A New Hope for the Return of the Jedi and the Empire that Strikes Back.

A statement of nerdy passion and excitement along with a plea to the Fan boys.

So as my long winded title of run-on sentence and bad grammar indicates this is an article about Star Wars and how I feel about the current state of affairs in the Star Wars universe.  There are good things coming out over the next several months so if you’re a Star Wars fan, it’s time to get your nerd on and listen up.

First I’ll talk about Star Wars: the Old Republic, the new MMORPG coming out of Bioware Austin. The long awaited follow-up to Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 is coming out this holiday season.  Both of the previous games were amazing and received critical acclaim. This new game looks to blow both of them out of the water and into space.  I won’t go into the technical details right now, but suffice it to say we won’t be able to repel gaming of this magnitude (see what I did there?).  

 The game is based 3000 years before the events in the movies, so the game development team can exercise creative freedom while leaving the Star Wars movies untouched.  Naturally, the development team has been very closemouthed about the story details, (and the release date…) but with over 800,000 lines of dialogue, 17 different planets to visit, and 8 different character classes with individual story arcs, this will one of the biggest games of the year.

                In prelude to the release of the game, the complete Star Wars saga comes out on Bluray September 16th.  There has been nothing but controversy over the changes Lucasfilms is adding to the movies, especially regarding Episode IV, V and VI.  Some accuse George Lucas of being just another money-grubbing celebrity, desperate to eke every last penny out of the franchise, but look at the amazing difference between IV, V and VI and I, II, and III.  A New Hope was released in 1977, during a time when science fiction was laughably horrible.  George Lucas had a vision for his movies, he knew what he wanted Coriscant to look like, and he knew there was supposed to be a beak in the Pit of Sarlacc, but he couldn’t do it and make it look the way he wanted.  He made do with what he had, and now that he can do the films justice, he is pulling out all the stops.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that George is not the devil.  He has kept Star Wars relatively unchanged as far as the story goes (but Han shot first!) and introduced several new generations to Star Wars.  The changes are mostly aesthetic, adding a lens flare here, redubbing the sound FX there.  I enjoy the additions he made, and regret the things he had to move or change (anyone remember the nipple slip?) but I will be the first in line to purchase the new Blu-ray release.  After all at the end of the day Uncle Owen still shuts the power down, Luke will still end up unconscious in a tauntaun, and Darth Vader will still be Luke’s father.

                I am excited to be a Star Wars fan right now, the stuff coming from the Lucas ranch is going to be fantastic.  We nerds need all the wins we can get.  Sci-fi has gotten its ass beat over the last 10 years, but with the Star Wars Blu-rays and the Star Trek reboot, it has a chance again.  We live in an era where masterful stories and creative work like Firefly gets canceled after 13 episodes but The Bachelor can run for 15 seasons.  We need the heavy hitters from the past.  If Star Trek is willing to make bite the bullet and make big changes to capture the modern audience, then so can Star Wars.