New Books Announced to Fill the Gaps Between Episode VI and Episode VII

Sorry, I do not have a link to an article at the moment but it has been announced that there will be twenty new books to be released, I believe starting in August, that will fill the gaps in the new canon and explain to all of us what has happened between ROTJ and now.  From a marketing standpoint, clearly this move is brilliant.  I would be willing to bet that there are some Star Wars fans out there who were never all that interested in the EU but will be reading some of these books to prepare themselves for the new movie and find out what has been happening. 

I think under different circumstances, I would be excited about this.  To be honest, with the way I'm worrying about what they are doing with this movie now, I'm actually kind of dreading it.  And I probably won't be reading any of them before the movie comes out, although that would've been true whether I was feeling cynical about it or not.  I still want the movie itself to be sort of a surprise.  Which reminds me to remind all of you, please do not discuss spoilers in any of the comments.  You are free to link to anything as long as you warn us and don't mention any specifics, but for those of us who don't want to know, don't just blurt anything out.  Although from what I understand, while rumors are flying left and right, nothing at this point can be confirmed anyway, so you may believe something you read, but it may be completely false. 

I don't know why, recently I've been a lot more concerned with what they are going to do with these movies.  I feel as though they are going to almost go out of their way to make it incredibly different from the EU as it was before.  I guess that gives them more room to "play" but at the same time, so much of what happened in the original EU (what are we calling it now?) took the character arcs from the movies and brought them to their natural progressions.  Han and Leia got married and had kids.  Luke started a Jedi academy and trained the next generation of Jedi.  Leia became a real leader, Han maintained a strong presence with the New Republic.  The Empire didn't completely disappear but they also were no longer in power.  If you change those things, you basically are telling me that the end of ROTJ was a complete lie.  Just kidding!  They're smiling now, but really the Empire is still very much a big deal and Han hasn't changed at all and will go back to his old life and Luke is going to disappear and Leia is just going to continue to be a miserable, alone woman serving for the greater good.  Fooled you!  It'd be like if the prequels had come out first, and then when ANH came out the Empire totally hadn't gotten anywhere and Vader wasn't that big of a deal as a villain. 

Sigh.  Please don't ruin my favorite movies for me for the rest of my life.  I could let the prequels go and pretend they don't exist because they were all different people and a whole different thing and we already knew how that turned out anyway.  These are my favorite movie characters and I'm just really concerned that they are going to completely tarnish them.  I'm not feeling particularly optimistic. 

As a final note, Episode VIII has a release date of May 26th, 2017.  And the first spinoff movie will be titled Rogue One, and I believe will center on the beginnings of Rogue Squadron.  I am completely indifferent right now to the announcement of Episode VIII's release date, because if Episode VII destroys my love of Star Wars, I really won't care.  A Rogue Squadron movie could be cool I guess, and has a lot less potential to have elements that send me into nerd rage.  Although I have to admit, the fact that we're apparently going to be getting a new Star Wars movie like, every 6 months, seems a little... excessive almost.  Can they make them all worth watching?  Is it going to feel more like when we get into the late seasons of TV shows and they are running out of ideas and the quality really suffers?  So many questions.  I'm curious to hear all of your thoughts on this.

Harrison Ford Crashes Plane, But He'll Be All Right

If you are just now hearing this news from my blog, I'm kind of disappointed in you.  And also wondering what hole you've been hiding in for the last day.  Yesterday afternoon in Los Angeles, Harrison Ford crashed his plane into a golf course.  The news broke very shortly after it happened, and I was informed by one of you fine people, and then I immediately went to Twitter and Google, mostly in the hopes that it was a hoax.  This would not be the first time that someone went on the internet and tried to convince everyone that Harrison was dead.  Unfortunately, further research indicated that it looked pretty darn true, and then I spent the next hour with an unreasonably high heart rate, just sitting still and looking for updates.  Just for your own future reference, I've found Twitter to be the best source of developing stories.  Millions of users and easily searchable, and some of the information is instantly available directly from people who were actually there to witness it.  It is both amazing and frightening sometimes, this world we live in.

After some initial panic and reading a lot of headlines that said "critical condition" which you should all know is basically a death sentence, further updates revealed that he had been awake and talking and stable when they got him out of the plane.  Then eventually his son Ben used Twitter to send a message telling us all that his dad was going to be ok.  See?  I told you Twitter was a great resource.

According to Ben:

"At the hospital. Dad is ok. Battered, but ok! He is every bit the man you would think he is. He is an incredibly strong man."

Now that was comforting in two ways: First, that Harrison will be all right.  Second, to learn that he is just what we all like to think he is.  Now that we know that, I don't think we need any more evidence, like having him crash his plane and come out all right.

I'll be honest, I've thought before about how I'll feel when he dies.  I mean, unless I die pretty young, and that would be a bigger problem I think, I'm going to be around to learn of his death.  I don't know what it is, as I don't really have much attachment to any other celebrities, but I just know I'm going to be really upset when he dies.  Which is why he is not allowed to die for at least twenty more years.  Minimum.  Only when he is old enough that he has done and seen everything there is to see and do, then he is allowed to go peacefully.  Hopefully not in a fiery plane crash.  Seeing that news and all that critical condition talk, I really did get nervous.  And I thought I might be ok if he only made it ten more years, but then last week Spock died, and I have never even seen an episode of Star Trek, and only seen the new movies (plus I think once my parents had us sit through Wrath of Khan when we were kids, but I don't remember anything about it)  and he is about ten years older than Harrison and even that sort of made me sad and made me realize that early eighties is still not old enough for us to be able to say, "Well, it was just his time."  No.  We are not done with him yet.

For any of you who haven't read details, he is banged up pretty good but should make a full recovery.  Although there were reports that he had a pretty major gash on his forehead, so one wonders if he may have a new scar to balance out the one on his chin but that remains to be seen.  There are also reports of some other broken bones but nothing confirmed there and no new updates today.  Trust me, I check constantly.  All I seem to get when I check are more jokes about the Kessel Run and Boba Fett taking him down or the classic line from Indy, "Fly?  Yes. Land? No."  As well as some creative pictures.  I admit the humor does help, especially since it means that it's not serious enough that we are not allowed to joke about it.

One good thing that has come out of this is that Harrison is all over the news.  Not just the bad news either, but clips from his movies.  I for one would like to see this push the Academy to finally give him the Lifetime Achievement Oscar he needs because there is apparently no chance they will ever give him one for acting.  Or, even better, nominate him and give him one for his portrayal of Han Solo in Episode VII.  How amazing would that be?  I mean, that will never, EVER happen, but it would be pretty awesome.

One thing has become clear through all of this, although I had suspected it anyway: Everyone freaking loves Harrison Ford.  Seriously.  I mean, everyone was going crazy at the thought of the loss of this iconic actor.  And then there is all of this talk about how "heroic" he was by being able to bring the plane down like he did, because the engine totally failed.  There was nothing he could've done, and he did everything "right" under the circumstances.  It is oddly comforting that it appears that most people love him as much as I do.  (ok, maybe not quite as much, but still)  I mean, the second person I heard the news from was my brother, who even through text sounded genuinely concerned before I reassured him that the first reports of "critical injuries" were not true.  This may also help anyone who was previously joking about not wanting to see this old man in the new Blade Runner movie.  I mean, now that we almost lost him, let's put him in all the movies!  I'm not kidding.  ALL the movies.

When I heard the news I was actually watching Crystal Skull on TV.  I had the frightening thought as I watched that the old Indy on screen was actually SEVEN YEARS YOUNGER than Harrison when he reprized the role of Han Solo.  I mean, he's gotten so old.  I get even more depressed when I realize how old he really has gotten, and how long ago he was actually my age (hint: he was my age before I was even born, and I'm no spring chicken anymore) But we're definitely still not ready for him to go yet.  I do hope that he heals quickly and makes at least a few more awesome movies before he's done.  And that when he does die, he is super duper old and we will be at peace with it.

And hopefully this will be just like the broken leg a few months ago (he's had a rough year, hasn't he?) and in a month or so he'll be totally fine and we'll have forgotten what we were so concerned about.  You know, I've always worried that he would die in a plane crash and last night for a little while I thought I was right.  If he does, I hope it is not for a very, very long time.  Ok, that is probably enough babbling about my love for Harrison and relief that he will be all right.