During today’s Hasbro livestream celebrating the forthcoming “I Am Your Father’s Day” event, the Star Wars team revealed several new items from their Black Series and Vintage Collection, including multiple Rogue One figures and repaints collectors have been clamoring for since the line debuted in 2016.
Continue reading “Hasbro Reveals New and Updated ‘Rogue One’ Black Series Figures and More”
May the Fourth be with you!
Today, we commemorate a franchise that is loved unconditionally. From the biggest disasters (Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Rise of Skywalker) to the biggest wins (Empire Strikes Back, Rogue One, The Mandalorian), Star Wars has been the one franchise whose highest highs make it simply impossible for us to quit. The Original Trilogy is, and always will be, regarded as one of the greatest film sagas of all time. The prequel trilogy and the sequel trilogy, however…?
Continue reading “NOC Review: With ‘Star Wars: The Bad Batch,’ Filoni Triumphs Again”
Get hyped (Or Hype-erdrive-ed?… nope, that’s nothing. Sorry.) because tomorrow is May the Fourth, nerds! And that means, Star Wars! Nothing but Star Wars! Coming your way! To celebrate, The Nerds of Color had the opportunity to attend a press event for the brand new installment in the beloved “Filoniverse,” Star Wars: The Bad Batch. Present at the event were Star Wars voice legend, Dee Bradley Baker (who voices the entire Bad Batch: Hunter, Crosshair, Wrecker, Echo, and Tech), producer and Head Writer of the series, Jennifer Corbett, and producer Brad Rau.
Continue reading “Getting to Know ‘Star Wars: The Bad Batch’”
Keith and Britney share their favorite moments from Disney+’s WandaVision making-of special before revealing what’s Nerd Poppin’ this week. For Britney, she’s reading all the books in the Star Wars: The High Republic publishing initiative. Meanwhile, Keith has seen The Snyder Cut and gives his semi-spoilery opinion of Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
Continue reading “Hard NOC Life 207: A ‘Justice League’ of His Own”
We talk about Gina because we were big supporters of her initial inclusion in The Mandalorian cast and now we definitely are not. How do we fandom when some of your faves suck?
For our very own holiday special, we review season 2 of The Mandalorian.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers from the second season of The Mandalorian.
Lauren Mary Kim, a seasoned stunt actor and martial artist, has been making waves this past year for her work in two Star Wars productions. She did motion capture for the character of Ahsoka Tano in the series finale of The Clone Wars and she doubled for Emily Swallow’s the Armorer in the season one finale of The Mandalorian.
A year ago, when Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon emerged from a wrecked Tie Fighter wielding the Darksaber in the end-credits stinger to season one of The Mandalorian, it was a signal to the audience that season two would tie more directly to established Star Wars canon than initially expected. Fast forward to the end of season two and it’s safe to say no one was prepared for just how extensive those ties would be.
In a season full of cameos and call backs to every installment of the franchise’s four-decade history — from the return of Temuera Morrison as Boba Fett to the live action debuts of Katee Sackhoff as Bo-Katan and Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano — The Mandalorian season two proved to be as integral a part of the Skywalker Saga as each of the episodes released in theaters since 1977. None more so than the events of the second season finale, titled “The Rescue.” Spoilers for The Mandalorian season two finale from here on out.
Continue reading “What the Season 2 Finale Means for the Future of ‘The Mandalorian’”
To prepare for the second season of the anticipated Star Wars series on Disney+’s The Mandalorian, Mando Mondays has been announced for fans! The digital event, which kicked off today, revealed new products, digital content and books inspired by the series.
Star Wars Mandalorian Collection at BoxLunch!
Heyyy! It’s Kuya P and I recently sat down with NOC’s own, Preeti Chhibber of Desi Geek Girls to discuss her latest Children’s Book release, Star Wars: A Jedi You Will Be! ENJOY!
Continue reading “NOC’s Preeti Chhibber Launches ‘Star Wars’ Children’s Book: ‘A Jedi You Will Be’”
We’re excited to have on TV writer, blogger, and Star Wars fan Arezou Amin on to discuss the long history of MENA people being excluded from Science Fiction and Fantasy media. Why are we constantly ousted from stories that were, in fact, inspired by works based on the Middle East and our culture? Where could we even find ourselves? We discuss Arezou’s project with Postcards from the Galaxy’s Edge featuring Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Star Wars fans, and what she and the podcast hoped to achieve with it. We also discuss various DCTV news, including the Legends of Tomorrow panel at DC FanDome and the future of Zari and Behrad Tarazi in Season 6, Supergirl ending with Season 6, and Caity Lotz’s bufoonish tweets, and the news that Alia Shawkat is creating and starring in a series based on her family’s Iraqi immigrant experience!
Continue reading “The Middle Geeks Episode 17: MENA in the Stars and Middle Earth”
This past year has been a busy one for the Star Wars universe. Aside from the release of the final film of the Skywalker saga, The Rise of Skywalker, there has also been the beginning of the first live-action series, The Mandalorian, released last fall on Disney+, as well as the conclusion of the beloved animated series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, this past spring. For Lauren Mary Kim, a stunt actor who has been working in Hollywood for the past 16 years, she has been involved in the making of both of these Star Wars productions. Continue reading “Lauren Mary Kim on Developing and Performing Stunts for Two ‘Star Wars’ Productions”
On Hard NOC Life, Dominic and Keith welcome Lauren Lola — who took a moment out of her busy CAAMFest schedule — to talk about Hamilton and Mandalorian season 2 coming to Disney+.
Continue reading “Hard NOC Life: The Lin-Mando Takeover of Disney+”
On Hard NOC Life, Dominic and Keith discuss the end of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Disney+ and how it re-contextualizes the prequel trilogy for the better.
Continue reading “Hard NOC Life: Concluded, ‘The Clone Wars’ Have”
Warning: The following contains spoilers from the recent and final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
Twelve years following its premiere to initially hesitant audiences, the now beloved Star Wars animated series, The Clone Wars, has at last received the proper ending it deserved. Set after Attack of the Clones and concluding sometime after Revenge of the Sith, the brainchild of Star Wars creator George Lucas and supervising director Dave Filoni explored stories of a wide variety of characters — both familiar and new faces — during the war that was previously more of a backdrop to the fall of Anakin Skywalker.
Continue reading “Action, Depth, and Poetry Mark the End of ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’”
This week on Hard NOC Life, Dominic and Keith dig deeper into the leaked script for the original version of Star Wars Episode IX.
Continue reading “Hard NOC Life: The Episode IX That Could Have Been”
Ever since The Child made its debut on Disney+ in November, fans have been clamoring for ways to get their hands on some Baby Yoda merch. Well, the wait is finally over. Disney will be unveiling its 2020 roster of Star Wars-branded action figures, plush toys, board games, and more at Toy Fair in New York this weekend. And even though the Skywalker Saga is no more, the Force will be strong with merch based on shows like The Mandalorian and Clone Wars.
Continue reading “Baby Yoda is Going to be the Star of Toy Fair”
When I first saw The Force Awakens after a fully funded summer media apparatus of hype in the winter of 2015, I remember the following Christmas morning my mother turned the corner, threw me a Force Awakens pillow, and coldly chuckled “Merry Christmas.” It was a good joke — like many the Force is moderately strong in my family — but it left me to wonder, what Christmas spirit at Walmart possessed my Mom to buy me this gift? I suspect my mother may have unknowingly become a Disney market research statistic. But after the last five years and our predestined Rise of Skywalker, I am largely left to ask the same question.
Continue reading “The Rise of Disney and the Future of Fantasy in the Shadow of the Empire”
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and the first season of The Mandalorian.
Force healing: The ability to heal oneself or another by way of pouring one’s life energy into a wound, but at the expense of their own vitality. While it has made appearances in the past in Star Wars Legends, it made its first live-action appearances in two recent Star Wars productions: the seventh episode of the first season of The Mandalorian and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Continue reading “Force Healing and Its (Re-)Emergence in ‘Star Wars’”
Before December 2019 ends, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on one of the most significant pop culture artifacts of the year. This is the month, after all, in which one of the co-creators of the iconic series Lost gave us a critically acclaimed and universally praised ninth episode of a series that breathed new life into a franchise that had not been this beloved since the mid-1980s. By shifting the focus away from the historically white male heroes of the original and toward a story centering women and people of color, the creators had to also confront the toxic — and often racist — fan culture that had laid claim to the property for over thirty years. Plus, they were able to do all of this without the consent of the property’s original creator.
Of course, I’m talking about Watchmen on HBO.
Continue reading “‘Lost’ Legacies: How to Re-imagine Sacred Nerd Texts”
It’s the most wonderful time of the year on The Middle Geeks! Star Wars time! But is it really though, with the latest release of The Rise of Skywalker? Swara and Mae discuss, getting into what they liked about the film, as well as the issues they had with it and the Sequel Trilogy as a whole. Note that this is a SPOILER discussion. But before that, we get into the month of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) representation highs and lows, from the high of having an Arab-American hero introduced to Marvel Comics to the low of Aladdin star Mena Massoud not getting a single audition due to Hollywood racism, even after his film made a billion dollars. We still have a long way to go!
