Star Wars 7x7: A Daily Bite-Sized Dose of Star Wars Joy

Vader Immortal Episode I has been out for a few weeks now, but back at Celebration Chicago, they gave attendees a chance to get a glimpse of the story inside the standalone Oculus Quest VR headset. I'm very grateful to the PR team at ILMxLAB for letting me try it out there, and on today's episode, I'm sharing my initial reaction video - heart palpitations and unconsciously held breaths and all. Punch it!

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It's Fathers Day in the United States, so I'm counting down the top 7 fathers in Star Wars. "Traditional" fathers don't appear a lot in these movies, so I'm bending the definition only as much as I need to for us to have seven fathers to talk about. But everyone listed on today's show has appeared in a Star Wars movie... Punch it!

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Maryann Brandon is an Emmy- and Oscar-nominated editor who's worked with J.J. Abrams for more than a decade. While being interviewed for UC Santa Barbara's "Script to Screen" series on the 10th anniversary of the Star Trek reboot, Brandon also shared a couple of stories from the set of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. A few outlet have reported on this already, but in today's episode, you'll get to hear those stories straight from Maryann herself. Punch it!

And if you have even the slightest bit of interest in how movies are made in general or that Star Trek movie in particular, I highly recommend checking out the entire conversation between Brandon and the Script to Screen moderator, Matt Ryan, at https://www.carseywolf.ucsb.edu/pollock-events/star-trek-2009/.

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It's been a while, so let's check in and do an update on the post-production status of The Rise of Skywalker! Naturally, there's been a very tight lid kept on the goings-on, but the John Williams Fan Network has been tracking the Maestro's Star-Wars-related activities of late, and a new report reveals that a certain TIE design pre-dates J.J. Abrams' time on Episode IX. Punch it!

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The trailer reveal for Jedi: Fallen Order at Celebration Chicago seemed to show a couple of similarities between its hero Cal Kestis and another Padawan who'd survived Order 66. Now that we've learned more about Cal thanks to recent reveals, let's compare and contrast Cal with Kanan Jarrus of Star Wars Rebels. Punch it!

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What timing! In addition to the reveals from E3 these past few days, Game Informer magazine was given an extra level of access to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Today, an additional seven reveals about the game coming to consoles and computers in November. Punch it!

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EA and Respawn Entertainment released gameplay footage of Jedi: Fallen Order over the weekend. But they showed even MORE footage to the assembled press behind closed doors - and many of them summarized what they saw online. I've read a bunch of those reports, and I'm summarizing them on today's episode - including a couple of new Force powers, and a funny story about something that's easy to do in movies but apparently very hard in video games... Punch it!

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Ahead of the big E3 video game conference, EA released 13 minutes of gameplay and cut-scene footage from Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (the game itself will be available in November). And there are some big reveals in the footage, including a good look at Cal Kestus' Force abilities (which seem to go way beyond padawan levels) and the reveal of a character whose presence means we may encounter some interesting moral dilemmas in the storyline. Punch it!

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BuzzFeed cites three unnamed sources saying Laeta Kalogridis is working on the first script in a trilogy of Knights of the Old Republic films. But rumors also say that KOTOR is the subject of Benioff and Weiss' movies. How do we resolve these conflicting rumors? Let's look at what we know today and figure it out... Punch it!

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100 days have gone by since March 1st, and on today's episode - #1800! - I'm looking back at what you and I have discussed over the last 100 days, which includes 107 episodes of the show, two countries, Episode IX, multiple books, 22 interviews, the death of a very special actor, new movie announcements, and so much more. Punch it!

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