Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens promises to bring the laughs, the “Old Master” returns, and heavy metal coalesces with Star Wars. A week I can support!
By Mike Audette // On Wednesday, Star Wars’ official YouTube channel unveiled the first game-play trailer for Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens, which is coming out this June. The game looks like it will be an absolute blast. I’ve not had much experience playing the previous installments of the Lego Star Wars games since I use to be strictly a sports-gamer when it came to video games when I was growing up. (My Star Wars fandom lied like a dormant beast for a while through high school and college.) The game is going to be using authentic voice-recordings from the films actors as well as dialogue strait from the film itself. From what I’ve seen in the lead up to games like Disney Infinity 3.0 featuring Star Wars play-sets and previous works from Lego Star Wars television and the video games, the use of humor in the storytelling region of Star Wars is something to truly enjoy. Knowing when the story of Star Wars is meant to be taken seriously as a narrative and thematic tool is as useful as knowing when to have fun with it and find the joy in it. After all, Star Wars is for everyone!
This upcoming Wednesday is the hour-long finale of season two of Star Wars Rebels and it is promising to bring the heat. On Thursday, Entertainment Weekly revealed an exclusive episode clip and interview with Supervising Director Dave Filoni and Darth “Old Master” Maul voice-actor Sam Witwer. The interview has a lot of cool tidbits into the background story meetings of how Dave and the crew came up with the idea to re-introduce Maul into Rebels and what his life has been up to following the last time audiences saw him in the comic series Son of Dathomir. I am a huge fan of Maul and the way he was brought back in The Clone Wars series. His characterization and the brilliant voicework from the aforementioned Mr. Witwer is nothing short of incredible. I would highly, highly recommend checking out the episodes featuring Maul in season five of The Clone Wars involving Death Watch and Mandalore. His sheer brilliance and cunning shines through in spades in those episodes. I’m really hoping I don’t see the end of his story in the finale but I won’t hold out hope since it looks like anyone could be a goner this episode.
If there’s one thing you should know about me it’s that I love heavy metal music almost as much as I love Star Wars. I’ve been listening to metal music for over a decade now and I can’t imagine how I would be without it. It just so happens to be that metal and Star Wars are a perfect match for each other. A lot of heavy metal musical themes and styles come from classical music compositions and the similarities can really shine through to the trained ear. That is exactly what the band Galactic Empire sought out to do. The band released a cover of the end credits theme from A New Hope on December 17th, right before the release of The Force Awakens. Founded by Carson Slovak (Bass and Stormtrooper) and Grant McFarland (drums and Boba Fett), the duo and the rest of the ensemble (Chris Kelly (lead guitar and Vader), CJ Masciantonio (guitar and Shadowtrooper), and Josh Willis (guitar and Imperial Guard)) had over one million views on the video after getting out of seeing the film. In a feature on Huffington Post Australia the band gives some background on their motivations for the project and what else they are working on. You can view the video of the cover on their Facebook page here.