Throughout the sequel trilogy, Finn is adept at making both quick quips and rousing speeches. Here are just a few of our favorite lines from a hero who really is a big deal in the Resistance.
1.“Finn. I like that.” (Star Wars: The Force Awakens)
2.“I’m a big deal in the Resistance.” (Star Wars: The Force Awakens)
3.“That’s one hell of a pilot!” (Star Wars: The Force Awakens)
4.“I’m in charge now, Phasma. I’m in charge.” (Star Wars: The Force Awakens)
5.“You’re wrong.” (Star Wars: The Last Jedi)
6.“Rebel scum.” (Star Wars: The Last Jedi)
7.“We gotta take out that cannon.” (Star Wars: The Last Jedi)
8.“Rey, I never told you–” (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker)
9.“We’re all in this. Until the end.” (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker)
10.“Leia never gave up. And neither will we.” (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker)
WhatCulture Star Wars is dedicated to all things Star Wars. We’ll have all the usual lists, features, and news, plus there’ll be Ups & Downs for all the latest shows and new Star Wars movies. The force is with us!
Meanwhile, Doctor Aphra tries to finally free herself of the Spark Eternal. StarWars.com Team
Chewie can’t seem to catch a break. In Marvel’s Star Wars: Han Solo & Chewbacca, things haven’t been going so well for our favorite Wookiee. The Millennium Falcon is missing. So is a certain urn that he and Han were hired to deliver to Jabba the Hutt. Han is presumed dead. And now Chewbacca’s stuck in a big, big jail. In StarWars.com’s exclusive first look at Marvel’s Star Wars: Han Solo & Chewbacca #6, Chewie finds himself on the prison planet of Gulhadar, and he’s having some trouble making friends.
Meanwhile, in Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #24, the rogue archaeologist struggles to break free of the Spark Eternal — an ancient dark power — once and for all…
This issue was remarkable, because as it was coming together, the news about the Disney acquisition and the new Star Wars trilogy was just about to break. I wouldn’t call myself an editor of the magazine – I just advise when and where I can – but this time, I got to channel the ink-fingered editors of yore and put a call out to HOLD THAT FRONT COVER!
I had gotten wind that these announcements would soon be public while I was at New York Comic-Con, which made for some very cagey phone calls with Lucasfilm while I was at a very public venue (oh, if only the people within earshot had any idea what we were talking about!). As soon as I got back to California, Howard Roffman led us in hammering out a plan on how this news would be announced on starwars.com. It was kept to a very small group of people at first, and I didn’t want Insider to miss what would be the biggest Star Wars news in years.On October 25, I emailed editor Jonathan Wilkins at Titan Magazines, requesting that every effort be made to accommodate an upcoming major announcement that was brewing at Lucasfilm. “This could end up being the most important issue you’ve published to date,” I wrote, but I could not give him any specifics. I just said to hold the cover (and never advised what to run instead of a planned Clone Wars cover) and said that I have about 4,800 words of story coming his way, so that he had to move editorial around to make room. To his credit, Jonathan responded exactly the way a Star Wars fan should: he was excited to hear what was coming.
Now, per schedule, the content for issue #138 – which arrives at newsstands tomorrow – was supposed to be delivered by mid-September. Here we were, way past that deadline; we had to move fast. George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy had sat down to record their video conversation with Lynne Hale on October 19th. A few days later, I got to review the video in its entirety to help advise where individual featurettes could be cut from this longer piece. I figured while starwars.com got to run the shorter video chapters, the Insider could present the entirety of the interview for those who prefer reading their news and having this content in textual form for easy future reference, without fast-forwarding and rewinding. (Full disclosure: I’m a text guy. I’m not a video guy. I prefer to read on the Internet. And if you’ve made it this far, maybe you do too!)
So I quickly transcribed the text by the 24th, a 4,800-word document (turns out, I’m really good at estimating word counts), and reformatted the text by topic and turned it into a feature article for Insider. Issue #138 communicates this major news in the world of Star Wars in a format worth preserving in print, and also has some content that has not yet made it online or will never make it into the web series.
Of course, that’s only one of the features in this issue of the magazine. There’s plenty more filling out Insider #138.
Scoundrel Days. The deep mining of some never-before-published gems continues with the surfacing of a Harrison Ford interview from January 1977. This is before Star Wars exploded into a worldwide phenomenon, and is based on a discovery made by JW Rinzler of interviews done by Charley Lippincott during the making of Episode IV. This completes a trilogy of rare interviews; issue #137 featured a similar article with Mark Hamill, while issue #136 featured Carrie Fisher.
Scoundrels: We Like the Sound of That. Speaking of Scoundrels, this is the issue that pays tribute to Timothy Zahn’s forthcoming heist novel. Tricia Barr interviews Zahn about the making of this eagerly anticipated book that takes Han, Lando, and some other checkered rogues and put them firmly in their underworld element.
Heist: Zahn supplies the exclusive fiction in this issue, with a short stories that stars two of the scoundrels from his book, the beautiful and resourceful cat burglar twins Bink and Tavia Kitik. Brian Rood (who illustrated the portraits in The Essential Reader’s Companion) provides the artwork.
The Art of Tsuneo Sanda: On the subject of art, one of the nicest and most talented Star Wars artists is profiled in this issue by Mark Newbold. Sanda-san has been illustrating Star Wars for over ten years, including some striking pieces that have appeared in previous issues of Insider as well as Star Wars Celebration.
Celebration VI Through the Eyes Of… Celebration VI continues to be a subject of discussion – no surprise, given an event as big and exciting as that convention. In this feature article, some of the guests themselves offer their inside look at what made the event so memorable. Mark Hamill offers his perspective, as does James Arnold Taylor to interviewer Amy Ratcliffe. My particular favorite is the piece penned by Samantha Roberts, the daughter of Tom Kane. She describes how she would not let her battle with Hodgkins Lymphona get in the way of appearing at Celebration VI in costume as Asajj Ventress. It’s an inspiring and heartwarming tale that shows the power of Star Wars and its fans.
And More. Bantha Tracks celebrates the Season of Giving, Catherine Taber shows off an impressive knowledge of blaster types, the comics column looks at the latest arc in Dawn of the Jedi, Incoming is filled with Angry Birds while Rogues Gallery profiles some pigs – Ugnaughts and Gamorreans – and the sexy Black Milk models make this issue’s cover of Blaster one to remember.
And there’s more beyond that, so check out Titan Magazine’s official site here for more about Star Wars Insider, and go like ‘em on Facebook.
The fishy comics store-exclusive cover for issue #138.
Pablo Hidalgo is paid to know the difference between Romba and Lumat and dies a little bit inside when you misspell Wookiee or Lucasfilm.
The Arcona species are one of the weirdest species in all of Star Wars, see how they compared to other species, their complete breakdown, history and biology.
Check out the special launch event for #Andor, at the iconic El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California. Join host Jennifer Landa and hear from the cast and creators on the burgeoning rebellion against the Empire.
The Original series is now streaming on #DisneyPlus.
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This is not your Daddy’s STAR WARS! At least that’s what some are saying about Disney+’s latest live-action series, ANDOR. Join RFR for a whole new season of After Shows, where we review and reflect on this exciting new series episode by episode. Plus, we will open the RFR switchboard to take your calls live on the air. So, be sure to chat, comment and call with your thoughts and observations on the first three episodes of ANDOR. The action starts tonight at 9 p.m. ET… and we promise to leave you fat and satisfied!
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Official YouTube Video Home for Rebel Force Radio: Star Wars Podcast
Everything you never knew about the most anticipated movie threequel of all time.
WhatCulture Star Wars is dedicated to all things Star Wars. We’ll have all the usual lists, features, and news, plus there’ll be Ups & Downs for all the latest shows and new Star Wars movies. The force is with us!
The Arcona species are one of the weirdest species in all of Star Wars, see how they compared to other species, their complete breakdown, history and biology.
Andor is finally out! What did you think of the first three episodes? I loved them and can’t wait to talk about this series with all of you for the next ten weeks!
In their marketing campaign for the latest Star Wars live-action series, Andor, Lucasfilm and the cast and crew behind the project tried to stress a handful of things to the public. Perhaps the most important one is that this is no regular Star Wars series — it is as close to an HBO drama as Star Wars can get, with no Jedi or lightsabers around. Tony Gilroy, the showrunner, head writer, and executive producer on the series, is famously not a Star Wars fanatic (something that was definitely interesting in some aspects, as I’ll discuss later), and was drawn to the project because of the character drama that he found behind it, as well as the scope that he would be able to achieve with the backing of a huge machine like Disney and Lucasfilm’s.
Diego Luna, who plays 21-year-old, future Rebel spy Cassian Andor, was immediately sold on Gilroy’s pitch, as the writer wanted to test the limits of what Lucasfilm would be willing to do with Star Wars. Right off the bat, he announces to the audience that he wasn’t kidding with all of his talk, when Cassian Andor walks into a brothel in the very first scene of the show. While it certainly isn’t the first time sex is alluded to in Star Wars, Andor got quite explicit in the first two episodes, both in this scene and when Adria Arjona’s Bix visits his booty call late at night in the second episode.
It’s clear from the very beginning that Gilroy doesn’t care about pleasing a fanbase or checking the classic StarWars boxes that creators like Dave Filoni or Jon Favreau would. And that is not a burn on them either, it’s just a different piece of content, and something StarWars should be grateful for. Gilroy also doesn’t care about keeping awake those who set their alarms at 3am to watch the new Star Wars episode by throwing flashy action sequences in their faces. He builds his story through dialogue and character conflict, and through careful setup in the first two episodes, he finally delivers a grand spectacle in the third. But we’ll get to that….
As someone always on the lookout for rare old Star Wars photos, I was pleased to discover Forbes.com’s Geek Beat columnist David M. Ewalt had unearthed a cool old gem from the vaguely-documented “Star Wars Holiday Special” of 1978, which we actually lent a bit of coverage to a couple years ago.
While researching a couple of those pieces, I came across a rare Associated Press image of Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in photocopied articles from 1978, but couldn’t locate the original in Lucasfilm’s expansive Image Archives (apparently, wire photos were not automatically sent to LFL for approval and/or cataloging). Enter Ewalt’s Geek Beat column, which appears to have located the original shot of Ford and Fisher in a rare backstage moment captured by AP photographer George Brich.
Ah, to be a fly on the wall to hear what Ford is sharing with Fisher before their next Holiday Special take…
With the arrival of the three-episode series premiere, now streaming on Disney+, the creator/executive producer and cast discuss their revolutionary look at the Rebellion. Kristin Baver
When Rogue One: A Star Wars Story debuted in theaters in 2016, it was lauded as a gritty new installment in the galaxy far, far away, a previously unexplored chapter that took viewers to the brink of the Galactic Civil War raging throughout the original trilogy. With Andor, the new Star Wars series streaming exclusively on Disney+ beginning today, creator and executive producer Tony Gilroy has returned to tell not only the origin story of unlikely hero Cassian Andor (played once again by Diego Luna), but — perhaps more importantly — take fans deep into the sometimes-ugly heart of the brewing rebellion. This previously unexplored perspective on the history of the Rebel Alliance finds Andor in a raw and unflinching portrayal of the personal sacrifices made in the course of challenging the Empire’s rule and the people at work in the trenches on both sides.
The show’s existence owes a debt to the enduring popularity of the Star Wars zeitgeist, Gilroy noted in a recent press conference. “There’s this huge, dedicated Star Wars community that shows up. That’s what gave us the money and the momentum and the ability to make a show that’s this insanely big, this abundant, and this difficult to make.” But he hopes the story of Cassian’s journey from petty criminal to Rebel Intelligence officer daring to steal the Death Star plans will offer a fresh take on the space fantasy as enticing for existing fans as it is for new ones. “There’s nothing cynical about our show. The word we use more every day…is real. We want to make this real. This place is real to us. Our show is designed that this could be your entry point to Star Wars. We’re doing a show that does not require any prior knowledge whatsoever to get involved.”Gilroy recognizes that it’s a risk to pen a Star Wars story with no lightsaber-swinging Jedi Knights — one that feels more akin to the spy thrillers and sweeping dramas on his screenwriting résumé. “Can we bring something that’s so intense emotionally and seems so true and has the smallest domestic dramas and the smallest interpersonal relationships that are dropped down in the midst of the epic tectonic revolutionary historical moments where people have to make huge decisions? Can we attract another audience that’s interested in that as well? Can we marry those two things together?” Gilroy asks. “That’s the gamble. That’s what we’re trying to do.”…
The three-episode series premiere is now streaming on Disney+. StarWars.com Team
The rebellion is here.
Andor, the highly-anticipated Original series, has arrived on Disney+ with a three-episode premiere. Created by Tony Gilroy, the spy thriller stars Diego Luna, reprising the role of Cassian Andor in a tale set five years prior to the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Joining Luna is Genevieve O’Reilly, returning as Mon Mothma (Rogue One, Tin Can), as well as Stellan Skarsgard (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Good Will Hunting), Denise Gough (Collett, Angels in America), Adria Arjona (Pacific Rim:Uprising), and Kyle Soller (Anna Karenina, The Titan). And making his debut is B2EMO, our newest favorite droid….
Andor comes out tomorrow! Here are my spoiler-free thoughts on the first four episodes of the series. In short, I love it. It’s very different from the previous live action Star Wars series. It’s very unique. It’s light on the action, but never boring. I can’t wait to talk about it more over the next ten weeks!
Star Wars has been bringing a broad range of content to Disney+ from the anime anthology of Visionsto the blockbuster event of The Mandalorian. Now, the galaxy far, far away has something new to offer with Andor, a spy thriller starring Diego Luna’s Rogue One rebel.
As most will be aware, Cassian Andor, unfortunately, met his demise by the end of Rogue One with the Empire’s destruction of Scariff in his efforts to retrieve the plans for the Death Star. But Andor will jump back five years before his death to explore his early days as a rebel spy.
Ahead of the premiere of the 12-episode first season on Wednesday, September 21, Andor has already been picked up for Season 2 which will lead directly up to Rogue One, ultimately telling the whole story of Cassian’s rebel journey.
Clearly, Lucasfilm is going all-in on Andor and creator Tony Gilroy’s vision for a spy thriller in the Star Wars galaxy. But are the early episodes even worth watching? The Direct got the opportunity to preview the first four episodes of Andor, and here’s why it’s worth the watch….
As an addendum to our original post (below) about the “Vader is Luke’s father” spoiler appearing in the April 1978 issue of Little Shoppe of Horrors:
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Major Empire Spoiler Actually Dropped in 1977
A lot of buzz has surrounded a recent post at retroist.com concerning an alleged major spoiler leak made two years before The Empire Strikes Back was released. The article, which we’ve identified as having appeared in the July 24, 1978 issue of The San Francisco Examiner, relays comments made by Dave Prowse (Darth Vader) claiming that the sequel would reveal that Darth Vader is in fact Luke’s father. Actually, it turns out, this little rumor had been dropped several months earlier in a fanzine called Little Shoppe of Horrors #4 (April 1978), which featured an exclusive (and lengthy) Prowse interview (reprint copies can be found on eBay, which is where we picked up ours thanks to a tip from SW bibliographer Bob Miller).
Among the passages of the interview, which, according to the author, were collected between October and December, 1977 (including a public discussion at the Horror Elite Convention in October), were these sentences, which seem to mirror the comments made in the SF Examiner interview:
“In the next film, there is going to be a confrontation between Luke and Darth Vader and they then discover that Darth Vader never killed his father, that Darth Vader IS his father. So son can’t kill father, and father can’t kill son — so Darth Vader lives into the next sequel.”
So, it would appear the original Retroist post title – “Yes, They Did Have Star Wars Spoilers Back in 1978” was almost correct. Actually, they go as far back as October, 1977.
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Star Wars author Ryder Windham recently sent us a heads-up on another instance of this spoiler showing up in early 1978:
“Earlier today, I found myself perusing the first issue of Future magazine, cover date April 1978,” says Windham. “The issue has a ‘Databank’ feature for ‘News Items from the World of the Present’ on pages 6-7, and includes this entry for Star Wars…”
“In the realm of the Wars, George Lucas has approached all of the original film’s principals, including Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Dave Prowse, Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker. Noted SF author Leigh Brackett has been approached with the task of writing the screenplay for the big-budgeted sequel. One of the key elements in the second script may be the origin of the Dark Lord, Darth Vader. One version of his life being considered for the forthcoming production will reveal a young, handsome Darth turning rogue Jedi, killing Luke Skywalker’s father and being pushed into a pool of molten lava by avenging angel Ben Kenobi. Darth is so badly scarred that he dons his black armor forever. It serves as a combination exoskeleton and walking iron lung. The second version portrays Darth as being, in reality, Luke Skywalker’s father. After a psychological trauma, Luke’s father succumbs to the darker nature of The Force and allows all that is good within him to die. And rising from the ashes of his soul is Darth, the arch-foe of all that is righteous. Whatever Vader’s fate in the as-yet-embryonic script, the film began pre-production in London in January.”
The first scenario mentioned – the one where Vader is pushed into molten lava by Kenobi – was likely lifted from a Rolling Stone interview with George Lucas in 1977. The source for the second scenario – the father one – is uncertain, unless the reporter was within earshot of Prowse’s comments recorded at the October 1977 Horror Elite Convention (and referenced in our original post).
In any case, that cat was out of the bag by April ’78, although it fortunately didn’t get picked up by the mainstream media, allowing the Dark Lord’s identity — as Kenobi says — to remain safely anonymous until 1980.
Breaking down the most controversial Star Wars movie of all time.
WhatCulture Star Wars is dedicated to all things Star Wars. We’ll have all the usual lists, features, and news, plus there’ll be Ups & Downs for all the latest shows and new Star Wars movies. The force is with us!
