Star Wars: Queen’s Shadow
Hardcover | Kindle | Audiobook
Written by E.K. Johnston
Audiobook narrated by Catherine Taber (Publisher: Listening Library)
Publisher: Disney Lucasfilm Press
Release date: March 5, 2019

I am neither a lover nor a hater of the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. I saw each of the three movies in theaters as they were released and I even own a copy of each on DVD. However, I don’t really watch them regularly and I’m not very familiar with related content, such as The Clone Wars animated series. I don’t identify with them as I do the Original Trilogy or, for that matter, the Sequel Trilogy or the Star Wars Story films. They’re just kinda, well, there.

Suffice it to say, I wasn’t entirely looking forward to reading Star Wars: Queen’s Shadow, a book revolving around Padme Amidala set in the midst of the Prequel Trilogy. (I feel like I used these exact same words to describe how I wasn’t initially excited about that Hondo Ohnaka book.)

Then I started getting into it. (This line sounds familiar, too.)

The Prequels Strike Back: A Fan’s Journey
Amazon Instant Video
Directed by Bradley Weatherholt
Official Website | Ministry of Cinema
Not Rated | 80 Minutes
Release Date: September 14, 2016

Midichlorians. The Trade Federation. Watto. The coarseness of sand. Jar-Jar freakin’ Binks. Oh, and you can’t forget”¦. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!”

George Lucas‘ Star Wars prequels comprise what is possibly the most controversial motion picture trilogy of all time. Despite grossing hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office and selling countless DVD and Blu-ray copies, Episodes I through III remain a serious bone of contention for ferociously devoted fans of the Star Wars universe for many reasons.

Bradley Weatherholt‘s Indiegogo-funded documentary The Prequels Strike Back: A Fan’s Journey provides — through a series of insightful and provocative interviews with open-minded admirers of the films and their thematic elements and links to the original trilogy –- a pointed critical analysis of the prequel trilogy’s multitude of perceived narrative and technical flaws. Rather than serve as the set-up for a rude, feature-length rebuttal of the faults that have fueled many a furious blog post or chatroom discussion, detractors of these unjustly-derided intergalactic adventures to look at those faults once more, but placed in different contexts and interpreted through a series of unbiased points-of-view.

I remember in 1994 when George Lucas announced he was making the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. The announcement opened a door to over a decade in which I was able to channel my obsession with Star Wars into hunting down any and all tidbits of filming news. It was a fascinating and exciting period, and one of the things I learned from that time was an ability and skill to filter the facts from the rumors from the horseshit.

Star Wars was somewhat breaking new ground on the internet during that time, and it was the fans that were leading the charge. Sure there were many basement-dwelling neckbeards who became elitist trolls, but on the positive tread of the tire, it was the Star Wars fans who popularized the meme phrase "spoilers" in that early internet phase – and while there are cited examples of the phrase being used pre-internet, it truly was the Star Wars addicts that pushed it from web meme to culturally recognizable phrase.

Consequently here we are in a new exciting era in which we get to follow news and rumors and speculations on what we could possibly expect from Star Wars: Episode VII and the other chapters of the Sequel Trilogy. Having said that, we are in a completely new era now, with a lot of newer and younger fans out there, so I thought I would ramble on a bit about what we can expect, and the likelihood of certain elements arising.

Permit me to preface the list below by saying that I’ve held off from doing this article for some time. I wanted to wait until we at least had a confirmed director. And now we have, in the form of J.J. Abrams. But this also emphasizes an important aspect of Star Wars fan lore when it comes to new movies: EVERYTHING is rumor or speculation until confirmed by the official Star Wars site. This is almost biblical canon or Force Holocron or karma sutra or something to the hardcore SW nuts like me, and I can almost see the Prequel era speculators nodding their heads at this.

So here we go. Bear in mind, these are early days, and there are some only basic fundamentals we can ascertain right now. But at this point, in 2013, what can we possibly expect from Star Wars: Episode VII?

For those who celebrate Wookiee Life Day as opposed to all of the other end-of-year holidays, we have a treat for you… the Star Wars Holiday Special in 5 minutes, specially edited to only focus on the “live-action” stuff. Watch it here below.

If you haven’t seen the Holiday Special before, it’s certainly a gem from its time. If you thought Expanded Universe debates and Originals vs. Prequels debates turn out to divide fans, wait until you get in the middle of an argument about this thing.

Complete with Bea Arthur and Jefferson Starship, The Star Wars Holiday Special first aired in November 1978 and also featured Han and Chewie, Luke Skywalker with the WORST possible haircut ever, and Princess Leia singing a song that is sure to induce brain hemorrhages.

The original full special also marked a few firsts: one of which was the very first appearance of Boba Fett (before his debut in The Empire Strikes Back) in a short animated story involving Luke, Han, Chewie, the Droids, and some weird beast of burden Fett rides.