Shadows of the What?

Well friends, something deeply disturbing has emerged from the innermost depths of holy hell. A torturing concept destined to upset and terrorize the very sanity of some of the most well inversed and intelligent Star Wars fans. 

If anybodies fear for what could be the villain of Episode VII has come to an excruciatingly painful realization, it's probably my own. The curious thing is that most Star Wars folks didn't even raise an eyebrow when Rogue Leaders: The Story of Lucas Arts written by Rob Smith and with a foreword by none other than the man himself, GL, was released in November of 2008/ containing in it a page of all the Star Wars cancelled titles for video games included none other than STAR WARS EPISODE VII: SHADOWS OF THE SITH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The folks over at EGM Now.com gave us their theory of the existence behind that very disturbing video game title:

''The book contains logos for 20 Star Wars titles that were in development at the studio, including a tie-in for Episode VII subtitled Shadows of the Sith–I’d guess the original plan was to continue the franchise via games before Disney bought the rights.''

 I'm not buying this. It would be completely moronic to continue the Episodic franchise in a series of video games rather than do them in film. I am 99.99999% certain that George Lucas himself would have never, ever gone this way. Besides, all evidence points out that George Lucas only gave the go-ahead to do Episode VII, after he discussed with Bob Iger the idea of selling his company, meaning it happened AFTER May of 2011. So indeed, this discovery is very strange and in some ways, it could lead to a dark thought.

What surprises me the most is not that this list was published 5 years ago and nobody has been talking about it, but that now that it's been released, nobody close to Lucasfilm is asking for confirmation, of whether or not it is the title of Episode VII.

The only reasonable explanation really is to think that this, along with the other cancelled games from Lucas Arts, were all a bunch of brainstorming ideas for what potentially became The Force Unleashed. And at least, that is what the Darth Maul, Han Solo and Vader games are. So it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that the Episode VII game was some sequel to Shadows of the Empire talking place after Jedi, and some dude in Lucas Arts gave it the pretentious title of ''Episode VII'' before GL smashed the project, or someone smashed it, and they went off with The Force Unleashed. It makes absolutely no sense for Lucas Arts to be working on a video game 4 YEARS before the film was even getting created in story treatments and scripts. As far as I'm aware of, that's not how things work in the film industry.

Now, If my theory proves to be wrong, then I have literally no clue as to what future Star Wars faces in the big screen. And if I follow my gut feeling, it tells me it's nasty. 

New Star Wars spinoff films announced

Well, my friends, the rumors have finally been debunked. Lawrence Kasdan, the writer of Episodes V and VI in the Star Wars saga and Simon Kilberg will be writing two spinoff films apart from the main saga films announced to be released. As Bob Iger, CEO of Disney said: "We are in development of a few standalone films," he said, "that are not part of the Star Wars saga...there are now creative entities working on developing scripts for what would be those standalone films." 

Know that this is official the question is: On which characters will the films be on? Some rumors over the Internet are saying that it will deal with Boba Fett in one film, and Han Solo in the other. Others say that one spinoff will be based on Yoda, and another on Jabba the Hutt. I have an idea: Wouldn't it be awesome if the next films would be based on say, Clone Wars characters, like Ahsoka and Cad Bane? Wouldn't that be awesome!!

Obviously, the likelihood of either of these happening is anyone's wild guess. It's ultimately the decision of George Lucas, and I sure do hope that the stories come from the man himself.

It would be interesting for a spinoff centering Ahsoka if she survives the Clone Wars, to depict what happens to her after the war and how she survives. A Cad Bane one would be probably the first Star Wars Western film, which would honestly be unbelievably cool. 

But yeah, I said myself, the next spinoffs don't have to center around those characters-but it sure would be fun if they did!!

My Biggest Fear Part 1

I remember that it was a normal Tuesday afternoon, the day before Halloween. I had been reading on my bus that day, the continuous blog posts that the keeper of the Holocron Leland Chee had been adding which listed the show of Star Wars: The Clone Wars in chronological order. I was worried about the fact that my Senior class had decided to dress up as clowns for Halloween, and since I hated clowns, I wasn't sure If I would present myself for Halloween the following day at school. But then, something happened when I opened Twitter that day. Something that would change my life.

I clicked on the link of the tweet without reading exactly what it said, something about 2015 and Disney and Lucasfilm... When I realized it, I was in the fan-based blog TheForce.Net and I was looking at a picture of Disney's CEO Bob Iger shaking hands with George Lucas. Then I happened to read what the post and the picture was all about:

Disney Buying Lucasfilm, Plans New Star Wars Film 

When I first saw all of this and the long thread that followed, talking about the deal and everything, I could not believe what I was seeing. I literally thought that this was some kind of April Fool's Day Thing, and that it wasn't real. Then I went to check on Google-the News was basically everywhere. I literally had to re-check everything to see if it wasn't some kind of joke. I thought that this was all some kind of nightmare and it wasn't true that this has to be some kind of dream. But no. It was all too damn real. I spend the next few days trying to figure out what the deal exactly meant.The worst part of all of this is that  I came to realize, that my worst fear, now had the possibility of becoming a reality: That the stories told in the Star Wars Expanded Universe would end up adapted into a new trilogy of Star Wars films. 

My mind had, for a very long time, settled with the idea that Star Wars was meant to be a Six-part movie series, and that the end in Return of the Jedi, with the Ewoks, the redeemed Anakin Skywalker and the victorious Rebel Alliance was all their would be and that they would live happily ever after. Now I know, that it isn't the end of the story, and that the beautiful ending was only truly the ending for the first six films.  

Thankfully as has been confirmed by Lucasfilm and Disney, the next set of Star Wars films will be an original story, and they won't be based on the books and comics that took place in that time period. In a later post, I will explain why the adaptation of these novels and comics, was and in some ways still is my biggest fear for Star Wars.