Star Wars Articles

Awhile back we told you the story of Andrew Ainsworth, the UK prop designer. Ainsworth was responsible for designing and creating the stormtrooper helmets that were in the original 1977 film. Since then, he has taken those rare molds and tools he’d used and made replica helmets for collectors and cosplayers in the UK and abroad. But the question was whether or not the replicas constituted infringement on Lucas’ intellectual property or not. Lucas had filed a lawsuit, when he alleged that they discovered that the company was selling to the US market. But Ainsworth has denied doing so. The case went all the way to the British high court and they ruled in favor of Ainsworth stating that replicas are not works of art and therefore are...

On ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, they had Harrison Ford on to promote his new movie Cowboys & Aliens. But while in the dressing room, he meets with a rather old friend, or at least we thought they were old friends. Apparently Chewbacca has been a very naughty wookie over the years, according to the Kimmel skit written by C&A director Jon Favreau. The famed fuzzball has allegedly been sleeping with Ford’s wife and she is still coughing up hairballs, which is a little disgusting. Anyway, he comes to apologize to Ford while he’s in the makeup chair getting ready for the Kimmel taping. But it’s pretty clear that the ex-Han Solo is having nothing more to do with him. In fact, he’s mad from the moment his past partner walks into the...

There have been books with blueprints in them, mostly drawn by those who wanted to extend the creativity of the Star Wars universe, but now Lucas is releasing through Epic Books a monumental collection of the real blueprints from their archives in a cloth bound limited edition box set. The book is actually huge in scope and in size. It weighs 35 pounds and is 15” x 18” and 336 pages. The width and height were necessary, according to editor Kristin Mehus-Roe, in order to better show the details that are in each blueprint. Of course, for the price, the large size will also be very impressive to your friends. For those pages that were still too small, there are even gateway pages that fold out, 10 in all. What is amazing about this...

Garmin, a manufacturer of GPS systems for cars, announced that they will be adding the voice of Yoda and Darth Vader into their products. I love my GPS. It has saved me a few times from being completely lost while trying to find the new restaurant my friend suggested or that far away place for which I’ve never been. It has a nice soothing female voice that lets me know where to turn and the best route. And in an environment where drivers are pretty crazy, that smoothness can help keep the stress down. But I also love Star Wars and I was disappointed when I saw that TomTom GPS systems had C3PO, Vader, Yoda and R2-D2 (which I am not sure how he would give directions when he can’t talk). I wanted those voices. Almost enough to...

The Jedi Consular class has been added to the new MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic in their latest update. The purpose of this class is to bring a peace to the universe through calm and concise thought. Words speak louder than actions and that will be the challenge to the player supposedly, but you wouldn’t know it by the trailer. In it, as you can see below, they forego any of that nonsense, opting to instead show the character as a guy who kicks a heck of a lot butt to get to his goal. Of course, from a player perspective just going around sharing words of wisdom would be pretty boring. After all, Qui Gon didn’t go around picking fights and chopping off arms with his light saber, but when challenged he was pretty awesome until...

You may not have been aware of this, but Lego Star Wars also has two online games that you can play for free as a promotion for the actual game. Ace Assault pits you up against your favorite bounty hunters as you try to destroy their ship in this Asteroids like adventure. The other, the Quest for R2-D2, takes you on a quest through various missions to find the elusive droid that is calling for help while carrying the plans to a new weapon. Ace Assault allows you to first pick and customize your pilot. You can give your guy a name, a chosen helmet, weapon, pants and shirt. There are a lot of different options. The face ones, for example, give you different expressions. Once you’ve chosen what your character looks like, you’ll be...

Billy Dee Williams has something to get off his chest 35 or so years later over something that his character had done in Empire Strikes Back. The flack he has taken for it prompted him to apologize, but you’ll never guess who he is saying sorry and explaining himself to. But before I get into that, it’s only fair I post a spoiler warning here. Although it’s hard to believe that if you are reading this site, that you haven’t seen all of them at least once. But to be sure we don’t give anything away, you might want to stop reading here. SPOILER Star Wars fans know that in order to keep his operation going in the Cloud City, Lando Calrissian (played by Williams) appeared to have betrayed Han Solo and his friends, offering them up to...

As you are aware by now, the age of remade Star Wars films in 3D is almost upon us. Jar Jar in stunning 3D, er Phantom Menace, the first episode (or the fourth depending on how you look at it) will be out on Friday, February 10th. But AMC Theaters wants to make it far more memorable than just getting a ticket and sitting down with the usually ugly 3D glasses. Instead, participating locations will be giving away collectibles (with purchase) and customized glasses, while 10 places are even having cool events and activities on Saturday, the 11th. First of all, let’s start with the collectible stuff. While it wasn’t listed which theaters would be doing the promotion that runs from Feb. 10-12th, some will be giving out Anakin Skywalker...

Last year, you may remember that we talked about “Star Wars Uncut”, a fan based project in which potential film makers would send in 15 second clips from any scene they chose from A New Hope. In these clips, creative people could basically do anything from making tie fighters out of cardboard and R2D2 out of a garbage can. Once all the scenes were represented, the producers edited the movie together into one glorious film. Since then, the movie, which as been okayed by Lucas and his legal eagles, has won an Emmy and became an internet sensation. But it didn’t end there. The adventure continues with a director’s cut that features some of the best scenes swapped into the original cut, creating a whole new experience for viewers...

I am almost starting to feel bad for the developers of this game. Either they’ve just given up after numerous delays or they are letting marketing go crazy with no rhyme or reason towards their audience. Either way, they certainly don’t seem to be taking the fans, who would play the game, to heart in their latest moves. Of course, Lucas has said basically that the input from the large community doesn’t really matter, so I guess he can basically throw anything in the mix and expect people to lavish in it, even if it is kind of smelly… Case in point, the new “trailer” for Kinect Star Wars. Now I’m not the kind of fan of Star Wars that dresses up as a stormtrooper at Comic-Con’s, but I do appreciate a good storyline and strong...

A month out of the gate and Star Wars: The Old Republic has seen over 2 million copies sold and 1.7 million currently playing. That spells a pretty good start for investors to hang their hat on for now, but the biggest test is still yet to come. You see, people haven’t started paying the subscription cost yet as it came with a free trial. During the grace period, Bioware hopes to show their stuff with already one update and another one coming in March. These updates will not only create new content, but will hopefully fix a lot of the glitches that still hound the game. If you check out the forums, there is a lot of early criticism, although no one I think really expected the game to go smoothly given the amount of content and the...

This edition features Phantom Menace 3D at the box office, Glenn Beck’s rant about George Lucas and the new Kinect Star Wars Trailer, which is actually pretty funny this time out… Love is in the air, but not so much for the latest 3D Star Wars. It finished #4 at the Box Office this weekend, earning around $23 million. Of course, the movie has already grossed over $400 million, so it doesn’t really have anything to prove, but its lack of a higher placement could be a bad sign for future 3D conversions of the films. I guess it would depend on how the next few weeks go but it’s off to a pretty rough start. And speaking of love for the film, Glenn Beck, who’s normally crying about the left wing democrats and Obama, has decided to...

If you are a collector of all things related to the Force, you may certainly be interested in this high end set of gaming peripherals for the new MMO from LucasArts, Star Wars: The Old Republic. The set, which Razer actually doesn’t market as a package, but as individual items, is sure to excite your senses and your friends with these cool gadgets. You won’t even need any Jedi mind tricks to get them to see the wow factor in the mouse with the metallic lines reminiscent of the Death Star, the Sith/Jedi insignia on the headset or the cool mouse mat that lets you choose which faction (dark or light side) that you fight in. The mouse is based on the Razer Naga, which is power packed with buttons galore. 17 in all to be exact. There...

Star Wars fans really love to get into the immersive environment of George Lucas’ world and now Kinect Star Wars gives them a chance. In this new gameplay video, we actually get to see this first hand, and it’s actually kind of cool, despite what I’ve said in the past. The first thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of the game seems to have to do with Jabba directly or indirectly. Course we all know the Hutts have their grubby little hands in just about everything in the Empire, so this isn’t a big surprise. There are the pod races on Tatooine where you get to use your body to control Anakin’s podracer against opponents like Sebulba and others. This is just like you did in the game Star Wars Pod Racer, if you ever played that, only...

Here is a list of things that probably would have helped if Han, Luke and Leia and company had followed these simple common sense things In the original Star Wars: A New Hope, at the time of the filming, there were almost no characters in the film that were not played by humans in costumes. Even in the most alien-centric scene at Mos Eisley SpacePort, it was easy to see that all of the inhabitants were people in various degrees of makeup and prosthetics. This is because it was really the only option available. Later of course, there were creatures added in via computer graphics to complete scenes Lucas had not been able to previously. But Yoda does not appear until Empire Strike Back. His character is an integral part of the story...

In 1986, Disney was very interested in a ride where they could use a military simulator, often used for pilot training, to create an attraction in which visitors would literally ride through scenes from a film. Initially, the movie was to be Black Hole and it would follow the journey of the Cygnus through the vortex. While it sounded exciting on paper, the cost and the fact that the film had limited popularity made it very impractical. But Imagineering didn’t forget about the idea. Here is a list of things that probably would have helped if Han, Luke, and Leia and the company had followed these simple common sense things. 1. Don’t go down a chute that smells like garbage. 2. Don’t try to shoot Darth Vader. It only makes him mad...

The Force Unleashed II continues the story of Starkiller, despite the fact that he was killed in the first game. Darth Vader, upset that his apprentice did not finish the job of helping him to take over the universe, decides to clone him and leave him on a distant world. With very little memory of his former life, he must fight back against the Dark Lord and find his past love Juno Eclipse (who was a pilot in the first game). The new adventure is an onslaught of action with wave after wave of enemies that Starkiller has to destroy. There is more variety in this one, giving you many more enemies to take down with your force powers, but the constant fighting will leave some players bored with little in between. This makes the game...

Star Wars is considered science fiction, but like its adversary Star Trek, the George Lucas universe had foreseen many real technological breakthroughs. These innovative achievements showcase the vision that went into making the films and how the future would come to pass. Here are some examples: In Empire Strikes Back, Luke loses his hand in the battle with Lord Vader at the Cloud City. He is seen later in the film getting a new hand put back on. Inventors like Dean Kamen (of Segway fame) have created a bionic arm that provides amputees with functional fingers where they can pick up and manipulate things much easier. While still not as agile as Luke’s arm, they can go a long way to helping the handicapped be able to do tasks that...

It's hard to imagine that back in 1971 when the idea of Star Wars, a sort of spaghetti western in space, was pitched to Universal, that such a film almost didn’t see the light of day. Even though it had been greenlighted along with American Graffiti as a two film deal, the initial scripts were rejected. George Lucas had to fight for its very creation with rewrite after rewrite and wondered even after it was complete whether it was worth it to continue. So how did this worrisome experiment turn into a multi-billion dollar empire and cult classic still thrilling people? Well like Walt Disney, Lucas knew that good moviemaking started with a great story. No film becomes as memorable as Star Wars on special effects alone. People have to...

Star Wars Celebration V is the Lucas Film approved event that brings together Starwars fans from all walks of life to discuss, celebrate and network with other Starwars fans. The events include celebrities, live music, collectibles, fans, and contests. This event experienced its fifth celebration this year, and the developer of its iPhone app has released Celebration V version It's hard to imagine that back in 1971 when the idea of Star Wars, a sort of spaghetti western in space, was pitched to Universal, that such a film almost didn’t see the light of day. Even though it had been greenlighted along with American Graffiti as a two film deal, the initial scripts were rejected. George Lucas had to fight for its very creation with rewrite...