My Star Wars Experience: Bantha Tracks (1978-1987)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing okay. Happy Friday! Today I'm going to be talking about another Star Wars thing, but not one I was able to experience for myself, as that was an exclusive thing in the '70s and '80s. I'm talking about the newsletter for the Official Star Wars Fan Club, known as Bantha Tracks. So let's get into it.

So Bantha Tracks was to the Star Wars fan community what Star Wars Insider magazine is to us today. The official Star Wars website didn't exist yet, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and X weren't around yet, YouTube didn't exist and while Starlog, Cinemafastastique, and Entertainment Weekly might've contained the occasional article that updated people on the production of The Empire Strikes Back, which was simply known as Star Wars II back then, but Bantha Tracks was where the really indepth stuff was told. Unlike Star Wars Insider though you had to become a member of the Official Star Wars Fan Club in order to get issues of Bantha Tracks as they weren't available on regular newsstands.

I've always thought that the Official Star Wars Fan Club and its various print publications, be it Bantha Tracks or Star Wars Insider, are what distinguished Star Wars from the corporate Sci-Fi franchises like Star Trek. Because Star Wars was made as an independent film, its initial marketing in 1976 and 1977 heavily relied on word of mouth and science fiction and fantasy fans to get the movie out to the masses. Lucasfilm's marketing plans could only take things so far, unlike Paramount and its marketing strategy for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1978 and 1979. And so I've always thought that Lucasfilm's relationship with Star Wars fans was the biggest reason the original movie did so well in 1977 and why the franchise grew as quickly as it did.

For example, the Official Star Wars Fan Club began less than a year after Star Wars came out, and even when Star Wars ended with the Droids and Ewoks cartoons in 1986, Lucasfilm transformed the Official Star Wars Fan Club into the Official Lucasfilm Fan Club in 1987, and continued that relationship with the fans, which continues to this day. The Official Star Trek Fan Club however was started by Dan Madsen in 1979, shortly after Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out, and before that many unofficial Star Trek fan clubs popped up in various cities around the world as early as the original show's debut in 1966. But Paramount didn't make Madsen's Star Trek fan club official until 1983, and it ended in 2005 when Enterprise got canceled by UPN. While the Official Star Wars Fan Club ended in 2010, the relationship with the fans didn't end. 

I know I'm talking a lot about the fan club itself, but it's the reason that Bantha Tracks existed. It's also the foundation of what the relationship between Lucasfilm and Star Wars fans is today. However, I strongly suspect that if that foundation hadn't existed already when Disney took over the franchise after George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney, we wouldn't have that relationship at all. Especially because by 2012 you didn't really have fan clubs for movies, TV shows, or entertainment franchises anymore. Most of them died out in the '90s, and magazines like Star Wars Insider had mostly died off or moved to a strictly digital version by 2012. Nintendo Power was gone, Starlog was gone, Disney Adventures was gone, and magazines like Entertainment Weekly had mostly gone completely digital, even though EW did published a physical magazine still. Even recently, there is no more magazine for Star Trek as the final issue of the most recent iteration, Star Trek Explorer was published a couple of months ago.

I really do feel like Bantha Tracks laid the foundation for the amount of behind the scenes access that Star Wars fans have, and had even before social media and YouTube became a thing. Aside from the interviews in Bantha Tracks, The Official Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine, and Star Wars Insider, and the occasional documentary on TV, Lucasfilm had the running video diary on the official Star Wars website for all three prequel movies, various webseries including The Star Wars Show, and recap webseries for Star Wars Rebels that aired an episode the day after an episode of Rebels had aired.

I don't think any of that would've been possible in any decade, but particularly once Disney had taken over in 2010s, had Bantha Tracks and the Official Star Wars Fan Club hadn't laid those foundations with updates on Star Wars II and Star Wars III after the movie had come out in 1977.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for this week. Next time I'll be talking about the first expanded universe novel that was published in 1978, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and then right after that will be The Star Wars Holiday Special. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you later. Take care.

My Star Wars Experience: The Marvel Comics Illustrated Version of Star Wars (1977)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing really well. I was out with Brad yesterday and I picked up a couple of books, a CD, a DVD, and four VHS tapes. Today we're returning to the Star Wars Universe to look at the paperback edition of the comic book adaptation of A New Hope, The Marvel Comics Illustrated Version of Star Wars published in 1977 by Del Rey, for some reason. Let's get into it.

All this book is is a collected edition of the first six issues of Marvel Comics's very first Star Wars comic book series, which started with the six issue adaptation of the movie. The interior artwork is all in black and white, which kind of makes it feel more like an old Science Fiction movie serial comic strip than a Star Wars comic, but it's still pretty cool.

I have no idea where he got it from, but Brad gave this to me when we were still in high school. So I've had it for about 20 years now. I'm amazed it hasn't fallen apart yet considering the book is 48 years old, I've had it for 20 of those 48 years, and I've read it or looked through it pretty often.

It's interesting that Del-Rey published this book, but Marvel Comics published the one for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi as well as the ones that reprinted the U.K. Marvel Star Wars stories. I think it just has to do with this adaptation being for the first movie and Marvel wasn't publishing collected editions in 1977, whereas the other four volumes they did in the Marvel Comics Illustrated Version series were all published between 1980 and 1983.

I also find it interesting that the text in the book, including dialogue and narration, was mostly lifted from the novelization. Now, Alan Dean Foster wrote the novelization based on the fourth draft of the movie's script, so it would make sense that Roy Thomas would follow suit. It's just funny to see the comic book adaptation tie in so closely to the novelization.

I honestly prefer the novelization, but I do like this book, as well as the comic book adaptation as a whole. It's interesting to see the scenes as they're described in the novelization rather than how they're shown in the movie. 

That's it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for a look at Bantha Tracks, the original newsletter for the Official Star Wars Fan Club, which began in early 1978. So until then have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My Star Wars Experience: Star Wars (1977)

 Hey everyone, as promised I'm back with my review of Star Wars from 1977. Again, this is going to be short and sweet, with only my personal thoughts and opinions on the movie. Plus I did all the history stuff in my previous post on the movie. Let's get into it.

A New Hope is probably my favourite Star Wars movie. I mean it works on its own, it works within the larger franchise, it just works. I think it's because when it was made, George Lucas just wanted to make an adventure film in the vein of the old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers movie serials that kids and adults alike would enjoy. And it succeeded.

I remember the first time I saw this movie. It was on VHS in about late 1995 or early 1996. I was nine years old and the movie blew me away. I had been a Star Trek fan my whole life, and while the Star Trek movies were good, they were made with a TV show production mentality due to the fact that Paramount was so scared by how little Star Trek: The Motion Picture made at the box office that every subsequent Star Trek movie was produced with a more TV show budget mentality. So I'd never seen something like Star Wars before. So it blew my mind seeing the effects that the movie had, and this was me in the '90s, watching a movie that was made in the '70s. This was also a little over a year before The Special Edition came out too, so none of us had seen the updated special effects yet. 

While some of the special effects for the Special Edition, which haven't been updated through the Blu-ray and Disney+ eras, don't hold up quite as well, some have. For example, much of the CGI used for the Mos Eisley scenes don't hold up, but the updated effects for the Battle of Yavin at the end of the movie hold up extremely well. There are even some shots of the X-Wings and TIE Fighters that still look REALLY good for effects made in the '90s.

Storywise, the movie is simple, but in the '70s people were looking for an escape from the difficulties of life, and George Lucas was more than happy to give them such an escape. Things are different today, which is the reason I've taken on this monumental project of documenting every Star Wars thing I read and watch. I'm documenting the evolution of Star Wars as a franchise. 

That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back next week for my next Star Wars review. Until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My Star Wars Experience: Star Wars #1 (1977)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing well for a Thursday. I know this was supposed to be my post on the original Star Wars movie, but at the last minute, I decided I'd include any Star Wars comic book single issues that I owned, not just the collected editions. So, the next installment of My Star Wars Experience will be on the movie itself, right now though, I have a comic book to talk about, which is the first issue of the original Marvel Comics Star Wars comic book series. So let's get into it!

This issue is even more fascinating than the novelization is. Mainly because it's our first glimpse at the visuals of the then upcoming movie, outside of Ralph McQuarrie's artwork on the front cover of the novel. It's also more compact, as comic books do have a page limit to the single issues. And with this being the first issue, it only goes up to Luke's encounter with the Tusken Raiders in the desert of Tatooine, after he and Threepio went out looking for Artoo. 

So, when I was growing up, I didn't have access to these original Star Wars comics. By the time I was comic book reading age in the early '90s, Dark Horse had the license, but they only did original issues, or reprints of the newspaper comic strips, they didn't do reprints of the comic book adaptations until 1995 when they did each one under the Classic Star Wars banner. So it wasn't until the mid 2000s, when I was almost an adult, and just finishing high school that I got to read an old issue of the original Marvel Comics Star Wars comic. My sister had found Star Wars #41, which had the third part of the comic book adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back. It was cool, but I've never read the original stories printed in the comic, between the movie adaptations, as the original comics go for a pretty hefty price on the second hand market.

Luckily, Brad gave me The Marvel Comics Illustrated Version of Star Wars just before I graduated from high school. I'll be discussing that book next week. Also, both Marvel and DC have been publishing facsimile editions of their biggest issues, and one of them happened to be Star Wars #1.

While the issue itself is decent, it basically helped Lucasfilm market the movie, as Roy Thomas, the writer, and Howard Chaykin, the artist, went to Science Fiction and comic book conventions to help Lucasfilm's marketing director, Charles Lippencott, promote the film. And with both Thomas and Chaykin being pretty well known names among Marvel fans in the '70s, their involvement basically ensured the comic's success while Marvel's other attempts had Science Fiction/Space Opera comics had failed. 

I also think the front cover of the issue is interesting since Leia, Luke, and Vader are the only characters shown on the front cover who are in the actual issue. I also like the blurb on the front cover too. It says, "Enter: Luke Skywalker! Will he save the galaxy...or DESTROY it?" As if there was any doubt that Luke was the hero of the story.

I like this issue, but I really don't have much more to say about it since it's only one issue of the six issue adaptation of the movie. Instead, I'm going to wrap things up here and start on my movie post. So, join me sometime this afternoon when I put out that post, and I'll be returning to this comic when I discuss The Marvel Comics Illustrated Version of Star Wars next week. Until then, I will see you all later.

My Star Wars Experience: Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker (1976)

Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing okay. I took last week off because it was a busy week and I just didn't have the time to sit down and write three blog posts during the week. It was also a really rough week for me, so I just chose not to do any blog posts last week. I'm back today though with a change in series format for the Star Wars Discussions/My Star Wars Experience series. I was first just gonna go through every random Star Wars topic I could think of. Then I was just gonna go through all the movies and TV shows of the franchise that came out between 1977 and 2005. But, recently I've decided to do a full watch through of all the Star Wars shows and movies, and a read through of all of the Star Wars books and comics that I own in my collection. Including reference books. I also decided I wanted to document my progress through the franchise. So, today, we're starting with the very first piece of Star Wars media to ever be produced. That is the novelization of the original 1977 movie, Star Wars. These will just be my quick thoughts on what I read or watched.

It's not going to be a daily thing. But, whenever I finish a book, watch a movie, or finish a TV show, I'm going to write about it here. So get ready for this to become a Star Wars centric blog for the next however long it takes me to get through the Star Wars franchise. Let's get into it!

 I love this book. I first got my copy, which is the 6th printing of the book, which was published in June, 1977. The original edition was released on November 12th, 1976, a full six months before the movie was released. Now, normally, movie novelizations don't get published until a month before the movie's release, but Star Wars was originally supposed to be released on Christmas Day in 1976, and the novel was published a little over a month before that original release date. But when the movie got pushed back to May, 1977, the novelization's release wasn't pushed back to coincide with the movie's new release date.

One of the things I love about this book is how raw it is. Today Star Wars is such a vast franchise that is well known all around the world. But, back in 1976 all there was was this novel, which was based on a movie nobody had seen yet, nor had anyone even heard of the movie yet. But, it's also raw in that it contains storylines that weren't in the final film, including the one where we're introduced to Luke Skywalker much earlier in the movie, and we see him hanging around Tosche Station with his friends, including Biggs Darklighter, a character we wouldn't see in the movie until the battle against the Death Star in the final act of the movie.

I also like that everything that became the Prequel Trilogy, began in the prologue of this movie novelization. Including the first mention of Senator Palpatine. In fact, this prologue as well as the novelization of Return of the Jedi (as well as possibly the one for The Empire Strikes Back) are the only time we ever get any mention of the Emperor's name outside of the Expanded Universe, until Episode I came out in 1999. George Lucas never refers to the Emperor as Emperor Palpatine in the original three movies.

It's also the first time that Darth Vader is ever referred to as a Dark Lord of the Sith. He's always referred to as Lord Vader, but the word, Sith, is never mentioned in dialogue in any of the movies of the Original Trilogy.

I don't know how many people read this book when it first came out in 1976. Like I said, when it was originally published, nobody knew what Star Wars was, and even fewer people even cared about it. But, it had to have had sold relatively well in order for it to get more printings. I figure that one of the things that helped it get additional printings was the popularity of the movie when it was finally released in 1977. Movie novelizations tend not to get more than one printing unless the movie was really popular. And even then, it's rare. I'm pretty sure this book helped get people excited for the movie though, given that the book was part of Lucasfilm's marketing for the movie.

Those are my thoughts on Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker. I'll be back tomorrow with my look at Star Wars, the movie that started it all. I began with this book because it was released before the movie ever came out, which makes it the very first piece of Star Wars media to come out, even before the movie itself had come out. Take care everyone and may the Force be with you!

Star Trek Discussions: Star Trek (1966-1969, NBC and CTV)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Friday! Welcome to "Star Trek Discussions" where I will be talking about every Star Trek movie and TV show that came out between 1966 and 2005. With this blog focusing on nostalgia I figured that both "Star Trek Discussions" and "Star Wars Discussions" would only cover the franchises up to 2005 as that year would be see the end of a particular era for both franchises. So, for our first installment of "Star Trek Discussions" I'll be covering the original 1966 television series, Star Trek or Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) as it's primarily known as today. Let's get into it.

Star Trek originally premiered on September 6th, 1966 on CTV, which is actually two days before the series premiered in the United States. I know, people tend to go with the American date as the show's official premiere, but nonetheless, it premiered in Canada first, for whatever reason. The series debuted with "The Man Trap" after going through two pilots, "The Cage", which was later edited into a two part episode in the first season called "The Menagerie", and then aired on it's own in 1988 during a writer's strike which delayed the premiere of season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and "Where No Man Has Gone Before", which aired as the third episode of the series two weeks after the premiere.

The original pilot starred Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike, but when the series officially premiered, Hunter had been replaced by William Shatner, a Canadian actor who played the captain, who is now known as Captain James T. Kirk. The series also starred Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock, DeForest Kelley as Doctor McCoy, James Doohan as Scotty, George Takei as Sulu, Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Uhura, Walter Koenig as Chekov, Grace Lee Whitney as Yeoman Rand, and Majel Barrett as Nurse Chapel. 

Despite Lucille Ball supporting the show, as her company, Desilu, was producing it, NBC very quickly canceled the show after its first season. They relented, but attempted to cancel it again after the second season. By this point Paramount Pictures had bought Desilu, and they had the show's production forced on them. Star Trek also had abysmal ratings. Many fans of the show blame it on NBC's decision to move the show to Friday nights at 10 o'clock, but the show's ratings weren't great to begin with in comparison to other shows that were on at the time, like The Monkees, Bewitched, and I Dream of Jeannie.

Fandom wasn't anything like it is now. Unlike with Star Wars, which 20th Century Fox had marketed and promoted at Science Fiction conventions, Gene Roddenberry and Desilu didn't have that avenue available to them for Star Trek. Starlog Magazine didn't even exist yet. They had to rely on NBC's marketing department and word of mouth. Including word of mouth from Sci-Fi authors such as Isaac Asimov. And the show did have fans. In fact the hardcore fans like Bjo Trimble and her husband, John, were the ones that kept the series going even after NBC tried to cancel it twice before succeeding in 1969. The fans made fanzines, which were basically fan magazines because you didn't have magazines dedicated to a TV show in the '60s. They wrote stories and campaigned to keep the show on the air for as long as possible.

Television was also vastly different from what it is now. There were only three networks in the U.S. at the time, NBC, ABC, and CBS. Fox didn't exist yet. Cable channels like HBO, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, SYFY Channel, and Cartoon Network also didn't exist. Neither did first run syndication, or syndication at all. So you had to go through the networks to get your show on the air, and you were lucky if a network bought your concept letalone made it into a pilot. 

 

While merchandising wasn't a thing for TV shows in the '60s, it had been done for movies to a limited degree, as well as for characters such as Mickey Mouse, Zorro, Davy Crockett, Superman, and Batman. Star Trek got a comic book series published by Gold Key Comics, a publisher responsible for a lot of comics based on TV shows and movies. The comic wasn't very good. The people producing the comic had never seen the show and they didn't have very much to go on in terms of reference material. In fact in the first issue or two Uhura is a blond, white, woman rather than the delightful black woman that she is. They also took some liberties with the interior of the Enterprise and things like the transporter, shuttlecraft, and McCoy's medical instruments, turning them into generic versions that you might see in an old Sci-Fi serial from the '40s. 

A series of novelizations of the show were written by author, James Blish, and published by Bantam Books. These aren't the full length novelizations that we'd start to see with the movies in the '80s. Instead Blish would take five or six episodes and condense them into a single volume with a total of twelve volumes published across the span of the show's lifetime.

A series of original novels for Star Trek were published in the '70s, starting with Blish's novel, Spock Must Die! in 1970. I had a few of these novels when I was a teenager, but I ended up getting rid of them when I did my huge physical media purge in 2014-2015-2016 in preparation for the move, in favour of keeping the novels published by Pocket Books that I happened to enjoy more. 

Star Trek had toys as well, though they didn't start coming out until 1974, though AMT did have a line of buildable models of the Enterprise, the shuttlecraft Galileo, a Romulan Bird-of-Prey, the Bridge of the Enterprise, and a Klingon Battle Cruiser while the show was on the air. The toys were made by Mego and came in three categories: figures, playsets, and roleplay items. The figures included Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, a Klingon, Uhura, and other aliens from the show like the Gorn, a Talosian, a member of the Cheron race from the season 3 episode, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", a Romulan, an Andorian, and the Mugato from the season 2 episode, "A Private Little War".

 

Mego also produced several playsets to use the figures in. The first was the Bridge playset, which doesn't look anything like the Bridge on the show. The second was called Mission to Gamma VI, which is actually playset of Gamma Trianguli VI from the season 2 episode, "The Apple", complete with the Vaal computer system. The third was the Transporter, which I first saw in an episode of The Big Bang Theory.

Mego also produced a couple of roleplaying items. They were the communicator and the tricorder. Again, this was in the '70s so the amount of toys produced for the show weren't as abundant as they would be in the '90s. Trust me, we'll get there later on in this series.

Star Trek would be released on VHS in the early to mid '80s, as well as again in the '90s. The show also had CED releases in the early '80s, as well as Laserdisc releases before Paramount began releasing the series on DVD in 1999. Again, we'll get there.

While I do feel that Star Trek is outdated and out of step with the rest of the franchise that spawned from its ashes following its cancellation in 1969, I really do enjoy the show. Spock has always been one of my favourite characters, as has Doctor McCoy. I like Kirk, but I actually like him better on Strange New Worlds. The Enterprise sets are so '60s, and yet Sickbay's medical monitors actually are the basis for today's modern monitors above each bed in the hospitals. And of course the communicators are the basis for our original flip open cell phones that we had in the late '90s and the 2000s. One of which I still have today. Plus, as I mentioned Star Trek spawned an entire franchise that has endured for nearly 60 years.

That's going to be it for me for this week. I'll be back next week with more blog posts. I'm not sure what my post on Wednesday is going to be yet but I have a few options. Until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My '90s and 2000s Experience: Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008, YTV and Nickelodeon)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm going to be taking a quick look at the 2005 Nickelodeon animated series, Avatar: The Last Airbender as I just finished watching the entire series from start to finish for the very first time. I'm placing it under the "My '90s and 2000s Experience" banner, because I did see one episode on YTV when I was visiting my grandparents at the cottage one summer sometime between 2005 and 2008. I can't tell you what episode it was, but it was probably a season 2 or a an early season 3 episode because I remember Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee being in it. Anyways, let's get into it.

Aside from that one episode that I caught on YTV sometime in the mid to late 2000s, I completely missed this show when it was originally airing. I was already 18 years old when Avatar started in 2005 and about a year and a half away from graduating from high school, so I wasn't watching what was current children's animated television shows at that time. I had already dropped off Pokemon and Digimon and I wasn't watching Teen Titans, Justice League Unlimited, The Batman or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), even though I'd seen a good chunk of the first season of all of those shows except for JLU. Avatar began the same year as Power Rangers SPD, and I really wasn't sure about the new season of Power Rangers after how amazing I thought Power Rangers Dino Thunder was.

Fast forward to about seven or eight years ago and Brad lent me the complete series DVD set for Avatar. I didn't make it past the third episode. I felt the show was too juvenile and formulaic for my tastes, and at the time I just wasn't into that sort of thing. Especially because it was heavily inspired by Anime, and aside from the ones I grew up with and more recent ones like Haganai and One Punch Man, I'm not a big Anime fan and generally don't care for that style of storytelling.

So then, during the pandemic, but after lockdown was over, I asked Brad if I could borrow the show again, because I really wanted to watch the show from start to finish and see if I'd like it now that I'm almost a decade older than I was when I first tried to watch it from start to finish. Unfortunately, he'd lent it to someone already and hadn't gotten it back yet. That was fine. Brad finally lent it to me a few weeks ago, during our most recent hangout. I'd completely forgotten that I'd asked if I could borrow the DVD again, because other things like Disney+ shows, my VHS collection and my DVD collection has kept me occupied. Especially because I've watched movies for my guest appearances on The VHS Club Video Podcast, and the focus of my blog has been stuff I grew up with in the '90s and early 2000s, so I haven't thought about watching much from 2005 and onward, unless it's brand new like the most recent episode of the current Star Trek shows, Only Murders in the Building, Superman & Lois, and the Disney+ Star Wars shows, minus Andor and The Bad Batch. 

But, I finally watched it, and while it was good, and I obviously watched the entire show, I still have the same problems that I had with it when I tried to watch it in 2017 or 2018. It's too juvenile for an older audience, but too mature at some points for the audience the show was aimed at back in 2005. Which was 6-11 year olds. Which, oddly enough, if Avatar: The Last Airbender came out when I was between the ages of 6 and 11, or I had been between the ages of 6 and 11 when the show began airing in 2005, I probably would loved it because of the voice cast. I mean, you have Mae Whitman as Katara, Dante Basco as Zuko, Mako (replaced by Greg Baldwin) as Iroh, Mark Hamill as Firelord Ozai, Grey Griffin/Grey DeLisle as Azula, and tons of guest stars such as George Takei, Rene Auberjonois, and Clancy Brown.

Speaking of Clancy Brown, the character he voiced turned out to be a bad guy. I saw it coming because Clancy Brown voiced a lot of villain characters in the '90s and 2000s, from Haakon, the leader of the Vikings, in Gargoyles to Lex Luthor in Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited to Savage Opress in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. So naturally, if Clancy Brown is voicing a character, there's a good chance the character's gonna turn out to be a villain.

Because of Nickelodeon's requirement of a maximum of 22 episodes, and minimum of 20 episodes, per season, there were a lot of episodes that felt like filler. Kinda like Pokemon, where Aang, Sokka, and Katara, and then with Toph joining them in season 2, make a ton of stops on their journey to wherever they're going in each season (the North Pole in season 1, the Earth Kingdom capital of Ba Sing Se in season 2, and then back and forth between the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation in season 3) where they end up helping people, or getting stuck in a mystical swamp, and then they might fight Zuko, Azula, or whoever the Fire Nation General of the week was. You know, the usual deterrents.

Season 1 was good. It was interesting, but I didn't like any of the characters. Sokka was a jerk, Aang was annoying (he's 12 years old afterall), and Katara was that 2000s kids TV show girl that was in every show, whether it was a show on Nickelodeon or a show on The WB/The CW or UPN. Don't get me wrong, Katara was my favourite of the three main protagonists, but it was really difficult and took most of the season for me to like her. My favourite character the whole season was Zuko's uncle, Iroh, because he was hilarious but also really wise, even if Zuko didn't listen to him as often as he probably should've. Appa and Momo were great too.

Season 2 was my favourite season of the entire show, and the only season that I genuinely enjoyed. It started out rough, but once Toph was introduced in season 2, episode 6, that's when things started to pick up for me. And by the end of the season I was genuinely excited to see what was going to happen next, even as Team Avatar escaped from Ba Sing Se in the season finale.

Season 3 was the worst season for me. I found it so boring and even the two two part episodes that we got that season had dissatisfying cliffhangers that left me wishing the show would just end. Even the four part finale felt overbloated and dull until Part 3 where Zuko and Katara fight Azula, Sokka, Suki, and Toph fight the Fire Nation Army, and Aang fights Firelord Ozai...sorry, I mean Phoenix King Ozai because of course Mark Hamill voices a villain with delusions of grandeur. Because he's never done that before (I'm being sarcastic). I did like that Aang chose not to kill Ozai at the end, because way too often action shows like Avatar end with the hero killing the villain.

I also really liked how slowly they made Zuko's redemption arc. I was thoroughly prepared to be unimpressed because I thought he was going to turn against the Fire Nation in the season 2 finale, but he didn't, and I REALLY liked that. I also like that he didn't just simply join Aang and his friends in season 3. He had to work hard to earn everyone's trust. Especially Katara's, because of how things went between them in the season 2 finale.

I also got really tired of Katara and Toph bickering with each other after the first couple of episodes where they were at odds with each other. I get that you have to create conflict between characters when you're telling a story, but that trope of women or girls, depending on what age group you're writing about, have to be at each other's throats all the time right? (again, I'm being sarcastic). 

Overall, Avatar: The Last Airbender is a really good show, it's just not for me. I couldn't connect with any of the characters, though Iroh was my favourite character in the entire show, and season 2 was the only season I loved. Like I said, season 1 was fine though it took a long time to actually get the story started, but I just didn't enjoy season 3 at all besides the series finale, and not just because I had finally finished the show. 

Alright my friends that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back on Friday to talk about Star Trek, also known as Star Trek: The Original Series for the first in my Star Trek Discussions series. Until then have a great rest of your night and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Star Wars Discussions: Star Wars (1977)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So, initially I was planning on doing three Star Wars blog posts this month, one on Shadows of the Empire, one on Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, and one on Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith since it's that movie's 20th Anniversary in two weeks. However, I decided to begin my Star Wars Discussions and Star Trek Discussions series of posts that I started under "My Star Wars Experience" and "My Star Trek Experience". These will be more of a chronological look at each franchise. So, today I'm taking a look at the movie that started it all, Star Wars, now mainly known as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Let's get into it.

Following the release of his first feature film, THX 1138 in 1971, director George Lucas began working on a science fiction fantasy film influenced by science fiction serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, and science fiction novel such as Dune, called The Star Wars. However, he wouldn't get a studio to back the movie until 1973 when his second feature film, American Graffiti was released and was successful.

Star Wars is one of those movies that could've bombed as easily as it succeeded. During production of the movie, everybody working on it, including George, thought would fail. Whenever I've seen interviews about the franchise, Steven Spielberg is interviewed since he's a close friend of George's, and he usually says that he always thought the movie was going to be successful. Of course, I kinda take things like that with a grain of salt because it's only one person saying it, and he had nothing to do with the production of the movie. 

The movie was released on May 25th, 1977, and ended up making a total of $220 million at the domestic box office, which is about $1.14 billion in 2024 money. With the earnings from the international box office, the movie made a total of $314.4 million against an $11 million budget, making it the highest grossing film in North America at the time, replacing Spielberg's 1975 film, Jaws.

At this point, fandom was not what it is today. Science fiction conventions were just becoming a thing, with San Diego Comic-Con having only started in 1970, there was no internet, and merchandising for films wasn't really a thing yet. the Star Trek TV series had a few toys by MEGO, as well as some novels and a comic book series, but movies were never marketed with much more than some movie posters and maybe a comic book tie-in or novelization. Star Wars had everything.

 The first piece of merchandise to come out was the novelization by Alan Dean Foster (though the book credits George Lucas as the author of the book), which was released on November 12th, 1976, about six months before the movie had even come out. This novelization included scenes that were in the movie's script and had been filmed, but the visual effects weren't working or post-production was tight, so they couldn't finish the scene. Two of those scenes, the Jabba the Hutt scene, and the scene where Luke speaks to Biggs at the Rebel base, were restored for the Special Edition re-release in 1997. Luke's scenes with Biggs and his other friends remained on the cutting room floor, but were included in a CD-ROM release in the '90s, as well as deleted scenes on the Blu-ray release of the first six movies in 2011. The novel also has a prologue that gives an early backstory for the fall of the Old Republic and the rise of the Empire. This prologue was the first time the Emperor is given the name Palpatine, as none of the movies in the original trilogy of films ever refer to him by that name, only referring to him as the Emperor.

George Lucas also made a deal with Marvel Comics to publish a six issue comic book adaptation of the movie in the vein of Marvel's other science fiction properties such as the Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova, and Captain Marvel.

Starting with issue #7 Marvel began publishing original Star Wars adventures set after the events of the movie. Issue 8 introduced a character named Jaxxon, who was a green space rabbit, who resembles Bucky O'Hare, and whose personality is a cross between Bugs Bunny and Rocket Raccoon. For decades Jaxxon was used as an example of how ridiculous the early Star Wars Expanded Universe was. Now, he's started to gain some respectability among Star Wars fans, and has begun appearing in comics again lately.

The movie also had a junior novelization in 1995. This is the one I owned when I was a kid. It included two extra scenes that aren't in the movie or in the main novelization. The first is Darth Vader beginning to board Leia's ship, and the second is Leia preparing to give the Death Star plans to Artoo as the Imperials board the ship.

There was a storybook which told a truncated version of movie.

Kenner released a line of action figures in 1978. They were supposed to be released in 1977, but production couldn't keep up with the demand, so the release was pushed back to Christmas 1978, a full year and a half after the movie came out in theaters. This toyline included all of the major characters from the movie, as well as background characters like the aliens found in the Cantina scene.

To go with the action figures, Kenner released a series of playsets including the Mos Eisley Cantina and the Death Star.

They also released a line of vehicles, including Luke's Landspeeder, Darth Vader's TIE Fighter, the regular TIE Fighter, the X-Wing Starfighter (pictured above), and the Millennium Falcon. All of which gave kids hours and hours of play as they didn't have the movie to watch at home.

While the movie did have a presence at the video arcade in the early '80s, it wouldn't recieve a home video game console release until 1990, which was a side scroller released on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Nintendo would re-release the game on the Super Nintendo in 1991. I loved playing this game growing up. I've never played the original game, but I'm assuming it's similar in that you could play as either Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, or Chewbacca and go through various levels until you reach the Death Star battle, which you fly an X-Wing in a more three dimensional level, similar to the polygram design of the arcade cabinet.

With the movie being such a big success, George Lucas commissioned Alan Dean Foster to write a sequel novel to tie fans over until the actual movie sequel, then only known as Star Wars II. This novel was originally commissioned to act as a novel sequel that could be adapted into a low budget movie sequel, should Star Wars be only a moderate success, or as a novel sequel if the movie bombed and novels were the only way George could finish his story. This novel was Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and it didn't include Han Solo, in case it got adapted into a movie and George couldn't get Harrison Ford back for the movie.

Not every Star Wars thing was successful. George decided to allow others to make their own thing set in the Star Wars Universe, and we ended up with The Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978. It's so bad that it only aired once on CBS and has never been officially released on home video, though bootlegs do exist and the animated segment is available to watch on Disney+. Despite how bad it was, and despite George disowning it, the TV special was responsible for introducing us to Boba Fett, a character who was appearing in the movie sequel, in the animated segment produced by Nelvana Entertainment, a Canadian animation studio that would be responsible for giving us two full fledged animated Star Wars shows in 1985. It also gave us a glimpse of Kashyyyk, the homeworld of the Wookiees.

Star Wars got a home video release in 1982. This was how a lot people saw the movie as the theatrical re-releases came infrequently and by the mid '90s when I first saw the movie, there hadn't been a theatrical re-release since the movie's 10th Anniversary in 1987. Of course Star Wars has had numerous home video releases since then and I'll be talking about some of those releases another time.

Star Wars has come a long way since those early days. It's one of my favourite movies of all time because of how fun and exciting it is as a standalone movie, even if you take away everything that came after it in the franchise. I'm also thrilled that I got to be there for its revival in the '90s. I'm glad that I get to talk about it here on the blog this way. 

And that my friends is going to be it for me for today. I'll be back on Wednesday for my post on Avatar: The Last Airbender, the original 2005 animated series, as I'm halfway through season 3. A friend of mine let me borrow the complete series DVD boxset, and I've been watching through that these last few weeks. So I decided I'd come on here and talk about it. So until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.