Rise of Skywalker. Thematically, however, Return of the Jedi is very concerned ab...

As we dive deeper into our examination of The Rise of Skywalker, and the comparison of it to Return of the Jedi, structure is where we want to head next. But before we get there, there's a related pair of topics we need to consider. First is the question of the final boss battles - the "big bads," if you will. Because the primary job of both movies is for the heroes to strike the winning blow, and...

Last week, we spent time talking about The Last Jedi, and comparing it to The Empire Strikes Back - which is similar to what we did a while ago when we talked about The Force Awakens in relation to A New Hope. Well, it's time to complete the cycle! On today's episode, we're starting a series of looks at The Rise of Skywalker, in comparison with Return of the Jedi. And in particular, we're going to...

The end of 2019 was remarkable in a lot of ways for Star Wars. One of those reasons was The Mandalorian, the first-ever live-action Star Wars series. It was so remarkable, in fact, that Disney is putting together an eight-part series under the "Disney Gallery" banner to go behind the scenes of the creation of The Mandalorian. Today, we're following that series with a look at the first episode, "Di...

The "I am your father" reveal from The Empire Strikes Back is the ultimate "recontextualization" in cinema history. Recontextualization is a heavy word, one definition of which is: To place or view (a work of literature or art, for example) in a new or unfamiliar context, especially in order to suggest a different interpretation. As we've been comparing The Empire Strikes Back to The Last Jedi thi...

I hinted at us coming to this episode earlier in the week, about a thematic similarity between The Empire Strikes Back and The Last Jedi. Well, here we are now: ready to talk about failure. The Last Jedi wears this theme on its sleeve, so to speak - failure is actively spoken of, and Yoda identifies failure as one of the most important lessons Luke could ever have passed on to Jedi students. Luke,...

There was a funny meme going around back in the day, which had two images, which were the same shot of protesters with torches and pitchforks. And one photo depicted people complaining about The Force Awakens for being too much like the Star Wars of old, while the second photo depicted the same people complaining about The Last Jedi for being too different from the Star Wars of old. Well, as it tu...