Can I persuade you to join us for the drink of the show? It's a tradition. Here, here Georgia homie, my main man. Quickly, before the separatists attacked. Get into the escape. Just his escape and wear the pot. Welcome back to Star Wars Escape Pod. It's been two weeks since our last episode and a whole year, believe it or not. So happy new year, everybody, and I hope everyone had a really good Christmas break, great holiday, and here we are, 2023, come of blazing.
And we're lighting things up with our new logo, if you hadn't noticed. And as a first episode to 2023, we're going to be diving right into the escape pod with our co host Blake and looking back at everything that happened in Star Wars 2022. And a look ahead at 2023. Let's get into it. Another happy landing. All right. Welcome back, sir. Hello there. Good be back as always. A new year. Yeah, new year.
I mean, what's crazy about Star Wars these days is anytime a new year rolls by, it's not like we're mourning time having gone by since the last star was movie hit theaters like we were in 2006 after Revenge of the Sift was in the theater. And now here we are. Every single year that goes by, we got so much more to look forward to. Yeah, for sure. It just feels like a whirlwind. Honestly, I can't even believe it's been a year. There's just so much going on. Yeah, it's been nuts.
It's been a packed year. So in this episode, we're going to go back and just condensely talk about what exactly happened last year for anyone who kind of missed anything. You mentioned just before we started recording that you hadn't even seen everything on the list. No, there's a few things, obviously. I've seen all the shows and I've read a handful of books and stuff. But there's more behind the scenes stuff, like specific stuff that I recall coming out and I was like, oh, I should watch that.
And then just lost into the ether who never got to it. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll get into that and then we'll also do a little bit of looking ahead at 2023, what what this year has in store, which is of course going to be a very incomplete list as soon as celebration hits in spring, I guess, because later this year will be another Star Wars celebration. And I feel like they always save a few things. They keep a few things up their sleeve for things like that.
So we'll just all look at this list as kind of what's been confirmed for this year so far with the rest of this year to kind of look forward to more announcements coming down the road. But before we kick things off, just got to say project YouTube is done. Every single episode that we've ever done on the podcast is now available on our YouTube channel. So go and subscribe. It's very impressive. I'm honestly incredibly impressed.
To manage to get through all that and put it up, that is a huge undertaking. It was a huge undertaking, man. So, yeah, if anyone doesn't know, the process was essentially downloading our MP3 file for each and every single podcast episode, which at the time when this process started, it was around 220 something, 225, 227, whatever. Now we're at about 236 something around there, if I'm not mistaken.
But yeah, we take the audio file, pipe it into a giant video loop that I constructed and essentially exporting it out, waiting for that thing to render. And then once one of them is done upload to YouTube, fill in the title, the description, just copy paste over from our original podcast upload and throw in a thumbnail and there you have it. Now the episode is on YouTube, but it's just like rinse and repeat for every single episode all the way up until 230 whatever now it is. Thanks.
So if you ever want to relisten, easy way to search it, find it on YouTube. Yeah, you can find on YouTube now. So go and subscribe there anyone who's listening right now to Star Wars, Kpop on Spotify or Google or Castbox or iHeartRadio, whatever you're on, go and subscribe to the YouTube channel. Because the more subscribers we get, the more stuff that we can do down the road.
Because at a certain subscriber level, we unlock new kind of channel features and stuff like that, we'll be able to utilize the actual video aspect a little more from the channel. I know that's something that we've both wanted to do for a little while, create shorts or whatever. So, yeah, go and subscribe. Find your favorite episode on there.
Give it a like the other thing we're going to be doing is because this process takes a bit more time to distribute on YouTube with the conversion process, with the video loop. We're going to be doing premieres for each new episode the day after the podcast episode has been published.
So if you're listening to this episode right now on a podcast app, audio only, what's going to happen is you can go to YouTube and find it there the next day, set to release at a certain time, probably 01:00 p.m., something around there. And you can feel free to kind of watch it live as if it was being aired live on YouTube. It's just a new thing that they've got for the last couple of years now. They've had this premiere feature just a few times.
Pretty neat, I think there's often like a chat so you can chat with people who are also watching the same time as you. Yeah, exactly. So that and the discord. We got the forms going on in the discord server. We've had a few people join lately, but feel free to hit that link in the description box, join the discord and feel free to just jump in those forms. We want to hear what are your thoughts about Jedi Fall in Order and, I don't know, Jedi Survivor, the upcoming game, whatever.
Just speculate. We like to hear from our audience and that's a great way for us to connect with people. Yeah. Or you can feel free to ask us any questions. If you had any burning questions, just at Josh or at Blake and we'll get back to you. Yeah, exactly. It's not a massive server, so it's not like those kind of things are going to bother us like it would if there was like a 100,000 people in there. But yeah, right now it's really fledgling, really small.
So get in there while small and take advantage of the fact that you can just connect with us individually like that swell, go check out Swell. Minor mention of that. But I've been posting little Swells of the Week where I just pose a question and that's pretty much it. Sometimes we'll get a reply and sometimes we don't. But just as an example, I feel like I should just play like a small, little segment to one, just so you guys know what I'm talking about. So here we go.
Here was the most recent one. I'll play a little bit of this, the lowest. Well, and this is going to be our last well of 2022 at least is right now 2022 in the part of the world in which I am currently flying the escape pod. And we've had quite a year of Star Wars, of course, behind us. 2022 is filled with a lot of cool stuff and we got even more to look forward to in 2023. But first off, I got to say this.
Thank you so much to Jack and Taylor for replying to so many of the Swells I put out so far. I know it's fairly rejuvenated account that I've got going on here with Star Wars Escape on Swell, but it's fun. It's fun to post a little kind of question of the week, not quite long enough to do a full length podcast episode. And some of you guys here on Swell aren't into listening to full length podcast episodes, which is all good.
So that's what makes me very happy to get involved here and bring the Star Wars to you. So question of the week, our last question of the week for 2022. What was your favorite Star Wars of 2022? There's so much to choose from. I mean, we kicked off the year with the book above. All right. Yeah. So that's a little previews, like an ad for the podcast we're doing right now. Yeah, you know what specific episode it almost is. Yes. Swell got it first. Well, got it first.
So, yeah, here we are with the full length. But yeah, go check out Swell. It's free. And it's a bit like, you know, if if Twitter were to be transformed into audio only. It's it's a little bit like that. So it's kind of cool. 2022. Let's kick things off here. So we started off the year with can you remember what it was? Well, going to our list is Book of Boba Fat. It was you are correct, sir. Man getting, like, PTSD flashbacks on that from the Trivia. That's right. Yeah, man.
Because this last year was so busy, and it's all just kind of a blob in my head. So that means Book of Bubble Fat came out at the beginning of last year. Yeah, it was early spring. I think it was the beginning of last year or like, the end of the year before. But let me just damn, it's crazy. Yeah. I mean, it seems like it was a while ago. Sorry. Yeah, it was December 29, 2021. That's when it premiered. And it ran into a year. Yeah. So the majority of the show was last year.
It was between January and February for the majority of the show. But yeah, it was a year ago. And it doesn't feel like it's been a year ago, does it? No, it doesn't. Honestly, it feels about six months for me, maximum. Right? Yeah. So what do we think of that show? I mean, like, obviously we did all those reviews, those breakdowns for each episode each week. The general consensus, I feel like, if I'm remembering correctly, was overall, it was fairly good. Chase scenes continue to suck.
And there was something else. Boba's lost his badassery a little bit. Yeah. I think that's pretty accurate to what we had generally felt about it. It felt like a step down from Mandalorian, I think. I think it was tricky because I know, at least from my perspective, mando is what we had pictured Boba Fett of the original trilogy to be. Right. He was that badass bounty hunter. Then he went off, did his own storyline with Baby Yoda.
But then I feel like because they did that with Mando, they couldn't redo the same thing with Boba. So that's why they made him become this crime lord. he was the honorable one amongst the thieves, and it didn't play well with me, I think. Yeah. Bear in mind, I haven't seen this show in a year, so it's probably worth a rewatch to kind of see how I feel about it after a second launch. I'm going to be honest. That's where I left off.
The main issue for me was if Bobo wasn't enough of a badass, which is the last point you said there. Yeah. So I'm going to be honest. I recently rewatched this entire show. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Like, within the last three weeks kind of thing. And it's aged a little better on me. I think maybe it helped having showing it to somebody else. Maybe I was a little more optimistic with wanting it to feel like, I guess, better the second time. I don't know.
There was something about rewatching it now, though, it aged a little better than I think when we were going week to week, just kind of doing our regular breakdown review. Right. You're probably expecting more of the flashbacks because you've seen it before. Stuff like that. Yeah, I think once the expectations are taken out of the equation, a lot of these shows tend to age a little better than initial views. It really is true, though.
I think the last couple of episodes are significantly better than the first part of the show. Did it still feel janky with the Mandalorian episodes kind of in the middle? So that, for me, is when the show gets good. It's not a Boba Fett show, though, at that point. No. But it's a good episode, though, right? Because it's nothing against Boba Fett at all.
It's just really like, do we like the style of the show? How does the scale feel? Are these characters written? Well, these Mandalorian and Luke Skywalker episodes were just really well done. And it is, I guess, maybe something to do with the fact that perhaps maybe the story of the show was just, like, maybe not hitting all the right notes for a lot of people. But the finale, it came together pretty well. That whole rancour destruction of the city was still very cool.
I still have my own little personal gripes with how Cadbain looked, but I'm okay to drop it. I mean, I'm not like one of those people that has to hold onto it for life kind of thing. But, yeah, it's just a TV thing, I think, because the Grand Inquisitor had the same exact issue where it was makeup applied. Not enough facial head prosthetic to change the shape of someone's head from being ground to more long. Right. So? Yeah. I don't know. Overall, good show could have been better.
Still was great. Still rewatchable, and I'm looking forward to seeing if there's going to be a season, too. Good point. I think I'm due for rewatch on that one. I've seen the bulk Mandalorian seasons multiple times and they haven't got back to bubble Fett yet. Yeah, well and Mandalorian season three is right around the corner. It might be worth a resource us and any fans that are willing to do it. Kick off 2023 the same way we started 2022. Book a Boba fett. That's right.
Next up on the list disney Gallery. The book above that. So every now and again when a Disney Plus show comes out, they always do a really cool behind the scenes look at the show that came out, and it's called Disney Gallery. And this particular one, of course, focuses on the never before seen footage and technology that they use to make the book. A Boba Fed and interviews with the cast and the crew.
From what I remember, because I've only seen it once and it was a while ago, I remember it to be pretty good. But that was that was a highlight for me as well, of course, seeing how they pulled off the new and improved digital Luke Skywalker and seeing Mark Hamill in the Jedi robes and everything like that. That show was instrumental for all of that. So that was a cool highlight of last year for me. Did you see this one? That's one of the few that I didn't get to actually got you. All right.
Most of what I didn't get to is behind the scenes stuff, which is strange for me because I love that sort of stuff in a busy year. Yeah, fair enough. Well, shortly after that came out, I believe it was Obi Wan Kenobi's next up on the list, which came out last year.
And this has got to be one of the most, I guess, anticipated yes, anticipated shows that Star Wars fans were looking forward to for so long, bringing together Obi Wan, or you and McGregor and and Hayden Christensen again for another duel. Interesting. So I feel like all the shows, I have at least a few gripes. Maybe it's just, as they say, you're a harsh critic to the things you love.
Right? But this show, first of all, I want to start off by saying I did really enjoy it, and I think it is head and shoulders above in film quality than last time we saw Iwan McGregor. I would say I love the prequels, but this felt more theatrical to me. I think had more of at least a modern crisp to it. But the issues I ran into was probably mainly that around that last fight and some Vadery stuff. I guess mainly it felt a little force unleashed, if you know what I mean.
It's kind of inevitable, but especially all the superhero stuff we're seeing, right? With all the overpowered and magics and all this sort of stuff. But I think we're losing that mystery and finesse that we had in the original trilogy, which is what this timeline is supposed to be around. So we did push the line a bit with the prequels with force powers and stuff. But I think it's getting to the realm of fan fiction, which George was always really good at knowing the limits.
And I think we're getting out of his box. And it really showed in this show, I thought. Really? Okay, what's an example. Just so people know just the amount of, like, the final battle, at least what's coming to my mind is when they're having the rock lifting. Although the rock stuff yeah. Which was another issue. I mean, again, rock stuff was the exact issue that I had with Ray as well. Right. It's getting too powerful. Exactly.
So why now is this so easy for everyone else? And Yoda is almost 1000 years old. Yeah, you know, and that's a debate. That's a topic that we could even do a full podcast episode on at some point. You know, just like when are Force powers and their scale relevant to a show? And is it appropriate to have something like that happen in the canon when X or when Y happens as well? Right? Yeah, I agree.
It can cause a lot of questions, and I have a few questions of my own as far as the actual quality show goes, like you say, awesome show, loved the music. And I ended up realizing that that final duel between Obiwan and Vader with this story slotted in the middle, I think it's fine. I think we can yeah, like back to back, the New Hope lines up. Well, I think most of it does. Not all of it, but then again, somehow the prequels happened and it still doesn't really line up with OB.
One, not remembering R Two from A Hole in the Wall, but there's always going to be those little inconsistencies and especially when you're making stories in a timeline in which things are happening. I mean, if you look at like the amount of things that are happening right now, we're looking at all the stories being made. We're looking at stories being made after episode six. We're looking at stories like the Bad batch happening right after episode three.
So, I mean, how tough is it to juggle the continuity sometimes and yeah, for sure, you know, it's extremely difficult. So yeah, and that's why they created the Lucasfilm story group. But I also see the issue of they want to let creative people be creative with making this stuff and not just limit their creativity. Yeah, totally. I can let a few things slide here and there.
I think that's why I have such a bigger problem with the things that I don't know why they didn't fix when they could, like Cadbain's face, like the Granite quizzer's face, like SOCA's, Montreal, things like that. Let me play devil's advocate, right? It could be something as simple as they were working on the props and they didn't get a full thing ready before the show was ready to film and they just didn't have time to go back and change it. Yeah, that's true as well.
Obviously, the TV is on a different schedule, different budget. Disney plus I thought would be different. There's a lot of money, but if you have to push back a whole film schedule because of one prop, it doesn't really make sense. Right? Yeah, exactly. But again, yeah, it's those little gripes it's not like I hate all these shows just because of those little things. It's it's just like they're there are little things that sting if I were to rewatch. But, you know, I can let it go.
After Obi Wan Kenobi came out, we had a really fabulous documentary, very touching, actually, called The Jedi's Return. And it's another Disney gallery style episode. And I took a few audio clips a long time, like back in September, I took these audio clips, never used them on the podcast. So I'm going to play some of them now just because I feel like since you haven't seen it, maybe other people listening right now haven't seen it. This is just like a nice little preview.
We'll just go clip by clip. And here's the first one here. This is how it started. this is also our first official day with Ewen, who not only is Obiwan Kenobi, but is also a producer and a partner on the show. Yeah. Thank you so much. It's been a long time coming. This many years we've been talking about doing this, and it's exciting and unbelievable, almost, that. Here we are. Yeah. So there's one. I actually didn't know that Obiwan was a producer. I keep calling him Obiwan.
I didn't know that Ewan was a producer. Yeah, I mean, maybe I didn't pay attention to the credits as closely as I should have, but I thought that was kind of cool. That was Deborah Chow, the director on the series. And here's another little clip. It's a very meditative process for me. Sometimes my mind wanders mostly about the scene we're about to do. The difference between Anakin and Darth Vader. Is anything completely gone or not? He is fully Darth Vader. He's fully consumed by the dark side.
But I like to believe that there's always a little bit of Anakin still in there. As it was explained to me by George Lucas, even when he becomes Darth Vader, and even when he's fully immersed in the dark side, he's still the chosen one. Yeah. So there's a little audio clip by Hayden Christian, just, like, sharing some knowledge that George kind of gave him back when he was directing Hayden as that when Darth Vader is Darth Vader, he's still the chosen one. Even when he turns the dark side.
That is his true destiny. And I feel like this audio clip here should solve a lot of fan debates as to whether or not that's the case. But here we are many years later, still talking about it. Yes. And that actually brings to light one of the things I really liked about this show, which was when Obi One is confronted by Vader and he tries to apologize and then Vader says, no, I killed Anakin. Yeah, exactly. He says to Obiwan because he identifies Vader.
Right? Yeah. So, yeah, he says to Obiwan, like, you know, you didn't kill Anakin Skywalker like I did. And he's, like, really just kind of like bringing out his his alter ego and in that scene. And I love that scene. And I think that's why that particular fight has aged well for me. Even though it doesn't 100% link up with the dialogue exchange in episode four. It's enough for me that I'd rather have all that in Obi Wan Kenobi than not at all. Right. Right.
And we've got a lot to kind of thank Obi Wan Kenobi for delivering that kind of stuff. If we have to go through the whole show just to get that exchange between those two characters in that final fight scene, let's bring it on. Right. It's a deep perspective, too, and that this was an opportunity to try and take all what we know about Dr. Vader and his life now, as well as Obi One, and fit it in closer to what we got with The New Hope.
So a lot of stuff that didn't make sense, like how we left off Revenge of the Sith, they're able to actually supplement that a bit, right? Yeah, exactly. I got two more. Here's another little one, QuiGon, that's finally up here. Yeah. It was so amazing to work with Liam again because, of course, I only worked with Liam in the first film. So amazing to see him again as QuiGon. It's just incredible. I spoke to Deborah a number of months ago and she told me that you was going to do this series.
And Deborah, it's just something towards the end where Obiwan has gone through some journey and he's reaching out for help and you're not there. That's quite on, Jim. And then he sees you. And I thought, yeah, I'm on board. I'm definitely on board with that. It was very familiar. And at the same time I kept thinking, it's 24 years since we made The Phantom Menace, and here we were with our brand new crew. Deborah, this wonderful director.
It's lovely to see you through the myths and the storytelling goes on. Obiwan has reestablished a connection with QuiGon and he's back to being the obi one that we knew and loved. And it's because of Leia and it's because of characters like Tallah who bring that faith back to him, who bring hope back to him. Yeah, I thought that was a really cool little audio clip, especially the acknowledgement with Liam in there. That was something that we've all been wanting for years, man. So cool.
I hadn't heard that before. So hearing Liam Neeson, like, reminiscent 24 years ago, they were feeling Phantom. And it's hard to believe it's been that long. It's crazy. Unbelievable, right? Yeah. Because Phantom Menace took longer than any of the other Star Wars movies to do as far as its total production time. Yeah. I think it was almost a decade, right? Yeah. If you count George's kind of writing block in there. Yeah, it was a long time.
It was nearly ten years but it's crazy that we go all this time with wanting to hear Liam in Yoda's head, instructing him in that scene on Polis Masa and Revenge of the Sith.
And with that scene removed from the final edit or removed from the script it was always just one of those things that fans lingered with us kind of wondering, like, oh, that mission that Yoda gives Obi Wan in the desert training for him, right? How to commune with his old master and seeing his eyes light up QuiGon and finally kind of being able to get that moment.
And that kind of is not a critical, essential part of this whole show, but it's one of those gratifying realizations that you have at the very kind of start where it's acknowledged that he tries to communicate with Quagon, but because he's lost his way, he hasn't used the Force in so long, he can't do it anymore.
And finally at the end of the series, when he kind of realizes who he is and reconnects with what he is, Quagon comes back to him and he says to Ouijuan that he's always been there and that he never left. And it kind of reminded me a little bit about the Harry Potter deathly Howls Part Two. And when Harry kind of drops the resurrection stone after seeing all his loved ones around him.
And he just says, like, you'll stay close to me, right, and I won't be able to see you, or he won't be able to see you, but I'll know that you're all going to be there and we'll be here, you see, his father says. And he points at his heart. And I was like, oh, that's such a good story. Anytime you get something like that, it just hits the right note. And it's like with Obiwan, it was no different.
And Quaggon has always been such a special character to Star Wars fans, and having a scene like that, it was like, oh, that's good. That's good stuff. So that was a great little clip there. Do you think the timing was right, though, not to get into, I guess, get away from these nice vibes, but do you think the timing was right for when they revealed the Quaggon? Because part of me wonders if it would have been better if he showed up when OPI One was trapped under those rocks.
Yeah, I think that would have also been a really good time to do it. I don't know. Maybe his voice only maybe not like the visual force ghost of QuiGon. But, yeah, that could have been a really good time as well, I think in that moment where we're already kind of just shocking awe with what's actually going on with, you know, especially with Anakin's face reveal behind the helmet only moments later.
I feel like it might have been just a little much in one sequence, and I would have liked it either way. I mean. I think you're on to something with the timing. I don't think it was poor timing at the very end, though, because at the very end, you're almost not expecting it to happen. And then it's like, oh, there he is. Yeah, exactly. We forgot. Let's just throw it over to the end. Yeah. But I do like it.
I do like the fact a lot that he helps lead Obiwan to his place of residence that you later find him in in episode four. And I also love what he says about how it's people like Leia and Talla that restored his faith in the Force. Without people like that, he would have been lost, right? And I think it's such a good tribute to why episode four is called a New Hope.
And even long before this show was even a thing, george called it a New Hope way back when, right? And it's worth noting, like, Luke Skywalker is supposed to be that new hope for the galaxy, right? And he may not be the chosen one, but he's so critical in that story, right? He's so critical in redeeming his father so that his father can fulfill his prophecy. And with the whole trilogy being vader, telling Luke what his destiny is, actually, it goes backwards.
I always thought that was such a great kind of little thing at the very end there. The audio clip, just an acknowledgement of the fact that without these other people in Obiwan's life, he would have still been a rat in the desert, as Mall would say. Here's one more clip for you. Mythology that has now allowed others to come in and build upon. It's exciting to see the saga continue. Coming into the Star Wars galaxy and getting to be part of this world, it's pretty special.
It's in everybody's life. Everybody's grown up with it in some respect. Help me. Everyone can only do I only help. So many people have such an emotional relationship to it, and so it is quite meaningful in the broader context of your life. The Star Wars alliance, there's so many different generations involved in it and there's so many people who care so passionately about it.
George Lucas created these characters that are so rich and that have such huge inner lives and so taking on these characters and trying to tell the middle part of the journey, I feel hugely fortunate to be able to do this, but also a big responsibility to trying to do it right. Yeah. So that was Deborah Chow again at the very end there, but yeah, very cool show. We've talked enough about it already so far, but I think it's going to age well. I think it's going to age well.
Man, we haven't even gotten to go A list yet. Just think about how much Star Wars content we've gotten, like, over this year. Isn't it crazy? Because I've been really living in kind of day to day this year. So looking back and actually just like taking it all in, taking it all in, like it's a lot. Could you imagine? Oh, yeah, it'd be like getting all the prequels in one year.
Yeah, it's nuts, right? I mean, if you count screen time, it's like more than the prequels as far as on screen hours in the day. Right? It's crazy. I never thought I'd see the day when this was happening. I don't think anyone did. Yeah, let's hit the next thing on our list is, you guessed it, andor very unique show having been the most recent that we had our and or after show sub series on. And I think the general consensus of this show was it was just overall really well appreciated and liked.
And people who aren't normally into Star Wars found something in this show that they were able to enjoy, which I think is great because Star Wars is such a wide galaxy full of different stories and myths and andor just kind of added another genre to the mix, which was this cool spy espionage thing and kind of approached the political struggles from a more interesting perspective rather than just in the Senate halls all the time. Right? Yeah, absolutely. I really like this show quite a bit.
I think when we did the reviews of the catch up, it was more or less what I said. This was the breadth of fresh air that the series needed. It just took everything in such a different light and like I said, brought all these other fans and I think especially for me and probably other film goers, with all the superhero shows and stuff, we've been getting like the general Star Wars movie kind of falls into that little fantasy high adventure.
Right? I think people are getting a little burned out with that. There's just been so many shows over the last ten years, really, so something and or coming out where it's a slower paced, more dramatic show, I think that's exactly what people need and that's exactly what I wanted. So I liked the show quite a lot. Quite a lot. Yeah, it was really well done and the episode count was longer than normal.
I like the fact that they approached this show from a standpoint of having a set amount of seasons in place with an overall constructed story long before the end has been shot and filmed. And it's a very wise way to make a show because we've seen what happens when story is not planned out in its fullest to the end, and it can go left, right and back and forth, no consistency, and a bunch of other problems.
This was just one of those shows that was just so solid from the very moment that they announced it all the way. You didn't hear about any weird kind of directorial changes last minute and rewrites or whatever, just kind of stuff like that. Like all the drama that normally surrounds a lot of Star Wars projects. I feel like this one just slipped under that radar, like, almost no, it's smooth. I didn't hear any news anyway about stuff coming up with this show. It was announced.
People were like, including myself, like, oh, this character, we don't know anything about him. Does he really need a show? And then just nothing. And then bam, it's out and it's great. And it's like, oh, yeah, I'm so used to hearing about all this behind the scenes drama directors and stuff. It just didn't happen. Yeah, it's like, Wait a minute. A Star Wars show can come out without all the drama? Yeah, no, I'm with you there. I do wonder if maybe that's why.
Because it was a character that is less tied down, story wise, with just history. The people writing the show and running it were able to just kind of do what they wanted as long as it reaches the end point and then you don't step on any other toes, you can kind of just do whatever you want. Right? Yeah, it's true. I mean, that obviously can have an effect and maybe that played a part in it a little bit more freedom with that character to kind of do what they wished.
As far as the overall kind of story of the Rebellion, though, that was a big one. I think that would have been, in my opinion, probably the biggest struggle when making Andor is like, what's this show going to do to change existing EU legends material or tamper with existing Shannon when it comes to timeline of events, as to the creation of the Rebellion, who's involved with that process and everything else.
But I feel like they managed to just pull it off in a way that fits really well into the existing stories. And we all really love the show. So I'm really looking forward to season two. Yeah, me too. I honestly can't think of any complaints for this show at all. I've seen people complain about being too slow, but I like that that actually made it better, in my opinion. Yeah, it was certainly not a slow, at least for me, because I know, yeah, some people would say that, at least for me.
I didn't find the pace to be, overall, majority wise, distracting. I did appreciate the fact that we were able to spend more time with these characters in a way that other shows had not been able to do. And I love the scope. I don't know, maybe I said that before when we were doing the after shows, but the costumes and the scope, the cinematography, like having those real location film sets, it went miles.
You can totally tell the difference when you're looking at a show like Andor versus a show like Kenobi or Book, a boat fed or Mandalorian. There's just something about the scale, like the shots, the angles, the realism of where they are in that moment. There is something very tangible to it. And our friend Kirk on the podcast, he did a really great video essay on andor which I'm going to throw it in the description of this podcast episode. But yes, it's a good idea. Definitely.
Anyone listening, it's worth checking out. Definitely. Yeah, it sums it all up. Pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. Brook did a great job. So it was definitely worth checking out his video and getting into those details. Yeah, for sure. Next up on our list was Light and Magic. And I'm going to play this song because recognizable from the trailer for Light and Magic, but this was a documentary series about the early days of ILM before Star Wars came out.
And then followed a little bit of ILM story and journey kind of, I guess post in the post Star Wars era. If I'm remembering correctly. It was a while ago now that I watched it. But really great show. I can't say there was a whole lot of stuff that I learned from it just because of all the years of having consumed kind of similar material. It just kind of came at me as an entertaining perspective rather than informative.
But there was a few things that I didn't know that they kind of threw in that show. And I was like, oh, this is going to be really, really cool. And a nice kind of tribute to all those brilliant minds behind that first film and the struggles that it took to get it off the ground. Oh, man. Yeah, absolutely. If you haven't seen a documentary, pushing visual effects back in 77 or up to 77 is definitely worth looking into.
As you said, there has been a good number of documentaries that come out over the last 40 something year, 50 years. But I think this was just kind of a modern put everything together and get it out to a new generation because this has inspired so many people to get into the film industry. Yeah. And just seeing what they managed to accomplish compared to other films of that time, it's unbelievable.
They got a lot of awards for it and well, Deserving, the first Plan of the Apes movie, Plan of the Apes, I believe it came out the same year or was very close to it. And if you do the visual effects side by side, it's night and day. It's just absolutely night and day. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So Light and Magic, if you haven't seen it yet, go and check it out. It's not that long to get through. And it's so interesting. Tales of the Jedi that was kind of out of left field.
Do you remember when that came out? It just kind of popped up as an announcement. And at least for me, it just kind of blew me away as far as its existence. And I don't think they didn't announce it along with all those other shows a couple of years ago when they announced like, Lando and a bunch of other things. I don't think that was on the list. This one just kind of came up and it was like, boom, six shorts. And maybe we'll get more of it in the future.
And told two really good stories, one of them that we both were really looking forward to, which was the Count Dooku one. It was just such a great fill in the gaps. This was literally like Star Wars Bondo. Just a tube of tails of the Jedi and plot hole fixed. Right. Apply an animated bandaid, leave more comics. Yeah, it was so good. And what I find very encouraging about the Disney plus summary of the show is that it tells stories of the Jedi during the prequel era.
I think it was like the stories from Socatano, Count Dooku and more, and it just kind of ends off on the and more. And I was like, oh, yes, please give us a season, too. Give us some more characters in which we can tell little stories like that with. Yeah, I'd be damned for that. We need more Yaddle. Oh, yeah, we need a whole one for Yaddle.
A little while ago, we came up with a few ideas for good characters that they could do, but Kitster, where's our Kidster episode? Where is Kitster? Yeah, that's right. And with it, of course, we got another really brilliant soundtrack by the likes of Kevin Kiner. So we're listening to Dugu's Fall right now, which is really ominous kind of dark theme that was played when he makes his transition to the dark side. It's similar to when Anakin is turning to the dark side. Yeah, it is.
Actually, what I learned, at least from this animated series, was that him and Anakin are not so different. No, they're not. And that's what makes their rivalry almost that much more interesting, is they're almost like direct nemesis. Right? What do you call that? Like an arc arch arc enemy. Arch enemy, yeah. Yeah. Arch enemy, yeah. Nemesis is also correct. Yeah, yeah. Like they're like, you know, just complete opposites in battle, in a way.
But really they're so similar that it's almost frightening. Right? Yeah. They have the same goals and ironically, the same destiny. They just go about it differently. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We also had the return of Liam Neeson. Voicing QuiGon in that show, and his son in real life plays the young version of his character when when we had the episode that flashed back to the old days, the golden age of young QuiGon and Master Duku. So that was also very cool to see.
I was just particularly impressed that young QuiGon, even though he's not even 18 yet, he still got a full 05:00 shadow. That's Scottish blood. Yeah, exactly. Well, this year was packed. And I definitely have to mention this because it was such a big part of last year was Celebration Anaheim, which we had a variety of coverage right here in the Star Wars discord server. So definitely, once again, join the discord. It's a good place to be.
We have a Star Wars Celebration TV channel where we had the live YouTube embedded right there in the channel. You wouldn't miss it every day. And Celebration Live blog, I followed it as it was kind of streaming on YouTube and just type messages here and there, just kind of summarizing the events that would happen and transpire through the course of the day.
We had a couple of really cool announcements, like volume two for Star Wars visions coming out in 2023 this year and a bunch of other things. Skeleton crew, they announced that as well. So, yeah, lots of cool stuff happened. And there's going to be another celebration this year. So definitely looking forward to seeing any announcements that come out of that. Let's see, did they announce where the next celebration is going to be? They did. It's going to be in London, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's this year. So they alternate every second year. They do it in Europe and then they do it in the US on the off years. I'm kind of jealous of everyone who's able to go this year, but I'll be watching video. You got a family. Just go coincidentally and visit it over the days that celebrations happening. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I could do that. But yeah, I don't know. I don't think it'll work out that it was scheduled, but yeah.
Europe 2023 star Celebration It's happening. What is it? April 7, 2023 and three months from now. And yeah, that's not that far away. We will be in the discord keeping track, typing up those updates in the live blog. We're going to be chatting about it as well. Maybe I'll be in a voice channel. We can hang out, do a celebration day on the weekend or something like that together. And then we'll be doing our daily Celebration coverage episodes as well, which you and I both did as well.
Do you remember those? I do, yeah. That was a lot of fun. We could even possibly open it up, let people just drop in yeah. And join us and talk some Star Wars celebration. Oh, absolutely, yeah. We can let people know and in the discord when we're recording and we'll get people dropping in and out, that'll be awesome. That's a great idea. Lego Star Wars, summer vacation. Did you watch that? Actually, I haven't seen this one.
I've seen the Christmas one and the Halloween one, but I haven't seen the summer vacation. I recall the Lego minifigures with Tony Fader with the swim trunks over top of his suit. So in classic Lego Star Wars fashion, yeah, they've always got a little bit of Lego merch to go with the new release. But yeah, they've done three now. They've done the halloween one. They've done a Christmas one and now they've done a summer vacation one. So it makes me wonder what they're going to do next.
But it was pretty cool. I did watch it. It's got some laughs in there. It's always got the crazy song, the musical number that they always do each year. Here's a quick little preview. There was one from Weird Al Yankovic, which that's awesome. Yeah. He did one called Scarf beach party. We got to play that more on the podcast. This is a good one. Oh, man. I'm very impressed and surprised. I never, ever would have expected Weird Al to be a Star Wars Lego YouTube.
What is it? Is it? I mean, Disney Plus. Disney plus. Yeah. Short movie. I guess. Weird. Al must be a Star Wars fan. Or a Lego fan. One of the two. Oh, he is a Star Wars fan. I know. He did a song based on a leaked draft of the script of Phantom Menace in the launch the same day as the movie. And he got a lot of it correct. Really? Some of it's wrong, but yeah, that's pretty neat. Have you ever heard that song? No, I never have. It's based on my Mesmerick Pie song. Oh, interesting.
A long time ago in a galaxy far away. It's actually a really good song I used to listen to all the time when I was like twelve, man. Yeah. Well, Weird Al, I guess he's back in a galaxy far, far away now producing music. 24 years later. Yeah, 24 years later. Producing for Lego. Star wars summer vacation. So yeah. Next up is brief mention last year celebrated Attack of the Clones 20th anniversary. Yeah. Attack of the Grade Four. No, it's a little later than that.
Yeah, no, it's pretty nuts to think about how long ago it was. But attack of the Clones. I mean, here we are 20 years later. Tons of I'm not even going to get into the list of details, but there was a ton of merch at Celebration, as well as hot Toys, of course. Everyone's familiar with hot toys collectibles the sideshow stuff. They're producing a brand new refreshed lineup for Tack of the Clones for the 20th anniversary.
And I would not be surprised if this year we would get maybe like a few delayed products from that celebration as well. It would be really cool for Hasbro to make a phase one clone tuber helmet. I'm still waiting for the phase two to very anxiously waiting. Waiting for phase two to be released because ever since they announced it, which is thankfully this year, but that would be so cool. So I got to do phase one as well. And a Wreck special edition. Oh, yeah.
I'd buy all those hasbro, take my money. Make sure you get the welds right. Don't cheap out on the weld details for Rex's helmet. I don't want any prints exactly. Yeah. Next up on our list, we had Lego Star Wars, the Skywalker Saga, the video game premiere or make his debut this past year. And we played quite a bit of that game together on the Steam remote play multiplayer feature. That's right. And then I replayed it again at my place when I got it.
And I got up to the same point, started the sequels, and then I just kind of never got back to it. It's a great game. And any fans of the old Lego Star Wars games, there is a mumble mode to recreate those iconic sit downs where you couldn't understand the characters through a hole in the wall. But it's some of the original games from 2002 or whatever it was. Yeah, they played good tribute to those. So we've had some good fun with that. So that saw its debut last year.
The High Republic phase two. This was a big one for last year. I'm not going to get into all the minor details as to what it was released, but The Higher Public has been an ongoing multimedia project for the last couple of years, two to three years maybe. And we had a good time reviewing a lot of stuff from the Phase One. So Phase Two now, which is taking place about 200 years before Phase One, if that makes any sense at all.
We had a few novels and comic series and junior novels, young adult novels and so on and so forth, release last year and going forward this year as well, will also be filled with Phase Two content. So there's some Phase Two content already out there, is what you're saying there is, yes. Okay. The main adult novel series is not out yet. You know what? For phase two. Okay, I think there is one. I believe it's called Convergence, but I'm not entirely sure there's one.
There's one of them that's out. I got a pre order for one of them, which I think is the Claudia Gray novel. Yeah. I think there's also a dedicated audio book called The Battle of Jedi that's also supposed to be coming out yesterday. It should already be out. Look at that. What timing. Yeah, what timing. So, yeah, phase Two, you can differentiate Phase One and Phase Two by looking at the label. If the Star Wars, the Higher Public label is in blue, that is a Phase Two book or story.
If it's a gold label, it'll be Phase One. So that's the best way to kind of just determine what is from which phase, if that makes sense. I'm glad they're doing that because there is a lot of content that has come out. There is. And so it will get very confusing very quickly. Oh, there is, yeah, absolutely. Brief mention, because I had to who wouldn't? John Williams, last year in 2022, he turned 90 years old. And same year, of course, he makes us the theme for obi Wan Kenobi for that show.
And he's still very much kicking around active. As far as I know. He's doing the soundtrack for Indiana Jones Five and The Dial of Destiny. So, yeah, we have a lot more to look forward to from John Williams, or hopefully we have a lot more to look forward to from John Williams, but yeah, green many years of appreciating his work.
Yeah, honestly, he's just done such an amazing career of all the different theatrical films or theme songs and everything he's done my entire childhood has been composed of John Williams. Yeah, exactly. That's a great way to put it. They just need to catalog his mind and turn into an AI so that we can just have theatrical music for the rest of our lives that are just the linchpin of cinema. Oh, yeah. No, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Notable literature.
Last year we had so many things that this is a very trimmed down list, but Shadows of the Sith, as well as Brotherhood and Queen's Hope, which saw the finale book to the Padme trilogy. Brotherhood was a book about Anakin and obiwan right after the events of Attack of the Clones leading up to the Clone Wars show. Did we did a review for that one. Yeah, we did. We did a review for Brotherhood.
We also did a review for Shadows of the Sith, which was a book filling in the gaps with the story about Luke and Lando looking for achieve Bestoon. Right. That was a good book, too, as long as you don't read the last chapter. It told the story of young Ray and the true story of how her parents died. And it really did a number for the sequels and kind of made a lot more things make sense. And we did a review for that book as well.
So, yeah, you can look for those in our podcast archives, which we've got so many now, and they're all across YouTube and podcast apps. All you have to do is scroll back. Marvel's Crimson Dawn, which was Marvel comic series, followed the 2020 one's War of the Bounty Hunter story arc. Next year sorry, this year, now, 2023 Star Wars The Hidden Empire will conclude this three part story arc series.
The series serves as the final entry in the trilogy, focusing on the character of Kira that we were introduced to in Solo a Star Wars Story, and her criminal organization, Crimson Dawn. So that's a brief mention of that. This wasn't a replacement to the home solo film franchise, was it? Did they decide to turn into comics? As far as I know. This is also something, a little piece of news that we got from Ron Howard last year or this year.
He basically said to someone in the press at one point in time that Luke's film is not prioritizing a sequel to Solo A Star Wars Story. So personally, I think it is a replacement to needing to follow up with another film. Okay. Similar to the end of Clone Wars thing where they did a bunch of comics and stuff. Yeah, exactly. I also think with that Lando series up their sleeve, I think maybe if that is in fact a Donald it is a Donald Glover led series, as far as I know.
But they're probably going to use that show as a way to maybe tie up loose ends just the way that they used rebels to tie up some loose ends from Clone Wars. So I guess we'll have to wait and see. But there's a little tidbit from that. And finally on the list of 2022 is of course, a little bit of podcast news. Already mentioned it before, but Project YouTube is complete. We expanded the discord server as well.
We gained more Twitter and Instagram following with our first giveaway sponsored by Orbitkey, and we hit an all time high for most downloads in a month back in November. So a few little updates there. Yeah. So thank you for listening because we achieved that because you're all hard work. Yes, huge thank you to all our listeners because of course, we'd probably be doing this either way, but it's always nice to know that people are listening, you know? Yeah.
It's not just, you know, voices in in the in the ether. Yeah. All right, 2023. Let's do a little bit of speculating and then we'll wrap things up. Another happy landing. All right. 2023 kicks things off with the Bad Batch season two. And it's right around the corner. Oh, right around the corner. It's it's out, man. It's it's out. As of as of today, the first two episodes are on Disney Plus right now. Yeah. Wow. I definitely knew that.
And you know what's funny is you are a member in our discord, but those people in the discord server would know that anytime a new show or big Star Wars event happens, you'll see it in the top left hand corner of the Star Wars server and it'll say, happening now. And the event with a link. And right now the Bad Batch season two premiere is happening.
So you never miss a thing with Star Wars news with our discord server, bad batch season two, we're going to be reviewing the first two episodes next week in next week's episode of the podcast. So far, I mean, I don't want to say much, of course, for those who haven't been able to watch it yet, but it's off to a great start. So I guess we can talk about that as the weeks go by. You have already watched the first two episodes. I have, yeah. I did the midnight release. I did the midnight release.
Oh, wow. Yeah. So next up in 2023 is going to be Jedi Survivor, the sequel to well, highly acclaimed Jedi Fallen Order, and features returning character Calcastus in. His adventures with the crew of The Mantis. There is a few teaser cinematic trailers out there for anyone who has seen them. I'm very much looking forward to playing this game because I really thoroughly enjoyed the first one. I can't remember. Did you play the first one? I did, yeah. I really enjoyed it quite a lot.
I thought the story was super cool. I really liked the character. And I would say it is my favorite Star Wars game of the EA generation. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I know we've had our fair share getting good use out of Battlefront Two, but I feel like this one was just one of those games. It didn't have a rough start like Battlefront Two did, whereas Battlefront Two has a reputation with the most downvoted reddit comment in history. This one, on the other hand, was quite the opposite.
It was very well, very well appreciated by Star Wars fans. The story was great, had good value, and it added a lot of good stuff to the canon. If you haven't played it, definitely check it out. The gameplay is kind of similar to Assassin's Creed, only Star Wars. And I would say it's a better storyline. Yeah. So Jedi Survivor, we're looking forward to that. So that also is in our list of discord Star Wars events.
And what do I have here? If I click on oh, yeah, if you scroll up to the top and you hit the the little calendar thing that says three events, you can see a list of all the events that are going to happen. Friday, March saw the release date for Mandalorian, season three. There you go. Yeah. So Friday, March 17 at midnight is the release date for Jedi Survivor.
It'll be releasing on PC Xbox One, Xns, PS Five, and takes place five years after Jedi Fall in Order, which is coincidentally the same year that Obiwan Kenobi takes place. There will be a novel that I guess preludes the events of this game, and it's going to be called Jedi Battle Scars. So I'm very much looking forward to that novel this year as well. You're going to read that one? I'm definitely going to read that one, yeah.
Okay. This is very similar to what they did with the bad Batch games there's. Not bad batch. The battlefront. Two games. Batch, yeah. Battle Two. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Inferno Squad, the Battlefront two novels. That's right. I hope this novel is better. I do too. Yeah. Not that I disliked it, but it wasn't like an overall fabulous novel. It was just like just another Star Wars. It was slow. It was just really slow. Yeah. Star wars hunters.
This gets a small mention only because it's been talked up for so long at this point that I feel like people have forgotten about it. But Star Wars Hunters is going to be a free to play, player versus player competitive arena combat game. It's being developed for Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android and is set to be released this year. There is a trailer for it as well and that is all we know.
I don't believe there's any kind of canon story to it or anything like that, but anyone who's into the free to play mobile games, this is going to be one for you. I find it funny that Switch is just, like, lumped in with phone games. Yeah. I don't want to start up a ruckus, but as far as the switches power goes okay, I'll just put it this way. I'm kind of surprised that it's lumped in with consoles and not mobile. It's just a different type of gaming, honestly. It is. That's what it is.
I have a Switch and I enjoy playing the Switch, but there are games that you wouldn't buy on Xbox. Oh, yeah, for sure. Except maybe Smash Bros. Yeah. So it's definitely got some of those little quirks about it. Yeah, it's more of like one of those handheld. I would put it more in line with like a DS and a Game Boy and you can use it as a console. But in my mind, I don't group it in with things like a GameCube and in Xbox.
For some reason, my brain just doesn't quite comprehend that it's an actual console. But it is. Fair enough. It's a future man. He can take it with you. He's playing on the train. Yeah. So next up on the list here is the Mandalorian season three. Yeah. And March 1. Coming out sooner than I realized. Yeah, that's not too far away. And there is a few trailers for this already.
I know so many people are looking forward to seeing the continuing adventures of Dinjarn and Grogu and taking place immediately after their spoiler for bookabout FET, immediately after their appearances in that series. So going back to what we were talking about in Book about Fit, it's time for a rewatch because it's essentially 2.5. Yeah, we're going to have to do a trailer breakdown as well. I don't think we've done that yet. We've been so busy with all this other stuff. Oh, yeah.
Andor and whatnot? Busy with andor and then yeah, and then the holidays and yeah, now we got bad batch. I mean, I think we're going to be taking along for the right. We'll have to do a special episode release one week and do two in one week. But yeah, it's coming up quick. It's coming up quick. So we're looking forward to that. Visions, volume two, you, myself, Bryce, we all sat down and watched Star Wars Visions in its entirety back when that came out.
And I think Bryce is very much like an anime guy, so he had a lot to say about it. It was one of my more saturated experiences, like seeing anime and seeing Star Wars anime was in itself, like a very unique experience. But yeah. Are you looking forward to season two. Yeah, I am. I've always been an anime fan as well, kind of on and off, where I watched a lot of anime back in the day, not realizing was anime. And now I just have a built in nostalgia for it. So. I enjoyed visions quite a lot.
I thought it was a lot of fun and had some really unique storylines, some of which I really want to be expanded into a series. So we'll see what happens with that. As of right now, as we know, it's not candid, but there's some cool stuff. Yeah. So this year's, Stars Visions, I should call it volume two, not season two, will consist of nine shorts done by various studios.
Whereas the last volume was mostly Japanese studios, this volume will consist of global anime studios from Japan, India, the UK, ireland, Spain, Chile, France, South Africa, and the USA. So we're going international on the anime style this time around. So we're going to be getting almost like more kind of different visual, I guess, depictions of what this galaxy would look like in anime form. So I'm looking forward to it. Some of them were quite creative.
We also got some pretty crazy songs like this one. You remember this? I do, yeah. Tatooine Rhapsody. Yeah, they played this at the Bunty Eve. You mean the jabba jammer? Yeah, that's right. Oh, man. That's what it was called. Jabba Jamunt eve stadium. No, the Jabba Jammer was one of the answers I came up with for that question that Phil had on the Trivia. That was the name of the concert, though. Could have been. I think this anime inspired me to make that answer. Makes sense. I could see that.
Tickets, no lie, for the Jabba Jamaica. Just can't even understand what you're saying. Yeah, that's enough of that. All right, asoka that makes us debut later this year, we don't have a dedicated release date as of yet, TBD. And I'm assuming we're probably going to get a trailer. I would imagine Long Made Mandalorian season three has got to come out before we get a trailer for Soka, but I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with this show.
Perhaps tie a bunch of things together before we hit some sort of cinematic conclusion. That's been promised for a while for all these live action shows taking place after Return of the Jedi with the upcoming speculated appearance of Thrawn and of course, a live action as we're bridger the casting for the show is very interesting. It's been confirmed we're going to see a live action sabine Ren, which is also very cool, and Harris and Dula.
So I'm very much looking for the forward to the show, and I know you are, too. Yeah, this is probably the show after the Obi One series I've been most excited for. Yeah, I feel like this is also such a great opportunity for Dave Faloni to really spread his wings because this show is being helmed by him, if I'm not mistaken. So it's just going to be one of those stories that I feel like will take him into his live action film directorial debut, hopefully. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed.
We also had an announcement at Celebration last year for a very interesting, very curious show led by Jude Law called Skeleton Crew. And I don't know too much other than the fact that it is supposed to be post Return of the Jedi. It's supposed to be about a bunch of kids comingofage story. They get lost in space. I figured it out. So, you know, the kids that are in the Jedi Temple, anakin shows up and they're like, that's just skywalker.
What are we going to do? Ignites his lightsaber? And we all know what happens. Well, those kids raised from the dead, now they're skeletons and they're in a crew. Okay, sure. I think you're looking at Jude Law is a necromancer. Oh, man. I think that the chances of that happening are even less than Luke's chance at blowing up the Death Star. But, yeah, I think this show is definitely supposed to be targeting a bit of a younger age audience, but still live action.
And I believe Favreau was involved as well. John Watts is created by John Watts and Christopher Ford. So? Yeah. I don't know. I guess we'll have to wait and see. There's literally nothing about this show so far other than like a title card. But yeah, we do know that it's been inspired as an Amblin entertainment style coming of age adventure. I'm picturing, like, Stranger Things, but in Star Wars universe. So I guess we'll have to see how it goes. That'd be kind of neat. Yeah, see how that goes.
Maybe I could see it being somewhat inspired by maybe the kid from The Last Jedi from Broom Boy. Yeah, Broom Boy. Maybe he'll have his, I don't know, his younger brother or something. Or his older brother. Is he going to I don't know. This is long before the sequel, so yeah, who knows? Who knows? Maybe it's like the father of Broomboy or something like that. Broomboy origin story. Yeah. Oh, man. Okay. Young Jedi adventures.
This is not going to be something a whole lot of Star Wars fans are going to be watching. It's an animated series taking place in the higher public, and I believe it features Yoda and a bunch of other characters new to a series which is geared for people of the age that would turn on Disney Junior every day. So we're talking, is that what Star Wars resistance was on? Was that XD? Resistance was on Disney XD? I believe you can yeah.
So this show is very much geared for, I would say, five year olds, six year olds, preschoolers. Young Star Wars fans might be the kind of thing that a lot of families would appreciate if they're resistant to showing their five year old, the original trilogy or whatever your choice is. I'll probably watch it just because I'm kind of curious to know what it's going to be like. But I got to be honest, my expectations are definitely not that high.
I don't have a young person to look after, so to me it's not going to mean much, but to some people, they might appreciate a lot. I have a feeling that by the end of the year next year, I guess we'll be doing a look back. You're going to say young Jedi adventures was the best content you consumed this last year. Oh, jeez. I think it's going to have to be a pretty bad year for me to see it back. Might surprise you. You never know.
Maybe we'll get some crazy reveal because Starkillers get young plagueis. I don't know. Oh, man. Well, another exciting part, this isn't Star Wars, but I have to bring it up is Lucasfilm's next entry into the Indiana Jones series, indiana Jones Five and the Dial of Destiny. That is the next, I guess, Harrison Ford's outing as the character. As far as my understanding goes, this is a film that's been talked about since Disney bought Lucasfilm.
And finally we're getting some stuff out of it, right. So it's a good point. It's been a long time coming. Stubborns was always the forefront of the Star Wars Disney acquisition, but Indiana Jones was kind of always there in the shadows. People talked about that, too. I'm surprised they even risked it to wait this long. Just with Harris. Harris, he's in his 80s, right? He's getting up there. I mean, he's not quite John Williams age, but he's up there. Let's see. How old is he? He's 80 years old.
He's ten years behind John Williams. So he's not a spring chicken anymore. Well, he's springing into action this spring or whatever it comes out. Yeah. I do love the fact that they've taken what they've learned on the Book of Oath for Luke Skywalker and will be applying some really awesome CG flashback, harrison Ford younger Indiana Jones scenes in this movie. They showed a few in the trailer. They look fabulous.
I'm very excited to see what happens in this movie and how they're going to address what happens to what's his name, mutt or Shy Lab. Yeah, it goes by Mutt. I forget his real name. It's mutt, right. very much looking forward to that. If this goes well, like the CG and stuff, the de aging, would you want them to continue to face replace Indiana Jones to make more Indiana Jones movies? I think if the performance is there, I'd be okay with it. For me, it's also the story.
It's got to have a good storyline that's obviously most of the movie because we sit there and watch movies like, I don't know, you name it, transformers, Marvel movies. Marvel movies tend to have more stories. I have seen tens of movies. There's so many movies that it's 100% just a massive it's considered live action, but it's mostly CG. Right. I don't think having a digital protagonist, I don't think it takes away from the story at all. So long as the story is actually good.
Yeah. And it's not distracting. Right. Like it's going to be done well. We're sitting there looking at it like I can't tell if this is a human or AI. Totally. Yeah. I'd be okay with it. But it's got to be pulled off well. And here's hoping that they can find someone that presents themselves as a very good double. I hate to think about a world without Harrison Ford, but let's be honest, the guy's not going to live forever.
So how are they going to approach bringing back Indy without Harrison? Hopefully they can find someone that's got the voice, got the look, you know, that they can actually do the the CG double or deep fake, however one you call it over top of them to get the Indiana Jones back. Or just hire that kid who tried out for young hon solo. Yeah, totally.
Next up on our list is a game that came out about two years ago with an expansion that came out last year and it's Star Wars Tails from the Galaxy's Edge. VR will be launching this month, I believe it is, on PS Five. VR. And it's called Tales from the Galaxy's Edge enhanced edition with next gen graphics and probably new ways in the game to just enjoy it all over again in in a brand new kind of HD fidelity. So speaking of which, I still need to swing by your place and do the original one.
Oh, yeah, I think you need to finish the Vader series, too. The Vader Immortal series. Yeah. So many good stars. That's supposed to be really good. Yeah, it is. All right. And that is so far the list for 2023. I figured it was worth noting that we have some unforeseen releases on the horizon. I don't believe these are confirmed for 2023. In fact, I don't think they will come out in 2023. But of course, we are getting a show called Star Wars the Acolyte.
A lot of people know this taking place at the end of the higher public filming. My guess is then that won't come out until after or at least up to phase three of The Old Republic is going on with novels of stuff. I think that's their plan. I think it might be an early 2024 thing just based on production is already I believe it's already doing its shooting. They did some casting announcements and they shared a few pictures on Star Wars.com a little while back.
So it is on the way and it will take place, I think it's about 100 years ish before The Phantom Menace, something around there. So, you know, we have we have yet to get more details on the show, but it is at the very tail end of the higher public, and it's going to be a bit more focused on kind of the mystery of the Sith's return. And I think there are plots to infiltrate the Jedi somehow. So that's going to be very cool.
Notable literature from this past year, or sorry, from this upcoming year as well. I mentioned it before, as Jedi Battle Scars, the book that is going to be leading into Jedi Survivor, as well as the higher public, the Battle of Jedi, which is the audiobook taking place in the higher public, phase two. And another book, which I thought really piqued my interest, is called Inquisitor Rise of the Red Blade.
And it's about a young Inquisitor who joins up the Inquisitors kind of shortly after the events are rendered the Sith, I guess, and will likely shed a little more light on who the Inquisitors are and perhaps why some of them joined the dark side. Because a lot of them, we just have no idea why they would, and why so many of them look so evil if they were once Jedi. It doesn't make any sense. Dark side corrupts, man.
Yeah. So I guess this book hopefully will shed a bit more light on the subject and or season two. That's the last thing I forgot to mention. We have no idea when this is going to come out. It could come out maybe at the very end of this year. It could come out in 2024, we don't know. But this is obviously very much highly anticipated and we loved Andor a lot. And season two is on the way. So this will be the final season and it'll leave.
It tells me that we're going to watch it and it's going to be good and or great. Yeah, absolutely. That's how I put it. We've had such a crazy year last year, such a good year ahead. We got so much to look forward to on the podcast as well. Of course, like I said, look for that new logo out there now and look for our YouTube premieres happening the day after. Podcasts are going to be coming into you on audio podcast apps. Look for the YouTube premiere the day after and join the discord.
So is there any last minute things you want to bring up, sir? It's been a really fruitful year for Star Wars. All the contents come out. Enjoyed it eventually, and I really hope this upcoming year keeps that momentum. Yeah, I do, too. I hope we have a really great year ahead. There is so much to look forward to, not to mention all the crazy good merch coming out. Merch, always. Lots of good merch. Yeah. Good Lego set. More props. Yeah, more props. Got to start selling more prop replicas.
Yeah, they got to get on those helmets. They got to start making helmets that we want not just reproducing the Boba Fett helmet over and over again with different prints on it. Yeah, get us those clone helmets. Yeah, well, if we're willing to spend more money, there's lots of options, but as far as, like, the Black series, there's a lot of repeats. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, I'm definitely hoping for some good clone helmets, but yeah, cool, man.
Well, I guess next week, the Bad Batch season two premiere review. Until then, we'll catch you in the next episode. One and two. Yes. So let's look forward to that. Yeah, watch. Both double down. That's right. All right, we'll see you out there. Keep flying. All right. And thank you to our esteemed listeners at home. If you've made it this far in the podcast, thank you so much for sticking with us as always on Star Wars Escape Pod. We're always so happy to have you and for tuning in on YouTube.
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