Star Wars, A New Hope

The imminence of new Star Wars is a mixed bag. I'm glad The Mouse is in the house. I'm pretty happy Buy n' Large (did you see Wall-E?) with the way that happy-go-lucky rodent operates.

I mean, I am not down with the absence of mixed race couples among the older stable of characters. I mean, the mice stay together, and the ducks stay together, and Goofy and Pluto are both dogs, but one wears clothes.

Is that super awkward when Goofy goes over to Mickey's for dinner?

I was talking about Star Wars. There're new ones on the way. The bag is mixed. That's where we were at.

The bit that makes it less so good is that I was there in '99. A lot of us were.

In my more formative years I was a lot-a-bit unstable for Star Wars. The original trilogy. That was the only one we had. Then they broke that.

George came in and was all like, 'These are my toys and I have decided to destroy them.'

If you really got into The Phantom Menace, and it is your favourite of The Wars, then you can take it and every copy of Batman & Robin and I can bury you alive.

BYO shovel.

It hasn't been all bad since the 1983 release of Care Bears versus Space Nazis. The first Dark Forces computer game was great, and came out during a long forgotten time when not everything in the Star Wars universe was made of light-sabres. Shadows of the Empire (only the novel) was a really good character based story set between Empire and Return.

And then there are these two videos by Belated Media.

I know that very strictly speaking this stuff isn't at all any sort of official canon. It's all just the ravings of a yet another YouTube lunatic who says things like 'salmon-box' to describe a scenario in which you are forced to work within the confines of a metaphorical box (predefined criteria) during a task that already feels like you are swimming upstream (like a salmon is prone to do).

These ravings though, are sweet.

When it comes to expanded universes, fan fiction, and other questions of canonicity I'm about as libertarian as I get. You can choose your own adventure. That's up to you.

For me, the Belated Prequel Trilogy is canon, and I am more excited about the arrival of episode III than I am about episode VII. They've restored a sort of positive feeling for the future of the franchise that is something that has only recently arrived in me. I'm sure there are words for that.