The Road to Episode Infinity: October 2014

Friday, October 31, 2014

Death Troopers

In October 2009, the first true Star Wars horror story was released. The somewhat disturbing cover let audiences know that this was not our childhood Star Wars novel. With a lot of blood and a tiny hint of stormtooper innards, Death Troopers was something new. Something unsettling had arrived to the Expanded Universe.

I hadn’t heard much about Joe Schreiber’s “Death Troopers” when I started reading it. I saw the book on occasion sitting in the Star Wars section of Barnes and Nobles, but it’s not something that I ever thought I would read. It seemed more like a gimmick- mixing Star Wars with horror. But as I read the thing I remembered, Star Wars is horror!

Flashing back to my childhood I remembered a dream from when I was quite young. Maybe four or five years old. This was a few years before I was even aware of Star Wars. I think my babysitter had watched “A New Hope” one night. I don’t remember sitting through anything past the opening crawl, but I must have because that night I had a dream of the Mos Eisley Cantina- All the weird and ghostly aliens drinking at that bar. To a five-year-old Star Wars isn’t just scary, it’s a nightmare! Darth Vader, the Tusken Raiders, even the Dianoga. After seeing the thing a hundred times fans forget how scary it must have been to a child of the 1970s or 1980s.

But as I read Death Troopers, I discovered a new height of horror in the Star Wars galaxy. The book takes place on a prisoner barge, dead in space, the engines broken. But there is hope. They come across a derelict Star Destroyer that has been abandoned by its crew. Or has it? There are no life forms on board, but maybe the Destroyer is not as empty as it seems.

Is this set-up original as far as the genre of Space Horror is concerned? Not really. It’s kind of predictable if you’ve seen enough episodes of Star Trek or Firefly or even Doctor Who. But it is scary and it’s the first time Star Wars has been this scary. Also, about halfway through there is a little surprise for the reader. Let’s just say the Empire has been keeping a few prisoners in solitary confinement. Maybe a certain smuggler and a certain co-pilot.

Death Troopers is a fair tale. It has good elements of horror. There are disturbing moments that churn your stomach. There are deaths. Not all the characters make it out alive. This is not a children’s book by any stretch of the imagination.

There are also good elements of Star Wars within the pages of Death Troopers. Therefore the book accomplishes what it sets out to accomplishes- it is a good blend of the two genres.

In December 2010 Joe Schreiber would publish a prequel to Death Troopers called “Red Harvest”. The title, of course, pays homage to Return of the Jedi’s working title “Blue Harvest: Horror Beyond Imagination”. Both books are available at your local book store or digital book store for those who have witnessed the death of book stores in their community.

Happy Halloween and until next time “May the Horrors be with you!”

Friday, October 10, 2014

Spooky Star Wars: Halloween Special Part 1

Galaxy of Fear

The Star Wars galaxy can be a scary place, but never too scary. Star Wars certainly never reaches horror-levels akin to Ridley Scott’s Aliens. But sometimes, on rare occasions, the franchise has dipped its toes into the genre of horror.

In 1997 “Horror” was reaching its apex of popularity. Kids were wearing “No Fear” shirts and reading “Goosebumps” books. Films such as “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last ThSummer” were conquering the box office. 1997, was a good time to be a kid.

1997 was also the year that Star Wars tried to cash in on the children’s horror genre with its series “Galaxy of Fear”. The first book in the series “Eaten Alive” had a cool holograph cover featuring a hideous monster. Any 90s child that was a fan of Star Wars and a fan of Goosebumps must have been eager to read this novel.

Except for some reason I didn’t. Maybe it’s because 1997 is the year I entered middle school or maybe it’s because even at the age of 12, I was skeptical about a Star Wars / Horror crossover series. Maybe I saw right through the marketing ploy. I don’t know why I didn’t read this series as a kid, so I decided to try as an adult.

“Galaxy of Fear” it turns out stars two orphans who lost their parents when Alderaan exploded. They were adopted by their mysterious shape-shifting uncle, Hoole. Tash is a force-sensative girl curious about the legendary Jedi whose history has been erased by the Imperial government through a series of “Chinese-Great-Firewall-Like” tactics. Her brother, Zak, is a skimboard enthusiast (pretty much a space version of Marty McFly).

The twelve-book series also features cameos from more famous Star Wars characters such as Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Princess Leia, but also some appearances from EU characters such as Thrawn and Dash Rendar.

Whilst reading through the first novel I wanted to get a rush of 90s horror nostalgia. But I have to say, it didn’t really happen. Author John Whitman tries to emulate “Goosebumps”, he really does. There is the fact that every chapter ends with a scary cliffhanger (even if the slimy thing that crawled around Tashes’ neck turns out to be a lei of flowers given to her by the locals). There are mysteries and monsters but at no times did the book feel “spooky”. Spooky is important. Spooky is the difference between action/adventure and horror.

In “Goosebumps” anything could happen and everything did happen. It was silly and zany at times, but literally anything could happen to the main characters. There were “Twilight-Zone-style” twist endings where on the final page characters could suddenly find themselves trapped in the body of a crow for eternity. You never knew what could happen in Goosebumps and the possibilities kept you wide awake all night long- not because you were scared, but because you were eagerly consuming the next chapter and the next and the next.

“Galaxy of Fear” is not “Goosebumps”. If for no other reason it is because these books are serialized. Tash and Zak are featured in every book. These kids can’t turn into crows or be trapped in a painting. Nothing could happen to the main characters because they have to be around for the next book, so there is no real danger.

I guess in retrospect what I learned from these books has very little to do with Star Wars and very much to do with how awesome those Goosebumps books were. I’ll definitely have to check out next summer’s Goosebumps film, which apparently stars Jack Black as R.L. Stein.

Star Wars would not jump back into the horror genre until many years later when the adult-novel “Death Troopers” was published. I’m not finished reading “Death Troopers” yet, but as far as “horror” goes, this one is the real deal. More next week!

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Star Wars Rebels

Since 1983, before my birth, there have been a lot of movies and TV shows with the title of “Star Wars”, but none of them have felt like “Star Wars”. Rebels does feel like "Star Wars" and it proves that there is a formula for a Star Wars movie. The formula was long forgot by its creator, but the Disney company has rediscovered that formula. Not every fan will be able to tell you why this feels like Star Wars and the prequels did not, but I am going to attempt to do this.

Point 1: Cinema

It is obvious that "Rebels" isn’t simply an average kids television show. The thing feels cinematic. It isn’t just that the music and sounds are lifted right from the original trilogy, or that you have those neat “Star Wars” transitions that wipe and swipe across the screen. The camera angles feel real. It is well paced. There are quiet moments that are well juxtaposed with the action, (which feels liked the action right out of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or "A New Hope"). I don’t know when Lucas or Spielberg forgot how to make these kinds of movies, but someone has remembered.

Point 2: Weight

Everything in Star Wars Rebels has weight. There are tons of little moments that prove this. The first time we see a walker on screen it creaks and squeaks and appears high above the viewer. And you get this chill down your spine. This small shot is a “set-up” for episode 2. When we see these walkers again. In the “Droids” episode there are two of them! And they are hard to defeat. The characters have to work together and come up with an interesting solution to take down the walkers. It’s like the Hoth battle in Empire Strikes Back.

If this were the prequels or “The Clone Wars” there might be 700 walkers and some Jedi would use the force to knock them all over or some clone trooper would throw a bomb and they would all blow up. But when things are so easily defeated the threat is eliminated and the thing doesn’t feel “cool” anymore. That’s why I don’t care about any of the droids or ships from the prequel trilogy: everything just blows up. There are like one-million things on the screen constantly exploding and nothing has weight.

Point 3: Characters and Plot

There is a main protagonist in this show and his name is Space Aladdin. There are also five other lead characters: Samurai-Jedi, Pilot-Oola, Sexy Boba-Fett, Aussie-Chewbacca, and Grumpy-Orange-R2-D2. The episodes of this show follow this rag-tag band of out-laws as they steal from the empire and sell to low-life criminals. This show is basically "Firefly".

That’s pretty much the plot. It’s simple. Can you please describe the main characters and plot of the Star Wars prequels? Is there a main character in the prequels? Is it Anakin? He’s barely in the first film. It can’t be Anakin, he’s the bad guy. Maybe it’s Obi-wan. Is there a main plot? If there is one, it’s certainly not a simple one.

I feel like “Clone Wars” yearns for a main character and plot even more than the prequels. If the main characters are Anakin and Asoka, how come they aren’t in half the episodes?

The characters in Rebels feel real. They aren’t just stiff puppets. There are moments when they are lounging around the ship. They are slouched over or have there arms slung over a chair and you think “Hey, that’s how real people lounge around”. Compare this to how stiff every character looks in any prequel “dialogue” scene.

These small subtleties make the characters feel human. They are more than marionettes that are just there to take part in the action or carry-out the plot. The characters do and say things that feel organic. The dialogue in this show is decent and borderline clever.

Point 4: There are no lessons

Every “Clone Wars” episode would start with a quote, which told us what lesson we were suppose to learn from the episode. Then things would explode and a million blaster shots would be fired and at the end of it all, the characters would basically talk about how they learned some kind of lesson.

There are no fracking lessons in “Rebels”. If there are “lessons” they are much harder to put your finger on. You have to really think about it and even after that, there are no easy answers.

One example is the character Zeb. His species is endangered because the Empire freaking killed them all. If this were “Clone Wars” you might have Padme on the screen saying something like “Genocide is wrong!” and then she would address the senate and they would be outraged but some crooked senator would make some sly deal because he was evil.

Rebels is different. First of all it doesn’t make a blanket statement, like “Genocide is wrong!” It focuses on a character who has been torn apart by genocide and shows us how he is feeling about it. But this isn’t some little helpless alien that we should feel sorry for, this is a big rude brute that we aren’t sure if we have warmed up to yet, and the fact that his race has been extinguished and that he is emotional about it, helps us feel something for him. There is no doubt the Empire is evil here, but it’s not just to be evil. If I were the Empire I might take down this guys species too. They seem ornery and dangerous.

Nitpicky?

Some people might say that I am being nitpicky. But really they are just accusing me of having tastes and standards. Someone who likes beer will talk about the subtleties of the taste, how the flavors are well balanced or how much the malts are roasted. If you give them a Bud Light and they don’t like it and you accuse them of being too picky, then you are being a douche-bag, not them. This is how many fans (and casual viewers) feel about the prequel trilogy and Clone Wars- That it’s Bud Light and they at least wanted a Leinenkugel. Lucas forgot how to make good beer a long time ago, but Disney- Disney has been brewing good beer for children for generations! Hmmm…. my metaphor kind of got away there.