A Green Mushroom

Introducing your friends to Star Wars In this episode: Getting into Star Wars can be tough. It has a huge history and a gigantic fanbase, and with 50 years behind it, some people are intimidated by the franchise and don’t know how to jump in. Never fear, geeks! We’re here to help. Inspired by our resident Jedi Noobs Chocobochica and CapsuleJay (among others!), we want to make sure that Star Wars is not unapproachable. We provide suggestions on the best viewing order on the movies, as well as jumping-on points that aren’t necessarily even tied in with the films. There is a huge swath of Star Wars-related media out there, so if you’re a book person, we recommend books (specifically,   audiobooks !), or if you’re a gamer, there are always video games, and if you like to binge, you can even jump in with some of the cartoons and even different ways to watch those! We discuss the oft-mentioned Machete order, as well as how The Force Awakens (Episode 7) changed the way you jum...

I don't have a ton to say about the novelization of Rogue One, but I did read it. Like most Star Wars movie novelizations it's essentially the movie in book form.  While books adapted to movies often work well it typically isn't as interesting the other way around.  But, I always read the Star Wars ones anyway just to get the bonus content and context to the universe. The Rogue One novelization has a few scenes that either were never in the movie or were cut from it.  It also fleshes out a lot of characters' internal thinking about events, which is something you almost never get in a movie. My favorite part is probably the admin documents used to break up the story randomly.  They give looks inside the building of the Death Star and inside the Rebellion.  It's just tiny vignettes but they're great! I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who isn't Star Wars obsessed in the same way I am.  But, I'm glad to have read it.  I always like lea...

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story In this episode: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story just released, and we had to do a podcast on it. Especially since we did   a pre-release show last week ! What is interesting, though, is that we have never disagreed so much about Star Wars. Despite being roughly the same level of fan (read: fanatic), the two of us look at both the SW universe and film/media in general in such different ways that our takeaways from Rogue One are starkly different. From the characters to the plot, to pacing and even whether or not this Star Wars Story needed to be told at all, we disagree on almost every point. We do, however, totally understand why the other feels the way he does. We have a long discussion about the Star Wars universe, what makes each of us love it, and why. Much of our disagreement around Rogue One comes from its dark tone, which influences our enjoyment on a film-viewing level, not as a Star Wars fan. We do, however, agree on a number of points...

Before Star Wars Rogue One In this episode: We’re excited because a new Star Wars movie is coming out. We couldn’t resist talking about it before hand. This is not a spoiler episode, and we are releasing this a day early for you folks to listen to in time for the weekend’s releae. We will only be talking about stuff from the trailers and maybe a bit from the prequel novel. Next week will be our spoiler filled review of the movie. So stay tuned! Our worries and concerns are minimal. Void is worried we already know so much of the plot from the trailers and just context of the movie, but we think it may be very character driven. It may not be as good as the mainline Star Wars movies, which wouldn’t bode well for the other spin-offs, and he is also worried the tone of “war movie” may not fit the franchise as well as the science-fantasy does. Beej is worried there are so few Jedi and that aspect because it’s a major hallmark of the franchise. We know other media can tell...

The latest Star Wars Expanded Universe novel, Catalyst, is a direct prequel to the upcoming Rogue One out later this week.  It wasn't great. I mean, it was ok.  It wasn't horrible or anything.  But, it also wasn't a good book on it's own. Mostly, Catalyst is just an introduction to two of the characters that will be in Rogue One.  It follows Krennic (that guy in white from the trailers) and Galen (Jyn's father).  They both have an engineering background.  Krennic is a military man and in charge of overseeing the Death Star building.  Galen is a super intelligent scientist doing energy research with kyber crystals.  Galen is a pacifist who wants to use his research to provide power to everyone.  Krennic slowly ropes him into helping with the Death Star main weapon without Galen ever figuring it out. And that's most of the book right there.  Not a lot else happens.  There are parts with other characters but they don't r...

The latest Star Wars novel, Ahsoka, came out in mid-October and I finished it in two days.  I always love picking up the newest Star Wars book and it's been really fun keeping up with all of the new canon since Disney pushed the giant reset button on the universe. Ahsoka was an ok book.  It didn't blow me away with awesomeness but it wasn't bad either.  It will definitely be for some people and not for others. To me, it felt like a long story arc from one of the TV shows, Clone Wars or Rebels, that has been moved over into novel format.  It bridges the gap between those two shows and reveals what happens to Ahsoka during that time period.  For that, I love it, just because I always want to expand my Star Wars lore. But, I feel like it would have been better in show format.  I could easier see this as a bonus story arc in either of the shows.  It's probably a consequence of the main character being a unique character to Clone Wars and Reb...

I'm keeping up to date with all the new Star Wars novels and Aftermath: Life Debt is the latest. I think this book is better than the first Aftermath novel but it's still not great.  I just haven't been able to buy into any of the author's unique characters for this series.  Luckily, this book pulls in Han, Chewie, Leia, Wedge, and some others.  That helps it so much.  They're interesting and established characters where all the new unique characters feel like bland stereotypes. But the one thing this book does brilliantly are the interludes.  There are a bunch of them throughout the book and they give quick little vignettes about what's happening around the galaxy.  I found myself excited for each new one coming up. After finishing the book I think I can see where this series is going.  I'm fairly sure it's leading to the Battle of Jakku which is covered in Lost Stars.  It's essentially the last stand of the Empire before the galaxy fal...

After seeing all the hype and all the build up for this LEGO Star Wars game somehow I thought it would be different enough from the last few LEGO games I tried that I would actually enjoy it. I did not. It turns out I don't like absolutely everything with a Star Wars name slapped on it.  But, after playing the demo I can see that this is probably the best LEGO videogame to date.  It controls well, ties into Star Wars, and actually has really nice graphics (which is weird to say for a LEGO game). Anyway, I'm sure a ton of people are going to have fun with this one but it's just not for me.  I'll wait for the next Star Wars videogame release.  I'm sure it won't be too long until they start coming out regularly.

I really liked Bloodline.  If you follow me you know that I read almost every Star Wars book that hits the market.  This one is right up there with the best ones I've read. And it didn't really surprise me that it was.   Bloodline is by Claudia Gray, the same author who wrote Lost Stars which is my favorite Star Wars book to date. Bloodline follows Leia sometime about half way between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.  It fills in so much information about the politics of the New Republic, hints at the formation and structure of the first order, and let's us see a key point in Leia's political career.  It's a fantastic book to start bridging the gap between Episode VI and Episode VII. While I'd love to learn more about what Luke and Ben are doing during this time period I never felt like this book had to go there.  There are enough interesting events going on with Leia that I was captivated throughout. If you're a Star Wars fan I recomm...

They're so good! I loved getting my Blu Ray of The Force Awakens.  By the time it arrived I had already watched the movie digitally a bunch (since it released that way first) but the Blu Ray came with the special features. They were fantastic!  The main documentary included was one of the best official behind the scenes documentaries I've ever seen.  The deleted scenes added a little bit more context to parts of the movie, but it was obvious why they were cut.  And all the little feature vignettes were awesome from the creature creation to John Williams scoring the movie. I can't recommend the special features enough.  If you love Star Wars like I do it's a must watch!

Star Wars Rebels Season 2 just wrapped up the other week and it was another solid season of the show! The main Jedi storyline continues to be the highlight with the overall rebellion storyline coming in a close second.  Whenever an episode is pushing one or both of these stories forward it's a really good episode. When Rebels instead decides to do a one off or side-character focused episode it's much more "meh".  It's never as bad as the worst episodes of Clone Wars were but I constantly want them to get back to the main storylines. And the main storylines are just great!  The season ended with a fantastic finale that sees Kanan, Ezra, Ahsoka, and Darth Vader all in interesting places.  It also manages to re-introduce Darth Maul into the universe and opens up lots of potential for him in the future. I continue to be really happy with Rebels and if you're a Star Wars fan you should definitely check it out!

ROGUE ONE TRAILER In this episode: We GEEK OUT over the Rogue One Trailer ! Be sure to subscribe to the Geek to Geek Podcast your favorite podcast app, drop a review so we know how we’re doing, and feel free contact us via email at geektogeekcast@gmail.com or @geektogeekcast on Twitter with any comments, questions, or suggestions for the show. Thanks for listening, and we can’t wait to hear from you! Subscribe: iTunes Overcast Pocket Casts RSS Feed

The Secret History of Star Wars is a book I really wanted to like. The author approaches the behind the scenes history of George Lucas and the creation of the original trilogy with an in depth look at the process.  He uses historical documents and drafts of the screenplays along with a ton of interviews and testimony from Lucas and those who know him well. I made it about 40% into the book before getting frustrated and putting it down forever. The problem I had is that the author often retreads the same ground from multiple different sources.  He'll walk through an interesting historical note, back it up with quotes from relevant people, and then seem to start moving onto the next thing... but then go back to the beginning of the subject instead and use different quotes to say the exact same thing.  And then go back and do it a third or fourth time. I wonder if he had a word count that he promised his publisher because it truly feels like he's just adding fluf...

I'm still catching up on some of The Force Awakens tie-in novels that slipped past me in the months leading up to the movie. While I basically read every adult novel of Star Wars as it comes out, I skip over most of the young adult or early reader books.  Generally this has served me well, but occasionally there's a Star Wars young adult book worth my time.  It turns out Before the Awakening is one of those. It's a book broken into three parts, one for each main character in the movie. Finn's story is all about his stormtrooper training, relationships with his squad, interactions with Captain Phasma, and his first deployment.  It's really good backstory. Rey's story covers a few months of her scavenger.  It explains where her mechanical and piloting skills come from as well as giving some more information on how she views the world. Poe's story ties in most directly with it basically leading right up to the point where the movie starts.  We lea...

I have a confession to make.  I'm playing a dumb, grindy, exploitation, micro-transaction, f2p, mobile game. If you couldn't tell from the title of the post, that game is Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes. It's so out of character for me in most ways.  I really like engaging and unique mobile games.  I typically can't stand this low-input waste-away-the-hours  check-back-frequently type of game. But this one is Star Wars.  And it's grabbed me. At the bare minimum I've been doing the daily quests every day.  Most days I've been checking in a few times throughout the day. I'm upgrading gear, giving my characters new moves, unlocking new characters, leveling them up.  All the things you would expect from this type of game.  It's actually not that far off from a game like Final Fantasy Record Keeper.  Except that it's Star Wars.  Apparently that makes all the difference to me. In the global arena ranking I generally hold my own and ...

I had a lot of fun with this playset.  So far I've played through all four available Disney Infinity 3.0 playsets and this one has been my favorite. The Force Awakens set comes with Rey, Finn, and the playset piece itself.  I love the look of the characters and I also ended up grabbing Poe Dameron and Kylo Ren as well.  I wanted all of them!  They just looks so cool! The gameplay is very similar to the Rise Against the Empire playset which covered the original trilogy, but that's not a bad thing.  It follows the events of the Force Awakens through the use of basic exploration, traversal, and combat. Really, this is an excuse to have another way to interact with the newest Star Wars movie.  And more than that, it's a way to introduce my kids to the new characters.  They love playing in the Disney Infinity 3.0 toybox mode where they can run around and swap characters freely.  They were super excited to see that I got new characters they co...

Before The Force Awakens I started re-reading my way through the old Star Wars expanded universe which is now called Star Wars Legends.  I was moving at a decent speed and then The Force Awakens released. I love Star Wars Legends, but now all I want to know is what happens next in this canon version of Star Wars.  Legends is still cool and will always hold a special place in my heart but I've completely lost my motivation to re-read through it again. I feel like I'll revisit Legends again sometime in the future but now isn't the time.  I'm too excited about the new reality of the universe that The Force Awakens has presented.  I want to know more about that.  I don't need to drag myself into what could  have happened. There are more canon novels and comics coming out all the time.  So, I'm putting my Legends exploration on indefinite hold.  I'll explore the new canon Star Wars expanded universe as it releases and outside of that I'll hav...

The Perfect Weapon is a Star Wars novella that left me wanting. It does a decent job of painting the picture of a life as a mercenary or bounty hunter on the edge of the law while the pacing and action are decent enough. My problem with the novella is that it all seems to be leading up to finding out what is so important that is contained in a box the main character has to retrieve.  And (spoilers) in the end she gets the box but doesn't open it. It's a frustrating end to the decent story that led up to it. Instead of adding a unique little facet to the Star Wars universe this novella doesn't really add anything.  You're safe to skip this one.

Happy New Year! What are you looking forward to the most in the new year? I'm so excited to see what Disney does to continue the Star Wars fandom after the launch of Episode VII.  I really want to see what direction they take the anthology movies since the first one is due out this year! I'm also really excited for more information about the new Nintendo console, currently codenamed NX.  All signs and rumors point to a launch sometime this year.  More and more it seems like it's due to be a hybrid between a traditional console and a handheld system.  I'm super intrigued to see the final design. Not to mention that Nintendo is going mobile!  This is the year that Nintendo starts rolling out their smartphone games and getting all their separate systems and services rolled into one.  They have an amazing brand with a fantastic catalogue of games.  If they do it right they could explode onto the mobile scene unlike anything before. Although my 3D...

Ok... so I kinda got on a roll and flew through the last three seasons of Clone Wars. Season 6 is interesting since it's the season of "Lost Episodes."  It turns out they were halfway through production of this season when they decided to cancel the Clone Wars TV show.  They decided to finish up production on the first set of episodes they were working on but they didn't actually air until much later. Now they're on Netflix as part of the show.  It's interesting to see how much better they've gotten at storytelling by season 6.  None of it packs the punch of the Ahsoka story arc at the end of season 5, but there are a bunch of good episodes in this "Lost Season." There are four main story arcs in the season and I felt that two of them were worth my time.  One of the others was about politics with Padme.  The one that made me cringe was all about Jar Jar and Mace Windu going on a mission together. But the very first arc of the season i...