Star Wars Celebration 2019

As a Science Fiction and Fantasy comment blog it would be extremely remiss of me not to comment on the convention of one of the genres biggest franchises.

This weekend saw Celebration come to Chicago with a whole heap of Star Wars news. This is a big year for Star Wars the Skywalker saga of films coming to a close and multiple new ventures coming into fruition. An event like Celebration is not something I am likely to ever attend but this year I managed to catch some of the live streaming of events on YouTube.

First up I watched the main event, the Star Wars 9 panel. It was hard not to get totally engaged as characters appeared on stage and began to talk about what awaits us in December. The highlight first was the arrival of Billy Dee Williams, AKA Lando Calrissian, man the guy just exudes cool. Every member of the panel seemed stoked to be present, full of passion and excitement and this put a new context to the films. The coup de gras was of course the teaser trailer for Star Wars 9 revealed now to be Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker. The trailer was just enough to sate a desperate fans need for information without revealing too much.

Of course speculation began right away and with the amazing reveal at the end of the trailer how could there not be. By now every scene will have been analysed and pored over to the nth degree and that is part of the fun.

Second up was the Fallen Order panel where the latest star wars computer game was revealed. Set at the end of Revenge of the Sith and up until a New Hope this game promises to be something we have missed for years. With Dark Force and Jedi Academy we had been treated to strong story driven light sabre action which has yet to be replicated. The Force Unleashed tried to recreate this magic and whilst good it never quite hit the mark. Fallen Order promises to be completely single person story driven with no lock-boxes or micro-transactions. In terms of immersion it is this I am perhaps more excited about.

Aside from all this we have the Mandalore coming and season 2 of Resistance. Things look healthy for Star Wars and despite the elements of toxic fandom I feel that the story will reach an epic conclusion.