THE AHSOKA PROBLEM: D. tries to watch the most recent Disney+ Star Wars show, Ahsoka, and while he enjoys it he can’t help feeling like he’s missing a lot of important context and information.
“SAY SOMETHING NICE”: D. Bethel proposes a new idea for a podcast or a segment on the show.
TOPICS:
(00:00) Intro – Dan really wants to like Ahsoka. (21:35) A brief sojourn into discussing episodic vs. serialized television (32:14) Star Wars homework vs. Marvel homework (43:05) Outro – “Say Something Nice” and Highlander 2: The Quickening (46:28) Outtakes
RELEVANT EPISODES:
“Of Underwear Models & Wayward Sons” (11 September 2014): Where our hosts discuss the benefits and deficits between serialized and episodic televised storytelling.
RELEVANT LINKS:
A More Civilized Age, “Knights of the Old Republic 01” – the Star Wars: Rebels podcast that paused on their discussion of the show (due to the onset of the writer’s strike) and instead played through Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
INFO:
Visit our website at forallintents.net and leave your thoughts as comments on the page for this episode.
A LESSON IN SURVIVAL: Our hosts are going to take it easy this week, but they’re stopping in for a quick look at what’s been drawing their attention. Andrew gets frustrated by the difficulty to be found in Green Hell while D. Bethel dips a toe into the wildly popular independent game, Vampire Survivors.
WEEK IN GEEK: Our hosts try to keep it short but, instead, keep it real as they talk about their respective Weeks in Geek. D. Bethel starts by talking about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny before Andrew shares his thoughts about the first two episodes of the new Disney+ Star Wars show, Ahsoka. D. Bethel wraps it up with quick thoughts about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.
RELEVANT EPISODES:
“Our Best Work” (14 August 2014): Where D. Bethel shares his thoughts about the 2014 live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.
Yay! Today is Sylvester’s 80th Birthday and a few friends dropped by to say hello. Morning Russell T Davies !!#SYLVESTER: Who's the real McCoy pic.twitter.com/QRoaGkA9i3
This weekend was Star Wars Celebration Orlando, the twelfth instance of the Star Wars Celebration experience. Star Wars Celebration is usually an opportunity for fans to get together and talk about their love of Star Wars. Of course, it’s also a great opportunity for the people that make Star Wars to unleash new content onto the world. This year was no different.
Perhaps the biggest news is the revelation of a trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi:
The Internet is already abuzz over the release of the first trailer for Star Wars: Episode 8: The Last Jedi. Mark Hamill drives the trailer as Luke Skywalker, providing the overall narration and a lot of heavy context to the “Last Jedi” aspect of the title. It sounds like the film will address the “balance of the Force” theme that first appeared in The Phantom Menace and has been further explored in Season 3 of Star Wars: Rebels. I’ve already spent an undue amount of time trying to determine if Tom Baker found his way on to the cast list, given his role as the Benduin Star Wars: Rebels. With a release expected this December, there’s already a lot of fan excitement developing for this title.
“Jedi and Sith wield the Ashla and Bogan. The light and the dark. I’m the one in the middle. The Bendu.”
In addition to the Episode VIII trailer, a preview for the upcoming fourth (and final!) season of Star Wars: Rebels was also released:
For those not following Star Wars: Rebels, it is the story of a cell of rebels fighting the Empire that become an essential part of the Rebel Alliance. The show has continued to provide a background for the formative years of the Rebel Alliance, and this final year appears to be no different. Season 3 villain Admiral Thrawn makes an appearance in the trailer (with what appears to be a silly General Veers style helmet) as does Katee Sackhoff’s character Bo-Katan, who was previously seen in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Forest Whitaker’s character Saw Gerrera also appeared briefly. With regard to thematic content, it appears that they will be addressing both the “balance of the Force” theme and the battle for Mandalore (which was an element of Sabine’s storyline from Season 3).
Probably the only character not featured (despite claims that her fate would be addressed) was Ahsoka Tano. As /Film’sPeter Sciretta points out, showrunner Dave Filoni seemed to tease the audience with a clever t-shirt swap during the Rebels event last weekend.
For not saying anything about Ahsoka during the event, he certainly seems to have said a bunch.
Given everything Star Wars that was unleashed in Orlando, it looks like 2017-18 will be a relatively big year for the franchise.
WEEK IN GEEK: Andrew watches the season 3 premiere of Star Wars: Rebels (as well as talks about the extended edition of Ghostbusters aka Ghostbusters: Answer the Call) while Dan talks about going to a heavy metal show to see the band, High Spirits.
BULLETPROOF BLACK MAN: Dan and Andrew talk about their first impressions of Marvel/Netflix’s Luke Cage, the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Though neither had finished the season by the time of this recording, they talk about the general conversation about the show and what it brings to the superhero cinematic genre that others haven’t really done before. Dan published some interesting links this week about Luke Cage, specifically.
Leave a comment at ForAllIntents.net. Be sure to join the official Facebook group for conversation with other fans. Be sure to leave a review on iTunes to help spread word about the show to new potential listeners.
For all intents and purposes, that was an episode recap.
FEATURED MUSIC:
-“Stayin’ in Black” by Wax Audio
-“Theme” by Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad (from Luke Cage)
-“Up and Overture” by High Spirits
Folks that are not attuned to the media Force may have missed the fact that this last weekend was Star Wars Celebration, a giant Star Wars convention that happens every year. Well, technically, it was Star Wars Celebration Europe III, but that’s an unimportant detail.
People may not realize that Star Wars is formally entrenched in the Disney production machine. Quite a lot of news leaked out of the convention concerning a variety of Star Wars properties. Of course, people that have followed us for a while know that my first loyalty in Star Wars fandom are the CGI animated television shows (Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels). This weekend featured the release of the trailer for the upcoming Season Three of Rebels [Warning: Spoilers abound for people that missed the end of Season 2]:
The trailer seems to throw a lot out there. Probably the biggest revelation is the introduction of Grand Admiral Thrawn, first introduced in Timothy Zahn’s non-canonicalHeir to the Empire. Thrawn, the only non-human in the Empire to be promoted to Grand Admiral, has been a subject of fan question ever since the House of Mouse exploded the Expanded Universe. A fan favorite, he might represent the most competent Imperial Officer ever introduced in Star Wars (given the propensity for most of the other ones to die rather unfortunately). Other revelations include the return of Maul and some new revelations as to the nature of the Force.
Truth be told, I missed it, but Dan pointed out that the voice of the Bendu, the peculiar creature claiming to be the “middle ground” of the Force, is voiced by none other than Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker. Although not the first Doctor to appear in a Star Wars series, as that honor would belong to David Tennant in his portrayal of the droid professor Huyang, it does say something about the reach of the animated Star Wars content. Between Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels, the CGI animated series is becoming the place for notable actors to go (George Takei, Seth Green, Clancy Brown, Simon Pegg, Katee Sackhoff, Jon Favreau, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jim Cummings, and even Mark Hamill in a different role).
With a lot of serious story going on in Rebels, it’s easy to forget that 2016 will also bring something new to the Star Wars continuity: a live-action “side story” (or what Dan and I like to call a “Gaiden”) film in the form of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Although a new trailer was featured at the event, it hasn’t been officially released as of this writing. However, a production trailer combined with the original was released:
I will admit that the closer it gets to release, the more excited I get about this new movie. A departure from the Skywalker-centric stories of Episodes I-VIII, this new “Star Wars Gaiden” looks to be expanding the Star Wars universe in new, cinematic directions. From what little has been released, it feels like this movie (and, potentially, the rest of these Gaiden stories) will create compelling characters and stories within the iconic Star Wars universe that are tangentially related to the Skywalker Magnum Opus we got with Episodes I-VI, which should be a nice change.
Additional information about the next Star Wars Gaiden, popularly referred to as “the Han Solo movie,” was also provided: Alden Ehrenreich has been confirmed as the man playing the galaxy’s favorite scoundrel (although I’ll admit to being more of a Lando man, myself). With filming beginning sometime in 2017, it will be interesting to see where the directors of The LEGO Movie will take the character of Han Solo and the Star Wars universe.
Overall, Star Wars Celebration dribbled just enough Star Wars fun to keep everybody excited for the Fall. If you’re interested in all of the details, I recommend checking out Gizmodo’s coverage spread of articles here.
