Tag Archives: PART 1

CELEBRATION CHICAGO EXCLUSIVES REVEALED, PART 1!

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Star Wars Celebration Chicago will be strong with the Force…and exclusive merchandise! With the highly-anticipated fan event just a few weeks away, StarWars.com is excited to offer a first look at some of the galactic treasures awaiting you; in part one of this special preview, you’ll find items ranging from a stunning ACME print to Diamond Select Toys’ menacing “Spider Maul” statue, and beyond. But this party isn’t over: Stay tuned to StarWars.com for more exclusive reveals next week!

Click below to see a ton of great items!

KIERON GILLEN LOOKS BACK AT MARVEL’S DARTH VADER SERIES, PART 1

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IN ADVANCE OF NEXT WEEK’S SERIES FINALE ISSUE, STARWARS.COM TALKS TO WRITER KIERON GILLEN ABOUT MARVEL’S SAGA-CHANGING COMIC.

Darth Vader is such an icon, not just for film, but for culture in general. With that kind of legacy comes an incredible amount of expectation, and Marvel’s Darth Vader ongoing series continually delivered. The first issue was published in February of 2015, and the title has since left an indelible mark on the Star Wars saga. With the final installment, issue #25, hitting next Wednesday, October 12, StarWars.com spoke with Darth Vader writer Kieron Gillen about the legacy of Vader, making him a starring character, and how he got us to root for a Sith Lord.

StarWars.com: Describe your relationship with the character of Darth Vader before you learned you were going to write an ongoing series.

Kieron Gillen: I mean, I always say this when I talk about Darth Vader — the very first movie I ever saw in the cinema was [The] Empire [Strikes Back]. You know, that was the first movie I remember being taken to the cinema to see. Darth Vader was literally the entry point of me into fantasy and science fiction. It’s my entry into public life and geek culture. It’s my kind of formative view into what evil looks like.

So, for me and Jason [Aaron], and I’m sure a lot of Star Wars writers, are on an age where Star Wars was absolutely formulate. So that’s where I shoot with Darth Vader there. He’s like one of the iconic pop cultural villains of the 20th century.

StarWars.com: Oh, absolutely. And I think if you grew up in a certain generation (I was born in the early ’70s), he’s just kind of imprinted in your mind.

Kieron Gillen: Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s like I said, you know, I was born in ’75, so he’s just there, looming, magnificent. I’ve always said, it’s like it’s very weird of me doing Vader, ’cause of course, it’s between New Hope and Empire, so as I’m basically writing the prequels to my own entry into pop culture. So it’s like a weirdly cyclical thing, and it’s very primal.

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FINDING NIEN NUNB, PART 1

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LOOKING TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT, ONE MAN DECIDED TO TRY TO TRACK DOWN THE ORIGINAL SULLUSTAN — KIPSANG ROTICH — FOR THE FORCE AWAKENS.
Christian Simpson has written before of curious on-set coincidences that seemed to be the Force at play. But what transpired on The Force Awakens was to be perhaps his most forceful fan adventure of all…

EXT. SPACE

A rollup slowly crawls into infinity:

Episode VII
THE FORCE NUNB AWAKENS
Luke Skywalker Nien Nunb has vanished. In his absence, the sinister friendly FIRST ORDER VOICE ACTOR has risen from the ashes of the Empire ADR session and will not rest until Skywalker Nunb, the last Jedi Sullustan, has been destroyed found.

To quote Ben (Kenobi, not Solo), my bumping into “old friend” Matthew Wood, Skywalker Sound’s supervising sound editor, at dinner at Star Wars Celebration seemed at first to be nothing more than a nice coincidence. But when he mentioned to me and fellow Star Wars actress Orly Schuchmacher that he possibly needed some union voice actors later that summer for a “mystery project,” it was to be the start of the next magical chapter in a Star Wars journey for me that had begun on the set of The Phantom Menace in a galaxy called 1997 — playing starfighter pilot Gavyn Sykes.

Starfighter pilots are relevant because, wonderfully, that mystery project was The Force Awakens, and when its ADR session did take place at Fox Studios in L.A. (and after I literally forgot to speak into the mic because Han Solo had just appeared on the screen in front of me for the first time in 32 years), Matthew mentioned that he was searching for another pilot — Nien Nunb himself.

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HOW BOOK AND COMIC ADAPTATIONS EXPANDED (AND CHANGED) THE STAR WARS FILMS, PART 1

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YODA WAS BLUE? WHO DID LANDO CON? DISCOVER ALL THE VARIATIONS BETWEEN THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY AND ITS BOOK AND COMIC COUNTERPARTS.

Adaptations play a big part in Star Wars history. They didn’t just retell the stories of the films. They featured deleted scenes. Named background characters. Had new dialogue. This article series explores some of these novelizations and comic adaptations, and how they deepened Star Wars.

A New Hope

Novel – Alan Dean Foster

Released six months before the movie arrived in cinemas, there are many interesting things to note from this novel. But the most is probably the opening prologue, which basically tells us the entire story of the prequel trilogy way before those movies were even made. In hindsight, this prologue is very accurate to those movies, showing that George Lucas always did have the general ideas in place. While this prologue is also the first, and for a long time the only, mention of the Whills within the Star Wars universe, they recently were mentioned again in the prologue of The Force Awakens novelization which was a clear homage, due to both being written by the same author.

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THE HISTORY OF STAR WARS MICRO MACHINES, PART 1

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STARWARS.COM LOOKS BACK AT A CLASSIC TOY LINE THAT MADE A LARGE GALAXY MUCH SMALLER (AND REALLY FUN TO COLLECT).
Star Wars Micro Machines (1994 – 2002) were one of the top-selling Star Wars toys of the 1990s. Galoob (and Hasbro) included numerous little ships, figures, playsets, and other items in their Star Wars Micro Machines line, and after a long slumber, that line has returned with Star Wars: The Force Awakens! In this series of articles, we’ll take a closer look at some of the most memorable Star Wars Micro Machines toys.

After a few quiet years, Star Wars merchandising was rapidly growing in popularity in the early ’90s. George Lucas announced that he was working on the prequels — and new books, collectibles, and comics were being released once again. Lewis Galoob Toys was one of the biggest toy companies in the US, and they had already gained fame with toys from The A-Team, Blackstar, and, of course, Micro Machines. Micro Machines were a series of toys consisting of tiny cars, airplanes, boats, and other vehicles that could interact with small playsets that had multiple action features. They were so popular in the late ’80s and ’90s that the line spawned several cool computer games. In other countries, Micro Machines were sold by companies such as Ideal (France) and GiGi (Italy).

Star Wars Micro Machines launched in 1994, one year before Kenner (Hasbro) released their new line of 3.75” action figures, and continued into 2002 four years after Hasbro bought Galoob Toys. Similar-looking toys were released after 2002, but they weren’t truly part of the Micro Machines line. One example was Kenner’s Micro Collection, a superbly-designed line of diecast figures and playsets that unfortunately got canceled after one year (in 1982). Let’s go back to when it started…

 

THE OTHER LOST MISSIONS: RARE CLONE WARS COMICS AND LITERATURE, PART 1

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The Clone Wars.

It’s a name — three words — that ignited the imaginations of countless Star Warsfans for a quarter century between A New Hope in 1977 (when they were first uttered) and the torturously long wait until the release of Attack of the Clones in 2002 (when they were first seen). And in the last dozen years since then, there have been hundreds of stories told of that bloody conflict — in comics, in novels, in video games — and not the least of which are the 120-plus episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

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THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY: FIRST DAYS OF SHOOTING, PART 1

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Earlier this year the cameras began to roll for Star Wars: The Force Awakens in Abu Dhabi and while only time will tell what exactly was filmed on May 16, we can take a look back in history and explore the first days of shooting for the first six films in the saga. We start this two part series with the original trilogy of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

A New Hope

After a difficult pre-production phase of nearly three years, in which it was difficult to even find a studio willing to invest in the movie, the time had come to start shooting Star Wars (as it was originally called). Cast and crew left the UK with not all the preparations finished, there were still problems with some costumes like C-3PO and the stormtroopers, and back in the US, ILM was struggling with the technology required for the special effects. It seemed that the cast and crew were in for a difficult shoot. This proved true the moment they arrived in Djerba where they had a lay-over in a big hotel sprawling with German tourists who could not find their rooms, while production was to wake up at 6 a.m. for a long drive to Tozeur. The trip itself was also taxing for the drivers because it was difficult to see the dark-clothed native Berber people while driving in the night. In Tozeur they ran into their next problem: the big hotel of the city was closed for renovations and the cast and crew for the 12-hour long miniseries Jesus of Nazareth had booked the best alternative hotels, as well as most of the local technicians and rental cars. Cast and crew ended up in fourth-rate hotels, sometimes doubled or even tripled up in rooms. Producer Gary Kurtz would say later of this: “That was okay for two weeks. We could survive that. But if it had been two or three months, we would have had a riot on our hands.”

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