Weekly Recap #3

What a week for Star Wars!

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It all started when Empire Magazine began trickling out stories on Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The first article, gave us some key info. Namely that Kylo Ren was not a Sith, and that Snoke was a powerful figure in the Dark Side of the Force. We also got the concept that the First Order was in many ways modeled after the Nazis, and the concept that what if the Nazis went to Argentina and regrouped. The crazy thing is, the Nazis actually did go to Argentina! So this analogy isn’t too far off. The full Empire magazine also came out, and you can find scans of the article here.

Mazlow01: This was very cool and fits well with the OT. Its obvious the original Empire was modeled after the Nazis and not surprising that JJ and LK would look to history to inform how they would set up the threat to our heroes after RotJ. We were already working on an article about the First Order and this actually confirmed some of our suspicions. Look for that later this week. I’m also glad they said Kylo wasn’t a Sith though I wish they had said the same with Snoke so that damned Plaguies rumor would die.

davestrrr: Has it already been a week since this news? Man, time flies. This explanation of the first order probably isn’t too far off from what people had predicted. Expect an editorial on the TFO coming soon from this site.  I always felt that Kylo couldn’t be a Sith because of the whole rule of two thing and that the point of the end of RotJ was to end the Sith because both of them died. This does beg the question of where did the Knights of Ren come from? Where does the name come from?

We also got some news from the official site about BB8 and how he was created. We got further confirmation that he is in fact a practical effect. We also learned that there were many different puppets and robots created, each for different types of shots.

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Mazlow01: I think what a lot of people missed was on set BB-8 wasn’t as fully functioning as we thought… or  at least there want one prop/droid that did it all. They used a combination to get it right, which honestly I like. It shows dedication to doing it the best way possible no matter what.

davestrrr: I really like BB8 and he is shaping up to be really cool. This article gives a sense of how expressive he will be, and the fact that there are so many puppets made, one for each occasion, should mean that he will be able to do a lot of things and convey a lot more emotion than one might expect.

Next we got a mini trailer with new shots of Rey with BB-8 which appears to match the shot description from MakingStarWars.com of Rey watching the First Order attack Maz’s place. And the shot de Triumph of Finn igniting his lightsaber in the same snowy setting we first saw Kylo Ren ignite his in the very first trailer.

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Mazlow01: Ok so this made may day. I must have watched it 50 times and I’ve come to two conclusions. One MSW has got most of the plot and scenes correct. Two I don’t think the sequence of Kylo lighting his lightsaber and Finn igniting his are as close as it seems in the trailer. I believe Kylo ignites his then tracks them for a minute. Threatens and taunts Finn and Rey and Finn decides he has to fight after what Kylo says.

davestrrr: This was pretty cool and will hold me over until the trailer hits, I think. Maybe we’ll need another 15 second one in mid September to get us through? Credit where due, the fine folks over at MSW predicted these two shots for the last trailer. Of course, a lot of people noticed that they didn’t make that trailer, but here they are exactly as predicted. They must have gotten pulled from that trailer so that they could be saved for this one.

In other news, we got a slew of news from toys coming out and hitting the shelves in anticipation for Force Friday. Among them are Asty, the bullhead X-wing fighter pilot, and the mysterious Sarco. Take a look at the toys here, and the images from a coloring book here.

davestrrr: These are really cool. These background characters are shaping up to be very true to the original star wars and unique at the same time. We know Asty is a X-wing pilot, but Sarco is a mystery. Maybe he will be in the little market place on Jakku and comes into contact with the main characters? Not that I know, but somehow Sarco reminds me of sort of a Garindan type character, that may play a small role, but a key one.

Mazlow01: I’m loving Asty. Hopefully he’ll be in multiple films because he’s such a great design. Sarco to me looks like a Jakku resident, my guess is he lets the First Order know where to find Rey. Either way both designs are really cool looking and just put me in that Star Wars state of mind.

The Force, Balance, and Awakenings

What exactly is the Force? If we take a look just at the movies, we were all introduced to the concept of the Force by Obi Wan in ANH. Here is what he said:

“Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together” -Obi Wan in ANH

more “The Force, Balance, and Awakenings”

Unraveling the mystery of Maz Kanata

Who is Maz Kanata? This character intrigues me more than anything else in The Force Awakens. Is she a Jedi? Is she just a wise old alien lady? Or perhaps the leader of a pirate gang? Let’s delve into what we know about this mysterious character.

First off the name. The folks over at Making Star Wars had one of their podcast listeners mail in a suggestion (forgive me, I don’t know the name of who sent it in ping me and I’ll add it!) about the name of Maz Kanata being meant to sound like the Spanish phrase “más que nada”. This phrase basically is translated to “More than anything” according to Google translate (although word-per-word translation means “more than nothing”). In Brazilian Portuguese it means more like “but nothing” or “but nonsense”. Taken together, this is whimsical name for a character that both confuses and adds a bit of mystery. Like saying she could be nothing and everything at the same time. Given the long history of double-meaning Star Wars character names, I’m willing to bet that this is deliberate. What could be more than anything? The Force perhaps? An amazing Jedi? Also, taking a different direction, it is notable that the name Kanata is one letter swap away from “katana”, a Japanese sword. More on the possible Japanese connection below…

Thinking beyond the name, what do we know? She is an alien character played by Lupita Nyong’o through performance-capture. She runs a pirate gang that hangs out in a castle and may also run a pub. She might be a Jedi…We have a couple of images that have seemed to hold up. One of them dates back pretty far (first on imageshack and later by SWU here) of Rey entering Maz’s pub:

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This image is remarkably similar to another piece of concept art that later surfaced at Indie Revolver, that seems to depict the same clothing and blue alien design:

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So in both of these we have a blue alien character with a longish neck and a red headdress. Given this, we might think that we’ve nailed it down. Furthermore, these images really suggest a Gossam as the species of this alien. Not so fast. As most of us know there are more images out there that turn out to be quite different.

From the (second) teaser trailer, we have who almost everyone has concluded was Maz handing over Luke/Anakin’s light saber to Leia. Side note: we know this is Leia from the ring and outfit matching Carrie Fisher from the SDCC BTS video.

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This depiction of Maz has a very different design: an orange alien with blue outfit. What gives there? I would definitely lean toward this later character design (in the trailer after all) over the earlier concept art. It’s even possible that the blue alien above is in fact not Maz at all, but another alien at Maz’s pub/castle. At this point, we don’t know for sure. Also notable is the fact that the outfit looks a bit more pirate-like. It seems to be a bit baggier and something about the bracelets connote something that would fit with the pirate motifs. Furthermore, note the lack of wrinkles.  This alien seems young, although it is tough to draw too many conclusions since this shot is difficult to see.

Next we have the most recent post at Indie Revolver, that gives one of the most detailed images of Maz yet:

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In this image we have a design that isn’t exactly similar to any of the others, but more similar to the previous image in terms of the alien’s color. This is much more wrinkled. We’ve noted before that early reports from makingstarwars.net have reported that there were two aliens, an older one and a younger one. This last image definitely looks like the older one, so maybe the orange one posted before it is the younger one? Time will tell if the notion of two aliens holds up, or whether early concept design was playing with the idea of different ages. Another possibility here is that this alien species just has a lot of wrinkles independently of her age.

The robes in this last IndieRevolver pic are very reminiscent of a Jedi or possible kimono robes. The crystal in front of her is consistent with reports and theories that Maz uses psychometry to extract information from the Kyber crystal from within Luke’s lightsaber. She uses this to conjure up the history of the crystal and produce the Force-Flashback that the characters, or at least the audience gets to see. All these theories and the fact that the image is consistent with them suggests, if true, that Maz is indeed Force sensitive and possibly a Jedi.

But how? How could she be a Jedi at this age of the galaxy? Given the age of the character in this last image, one would expect that she predates Order 66. Could she just be a Force user and not a Jedi? That is certainly possible, but her outfit looks too similar to a Jedi to me. I would think it would be confusing to have a Force-user that wears an outfit that looks this similar to a Jedi tunic. Maybe Maz was just too powerful to be taken down by the Clone Troopers, or maybe she had already left the order, or maybe, she was already hiding out on Takodana far away in the outer rim. Another possibility is that she does not predate Order 66 and was just trained by Luke at some point post RotJ. Perhaps she was just a Force-sensitive that later refined her methods under Luke’s tutelage. Time will tell.

Any other scraps we can dig up? A while ago we had reports of the name “Kanjiklub Gang” being in TFA. MSW has speculated that this could be a group from the freighter scene. However, Reddit user thatstarwarsdude has posted here the following comparison shot:

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On the left we have the guys from the lower left of the Vanity Fair shot of the guys from Maz’s castle. On the right we have a character from the box of the leaked Lego set where the name leak came from. The resemblance is pretty strong. The chest strap. The cap. The eye patch. The gloves. The mustache. It’s just so much that it would be confusing if these were not the same character. Now I’m fully aware that Vanity Fair may have characters line up out of context for a big group shot, but these guys just seem to fit in with the rest of the shot.

To me, this really suggests that Maz’s pirate gang could in fact be Kanjiklub. Let’s dissect that name for a minute. Kanji is basically a writing system used in Japan. We also have Maz’s robes as being described as like a kimono. Both of these things suggest a design with heavy Japanese influence. Kanji club? It’s almost like they aren’t trying too hard to make the names sound otherwordly.

We also have the planet name “Takodana” that sounds Japanese, and “Tako” means octopus in Japanese. Many have concluded that this name is most likely the name of Maz’s home planet. Come to think of it, Maz Kanata kind of sounds Japanese too (other than the Spanish connection mentioned above) and sounds a lot like “katana”, a Japanese sword as mentioned above. So it certainly sounds like there is a common thread of Japanese references in a lot of these names. That seems to reinforce the notion that Kanjiklub is the name of Maz’ pirate gang stationed on Takodana because it would tie together a lot of these Japanese-infuenced names.

Time will indeed tell who this character is. The speculation is half the fun!

Brought to you by davestrrr and mazlow01.

Weekly Recap 2: August 24th

Its Monday and that means weekly re-cap time. This week we have news that covers both the sequel trilogy to the first of the anthology Films. Or are they supposed to be called “A Star Wars Story” now? Anyway let’s jump right into the re-cap and start with The Force Awakens news.

more “Weekly Recap 2: August 24th”

Jakku – the “Mad Max” planet

For the longest time, people thought that the desert planet in The Force Awakens was in fact Tatooine. It wasn’t until Star Wars Celebration this past summer that we found out that it wasn’t Tatooine, but was “Jakku”, a planet then unknown to Star Wars fans. We have a few scraps of information about this planet, so let’s explore them now.

more “Jakku – the “Mad Max” planet”

Who is Snoke?

Supreme Leader Snoke, the man (?), the myth, the motion capture character played by the best in the business Andy Serkis. We have seen concept art of Maz, a stolen shot of Luke, but nothing has been seen of Snoke. JJ and Lucasfilm are keeping him under wraps for now only releasing his name and the sound of his voice. So what can we expect from this new villain? more “Who is Snoke?”

Weekly Recap #1: August 17th

The First Order

Hello and welcome to the first edition of the weekly recap at Spoiled Blue Milk. Let’s get straight to business. As usual, spoilers are the default here (heck, it’s in our title), so please turn back now if you don’t want to be spoiled!

For the sequel trilogy, we got a ton of news this past week for The Force Awakens.

more “Weekly Recap #1: August 17th”

Knights of Ren

KyloToday Entertainment Weekly released new info on our new favorite bad guy Kylo Ren. The most important part being he took his name from a group called the “Knights of Ren”. So what was his name before? Are the Knights still around? Are they Sith or something else? Let’s dive into the spoilers and piece this together…

more “Knights of Ren”

Welcome to Spoiled Blue Milk

Welcome to Spoiled Blue Milk. We are not what you usually find in a Star wars site. No boards to fight on, no breaking news, instead insightful editorials and speculation on the upcoming movies and the classics we have loved for decades. This site will be updated on a MWF schedule so no need to constantly refresh just bookmark us and visit right after you look at xkcd.com