Showing posts with label Star Wars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Star Wars. Show all posts
Sunday, 3 February 2013
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Disney buy LucasFilm
Breaking News! The Quantum Geek is now covering Breaking News! As it breaks and everything!
So, looks like Disney has now bought LucasFilm. And they plan on making more films. As expected, Star Wars fans around the world (as personified by the majority of people on my Facebook news feed) are a bit up in arms.
'Course, I can understand the concern. I won't go into detail, needless to say you'll be seeing the arguments posted up a lot over the next few days. But in an effort to stem the endless tide of nerd rage, here's a few more positive thoughts...
1.) We've already seen the exact same flood of rage when Disney bought out Marvel. The effect on the comics? Virtually none that I can see. We also got access to Disney funding for Marvel Studios, which resulted in the Avengers movie.
2.) Speaking of said movie, it was written by Joss Whedon. If Whedon had written the Star Wars prequels, I'm fairly certain they'd have been a lot better, amiright? There's another rather famous fanboy film maker with something of a history with Disney (through Miramax, admittedly), by the name of Kevin Smith.
3.) This way I might actually see the $@%£ing live-action TV series before I die.
4.) I know it's a bit trendy to play Spit on Lucas, but for a while now he's pretty much been the only one to consistently balls up what the rest of the world thinks of as Star Wars. Lucas gave us Anakin Skywalker, Watto (a "Toydarian") and [expletive deleted] Jar Jar Binks. Other people working the IP? They gave us Mara Jade, Prince Xizor, and Darth Revan.
So yeah. I'm not without my own reservations here, I'll admit it. But even if the glass is half empty, it doesn't need to be a glass of Rancor piss.
So, looks like Disney has now bought LucasFilm. And they plan on making more films. As expected, Star Wars fans around the world (as personified by the majority of people on my Facebook news feed) are a bit up in arms.
 |
| This seems to be the major concern. |
'Course, I can understand the concern. I won't go into detail, needless to say you'll be seeing the arguments posted up a lot over the next few days. But in an effort to stem the endless tide of nerd rage, here's a few more positive thoughts...
1.) We've already seen the exact same flood of rage when Disney bought out Marvel. The effect on the comics? Virtually none that I can see. We also got access to Disney funding for Marvel Studios, which resulted in the Avengers movie.
2.) Speaking of said movie, it was written by Joss Whedon. If Whedon had written the Star Wars prequels, I'm fairly certain they'd have been a lot better, amiright? There's another rather famous fanboy film maker with something of a history with Disney (through Miramax, admittedly), by the name of Kevin Smith.
3.) This way I might actually see the $@%£ing live-action TV series before I die.
4.) I know it's a bit trendy to play Spit on Lucas, but for a while now he's pretty much been the only one to consistently balls up what the rest of the world thinks of as Star Wars. Lucas gave us Anakin Skywalker, Watto (a "Toydarian") and [expletive deleted] Jar Jar Binks. Other people working the IP? They gave us Mara Jade, Prince Xizor, and Darth Revan.
So yeah. I'm not without my own reservations here, I'll admit it. But even if the glass is half empty, it doesn't need to be a glass of Rancor piss.
Thursday, 2 August 2012
Thursday, 19 July 2012
Tuesday, 10 July 2012
Friday, 6 July 2012
Thursday, 5 July 2012
Star Wars Droids: The Jawa Adventure
"C-3PO and R-2D2 embark on a rollicking adventure when the Jawas hijack an experimental Mon Calimari starship. Enjoy this Star Wars fan film written and directed by Brad Murphy and created in 3 months by the June 2012 graduating class of the Digital Animation and Visual Effects School!"
Thursday, 28 June 2012
What happened to the Star Wars that I used to know?
"You tried to make The Force make sense, so you introduced the midi-chlorians ..." Genius!
Tuesday, 26 June 2012
Thursday, 14 June 2012
Book Review - Star Wars The Old Republic: Revan
So, time for a good old fashioned book review. Unlike the delectable EJ, I'll be sticking to boring old written words rather than a video. I'm camera shy. Honest. It has absolutely nothing to do with that really embarrassing video of me dancing the Macarena. Really.
So today's offering is Revan, by Drew Karpyshyn. I'll keep it as spoiler-free as possible, but only so far as the book itself goes. If you haven't played Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel, stop right here, spoilers abound. Mind you, if you haven't played at least the first game in that series, I'm not entirely sure you'd even want to read this, it being the 'proper' third instalment of that series, more so than Old Republic itself.
Right then, are we ready? Nobody here that shouldn't be? Okay. The first thing worth mentioning here is that I was not really a fan of Karpyshyn as a novelist. I'd previously read Mass Effect: Revelation, and struggled to get to the end. Despite being set in the über-awesome Mass Effect setting, and featuring none other than Saren Arterius in a staring role, it just never managed to capture that Mass Effect vibe.
So today's offering is Revan, by Drew Karpyshyn. I'll keep it as spoiler-free as possible, but only so far as the book itself goes. If you haven't played Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel, stop right here, spoilers abound. Mind you, if you haven't played at least the first game in that series, I'm not entirely sure you'd even want to read this, it being the 'proper' third instalment of that series, more so than Old Republic itself.
Right then, are we ready? Nobody here that shouldn't be? Okay. The first thing worth mentioning here is that I was not really a fan of Karpyshyn as a novelist. I'd previously read Mass Effect: Revelation, and struggled to get to the end. Despite being set in the über-awesome Mass Effect setting, and featuring none other than Saren Arterius in a staring role, it just never managed to capture that Mass Effect vibe.
 |
| "But I'm a writer's dream, damn you!" |
Not that he's a bad writer, of course. Were talking about a bloke who worked on some of my favourite games ever; Baldur's Gate II, Jade Empire, KOTOR, and the Mass Effect series. But writing a novel and writing a video-game (which I assume is a bit like writing a script, rightly or wrongly) are two different kettles of fish, and Karpyshyn didn't seem to have found his feet for that one.
But I went in with an open mind, I promise. I mean, this is Revan we're talking about. He's pretty much a blank slate as far as characterisation goes, but still manages to bring a massive amount of awesome to the table. Let's face it, finding out who Darth Revan's real identity was about a thousand times cooler than Vader turning out to be Luke's dad, and like Vader he also had that awesome, iconic look.
 |
| "Ignore my fugly apprentice, there's a reason the artist made me look taller than his two meter ass." |
So needless to say, I was a bit disappointed that the way Karpyshyn deals with this setup is to take a brand new character and split the book fifty fifty with him. I can understand the reasons behind it, but lets be realistic; 90% of the people who pick this up are probably doing it to read about Revan, not Lord Scourge.
Yes, Lord Scourge. In the long line of bad villain names, that one deserves some kind of award. I'm not sure Karpyshyn named him mind, seeing as he's a character in the new Old Republic game, and has his name mocked within the narrative, but it's still cringe worthy. It doesn't help that despite half the book focusing on a Sith warrior, at no point do we really get any insights into the Sith themselves, or the rise of the new (or rather old) Empire Bioware have created for Old Republic. Instead we're left with what feels like a really long introduction to a fairly two-dimension character.
Revan himself fares much better, though he still comes across a touch bland. He's not you're typical Jedi even after his redemption, and still seems unable to resist winding up those he doesn't like (his meeting with the irritating Atris from KOTOR II is one of the more entertaining moments), and when he's not playing the family man with Bastila he's spending time in cantinas with Mandalorian sociopaths.
 |
| Canderous Ordo: Apparently Mandalorians are so cool even being stalker-ish Revan fanboys doesn't make them any less badass. |
But even here, Revan doesn't seem to really pop. There's no real characterisation, just Revan as a sort of pop culture icon swinging a lightsaber from time to time. And that's a problem; nobody expects these sort of books to be amazing examples of literature; I don't expect a Warhammer 40k book to be the new Kerouac, and I don't expect Shakespeare from Star Wars. But books based on IPs stand or fall on their representation of the setting and the representation of their characters.
So, all in all not great. So the really surprising thing? Despite all that, I actually didn't hate it. It's not a good read but neither is it a difficult read, so it didn't take long to finish. For me, the real enjoyment was in closing the story started in KOTOR; frankly, Old Republic doesn't do that at all. It's not what I hoped for, but for the sake of a few hours it was nice to revisit things.
Sunday, 10 June 2012
Star Wars 1313 Gameplay Trailers from E3
Okay, time for my first post. A first post is always going to be somewhat problematic, even just in deciding what to write about; "anything geeky" is a pretty wide mandate, after all. What medium do I go for? Comic-books? Games? Films? And then what franchise? I'm mildly obsessed with everything from Final Fantasy VII to Game of Thrones, after all...
Star Wars. I'm always safe with Star Wars.
So back at the start of June my brother let me know about this; given my love of all things Star Wars - and particularly my love of all things Star Wars bounty hunters - it seemed like something I should know about. Now, thanks to E3, we finally have a bit of solid information to go on.
Turns out it's a Star Wars version of Uncharted. Let me make that extra clear, for those of you at the back not paying attention. They have mixed this;
With this;
It's early days, but this is potentially more win than my body has room for. For more information, head on over to IGN. Need further reason to geek out completely? CT-1313 was an alias used by Boba Fett himself in the novel Boba Fett: Maze of Deception, according to Wookieepedia. Read into that what you will...
Star Wars. I'm always safe with Star Wars.
So back at the start of June my brother let me know about this; given my love of all things Star Wars - and particularly my love of all things Star Wars bounty hunters - it seemed like something I should know about. Now, thanks to E3, we finally have a bit of solid information to go on.
Turns out it's a Star Wars version of Uncharted. Let me make that extra clear, for those of you at the back not paying attention. They have mixed this;
With this;
It's early days, but this is potentially more win than my body has room for. For more information, head on over to IGN. Need further reason to geek out completely? CT-1313 was an alias used by Boba Fett himself in the novel Boba Fett: Maze of Deception, according to Wookieepedia. Read into that what you will...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)