After loudly complaining about the absurdity of having a fake holiday predicated on a bad pun, it looks like I too am posting Star Wars content on “Star Wars Day.” It’s unavoidable, it seems.
Silly holiday or not, I had a lot of fun recording this podcast. A few weeks ago I attended Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, and my friend Mike over at the Castle to Castle podcast invited me on to discuss the convention. For those of you who don’t know, Castle to Castle discusses Disney and Disney-adjacent topics, but what makes them so cool and unique is that it’s all filtered through a lens of progressive equality and social justice.
The bulk of this episode is dedicated to discussing Star Wars Rebels, which, as you probably know, is kind of my thing, but we also got to talk about The Force Awakens, the Star Wars Anthology films*, the possibility about more Star Wars presence in the Disney theme parks, and broader discussion about the Star Wars Celebration convention. Even though I only got to attend one day of Celebration, it was so much fun and made me more excited for Star Wars than I’ve been in a long time. This is evidenced by the fact that I’m surprisingly kind to The Clone Wars on this podcast. It’s no secret that I think the show is garbage, but I had a really hard time being down on it during Celebration because fans’ enthusiasm for the show is just so stinking infectious.
That’s part of what makes Star Wars so interesting and exciting – the Prequels and The Clone Wars are bad, and I have no taste for them, but their existence gives multiple generations “ownership” in Star Wars in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if they were just watching their parents’ Star Wars. Kids growing up with The Clone Wars have an investment in these characters that I’ll never get, and that’s sort of neat. It’s all the more exciting now that with Rebels (and hopefully the new movies), younger fans will be able to have a Star Wars that’s both theirs and worth watching.
Anyway, here’s the iTunes link to the podcast episode, and while you’re at it, check out some of their other episodes, they’re definitely worth a listen.
*We recorded this episode a week or so ago before it was announced that Josh Trank would be leaving Star Wars. There was obviously speculation at the time, but I didn’t feel comfortable taking part in that for this podcast, so I stuck with the “official” flu story.
