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

We've done four 2020 preview episodes so far - for movies, live action series, animated series, and books - and now it's time to take a look at the comics! 2019 was a big transitional year for the Star Wars brand. Not only was it the year that saw the end of the Skywalker Saga, it also saw the end of a couple of long-running comic series. The flagship Star Wars title ended its first series, set be...

The Academy Award nominations were announced on Monday, and The Rise of Skywalker has been nominated in three categories: Visual Effects, Original Score, and Sound Editing. Intriguingly - at least to me! - all the nominees for Sound Mixing are the same as for Sound Editing, with the lone exception being that Ad Astra was nominated instead of The Rise of Skywalker. On today's show, we'll see how th...

Well, it was going to happen sometime, it was only a matter of when. The Rise of Skywalker did not top the box office during its fourth weekend of release. That honor went to 1917, the World War I movie from Sam Mendes, which won a couple of Golden Globes two weekends ago, and opened "wide" for the first time this past weekend. (As in, it had ben in limited release previously and before the end of...

With it being the end of the "Skywalker Saga," and with it being called The Rise of Skywalker, it's probably no surprise that this whole movie hinges on family dynamics. And as we've done for the other 10 Star Wars movies whose release years coincided with our episode numbers, the final episode of that mini-series has arrived. One of the fascinating things, though, is that the movie's dynamic is d...

In this series of episodes looking at family dynamics in the Star Wars movies, one of the main things upon which I've been keeping an eye is how family becomes a driving force for the story of a movie, or of a specific character's story, story arc, and/or development. Yesterday, I said that The Last Jedi was one of the movies with the least amount of its story driven by family dynamics, and that w...

This episode didn't quite go the way I thought. It's the episode number that matches the year of release for The Last Jedi, so we're exploring family themes (as with previous number/year matchups). But my first instinct was to say that family was less of a driver in this Star Wars movie than any other Star Wars movie we've discussed so far. And in a sense, that's right. Rey has accepted, somewhere...

2016 is the year of Rogue One's release, so we're going to talk about that movie here on episode number 2,016 as well! As with our previous year/episode number matchups, family is the topic of the show, and in the case of Rogue One, family is a key driver of the action. Sure, you can make the case that family is important in most, if not all, of the Star Wars movies. But in this case, the father/d...

And here we go! As with the episodes that corresponded to the years of release for the Original Trilogy and Prequel Trilogy movies, we're now about to enter the final run of episodes focused on the theme of family in the Star Wars movies. Today, The Force Awakens is on tap. We've talked on the podcast before about how many, MANY of the story beats from The Force Awakens mirror those from A New Hop...

Time to get back to our series of looks at what's to come in Star Wars storytelling for 2020! This is our fourth in the series - we've already covered movies, live action series, and animation. Now, we're on to novels, short stories, and children's books. On today's episode, I'll be going through the announcement we have so far, in chronological order, and sharing what we know about the titles ann...

Welcome to another Resistance Briefing! With this one, we're all caught up on Star Wars Resistance, as today's episode of the podcast breaks down "The Mutiny." I have to say, I'm wondering if there was more to this episode - the log line at Disney's website says Ax Tagrin (Joe Manganiello) and Norath Kev (Daveed Diggs) were also supposed to appear in this episode, but they did not after all. I've...

The third weekend is complete, and The Rise of Skywalker is on track to easily clear a billion dollars at the global box office. That said, it's still tracking behind The Last Jedi's numbers, which could be a function of the better reviews received by TLJ as compared to TROS ... at least in part. We'll talk about this today, as well as other factors that could and will affect TROS's final box offi...

Well, here's the cliffhanger that could easily also have been a mid-season premiere if it had been held for a few weeks more. "Breakout" is the 13th episode from season 2 of Star Wars Resistance, and as I noted in yesterday's show, this is now three episodes in a row that are at the peak of Resistance episodes overall. They really seem to be hitting their stride with the show - more's the pity tha...

Well, with all the hoopla around The Rise of Skywalker, our Star Wars Resistance coverage had to take a back seat for a bit, I'm sorry to say. The good news is that we're catching up this weekend, starting with a Resistance Briefing for "The Missing Agent." This is episode 12 from season 2. I praised the previous episode, "Station to Station," as the best of the series to date. While I wouldn't de...

Fans lobbied tirelessly for it, and Lucasfilm answered the call! Clone Wars season 7 is coming to Disney+ in February, with 12 episodes to let creator Dave Filoni finish the series and give it the kind of send-off that he always wanted - the kind he got to do with Star Wars Rebels. Meanwhile, Star Wars Resistance is going to end its run in 2020, and after that ... what's next? A new season of a St...

Well, this is new! In previous years of previewing what's to come in Star Wars storytelling, live-action TV never had its own episode on the podcast. But now we've got not one, not two, but at least three shows in production in 2020! The Mandalorian is gearing up for season 2, and the Cassian Andor series and the Obi-Wan series are both in pre-production, at different stages of development. Today,...

Happy New Year! To kick off 2020, I'm starting a series of looks at the different kinds of Star Wars media, with a quick look back at 2019 for each, and a deeper look ahead at what's coming in 2020. Today, movies are on tap. We're covering a lot of the "look back" stuff with the Jedi Business posts, so there won't be a lot of time spent on The Rise of Skywalker. And no, of course there are no Star...

The second weekend of The Rise of Skywalker's release is behind us, and in some cases, the numbers are promising. Its closing the gap between it and The Last Jedi, its second-weekend drop was lower percentage-wise, and even the most conservative estimates for the total domestic box office have it matching TLJ's "multiple" (2.82, meaning that the total box office was/will be 2.82 times the opening...

2005 is, of course, the year that saw the release of the final movie in the Prequel Trilogy, Revenge of the Sith. And to continue our series of looks at family and its related dynamics in the Star Wars movies, we're talking about Revenge of the Sith from that certain point of view. Seen through the lens of family, this movie is when things really get bad for Anakin. Yes, you don't have to look at...

From a daringly lengthy comedic opening to an action-packed resolution and a shock of a final scene, "Redemption" saved The Mandalorian's Season 1 best for last. Just about every setup was fulfilled, meaningful moments were well-planned, the mythology was advanced, and we've got a cliffhanger that can possibly open the doors to a whole host of interesting possibilities for Season 2. On today's spo...

Yay! We're back to the main story arc in "The Reckoning," Chapter 7 from Season 1 of The Mandalorian. And we're catching up on it finally, since we've been talking about this little thing called The Rise of Skywalker for a while. This episode of The Mandalorian actually dropped a week and a half ago... On today's episode, we'll be talking about the surprises, the funniest moment of the season so f...

From a family dynamics view, Attack of the Clones is an especially difficult movie for Anakin Skywalker. Not only is he dealing with a life-or-death crisis in his biological family, he's also forced to deal with a life-or-death crisis for his surrogate family as well. In fact, you could argue that the reason why he chooses to marry Padme in secret - and not leave the Jedi Order - is because of the...

You may notice a bit of a jump in this episode - that's because it was initially recorded right on the heels of me seeing The Rise of Skywalker for the first time. But being that it's the evening of Christmas Day when it came time to pull this episode together, and (on a personal note) we still have family visiting with us, the easiest solution was for me to re-record the introduction to this epis...

By a weird fluke of the calendar, and maybe of fate as well, the 2,000th episode of Star Wars 7x7 falls on Christmas Day! So this episode is going to be a quieter, more personal celebration. It starts off with gratitude for you (yes, you!) for making the show possible and getting me excited to be in front of the microphone every day. Thank you for supporting me and Star Wars 7x7, whether you've be...

We've hit another episode number that corresponds to the year of a Star Wars movie release, so we're going to stop with The Rise of Skywalker talk for the day and have a look at The Phantom Menace! Just like the previous year/episode number matches for 1977, 1980, and 1983, we're exploring the themes and complications of family as presented in the Star Wars movies, focused this time on the first m...

The "Jedi Business" segment returns! Every Monday for the next few weeks, I'll be talking about the performance of The Rise of Skywalker at the box office, though this time around the focus is going to be a little bit different. There's been an assertion floating around for the last two years that dissatisfaction from some quarters with The Last Jedi would have a negative effect on the box office...