The Acolyte Actually Performed..... OK?

Garry: 00:00:01

Hello there. We would be honored if you would join us. Hello there and welcome to Spark of Rebellion.

This is your weekly Star wars podcast and welcome to episode 240.

Hope you are keeping well and that you've managed to do something Star Warsy over the last couple of weeks since we were last with you with a bit of a break as always. Worky stuff to do, other bits where we're busy scoundrels, scoundrels throughout the galaxy.

So can't be, can't be in all places at once, but it's going to be back talking Star Wars.

We've got about half a dozen new stories to go through, stuff that's leaked, stuff that's beneficial, some other bits, some absolutely ridiculous prices on some merch coming up, which we'll get into. But yeah, we're going to keep you up to date with all the things.

If this is your first time listening to Spark Rebellion, make sure you hit the follow or the subscribe button on the app that you're listening to right now. That way you won't miss an episode or at least a notification when it drops every Saturday when we put out a new episode.

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My name is Garry, I'm one of your hosts and before I bring on my co host, just want to say a huge thank you also to our supporters of sor. You guys are doing us a bit of beer money now.

And then the regular members, light or dark side, you decide, go and choose, head over to spark, rebellion.com support and and jump on board. And as I said, we love you guys. Thank you very much for your continued continued support over there. My co host, Mark.

It's the, it's the wookie with the mostest. Boy, how you been dude? How's Star wars been for you last week? I'm assuming that you should have finished the book that you updated us on last time.

Mark: 00:02:14

Yeah, Glass Abyss, I have.

Garry: 00:02:17

Oh wow. You finished a Star wars book.

Mark: 00:02:19

Finished. Yeah. Takes a bit longer these days but yeah, all finished, which is good. It was an all right little book actually.

Quite an interesting mace Windu tail, quite a nice little new newer cannon fleshing out of his personality as well, which was quite cool. It's always weird, though, with those books, because where it's set, it's set like after Phantom Menace. Like, you know, he's not gonna die.

You know, he's not gonna lose. He's not gonna lose a leg, you know? You know, so the stakes are always. The stakes always have to be presented differently.

You know, they always have to introduce other stakes for other people and then build that character and the character set around that and, you know, make you really kind of care for it. So the. Yeah, those kind of novels are always quite difficult sometimes because you spend a lot of time on that. But I enjoyed it.

A couple of really interesting characters in that book. A couple of droids that were interesting, and then one that the major antagonist is really quite interesting as well. And just. Just.

Yeah, just a decent little read. I enjoyed it like, it would be a straight middle of the road Star wars book. You know, just a. Just a good little read.

And then got on to Batman Resurrection. Don't know if you've read that. You know, your. You read it yet?

Garry: 00:03:36

I've got it. No, I've not started it yet.

Mark: 00:03:37

It's good. It's good.

Garry: 00:03:39

You're into it. Yeah.

Mark: 00:03:40

Yeah. Well, I've been reading the Batman 89 comic that came out, and that's cool. Yeah, it is really good. So I finished that one as well.

It was one of the few that I bought, single issues of that and the Superman 78. And so I thought, I'll just read the Resurrection straight off the back of that. So I'm enjoying that. So, sadly, no Star wars book ongoing right now.

Garry: 00:04:02

Still got your geek card, though.

Mark: 00:04:04

Oh, yeah.

Garry: 00:04:04

You know Batman.

Mark: 00:04:06

Yeah.

Garry: 00:04:07

Nice. Nice, dude. I went back and finished Star Wars Outlaws. Oh, yeah, the. The video game.

Mark: 00:04:16

Decent.

Garry: 00:04:18

Fairly decent. Yeah, fairly decent. I feel like I want to do a podcast episode just on Star wars gaming at the moment.

I might do that because something weird's happening with that. I won't go into too much detail now, but something weird's happening where there's this layered effect where on the surface things seem okay.

You know, with Jedi, Fallen Order, and Survivor and stuff like that. It's this weird thing where back in the day, we had, like, three or four Star wars games land in a year.

Like the heyday of, like, LucasArts and Lucas Games and all that stuff. And the majority of them were fairly good. They were good, but now it's probably something to do with the wider gaming landscape, but. Don't know.

Man on the Surface, it's cool. It's not too bad. But then looking back on it, I don't really remember. There's no real sort of great experience from it that, you know.

So if in a year's time, if someone said what was Outlaws like, I'd probably be like. From what I remember, it wasn't too bad. I feel like. I feel like the games at the moment are letting Star wars down a little bit. There's nothing.

Nothing to get our teeth into. Nothing substantial, mate. So it's. It's okay. That's all I say.

Mark: 00:05:34

I don't think I'm gonna play it. It's one of those, like, gaming for me is generally like that at the minute, you know, has to be a big, big game for me to want to play it.

Garry: 00:05:44

He looks pretty sad then. Listener, you can't see Mark.

Mark: 00:05:46

But yeah, that's really sad about it.

Garry: 00:05:48

Yeah. Yeah, I think everyone's just waiting for GTA 6, mate.

Mark: 00:05:53

Yeah, that's probably true, actually.

Garry: 00:05:55

Probably true.

Mark: 00:05:56

Yeah, that's probably true.

Garry: 00:05:57

But, yeah, I might do that. Yeah, I do a little episode on that. But anyway, reasonably quiet on the Star wars front from us too, mainly because it's reasonably quiet everywhere.

There's been some. Some stories which we'll kick into now.

The first one, which is the headline story for the episode, is that the acolyte, remember that was unceremoniously canceled due to mainly it just being shit. I think it's the only way to. To describe it shit kind of narratively as we went through in our reviews. Shit viewing figures and Disney.

You just said it's a waste of time. I think it was. I think it was quite expensive to make as well, which is an obvious thing, but it was.

It's pretty pricey when they released the figures at the end. Apparently we're taking this from.

From Gizmodo, but this was on all the main Star wars blogs and everything is that the Acolyte apparently didn't do too badly. What they did was they calculated the.

The number of viewing minutes across all of the people who watched Disney plus over the time period and calculated that the acolyte came in second place with over 2.7 billion minutes viewed. So when you look at it like that, and I think Disney are trying to clutch at straws a little bit with this by saying you all hated it.

You know, we recognize it wasn't that good, which is why we canned it. However, we still class it as a success because in the grand scheme of things, we're in second place. So that's not to be sniffed at.

I think you'll probably have the same view as this, mate. This is just probably a bit of damage limitation on. On and trying to justify spending that much money on something that wasn't that good.

But yeah, I don't know what you're. This seems like a technicality. Like.

Yeah, we'll just, we'll throw this out in a different way of saying it had low viewing numbers, but it really didn't.

Mark: 00:07:57

Yeah, it's a, it's a funny one, isn't it? Because it was, it wasn't great. You know, we know the acting was a problem.

We know like the story itself was all right, you know, and Khmer and, and Plagueis and even like the two sisters, like they were generally all right and there was, there were a couple of little good things that came out of it. But yeah, it was, it was, it was an expensive exercise in not doing any one piece of things very well. You know, it's, it's.

So it was sort of frustrating to see because it was, it was, it was conceptually very good and the trailers looked all right and it just seemed to be some weird choices. Like I said before, the actor that plays Saul, the guy from Squid Game, like, if you may, Mark, it's English speaking.

Don't get someone that needs to learn the language. Like it's just a basic. Surely it's just a thing. So. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what. Probably investor day. Damage control, isn't it?

You know, share all the damage control. The damage is done with the fans, you know, all the net beards. Net beards, everything.

Anyway, you know, they don't like, you know, they don't like anything. They'll always find fault. We've seen it with a Fantastic Four trailer. You know what I mean? Oh, I don't like the thing's voice. It's too high.

Was based on all your experience of previous encounters with space fairing rock monsters. Then you jerk off.

Garry: 00:09:38

Yeah, yeah. What do you base that on?

Mark: 00:09:40

Yeah, it's a fantasy movie, mate. There's a flying car, there's a robot that can talk. Oh, and look at that, a giant planet eating thing. You're right. The voice is off. Shagga.

So it's sort of this, you know, I don't think you'll ever please fans these days that people want to, want to go on about stuff.

But I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, look, if you're, if you're, if you're Kathleen Kennedy or whoever else and You've got to try and get a bit more brass for some more Star wars stuff. You got to do something, you know, well, what else you're gonna make and. Or season two. Well, this season one did well. Correct.

It did what else you got well, what about these things the other stuff didn't do well? Ah, well, it's funny you should say that because actually did do well. Yeah. Coming it from a different angle.

So, yeah, I think it's just investor stuff. I think it is. Which you would do. Of course you would. You would do. You'd try and spin it as best you could. Of course, that's the job in it.

Garry: 00:10:41

That, yeah, it's gonna say that is part of Kathleen and whoever else's job is to try and make. Make.

Make it not look like a dumpster fire in case they've sort of bought into the echo chamber or they've witnessed that and they just get, you know when you just get that vibe that you know something hasn't done that well, so you're kind of like, ah, how do we spin this? How do we make it sound like, yeah, it's not the best thing we've ever done, but at the same time it's not terrible. Not great, not terrible.

So give us more money.

Mark: 00:11:12

I think it's weird as well, because you'd sort of. It makes me wonder if they'd get more respect by just saying, do you know what? We appreciate that we might have missed a little bit with that.

Almost like what Marvel did, like figure came out and it was like, you know what? Since End Game, it's been really tough.

We've not made the best stuff, so we're going to slow down a little bit and, and we appreciate that it was quite difficult to do and we didn't always get it right. And I. Yeah, but again, people wouldn't respond well to that. You know, people wouldn't respond well to that either. I just, I. It's a.

I do think it's a difficult thing and I think it's getting worse. We saw it with a Superman trailer. People want to be divisive for nothing.

You know, that Superman trailer without a shadow doubt this will be the best Superman film since Superman. And I've liked every Superman film, even Quest for Peace, even though it's.

But you live in a world where you, you're lucky enough to watch Superman film films, so stop complaining.

Garry: 00:12:10

And it's true.

Mark: 00:12:11

People. People pick apart things for no reason. I think, I think it's just the world now in it. It's cool to complain about stuff.

And I think if you're a business like a Star wars or, sorry, a Disney that's got. Got plenty of ip, if all your shareholders are constantly seeing is boom, boom, troll, troll, troll, troll, troll, troll, troll.

And then like, the outlets pick up on that trollism a little bit because there's the trend now of all the outlets just, you know, fans reactions to this thing prove that it's maybe not as good as Disney thought. And it's basically just, here's a paragraph of me saying I'm gonna pay some tweets, then paste a load of tweets, and then a paragraph finishing up.

And it's like, there's a trend of that now. So if you're like, if you're.

If you're a public company with stocks and people's livelihoods and investors and all that, like, that's all they're hearing. So it must be very difficult to manage it all.

Garry: 00:13:07

Well, defo.

Mark: 00:13:08

That's why they're on the big bucks, not us.

Garry: 00:13:10

That's why we're earning the pennies, mate. That's why Kath gets the Starbucks in the morning brought to her. Just think, I get it. It's because of things like this. She's good. Yeah.

What's the guy at the top called? Still? Is it Igo? Is Bob still there?

Mark: 00:13:26

I think, yeah.

Garry: 00:13:27

Yeah. He must have been on the phone multiple times. Like Kafka. Come on. What you doing? Yeah, my. I'm getting a better.

I'm getting a better guide of what's going on from my, you know, from my kids, from you. So talk to me.

Mark: 00:13:41

Yeah.

Garry: 00:13:42

What's going on? Second place, Bob, Chill. Right. Well, it's all good.

Mark: 00:13:49

And also like, you know, all kind of irony aside with that, if you look at this, this article from Gizmodo, it opens with, it appears unnecessary complaints from that small but loud section of toxic Star wars fandom. They've influenced Lucasfilm to cut short the life of the acolyte too soon. It's sort of weird in it because you're right, they are knob eds.

So many knob eds. So many knob eds. Like when we reviewed it, like, we had, some people think we're no beds, but we're not nobeds.

Generally we like to be pretty fair and balanced. It just wasn't very good. And. And you sort of live in this weird world now where like the. There are a lot of.

But then if you say something critical, you risk being lumped into the dickheadville and then actually the actual, genuine criticisms that could have been learned from and built upon get lost and tied with. That's just. So we'll ignore them and we'll just say, well, we'll cancel it anyway. But we'll just say it's down to the. So, yeah, I don't see.

Like, you can't get better, can you, from that. Like, if there are. I wanted an Acolyte, Season two, same. Because we had Khmer and. And. And Plagueis and everything else.

And it was like, right, actually, okay, let's. Now surely we can learn from some of this, and let's just learn and listen. But you don't. What.

Why would you put X amount of hundreds of millions of dollars into it? Because dickheadism still exists. So, man, the world is wild, like you said.

And if you're Bob Iger or someone up at the top of the tree, you're like, I don't even know what you do. What would you even do?

Garry: 00:15:27

What. From. From Bob's point of view. Yeah, what would.

Mark: 00:15:32

What. How would you. I don't know how you'd handle it. Like, it would be. I just don't know how you'd handle it, because people will not like anything.

Garry: 00:15:39

Yeah, yeah, it's true. I get that. There's a. There's a. There's a whole subjectivity thing. You know, what some person likes this other person might not like, and that's cool.

You know, it's all good, but it never stops there at that point, like you said, people very vocal, and they'll jump on and say, yeah, shit, because of this reason, and then it becomes a thing and all that stuff. But I feel like there isn't anybody in Star wars like Feige that has the balls to say, we know that that wasn't very good. That's.

I think that's part of the problem. I think Feige, I think Bob needs to get somebody in there.

We've joked about it a few times in the past about Kath getting fired and stuff, but, dude, I think, you know, it might be time to actually start looking at that. That's probably one of the things you asked about. What do you do if you're Bob? That's probably one of the things you start to look at.

Mark: 00:16:32

You know, it's like, oh, look, let's be honest, man. Like, sorry to interrupt, but the logic is you just bring in George Lucas.

Garry: 00:16:41

He's unhappy, apparently.

Mark: 00:16:43

Yeah.

Garry: 00:16:45

So we're told. Thus, I have seen that where he's not allowed to or probably wouldn't professionally say that.

But, yeah, apparently people that are mates with him and roll in those circles have said that he's not really not happy with how it's going. So.

Mark: 00:17:02

That'd be amazing, mate.

Garry: 00:17:04

That'd be amazing. Of course he is. Yeah. But that'd be so cool, man, if he was just like, look, I've had enough.

You've had your fun, you know, you've screwed it for long enough now. Give a bigger back. That would never happen. I don't think he would. I think it should happen, but I don't think it would ever. He's too old, mate.

He's too. I hate saying that you're never too old, but I think it, like, logistically, how would that work?

You know, Bob's not just gonna say, kath, you know, this is an experiment you've done. George is back.

Because even if he came back to, quote, unquote, fix anything, he'd only do it as a temporary thing and then he'd be off again in exactly the same way that Bob is back as a temporary thing to sort out Disney and then he'll be off, you know.

Mark: 00:17:50

So, yeah, it's a weird thing and it's. Yeah.

Garry: 00:17:58

I do think it needs a clean house, though, mate. I do. I honestly feel like now is probably the time where Kath needs to start either thinking.

Because surely, like, from your own perspective, even if it's just not a paycheck thing, surely you must be sick and tired of, like, the entire world just having a dig at you for all this, all the things that you're putting out, you know, like, I don't know, it just feels like there's been more negative vibes for Star wars since she's been there than positive ones.

So surely, like, from your own personal turning up to do a job where people just want to kick the shit out of you every day, like, you know, metaphorically speaking, it's like, oh, man, I can't be doing with this. So fair play to her, in a way, for sticking at it. But they need a feige. We've said this loads of times. They need a feige or a George back in.

Mark: 00:18:43

You know, if you're.

If you're Kathleen Kennedy, like, this is only a very small percentage of your career and you're dealing with people who are known, or you're dealing with fandoms that are known to be shitty anyway. Complete shithouses. Like, she's done the stuff that she's done before. Like, we always forget that. She's like gremlins back to the Future.

Back to the Future too. Do you know what I mean? Cape Fear, all this sort of stuff. E.T.

war of the Worlds, there's a Jurassic park, there's Romance in the Stone, all the Indiana Jones stuff. There's classic. Like, it's, it's.

It feels like it's a weird outlet for people just because Star wars has not been great, but like a track record is actually really good, mate.

Garry: 00:19:28

Pre. Pre social media. She's. She's turned up and.

Mark: 00:19:35

Yeah.

Garry: 00:19:35

And. And earned her spot to do this. Of course. Took a great career.

I just wonder, back in the day, if we had social media when like the second indie film was coming out, would that have. You know, Which. I don't know. It's difficult to say.

Mark: 00:19:50

It's a good point, actually. Well, if the second. That's a really good question, actually.

So assume that we live in the age of X and all this shite and, you know, Temple of Doom comes out. Do we get Raiders? The Lost Ark and Last Crusade?

Garry: 00:20:03

Exactly.

Mark: 00:20:03

Sorry, do we get Last Crusade? Raiders already out. But the point is, what do we get? Do they just go, we're putting a pin in it for 10 years?

Garry: 00:20:11

Yeah.

Mark: 00:20:12

That's such a weird thing in it because it all. Like you said, it all shapes everything. It's. Anyway, yeah, we could talk about this whole episode, but it's. It's a. It's a.

It's a funny old situation and I. I agree they probably do need to do something to clean house a little bit and.

But I wonder if there's sort of been a soft reset with the Filoni stuff. You know, we've got andor kicking in and then everything else feels Filoni from there on.

Garry: 00:20:35

It does, actually. Yeah. That's good shout. Yeah. I wonder if Filoni is strong enough to. To do Cath's job from the top. Probably is, but. Yeah.

Mark: 00:20:44

But would that then take him away?

Garry: 00:20:46

It would. So who places him?

Mark: 00:20:49

You probably wouldn't want that.

Garry: 00:20:51

Got your CV up to date? I know you're LinkedIn.

Mark: 00:20:53

Get it on LinkedIn.

Garry: 00:20:57

Right. The acolyte, them. We all know it did. Mediocre at best, but Disney are putting a bit of a spin on that, so.

But definitely no season two that hasn't changed their minds, put it that way. There's been no announcement for that. Talking of announcements for other things, though, a story that dropped a couple of weeks ago.

Sorry, the end of last. Beginning of last week. Daisy Ridley's up and down roller coaster film that hasn't got off the ground yet.

New Jedi order that bagged itself a new writer. So the, the other guys that were on it, they got fed up, left.

So George Nolfi, who was the guy who's not had a huge career for big feature films, he was on the Ocean's, one of the Ocean's films and Bourne Ultimatum, he's in, he's now going to work on the script and we, I guess we hope that he's going to stick around because that seems to be par for the course with some of these writers over at Lucasfilm at the moment. But so he's on there and we still got the same director. You know, Shamin obeyed Chinoy, she's still there. So she hasn't left yet.

So she's still going to direct it. And old, yeah, old Georgie Porgy is gonna come on and write this one. I'm gonna skip over the other story that we.

That was related to this is another film. So you know Shawn Levy, he's writing his own film. There was a small thing around Ryan Gosling is in talks to star in that. That seems like.

I don't know what that's about that might come to fruition. But that's a, that's a rumor at best at the minute.

So dude, another writer for this, for this and also a follow up story he was asked about, he was spoken. He was speaking at the film stories event. He was asked obviously about Star wars up. I'll condense this a little bit.

Basically says the way that you approach something like this is that you look at what's come before, you look at the broad ideas and all that stuff. He means that Lucasfilm, Disney and the director and so on, they all have their thing they want to do.

And as a writer you try and put beats to the story together, you try and imagine characters and you present them with an understanding of what needs to honor obviously. So any waxes, there's a link in the show notes listening, you can go and check out his full reply to this.

But I think what he's basically saying is you try and write a cool story with respect to what's gone before, especially when you're writing a film that's a follow on from the previous stuff.

And he does say that one interesting thing he does pick up on, which I hope he includes is he says that what George Lucas did with his first six films is that he created a very steeped, broad notion of politics where it's not kind of on the nose but it's got that broad strokes of like the Nazis Roman Empire fall of all that stuff. And the politics is weaved in and out of all that.

So it sounds like he's kind of clued up, dude, he's like, you know, looks like he's focusing on the right aspects of this, but I just wonder if, if he's going to stick around. What say the.

Mark: 00:24:07

Yeah, it's a difficult one, isn't it? I mean, Star wars works. It was simple yet spectacular.

That's the, that's that, you know, it was a simple story, but delivered visually in a way that really hadn't properly been done at that scale before. And you know, then the, the next two in that original trilogy just continued the same story. It was all the same.

It was bad guys versus good guys undertone of politics just as a necessary, necessary thing. And then the prequel sort of lent into the politics a lot more, which I thought, I think probably harmed them in the.

In in the earliest days, but now I think you can appreciate, certainly it's been appreciated how good they were setting everything up. And I feel that a lot of the movies that we've had since then, like the ones that have worked really well, have told a single story.

And that's not just the movies, it's the TV shows as well. They've told a decent story, well executed, not relied too much on law, but has had some in there to make people aware that it's, it's available.

The stuff that hasn't done so well has tried to make changes without, I suppose, without really kind of contextualizing a lot of changes.

Like the, you know, the Luke arc in, in the sequel trilogy was pretty much non existent because everyone got nervous and it, there was such a letdown to not see that act complete properly in that it was, yeah, okay, this, this guy did get disenfranchised because so did Anakin. Rather than go that way, he went the other way. And you know, just to kind of skim over that in the last movie just let a lot of people down and up.

I think what's challenging about movies like this is that if you were to say something like Last Surviving Jedi tries to restart the Jedi order after the fall of a tyrannical ruler and dictatorship, you'd be like, me, that's brilliant. That's gonna be Luke.

And it's sort of difficult to accept that all the stories that you want to see and that would have made a ton of money if they were executed properly and still might do if they ever get done, are now going through these weird tumultuous Writer changes and director changes and pushbacks and delays and, you know, it's like this. The. All the ingredients are there for a complete up because of it. And you just think, well, come on, we must be able to do better than this. So it's.

It's difficult to be a fan of. Of news because you never, like, you sort of allude to. You never know if it's going to stick. So I hope it does.

But also, I think with most movies now in Star Wars, I'm sort of ambivalent towards them. I'm pretty, Pretty, like, apathetic. I'm not that, you know, I'm not that hung up on them until.

Until we get a trailer and then it's like, oh, exciting, you know, so let's talk about. So I don't know, man. It's weird. It's in a weird state. And it's like every, every new story is new writer for already announced thing.

Like, come on, we're not. We're not getting any actual progress on this.

Garry: 00:27:32

Yeah, that's the mainstay story is, yeah, it's like this has been announced or this person's on board, but you never see the final thing, which is weird. Exactly. Maybe it's just a case of, you know, this stuff happened all the time before we knew about it. We just didn't get.

Mark: 00:27:48

That's a good shout.

Garry: 00:27:49

The skinny on it.

You know, maybe we're just oblivious to the fact that some of our favorite films probably had like five writers before the final guy turned up or woman turned up and. Yeah, did the thing. You know, who knows?

Mark: 00:28:01

Well, you listen to a lot of movie podcasts, like Verbal Diorama and all that. They go into that sort of stuff.

And you, you do see a lot of the stories that you wouldn't necessarily have been privy to, like you said, because there was no social. So that's a really great point. It's just, I think because of that, the erosion of trust and anticipation and confidence just comes with that.

And it's a very difficult thing. You know, the old cheesy quote, like, you become what you think about if, if your fandom is in Star wars.

And all you think in here is actually, this is happening, this is happening, this is happening. You, You. That shapes the way you are a fan. And, And. And it becomes more difficult to be a fan in. In certain ways. So it's. Yeah, it's difficult.

I think it is difficult. And it would just be like, it's almost better to not say anything.

Garry: 00:28:51

Mm, yeah. Yeah. Bit like the video game industry, they're very, very tight lipped within, within a studio. They're very rarely release unless there's a leak.

You know, you very rarely get told that, you know, a new creative director's joined or, you know, they've reset the narrative and they, you know, all that stuff is done behind the scenes and the only time you know about it is if the game launches to date or it gets delayed or something and then you know about it. So maybe, yeah, it's, maybe it's just harder to keep the leaks and all that info under wraps though in this stuff.

But anyway, George Novia, it sounds like he's got that mindset which might tap into Lucas's stuff from a narrative perspective. So I'm hoping he sticks to his guns with that and doesn't get blown down by people wanting to do just, you know, pew, pew, pew.

Hope there's some, some of that stuff in there. But yeah, yeah, we'll keep you updated on that stuff. And moving over to the other end of the spectrum, we've got an update on the High Republic.

That whole thing is being wrapped up soon, which I'm surprised at. I. Unless I've just forgotten how long this has actually been going for. But there's a new book that's due out June this year.

It's called Trials of the Jedi, written by our old buddy Charles Soule. And this is the, the finale, the grand finale of the High Republic storyline.

Which is, which is why I say I must have just missed how long this has been going for. It doesn't feel that long. It probably has but you know, you just don't, you know, see it.

And yeah, it's out in June and there's a synopsis has been revealed to it revealed for it now over at Penguin Random House.

And I won't go into all of it, but it just says in the epic conclusion to the High Republic, the Jedi face a final confrontation against the Nihil and Martian Ro.

And goes on to say the Jedi have yet to solve the mysteries of the nameless creatures who feed on the Force Ro has loosed them upon the galaxy, striking fear into the heart of even the most stalwart Jedi.

And yet with every life saved, the world freed from nihil control, the all consuming blight which devours everything wherever it appears, threatens to wipe it all away. So sounds like it's a pretty big epic showdown on the horizon for the High Republic. And dude, I've got to catch up with this, mate.

I think I've read The first like three or four books, I'm pretty sure. But I think I've got like five books to go before even this one. I don't know how up to date you are it, dude.

But yeah, this feels like it's a swift, a swift end to what was meant to be this huge multimedia thing, you know.

Mark: 00:31:39

Well, I think it's delivered on that aspect of it, the multi medium, a lot of comics and stuff. I don't think it's necessarily been the all encompassing. Excuse me, you know, computer games.

Computer games, you know, I mean computer games and movies and. Well, maybe not movies but TVs, you know, we've had the acolyte and it's, it's not.

I don't think it's quite been as, as, as on screen as we maybe expected, but it's certainly done a lot in the comics. In the books it's actually four years old. So it'll be nearly five years old when this concludes. And I actually quite like that.

I actually quite like that. So I get all these books, right? I just order them and they're all there and I've read a lot of them and I've read some of the comics.

I've done some of the. They've done a couple of like scripted dramas where it's an audiobook and it's, it's actually, you know, like the Dooku Jedi Lost one.

And I think the one was, it was Tempest Runner, the one that was the High Republic one. Really good with Lana D. The character, Lorna D. Was really good. So I actually really quite like this that it's got a beginning, middle and end.

And I think it will be a really nice initiative to then go back on later and said, you know what, actually I'm going to read all those again. You know, like I'm going to read all the like the Dark Tower, Stephen King books. I'm going to read them all again once every 10 years.

Maybe I'll zip through them. Lord of the Rings, Dune, whatever. So I actually quite like that it's got an ending. A lot of this stuff's actually been really good as well.

I think it's done a lot to, to portray the galaxy as we've probably not seen it before.

And, and the way that the Jedi truly was supposed to be like at the height of the powers, not this, you know, complacent bunch, the Phantom Menace that have not really had that much to do for 10,000 years or whatever it's been, you know, I think it's, I Think it's, it's been a really nice initiative and it's introduced quite a lot of interesting concepts. So, yeah, I'm. I quite like this. I like that they're finishing it because I think it will be.

I'll get all the books, I'll make sure that I've not missed any and I'll just. That'll be it for two years. I'll read those books. That's it.

You know, it might take me 2, 3 months per book and that's what I'll do for a couple of years. So, yeah, I'm game with that. I'm game with that.

Garry: 00:34:06

Yeah. It's interesting that you say it's. That you, you like the fact that it's got a beginning, middle and end.

That's unheard of in Star wars stuff, isn't it, really? Because people just want more and more of that stuff.

As soon as something's done, like Mandalorian Season 2 or, and, or the, the first thing is like, well, when's more coming? You know, when's. When's that stuff coming? So that's kind of interesting. And I think the other thing that's.

I don't know if that would have been a good thing or not. When I said multimedia, but you. You nailed it. Yeah, I think it was the on screen stuff that was the.

I think they did say that they were going to do or lean into that a little bit right at the start of this, but it obviously panned out that it just wasn't viable to do that.

But perhaps when we get that, you know, the, the, the James Mangold film that he's working on, which is the origin of, of the, of the Jedi and all that stuff and the Force, maybe that will turn into something that leads into, to this in the future perhaps.

But I think, at least I think I was just expecting to see like a Disney plus animate, you think, you know, like Tales of the Jedi or Tales of whatever. But yeah, Trials of the Jedi, that's going to close out all that stuff.

I wonder what Old Soul's going to work on now, because I know he's doing some comics still.

Mark: 00:35:23

Yeah, he's got the new comic run, hasn't it? Which is. Is it the Kylo Ren stuff, the whole First Order? And he's got something else as well, isn't it? Darth Vader?

Garry: 00:35:32

He's done some music as well, if you follow his insta.

Mark: 00:35:36

Soul Man X.

Garry: 00:35:37

He's a soul man. Yeah. Good musician. But in terms of Star Wars, I don't know. He'll always do something, I guess.

Mark: 00:35:42

But yeah, yeah, I like his stuff as well. I do, I like his stuff. I like Light of the Jedi and, and all the other stuff that he's put out. So, yeah, I think it will be.

I think it'll be an interesting read that. So I'm gonna. Yeah, I'll pick that up one up just to kind of complete the collection as well.

Garry: 00:35:57

Yeah, samesies. I do need to catch up for sure. And listener, if you, if you want to hear us, chat to Charles Soule a while ago about.

I think it was his first book that he did for the High Republic or his second book or something. Then just head over to sparkofrebellion.com and in the search bar, just do a search for Charles Soul and yeah, you'll listen to our interview.

It's a good interview that he was. He was a nice chap. Rightio, dude. Finish up on a couple of bits of merch, just quickly. First one. LEGO Star Wars. A new Death Star set is in the works.

Had one of these already. Mega pricey. This one, though, is going to blow the roof off. So apparently they are. According to a leaker on Instagram. I love these.

A new Ultimate Collector set is slated for release later this year. The. That's nothing unusual because I think the first set came out years ago. Must be 10, 12 years ago that first set came out.

This next one apparently is going to cost a thousand dollars. You can, you know, you can take your, your $0.01, round it up to 1,000 bucks, which will probably be.

If they convert it, which it probably won't, it will probably be £1,000.

come before it, which was the: 8080

Mark: 00:37:38

Yeah, I mean, that's a hell of a lot of money. Hell of a lot of money for lego. It's more than I'd spend on it, for sure. I mean, I don't even know how big it would be.

Just trying to kind of put a bit of context in it, you know.

Garry: 00:37:57

What would the other one that they put out, it was fairly, it was fairly big.

Mark: 00:38:02

It's got to be 10,000 pieces. If the Millennium Falcon seven and a half, 8,000 and it's 150 bucks less. And it's a more complex build. It's got A bit. Call it 9,000, 10,000 pieces.

Yeah. I mean, this is for the hardcore, isn't it? It's for the. It's for the people that.

That love LEGO and that love LEGO Star wars and, like, that's their hobby. That's the thing they collect, that's the thing they're into, which I totally understand. Like, you know, I love Star wars and I'll.

I don't mind spunking 400 quid on a good Anakin or whatever else. I don't care. That's fine. I'll. I'm. I'm happy with that because that's the part of the Star wars collectibles that I enjoy. So I.

I would never kind of put anyone down for getting it, but at the same time, I. You would have to be, for me, real hardcore in. In. In. It would. The specificity would have to be there. Like I said, it would have to be.

You would have to be a hardcore LEGO Star wars fan, you know, so, yeah, not for me. I'd be curious, like, how you display.

It's one of those things that need a massive room to be displayed and loads of space around it to look really good, decent lighting and stuff. So it's not something you could, in my view, would be done justice by being stuck on a shelf. You know, it's.

It needs a proper display, which I think probably then lends itself to the fact that the people that can afford to properly display it, you know, they can chuck a grand it. So it's, you know, it's Lego, it's Lego. Understanding their business.

I would have thought it'll sell far fewer units, but the profitability will probably be far greater on it. So, yeah, you know, I get it. I'm not getting it, though. Don't have any room. I've got to get rid of some stuff, actually.

I'm making this room a bit smaller, so I've got to get rid of some stuff.

Garry: 00:39:49

Yeah, same, mate. No room for. I've got room for like a couple of little. Little Lego bits, but definitely not. Definitely not this.

And I think this is probably aimed at, like, the YouTuber that's got a dedicated LEGO room where he's fair play.

Mark: 00:40:06

Yeah, that's a good shout.

Garry: 00:40:07

You know, you go into the room, they've got the LED lights on, they've got all the other bits up on the. The cabinets and stuff. It's like, oh, have you seen this new, new Death Star there? I'm not going to say it was gifted to me for a review by Lego.

But I've got it, so go buy it. They'll use them as sales people, do you know what I mean?

Mark: 00:40:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Garry: 00:40:27

So, yeah, the older. And apparently it's going to be. Again, this is very much a big.

Apparently, apparently it's going to be based on The Death Star 2 from Return of the Jedi.

Mark: 00:40:37

Because anyway. Cheeky bastards.

Garry: 00:40:39

I was going to say, you'd expect to be less pieces, wouldn't you? It was overlaid. This information was overlaid on an image of the Death Star too. So that seems like an easy kind of.

Yeah, it's probably based on that one.

Mark: 00:40:50

Yeah.

Garry: 00:40:51

t Death Star that came out in: 2007

Mark: 00:41:08

It's. Yeah, they're constantly changing these things as well, like the R2D2s and stuff. You know, the more articulation and more.

It's like the corners are more pieces to the rounding so they actually look more round and stuff. And it's just. Yeah, it's. They know how to get you by continuing to refine these things.

ars if we get another one for: 1200

Garry: 00:41:30

Yep, yep.

Mark: 00:41:31

I won't get that one either.

Garry: 00:41:33

Yeah, same.

Mark: 00:41:35

Because I think the other thing as well, like, don't get me wrong, this is premium stuff. But you, you could get genuinely like that's in, you know, get two or three decent hot toys at that point. Sideshow collectible jobs.

Garry: 00:41:47

Two, four, six, eight. Yeah, three, maybe four.

Mark: 00:41:50

Yeah, exactly what the thing is.

Garry: 00:41:55

True.

Mark: 00:41:56

So Celeste.

Garry: 00:42:00

Yeah. Unless you were absolutely pissed smashed one night and you ordered it and it's massively regrettable, like.

Mark: 00:42:09

Yeah, holiday money.

Garry: 00:42:11

Yeah. Competitive around here for the next couple of months. Food's going to be sparse, but wicked. Death Star on the shelf.

Mark: 00:42:19

Yeah, Jet to come off. Keep your tenerife, jackasses. Look at this bad boy.

Garry: 00:42:26

Yeah, we jest, but that's probably happened. And just very quickly on the, on the merch stuff, the.

ainly anyway for stu wars out: 2025

And we've also got Star Wars Celebration in Japan this year and season two of andor Star Wars Vision season three. So when you look at it like that, it's actually pretty good year for Star Wars. And they're gonna do a whole, like, array of, like, mega cool merch.

Again, we haven't got time to go into all of them, but there's a link in the show notes. Check them out. We've got some very snazzy citizen watches that those guys normally do merch for. Obviously the expected Funko Pops and all that stuff.

We've even got jewelry, we've got toys, we've got replica lightsabers, got new toy lightsabers. We've got pendants and all sorts of shit there. So a big pushmate on the old merch this year for. For the anniversary stuff, it looks like.

Mark: 00:43:46

Yeah, yeah. The power of the Force stuff gets about a little bit. So it's interesting.

They've sort of released the year, you know, the year ahead stuff which is quite, quite cool. But it's just insane to think force awakens is 10 years old.

Garry: 00:44:00

Yeah, that is nuts.

Mark: 00:44:03

And what's perhaps more startling from that perspective is that now there's as much of a gap between today and the Force Awakens as there was between Force Awakens and Revenge of the Sith. What, the actual. Oh, yeah, that felt like way longer.

Garry: 00:44:21

Yeah, that did. It felt like twice as long.

Mark: 00:44:24

Exactly. What the heck? And everyone's like, oh, there's not been Star wars for such a long time. Like, it's only 10 years.

Garry: 00:44:30

Crikey.

Mark: 00:44:31

Nuts.

Garry: 00:44:32

10 years since the Force Awakens. It does not feel balmy. The gap doesn't. The gap feels longer and the anniversary doesn't seem as long.

Mark: 00:44:41

Right.

Garry: 00:44:41

That's mad.

Mark: 00:44:42

It's insane back then. It is insane.

Garry: 00:44:45

Yeah, dude. Remember going to the old. I went to an event in Leicester Square at the Empire Cinema.

I saw some person, lucasfilm UK or something, they were doing a the giveaway on Twitter.

I entered it and one went down there and seeing that trailer for the Force Awakens in a cinema while they were live streaming it from Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, I think it was at the time, mate, the hype for the Force Awakens was strong.

Mark: 00:45:13

It really was, man.

Garry: 00:45:15

Yeah.

Mark: 00:45:15

Yeah, that was a big. That was the last time Star wars felt massive.

Garry: 00:45:20

Yeah. Coming out.

Mark: 00:45:22

Not true, actually. It felt massive at the last Jedi trailer before all the division started.

Garry: 00:45:31

Yeah. Yes. Yeah, it did, actually. Yeah.

Because everybody thought, yeah, the Force Awakens, it's kind of a retelling of A New Hope, but we'll go let you have that one as it's the first one in the new trilogy and it was still a half decent film and everyone's jazzed for the second one. Yeah, it was, wasn't it?

Mark: 00:45:49

Yeah.

Garry: 00:45:51

Yeah. So, dude, yep. I don't think you're going to pick any of this stuff up. This is not your bag.

But listener, if you're into the old Funkos and jewelry and all that stuff, check it out. Share links, shout outs are in the, in the player, in the notes, whatever. Hit us up on the old Twitter. If you pick any of these up, you can find us.

Just do a search on Twitter for sponsor rebellion or sparkrevanion.com Twitter. I'll pop you straight over there, let us know if you're up for it.

And I think on that chirpy note compared to the start of the episode, dude, I think we'll wrap there for 240. Thank you very much for coming back and listening to another episode of your Star wars podcast, Spark Rebellion.

It was cool to chat through some of the recent news stories, etc. We should be back next week. I think there's going to be a couple of things rolling in terms of stories next week.

I'm hoping as we go through the year we're going to get some updates from these writers that have joined and working on some of these movies and stuff. It's got to be the year where they start to to put some some higher gears in this stuff. So we'll let you know what's going on with all of that.

In the meantime, check out the back catalog if you want. Just go through your app, go through SparkleBranding.com loads of cool stuff there.

And as I mentioned, that interview with Charles Soule that was really cool. Give that a listen.

Might get him back on the show at some point to recap his thoughts on the High Republic, see if he's up for chatting about all of that stuff. In the meantime, you can also throw us some beer money. Thank you very much for your support.

Kev, Danny, Denise, Pascal, all you guys, thank you very much. You can do that@sparklebroding.com support and mate, good to come back and chat the roller coaster that is always Star wars these days.

Mark: 00:47:48

The ups and the downs. Yeah, it's always good, man. We've got Star Wars Celebration in two months, so we'll see what goes on there.

It was two years ago since we went, which is barmy and it feels like we've not had a ton of stuff since then. We're obviously Ahsoka and the Acolyte, which were the big things from that. But all the new movies that announced.

Not that much has happened with them since then. So I'm hoping. I agree with you, man. I'm hoping. They've got to do something.

They'll announce something, show something they've got to do at celebrations. So I do think this year we'll start to get a little bit more thrown our way.

We're just like ducks in a pond waiting for the scraps of bread from old cast. So feed us, Kath. Get your war buttons out. Stop being tight.

Garry: 00:48:29

Great analogy. Yeah, we can all snap on that one tonight. And actually, on that note, we've ended there.

So until next episode, take care of yourselves and may the force be with you. Always.

Mark: 00:48:44

With the sunbread.

Garry: 00:48:51

It.