![]() “The Michael Stackpole books and the video games and all of the Rogue Squadron books, there's an incredible history that's really important to honor,” she said. Jenkins would name Stackpole as one of her nascent movie’s influences in a 2021 interview, saying that it was important for Rogue Squadron to honor Stackpole’s work. They captured a different side of George Lucas’ setting, sidelining Jedi in favor of the high adventure of piloting an X-wing against waves of TIE Fighters. Stackpole’s novels were some of the best in the old Expanded Universe, replete with details like Rebel pilots referring to TIE Fighters as “Eyeballs” or complaining about the sluggishness of Y-wings. But it actually knocked one of Stephen King’s books off the list.” Characters like Wedge and Poe Dameron are easier to relate to than Jedi like Luke, Rey, and Ahsoka, who are the superheroes of the Star Wars universe “And boy, when those books hit the New York Times bestsellers list… and especially the third one… When Kratos Trap came out, Stephen King had five books on the paperback bestseller list, and no one thought Kratos Trap would make it. “Little did we know that there were tons of Star Wars fans who loved Wedge, loved the pilots,” Stackpole recalled in a 2016 interview. LucasArts’ X-wing games would inspire Michael Stackpole to launch his fantastic run with Rogue Squadron – a series of novels in which famous ace Wedge Antilles puts together a new squadron of pilots and embarks on a series of adventures. Among their contributions to the Star Wars were an early glimpse of Coruscant, the first depiction of Grand Admiral Thrawn outside of the novels, and the TIE Defender, which featured in a terrific episode of Star Wars Rebels. LucasArts’ X-wing and TIE Fighter series expanded on that conceit still further by mixing arcade-style shoot ‘em up combat with light flight simulator mechanics, imbuing Star Wars’ familiar fighters with a sense of weight and realism. One of the earliest Star Wars games ever, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, featured a wireframe run through the Death Star, and many more would attempt to replicate that climactic moment in the years to follow. In the 80s and 90s, game developers treated recreating the Trench Run as a kind of holy grail. ![]() Elsewhere, Star Wars miniatures games recreating its space battles have enjoyed great popularity with the tabletop community. Old-school fans may recall the lengthy debates over the Super Star Destroyer and the “five mile fallacy” or paging through old technical manuals. Jedi get all the attention but Star Wars has a rich tradition of games, novels, and toys that tap into the fandom’s love of the setting’s starships. Top Gun: Maverick took the excitement of the original's flight sequences and pushed them to Mach 5, with twisting dogfights resembling A New Hope's Trench Run Close your eyes and you can probably imagine Red Squadron rising toward the Death Star or Admiral Ackbar yelling “It’s a trap!” as waves of TIE Interceptors crash toward the Rebel fleet, or Anakin offering a grinning “This is where the fun begins” as he weaves through a Separatist Fleet in his Jedi Starfighter. After all, great space combat is one of Star Wars’ birthrights. With Star Wars increasingly willing to embrace the old Expanded Universe though, there’s plenty of room to bolster one of the most underserved areas of the Star Wars fandom. Aside from a handful of great moments, like Mandalorian Season 3’s battle with a gang of space pirates, starfighters like Captain Teva’s X-wing are mostly around to play traffic cop. With smaller budgets owing to the franchise’s pivot to streaming, and without the spectacle of the big screen, there’s simply less incentive to feature truly memorable space battles. Top Gun: Maverick makes a Rogue Squadron movie or television series seem more obvious than ever, but in recent years, starfighters have increasingly taken a backseat to lightsabers, bounty hunters, and grim and gritty political drama. Top Gun: Maverick makes a Rogue Squadron movie more obvious than ever Replace Tom Cruise’s F-18 with an X-wing and it’s not hard to imagine Maverick as a Star Wars film, with a veteran Wedge Antilles as its star. ![]() It took the excitement of the original’s flight sequences and pushed them to Mach 5, with twisting dogfights resembling A New Hope’s Trench Run. Maverick was billed as a sequel to Tony Scott’s paean to fighter jets and beach volleyball, but it bore far more in common with George Lucas’ space opera than real-life fighter combat.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |