Clone Corridor is, above everything else, a blog by and for Star Wars fans. As such, we thought it would be a lot of fun for fans to share some of their favourite Star Wars moments with each other, whether … Continue reading My Star Wars Moment #1: Sarah and Boba Fett
What’s been happening inStar Wars-related news this week? On the Web: Colin Hanks and his daughter brought attention to the lack of female merchandise (Mary Sue) Diego Luna joins the cast for Rogue One (Variety) Star Wars villains for adoption: the … Continue reading News Round-Up
Asajj Ventress, as voiced by Nika Futterman, is a character that fascinated me, and many others, from the first moment she graced our screens in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, both film and series. Initially introduced as a Commander in the Separatists’ army and an apprentice to Count Dooku, Asajj Ventress is a feared force in the galaxy during the Clone Wars and the nemesis of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. Although this post will largely focus on her portrayal in the 2008 TV show, it is worth mentioning that many of the things briefly mentioned below are worked out in great detail in comic books and novels which are all worth reading. This post will contain spoilers for those who haven’t watched Star Wars: The Clone Wars in its entirety.
In the comic series Star Wars: Obsession Asajj says of herself:
“I am fear.”
Ingeniously, this applies to her character in two ways. On the one hand she is a woman feared throughout the galaxy because of her strength and her ruthlessness. On the other hand, she is a woman who is terribly afraid herself. Asajj is a character who is frequently used as a pawn by others. Most notable in that respect is her relationship with Count Dooku, starting when he presents her to Darth Sidious who sends her out to kill Anakin Skywalker. She is used by both men to further their own agenda. Dooku shows his loyalty to Sidious and Sidious is able to trigger Anakin to use his anger as a way of defeating his enemies. After this defeat, Asajj becomes an assassin for Dooku while always hungering to be trained as a full Sith. She is kept on the periphery by Dooku and Sidious, never fully trained, never fully accepted, which means she is constantly striving to prove herself to others and fearing that she is lacking. This comes to a close in the 12th episode of the third season of The Clone Wars when Sidious starts to consider her a threat and orders Dooku to eliminate her. He does so by betraying her during the Battle of Sullust and she is left for dead.
Continue reading “‘I am fear’: Asajj Ventress and the Strong Woman”
The Phantom Menace is still widely considered to be the most anticipated film in history and only The Force Awakens seems to be a contender of taking that title. The Prequel Trilogy however divided audiences in a manner very different from how the Original Trilogy had. I argued that Original Trilogy had been a defining cultural moment for a new generation due to its strong resonance with the world events as well as the daily lives of young people between ’77 and ’83. For the Prequel Trilogy this is even more true. However by ’99 the world had changed dramatically since ’83 and was on the verge of further dramatic change. This not only shaped the reception of the films, it shaped the divide that ensued.
There are legion reviews that describe in detail the state of the world as it lead up to first screening of Star Wars in 1977. Usually those essays, blogs, and documentaries then focus on the impact of Star Wars as a blockbuster phenomenon on (pop-) culture. The idea of such analyses is that there was something about the world before Star Wars that made us embrace it. I will take a different point of view in this article. My thesis is that it was the series of historical events and developments that occurred simultaneously with the Original Trilogy’s release and reception that can illuminate why this set of movies had such a huge impact in culture.
I want to take you on this journey from my personal point of view. That will be different from Obi Wan’s and probably also is different from yours. But I hope my thoughts may nevertheless contain interesting insights for you as well, reader. Continue reading “The Original Trilogy & The Eighties”
Three days ago, director Colin Hanks posted the following note on his Instagram account:
So, the other night, on May the 4th to be exact, I sat down with my 4 year old daughter and showed her Star Wars: A New Hope. It was her first time watching it. She loved it. Her favorite character was Princess Leia. She kept asking “Where is Princess Leia? Where is Princes Leia?” A few nights later, I show her Empire Strikes Back (or as she called it “The Emperor stripes back) and within four minutes of watching the movie she says, “It’s so tiring watching these movies. It’s always boys, boys, boys and there’s only one girl.” I could not of been more proud of her. So today I take her to Toys “R” Us to buy her a light saber and a Princess Leia toy. After being told that light sabers were “in the boys section”, she picks out the light saber of her choosing and asks about the Princess Leia toy. One problem: they only had the “slave Leia”. As you can see, sad depressing, “slave Leia”. So wrong. The only good to come from this is that, once again, my daughter makes me look at the world in a new light. #HelpusJJyoureouronlyhope
Hanks’ post has garnered a lot of attention, rightfully so, and joins the increased media attention for the severe lack of female merchandise. After the release of The Guardians of the Galaxy the hashtag #WheresGamora was started and since Age of Ultron came out there has been justified outrage over the lack of Black Widow merchandise. With The Force Awakens film coming out this year, Star Wars will be bringing out new merchandise as well and this is an issue that Disney should be very aware of. Before going into it more, I want to share a personal experience.
I am a twenty-one year old, female Star Wars-fan. Star Wars, like the Force, is strong in my family and I have been watching the films from the tender age of two. However, when I was seven I had an experience in a toystore which left me feeling marginalized and excluded without even knowing what those words meant. I walked in, looking for either a knight or a storm trooper. As I was looking up and down the walls covered in amazing toys, I was incredibly excited. Shortly afterwards, a male cashier came up to me and asked me whether I was looking for something. When I responded with an enthusiastic ‘yes’ he continued to guide me away from all the toys I wanted to the “girls”-section which was full of barbies and everything pink. Not only did I not like pink, but the male cashier made it very clear that this was where I belonged and that the other section was for boys, no matter what I liked. I was crushed and when I told my father, he was furious. If it hadn’t been for him, I might have accepted what I had been told rather than continue to love Star Wars. Instead, I got the toys I wanted and continued to be a raging Star Wars fan.
Continue reading “Girls Need Their Toys Too: Women In Star Wars and My Experience”
In today’s Scene It? post I’ll be looking at one of the most heart-breaking scenes in The Revenge of the Sith (2005), the third prequel film which depicts Anakin’s switch to the Dark Side of the Force. I am, of course, talking about the scene between Padme and Anakin on Mustafar, shortly before the battle between Anakin and Obi-Wan. Naturally, this post contains spoilers for The Revenge of the Sith. If you want a quick refresher on the scene, help yourself to the video below, the first half of which I will be discussing:
Some of the criticism directed towards RotS focused on the development of Padme Amidala’s character. In The Phantom Menace she is a young queen, exclusively focused on saving her planet from being taken over by the Trade Federation. In The Attack of the Clones she returns as a senator of Naboo and a key senator in trying to stop the outbreak of a war. We also see her trying to cope with her feelings for Anakin Skywalker and fighting for her life. In The Revenge of the Sith, Padme and Anakin are married, with the twins on the way, while she continues in her role as senator. As the Republic falls apart, so, it could be argued, does everything she has worked for. The difficulty with which Padme switches between her roles as senator and wife is, I believe, on purpose. As Anakin slowly loses himself it becomes harder for her to unite her principles with her emotions. The reason this scene is heart-breaking is because everything Padme believed in has either been corrupted or fallen apart. Below I will discuss why her choice of response to this is one which is probably singular in modern cinema and makes her stand out as one of the strongest women in sci-fi.
The WW2 narrative and Star Wars
From the very first instalment of Star Wars in A New Hope there has always been a clear link between its narrative and the history of Twentieth Century Europe. On the one hand there was Lucas’ deliberate use of Leni Riefenstahl‘s cinematography, as exemplified in her Nazi-propaganda film ‘Triumpf des Willens’, in depicting the Imperial menace. The shots of Imperial Shuttles landing in areas with large numbers of perfectly aligned storm troopers conveyed the sense of total control that the Empire sought to exert on its subjects. The mere facts that Imperial Officers were dressed pretty much like Nazi-officers and that Imperial soldiers were called ‘storm troopers’, a word that in the Anglo-Saxon world is almost exclusively connected with the Third Reich, already provided enough reason to consider the connections. But what stood out for me was that my parents, WW2 survivors, immediately recognised the Empire as a reference to the forces of oppression that had created such havoc in their lives and throughout Europe. The 70th anniversary of VE-Day seems an excellent moment to reflect upon this.
When George Lucas made the choice to start the Prequel Trilogy with Anakin Skywalker as a kid and to include Jar Jar Binks as a character he must have had an inkling of what was coming. But he must have made this choice deliberately because of its story-telling value. In this post I want to have a look at how intimately the stories of these two great characters are entangled and how they mirror each other. Unwittingly, in their joint rejection of these two, the prequel-bashing community not only misses out on a vital element of the story Lucas tried to convey. But above all they confirm the message that is in Jar Jar and Anakin’s story for those who did make the effort to recognize it.
The Starwars Rebel Tributes of Season 1 In the fall of 2014 a new element was added to the expanding Starwars universe of stories. After the to early demise of that excellent Starwars: The Clone Wars series the anticipation for … Continue reading Awesome Tribute Videos #3: Starwars Rebels
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