I'm still here!
It's been a while since I updated this blog. Like before The Force Awakens came out! Just like everyone else, I have my opinions on the movie. Most are good. Some are a little critical. But no matter what, the night I saw the movie I felt like I was 10 years old again, and that's really what a Star Wars movie should be about. My only real complaint is, strangely enough, one of consistency. When Starkiller Base destroyed the planet with the entire Republic government on it, our heroes could see this from a completely different planet in a completely different solar system. This is, of course, scientifically impossible as it would take many thousands of years for them to see the light of the explosion with the naked eye because of the speed of light. They tried to explain this away by saying Star Wars has different physics than our world. Look, I know it's fiction, and I know sometimes you stretch the boundaries of science to make a story interesting, but let's not pretend the speed of light is so much faster in the Star Wars galaxy that "simultanaety" becomes a legitimate scientific term. (Yes, that's how they explained it.)
Anyway, that's really my only complaint. It did seem a little odd that Rey went from having no idea she had Force abilities to being able to do Jedi Mind Tricks and fight a dark side user with a lightsaber. However, I guess once the Force awakens in you, it floods in like hot lava. It's not so unbelievable. Not enough for me to shake my head and wonder what J.J. Abrams was thinking.
I loved the story itself and I can't wait to see who Rey really is and to see Luke Skywalker in action. I'm excited to see through books and comics how the Republic expanded after Jakku and then how the new Jedi were formed then destroyed. Seeing Han die was heartbreaking, but reading of Ben's transformation into Kylo Ren and Han and Leia's subsequent split will be even more heartbreaking in my opinion. All in all, Star Wars movies are back, and that can only be a good thing!
Moving on from the movie, I've added a lot of books and comics and Rebels episodes into the timeline. The only books I'm unsure on are the junior novels, Adventures in Wild Space. It vaguely suggests that they may be just a few short years after the Clone Wars, but then at the end of The Nest they are headed to Lothal to find a resistance group. My assumption is that it's our favorite Star Wars Rebels characters they will find on Lothal, but that won't be confirmed until late June when the series continues. For now, I'm putting them during Season 2 of Rebels in order of publication. We'll see what happens as the series unfolds.