The Toledo Mud Hens, the triple-A baseball affiliate of the Detroit Tigers, are celebrating Star Wars Day on May the 4th. While most baseball teams are likely to encourage fans to show up in costume or have a Star Wars character on hand to throw out the first pitch, the Mud Hens are taking things one step further.
This whole weekend will be Star Wars Weekend at Fifth Third Field with Saturday being “May the Fourth Be with You” day and Sunday being “Revenge of the Fifth.” Even better, they’re wearing snazzy Chewbacca-themed jerseys.
I know that I linked to Patton Oswalt’s Star Wars Episode VII filibuster from Parks and Recreation in last week’s Geek Links of the Week. However, it’s far too awesome to relegate to just a link in a linkdump. It’s deserving of its own post.
First, Disney killed Lucasfilm Animation and any of Lucasfilm’s television aspirations by effectively internally cancelling The Clone Wars and Detours. Now, the Disney bosses have killed of Lucasfilm’s legendary video game development and publishing division LucasArts.
We all know the story of Star Wars fairly well thanks to the six movies (soon to be more) and the Expanded Universe. However, as some of you likely know, that wasn’t the original story that George Lucas put to paper.
Now, with the permission of Lucas himself, the original screenplay is being brought back to life in the form of Dark Horse Comics’ upcoming series, The Star Wars.
When Lucasfilm and Disney announced that they would be wrapping up The Clone Wars animated series at the end of this season, they also announced that they would be providing bonus content after the end of the series. Sources inside Lucasfilm Animation have told TheForce.net that this bonus content would be story arcs from the planned sixth season of the show but wouldn’t be providing the resolution and closure that many fans would have liked.
Is it possible that it wasn’t Rebel Alliance pilot Luke Skywalker didn’t destroy the Death Star with a perfectly aimed torpedo from an outdated X-Wing fighter? Is it possible that the destruction of the Death Star was an inside job that went all the way up the Empire to Darth Vader?
YouTuber Graham Putnam examines the possibility in this Loose Change style documentary. Even though it has several factual errors, it’s still a pretty neat video.
On Monday, Lucasfilm announced what they called a “new direction” for their animation division. Unfortunately for fans of Lucasfilm Animation, the direction that Disney has set appears to effectively close down Lucasfilm Animation.
In an announcement posted on StarWars.com, Lucasfilm announced that they would be “winding up” The Clone Wars animated series and indefinitely postponing the Detours series that was in production with the team behind Robot Chicken.
As expected, the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney marked the end of The Clone Wars run on The Cartoon Network. However, it was expected that a Disney network would pick up the series from starting from this fall. Lucasfilm seems to have decided that the critically acclaimed series will finish its run on TV this season.
The announcement did leave open the possibility of “bonus content,” possibly in the form of webisodes, to wrap up The Clone Wars’ story. Sounds to me that this season’s finale wasn’t planned as a series finale and a few loose ends will still have to be tied up.
As for Star Wars: Detours, Lucasfilm felt that the series wouldn’t fit with the direction that the new trilogy is taking. In other words, don’t expect the humour of the old trilogies to be in episodes seven through nine. I’d guess that this is our first official indication that the new trilogy is going in a darker or more serious direction.
What’s next for Lucasfilm Animation? The company says “We are exploring a whole new Star Wars series set in a time period previously untouched in Star Wars films or television programming.” No one quite knows what that means but safe money says that it’s going to be a prequel of sorts to the upcoming film trilogy.
Source: Star Wars – A New Direction for Lucasfilm Animation
While first-person melee combat doesn’t quite work in video games, especially in Star Wars: Jedi Knight series because all the cool moves are in third-person mode, it does work in YouTube videos. The crew over at The Stunt People put together this lightsaber duel between Darth Vader and a Jedi from the first-person perspective. I’d say this is almost as good as the action from the prequel trilogy.
Remember Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi? Sorry, did I just accidentally trigger the repressed memory of that abomination of a fighting game that we all wish had never been made because it was equal parts terrible and nonsensical in the whole Star Wars universe?
Well, Studio Gigante put some preliminary work into a second Star Wars fighting game that they were pitching to LucasArts. The game was never made before Studio Gigante folded in 2005. The video below is a tech demo showing a preliminary Xbox build of the game to show off what the plan was and the moves that could be executed. It’s not the fastest or smoothest looking fighting game ever but you’d have to imagine that a dev made up of Mortal Kombat vets would be able to make a damn good fighting game given the time to actually make it.
Despite previously saying that he declined any involvement in the next Star Wars trilogy, reports say that J.J. Abrams will add the title of director of the first movie of the new Star Wars trilogy to director of the rebooted Star Trek franchise.
In December, Abrams told Empire Magazine that there were some early discussions but he didn’t go forward with discussions over directing one of the upcoming movies because of his loyalty to Star Wars. Because of the friendly rivalry between Star Trek and Star Wars fans, it’s interesting that one director would helm both franchises. Read the rest of this entry
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