Star Wars

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/16563834

The John Williams documentary that was first announced in January 2023 finally received an update. The American Film Institute announced on Thursday that Music By John Williams, focused on the life and career of the beloved composer, will have its world premiere on the opening night of the AFI Fest, on October 23.

The film will receive a limited theatrical release before going to Disney Plus on November 1. Here is the official logline:

From his early days as a jazz pianist to his 54 Oscar nominations and five wins, the documentary celebrates Williams’ countless contributions to the moving image arts, music for the concert stage as well as his indelible impact on popular culture.

Ben Burtt created the sound of my childhood. He gets that a lot.

“Yeah, I hear that often,” says the legendary sound designer, creator of the lightsabre swish and Darth Vader’s electronic wheezing, the voice of R2-D2, Chewbacca and, for a younger generation, that of Pixar’s WALL-E. “I guess I altered the DNA of a lot of young people.”

Burtt, a 12-time Oscar nominee, and four-time winner — he earned Special Achievement Awards for his work on Star Wars and Raiders of the Los Ark, and Oscars for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade — is being honored by the Locarno Film Festival at its 2024 edition with the Vision Award Ticinomoda, a prize dedicated to creatives whose work has extended the horizons of cinema.

Lucasfilm used its part of the Disney Showcase at D23 to both tease the second season of “Andor” and offer the first tease of “The Mandalorian & Grogu” movie. First up, the second season of “Andor” had little on offer – no artwork, release date or stills – just a behind-the-scenes featurette only for the […]

Get ready for a brand new Star Wars adventure. Watch the trailer for Skeleton Crew, streaming with a two-episode series premiere December 3 on Disney+.

Although we got to hear about a lot of the future of Star Wars publishing at San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend, io9 has your exclusive first look at a Star Wars story that was left untold there: Reign of the Empire, a new trilogy of novels that will chart the rise of resistance against the Imperial regime from the very first year after Revenge of the Sith, all the way throughout the two decades that saw the formation of the Rebel Alliance and the beginning of the Galactic Civil War.

As you can tell by the cover of the first novel in the series, The Mask of Fear by Alexander Freed (writer of the absolutely incredible Alphabet Squadron series) Reign of the Empire will examine the struggle against the Empire through the eyes of some familiar faces. Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, and Saw Gerrera–all with their own differing perspectives on what must be done to stop Palpatine–play key roles in the trilogy, alongside a new cast of original characters as the galaxy begins to reckon with the grip of the Empire. Here’s the official logline for The Mask of Fear:

Before the Rebellion, the Empire reigned.

“In order to ensure the security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire! For a safe and secure society!”

With one speech, and thunderous applause, Chancellor Palpatine brought the era of the Republic crashing down. In its place rose the Galactic Empire. Across the galaxy, people rejoiced and celebrated the end to war—and the promises of tomorrow. But that tomorrow was a lie. Instead the galaxy became twisted by the cruelty and fear of the Emperor’s rule.

During that terrifying first year of tyranny, Mon Mothma, Saw Gerrera, and Bail Organa face the encroaching darkness. One day, they will be three architects of the Rebel Alliance. But first, each must find purpose and direction in a changing galaxy, while harboring their own secrets, fears, and hopes for a future that may never come, unless they act.

Princess Leia’s famous gold bikini worn by the late Carrie Fisher in Star Wars has sold at auction for $175,000 (£136,000, A$266,000).

The costume, made famous from the 1983 film Return of the Jedi when Fisher’s character wore it while chained to Jabba the Hutt’s throne, was bought at a sale by Heritage Auctions on Friday in the US.

The seven-piece ensemble, which includes a bikini brassiere, bikini plates, hip rings, an armlet and bracelet, was designed by the late Richard Miller, the chief sculptor for Industrial Light & Magic, the visual effects company founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas.

I'm sure we all know about the low audience scores given to The Acolyte. Rotten Tomatoes was sitting down at 14% since around the third episode, and was that low up until at least the last episode. Now that it's nearly a week out from the season finale, I figured I'd take another look.

The Rotten Tomatoes score has gone up to 17% and other review platforms have gone up a bit also.

So I decided to read through a few of the recent ones. Here are two examples:

The showrunners accuse fans of "review bombing" but are apparently just fine with artificial review boosting. I saw a bunch of these double reviews and nearly every single one talked about things like diversity, a "fresh take", production values, etc, all in that typical bland corporate-speech type of language.

Whereas the negative reviews are detailed and specific without ever getting into racism, bigotry, sexism, or other things fans are often accused of. If you read through the negative reviews they are often well thought out criticisms of the story itself and the quality of acting.

I just wanted to bring this fake review boosting to the community's attention. If you enjoyed the show, that's awesome. But it's dishonest to dilute honest and fair criticisms of a show.

I didn't realize this was the season finale before watching and was mostly confused that was it after tonight's episode. Seems like they started more loose ends in that one episode, maybe in hope of another season, but it felt like it could have used an episode or two more to set that up better. Spoilers below:

What'd everyone else think?

Wookieepedia, the most popular Star Wars wiki, appears to have entered an unexpected moment of crisis. It's impossible to overstate how important Wookieepedia, the fan-run Wiki, is to the Star Wars fandom. It's one of the largest Fandom sites in existence, with 193,050 pages and counting, and the site has even been frequented by actors and writers as well as general fans.

There's probably no better online resource when it comes to Star Wars, with Wookieepedia guiding viewers seamlessly through Legends and canon information. Even more impressively, over the last few years, the "Wook" (as it is often called) has become an important part of the online fan community in its own right. Unfortunately, over the last week, the Wook has found itself at the heart of a major controversy.

Leslye Headland's The Acolyte has proved to be one of Lucasfilm's most controversial releases to date, with an online backlash and a pretty transparent review-bombing campaign. One of the strangest controversies was over the age of Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi, a character who makes a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in The Acolyte episode 4. This appearance contradicted a 1999 CD-ROM and a 2013 trading card, both of which established that Ki-Adi-Mundi shouldn't have been born yet. Neither are actually canon, and Lucas himself contradicted the CD-ROM later in the prequel trilogy when he changed Ki-Adi-Mundi's lightsaber color.

Ki-Adi-Mundi's age became an unlikely flashpoint, especially when the canon page on Ki-Adi-Mundi was edited on Wookieepedia to reflect his appearance in The Acolyte. This resulted in death threat messages against the editor, and these were publicly shared by Jordan Wilson - then a key member of the Social Media Team and administrator of the Wook. Wilson had not been given permission to make these public, however, and has since acknowledged that doing so was a mistake. This seems to be the inciting incident for a major change at Wookieepedia.