Week in Geek, episode 11, recorded 11/1/17. News since last recording, including: Lin Manuel Miranda’s Kingkiller Chronicles prequel show; Veronica Mars miniseries?; DC and their odd anti-franchise-hype leading up to Justice League; Daredevil season 3; and Super Mario Odyssey. Then instead of diving into the 40 minute discussion of Hollywood and sexual abuse, tune back in for that in Episode 66 of the Comparative Opinions podcast!
I was asked recently whether we were going to do an advance post on Rogue One, because, well, Star Wars. My answer was… oh, well, yeah, should probably do that.
The hype around this one is… different from last year. Which is good. There haven’t been a whole lot of movies with more hype than The Force Awakens. Which gave the movie huge shoes to fill. Expectations are huge for how we feel about something, for our feelings of enjoyment or disappointment.
Still, there’s a lot of excitement for this one. And along with that, we have the success of The Force Awakens now for it to be compared to: will it be as good? Will it do as well at the box office?
And then it has to other problems to contend with. One, is it’s a prequel, which is tough. We talked about this some last week when we talked about Fantastic Beasts. It’s really hard to tell a story when we know how it all turns out. It helps when we only vaguely know how it turns out: like with Fantastic Beasts, and the Grindelwald era of the wizarding world: all we really know is it was bad, and Dumbledore eventually wins. With Rogue One, all we really know is that the plans to the Death Star get back to the Rebel Alliance.
But this isn’t just a prequel. It’s a presequel. It’s a story between a movie trilogy we’ve seen and a movie trilogy we’ve seen, in a universe with a massive expanded universe and a massive fandom. Which also means it’s wedged between a beloved trilogy and a bemoaned trilogy. It easily in a place for us to be able to say it’s better than some of the movies and worse than others.
Overall, it’s just a lot to compare it to. What will be considered success? By the fans? By the studio? I guess just time will tell. And without being able to define success, I don’t know how you aim for it. But there’s one thing to say about this movie…
Because it’s more than a pre-sequel. It’s a one-off stand-alone movie in a series built on longer storytelling (movie trilogies, long video games, multi-season TV shows, book series). It’s new characters we don’t know, with a sprinkling of known characters as a backdrop.
Meaning one thing is for sure: they need to make it a good movie. They need to introduce and give life to the characters, take them through a complete arc, and come out the other side. Which will in-and-of itself be something new for Star Wars. And that’s what can make this feel like a fresh and interesting experience.
Holly and I have been trying to avoid watching the trailers for this one after the first one, so as to try not to be too spoiled on it. But I’ve heard they’ve all been good. And the initial reviews are coming in, and they sound good. I’m excited. I’m more than cautiously optimistic.
How about you? Do you think they will live up to or exceed our expectations? Let me know what you think in the comments below!
I mentionedlast month that they announced a third edition to the rules for Warmachine and Hordes, and since then, they have been dropping spoilers on a week-daily basis. Official information releases, answers to questions on their forums, tweets, official “leaks” from distributors and game stores and press sites…
Just a little bit, each day.
They seem to have started with a lot of the bad news, trying to soften it with some good news and also with some question answering and discussion. They are moving further into stuff that is less changed or more positive. Or things that we really just have big question marks about – things that weren’t commonly played in the current rules.
And it’s been great – something to look forward to each day, a whole bunch of excitement for the game. They’re giving us time to get past some of our anger, fears, and trepidation. Time for the trolls to get some of their trolling out of their systems, before we get to actually play with these rules.
So that’s why it’s sad that, today, someone leaked a bunch of rules images that had the word “Confidential” stamped all over them.
There’s a few things they have done that were really good. A limited window of time for things to go wrong – the rules will be available online June 11, and the first new releases will come out at the end of June. Lots of spoilers to keep us both interested and satisfied. Discussion with the community about how and why on many of their decisions.
I could see, if they had said “new edition coming, PEACE” and there had been no more info… yeah, the first person to get their hands on something was going to leak it. Or with a long enough window of time. Or any number of other scenarios. Think of how spoilers and these things explode online. But I feel like they’ve handled this really well, like there isn’t nearly so much of a “need” from the community to get more spoilers. It’s less than a month now!
So yes, how do you build a hype train? We’ve seen several recently that have worked. Star Wars. Civil War. But I think better than those has been the one for the new editions of Warmachine and Hordes, with a shorter wait time and far more information, which provides far more room for our theories and and musings. The last step will be living up to the hype: will a great game exist at the end of this process? Right now, I’m thinking so!
There just seems like a lot to be excited about this year, especially if you are a comics fan, especially especially if you are a superhero comics fan… Oh and speaking of, hey, maybe Marvel and DC won’t reset their comics continuity this year… There’s certainly a lot of good looking movies that already have release dates…
Anyway! What are you excited for this year? Let us know in the comments below!
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