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They say that stormtroopers are very dedicated to their causes and such is the case of one particular warrior who is trekking across Australia to raise money for the Starlight Children’s Foundation (the Aussie equivalent of the Make a Wish Foundation). And doing so in full armor, which has been at times an exercise in true willpower to continue on in some of the conditions that he’s had to endure, but according to the 21 year old sales associate, the people have made it all the worth while.

Imagine being in the most treacherous places that Australia has to offer, 102 degree heat, dressed in a costume that is already too hot to walk in, bitten by bugs, sometimes alone when cellphone service was non-existent. That is the 3100 mile route from Perth to Sydney, Jacob French’s destination. But despite all the difficulties inherent in what he’s attempting, his dedication to finishing his trek is admirable indeed.

French’s deed is certainly a good reflection on the...

In a strange turn of events, the city of Odessa in the Ukraine has been giving people who apply free land, up to 1,000 square meters, but they were shocked when an unlikely visitor came to make his claim.

In a bold move for any Star Wars fan, he entered the offices where they were accepting applications for the Black Sea plots, in full dark lord garb, but he wasn’t turned away by the guards. In fact, they kind of laughed as he introduced himself as “Darth Vader, right hand to Emperor Palpatine” and they let him proceed to fill out the application. He said that he needed the property to have a place to land his spaceship, no doubt an Imperial Shuttle. Those things do take up a ton of room. Anyway, he also stated that he felt he had a good chance of getting the land because the people were already on the Dark Side, taking cues from local critics who accused the city of corruption over the giveaway...

We found a few new stories today that we thought we’d share with you. Star Wars: The Old Republic’s producers announced their plan for early access to the game for pre-order enthusiasts, Star Wars snowboards, and a little factoid about Carrie Fisher from her new book.

It’s pretty common knowledge that pre-order customers of Star Wars: The Old Republic will get some degree of early access, but up until now they didn’t really have any idea of just how early that would be. Well sources at Bioware are now saying that it could be as early as five days before, but it could also be one day or less even. It all will depend on when you entered in your pre-order code into the website. They didn’t say how the timing would affect that though.

Now we all know how protective we are about our Star Wars memorabilia. When people come over, we don’t even want them to touch that brand new Darth Vader bust. But when a Thai woman destroyed a 30 year old man’s Luke and Vader collection, he got all Sith Lord on her and choked her, but not using the force, just force.

Now this might be what Jimmy Buffett would call a Jedi Crime of Passion, but it’s actually much more complicated than that. When he was arrested after killing her, he had already had a history of being abused by the woman, even seeking help from a domestic abuse center. And she had vowed to make his life a living hell, threatening to leave him and return to her native country, but apparently did not have time to make good on the latter part of that threat. Instead she used his love for Star Wars against him by destroying the many items he’d collected since he was a kid. Apparently these included mostly Luke and Vader memorabilia.

He got 12...

This week we have EA’s response to worry that their servers for Star Wars: The Old Republic may not hold up, Mac users get Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars and Yoda was arrested for drunk driving in Germany. Wait. What?

As you may have heard, the Battlefield 3 servers, which are also run by publisher EA, had some serious downtime this week, taking offline thousands upon thousands of users on the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 platforms. This, of course, caused major outrage and a lot of pie on the face of the software giant, but it also shed doubt on their ability to maintain Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA was quick to point out that there is an entirely different PC only configuration involved in the SW:TOR servers and that the same problems would not be seen there. Of course, with anything of this nature there is bound to be a problem at some point. Even Google isn’t immune. But it’s good that EA is trying to look ahead and see what they’ve done wrong in the...

Going to be a sitcom, there is. Funny, it will be. Sorry, I was suddenly possessed by Yoda. But there is a situation comedy being mapped out by Seth Green with the endorsement of the man himself, George Lucas, or at least his licensing department. And the target date is in the next two years, give or take a year or so. Green wouldn’t be more specific.

If you haven’t heard the name Seth Green, he is quite the accomplished actor doing stints in movies like Scooby Doo and playing Oz in the ever popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, but he’s probably best known these days for two things. One is that he is the voice of Chris Griffin in Fox’s irreverent comedy Family Guy and he is the co-creator of Cartoon Network’s Robot Chicken. Interestingly, both series have done spoofs of the Star Wars saga that were really hilarious.

While Family Guy is more of Seth McFarlane’s thing, although I can’t see Green not having some input there, Robot Chicken is more his...

This week we have new ornaments from Hallmark, Star Wars: The Old Republic release date scorn, someone who doesn’t like the prequels, and David Prowse becomes the bionic man, sort of.

Hallmark, which often gets forgotten in the annals of Star Wars merchandise, had a showing at New York’s Comic-Con this last weekend, showing a preview of their 2012 line of ornaments as well as selling exclusive R2 unit (R2-Q5 and R2-A3) tree hangers at the show. Those went for around $30, but were sold quickly and are now only available on Ebay for around $75-100.
Other offerings mentioned were a TIE interceptor, Han on a Tauntaun, General Grievous, and Darth Maul. These will be available July 2012, while the stormtrooper logo will be in October 2012. They will also continue their tradition of coming out with humor and musical cards based on the series.

Star Wars: The Old Republic will be ineligible to be considered in the Christmas standings by the sales tracking service GtK...

This week we have two big fans of Star Wars and their creations, a new beta test weekend from Star Wars: The Old Republic and Star Wars: The Clone Wars returns two of our favorites.

A dedicated Star Wars fan has paid tribute to his favorite films by building an incredible reproduction of the Death Star hanger scene out of 30,000 Legos. The diorama has everything including hundreds of stormtroopers and Imperial guard and officers lined up in formation, the Emperor and Darth Vader on the carpet, the Imperial Shuttle, and the bay itself. Jay Hoff, who says he spent over $2300 in bricks and 6 months to build the 6 foot by 6 foot creation, built it for his school to celebrate the Science Discovery Day. Hoff has yet to dismantle it after it was displayed, and I’m wondering if he should. I would put it up on Ebay or something as someone would surely be glad to have it if he doesn’t want it. Legoland perhaps? He might even make a profit.

In other fan news, a...

In this week’s edition, we’ll look at a time not to use a Star Wars reference, the Blu-Ray success story, and a special shout out and happy birthday to one of our favorites. So let’s get started.

While using Star Wars references might work at your local LAN party, at football games, not so much. Especially at Florida Gator games. It seems that a reporter spoke to the head coach of the Gators Will Muschamp and asked him, innocently, if he had a padawan-master relationship with his old boss Nick Saban.The spitfire leader, known in some circles as Captain Blood, was taken back by the question stating that he didn’t know what a padawan was and thought the journalist had called him something bad. Since Star Wars really isn’t a staple in professional football, I guess we can understand his confusion, but then perhaps the reporter shouldn’t have been so bold.

Well whether or not people hate George Lucas and what’s he’s done this time around to the Blu-Ray set...

Star Wars was one of the first films that really did a booming business in the merchandising department and opened up a whole new avenue of income for movie producers to tap into. But because this wasn’t a big thing when contracts were originally signed, many wound up being left out of the revenue flow. Carrie Fisher, for instance, who arguably is the most memorable actress in the original films, with her strong portrayal of Princess Leia, apparently did not get on the gravy train according to an interview she did with The Daily Beast.

It was an interesting revelation. Most would assume that the actors in Star Wars, especially the big three, would be rolling in cash since their likeness is literally on millions of things, but they aren’t. Because they didn’t sign any sort of deal that would allow them to get such royalties. Perhaps that is why Harrison Ford is so bitter. Oddly enough, though, the least likely to have merchandise, the old Obi-Wan Kenobi, Sir Alec Guiness did...

This week we look at fan protests over blu-ray changes, darth, er dick cheney on Leno, and star wars toothbrushes.

Protests are breaking out across the internet as Star Wars fans react to the changes that Lucas has made in relation to new Blu-Ray editions coming out soon. Some are calling out for a boycott of the series, while others are just standing in disgust over why Lucas has to keep messing with his work. Many wonder if he cares at all about the fans or he’s just doing this to be vane or satisfy his own insecurities over the films. The biggest crime, as we reported, is adding dialogue to Vader’s destruction of the Emperor. The “Noooooo!” seems to be the same one that Vader yelled when he was told that Padme was dead back in Revenge of the Sith. And we can certainly see why there would be such a fuss about it. It literally changes the whole meaning of the scene and in the end, makes Vader look like a whining wimp instead of the bad ass that he’s...

Yesterday we told you that there was strong evidence that Lucas had replaced the puppet Yoda in The Phantom Menace with a CGI one, with the scene leaked out onto the net. And as of yesterday, Lucas had denied that any changes have been made and that the film was remastered only for visual purposes and not tweaked. But then other sources claimed that Lucas would be putting in some surprises.


Well today it was confirmed that the Blu-Ray edition would include the CGI Yoda that is seen in the clip, as well as some other tweaks that had been noticed by the eagle eyes of Star Wars fans who have managed to get a pre-release copy of the set. This actually makes sense to me, because it will serve as better continuity within the prequel trilogy and not be such an abrupt change, but I still think that Muppet Yoda was more realistic. There is also some cosmetic changes to the Ewoks in which...