Looking back at Shadows of the Empire

I read it a long time ago, and remembered enjoying it enough, but the only thing that really stood out for me was the fact that Dash Rendar (or whatever his name was) couldn't have been more obviously shoehorned in (and then out again) to take the place of Han Solo.

I dug the comic, and the book was okay, but Xizor seducing Leia through pheromones was lame, as was Generic Corellian Smuggler #2 aka Dash Rendar.

POFToo had some great parodies of it, but it seems to be dead now.

I remember there was a massive promotional push for this, including action figures, a comic adaptation, a junior novelization, a video game, and even a soundtrack. I remember reading it in middle school and wondering why such a big deal was made out of it. Its a fairly paint by numbers story with no real surprises and its certainly no better (and really no worse) than a majority of other expanded universe material out there. Prince Xizor was a pretty interesting villian, but author Perry could not have created a more boring protaginist than Dash Render. As mentioned above, he's a Han Solo clone right down to his Imperial Academy backstory and planet of origin. All in all, an entertaining read for die-hard Star Wars fans but nothing special. Does anyone know why there was such a media blitz for this novel? Does it have to do with the fact that it takes place between ESB and ROTJ?

It was a marketing "event" reminding the public of the Star Wars brand and preparing it for the prequels.

I think mostly cause they needed something to push to get SW into the public eye before the Special Editions came out. I don't think Perry created Rendar though, because this was a proper LFL outfit, although I don't know the details completely. But this came in what, 96, a year before the SE's, and while the EU was big and there'd recently been the retirement of the Vintage Trilogy (i.e. the OOT), beyond that it wasn't feverish, so they needed something to get the geek population to go nuts before unleashing hell on the mainstream with the SE's.

The reason I dug the novel, despite it's pretty basic story, was that it just felt a bit more atmospheric in terms of the OT, which is one of my major complaints of the EU, that it always feels like standard fantasy/scifi instead of Star Wars, and undoubtedly the ESB/ROTJ time period connection helped that.

Makes sense that it was preparing for the public for the OT re-release. I hadn't thought of that. Thanks for the responses.

I enjoyed the N64 game and the soundtrack. That's about it.

I liked some of the game, but it started the odious tradition that EVERY Nintendo SW game must have a Hoth level.

STAR WARS EPISODE III: THE VIDEO GAME - WITH SPECIAL BONUS LEVEL WHERE WE SEE THE FUTURE WHERE CAPTAIN TYPHO HELPED THE REBELS OUT BY FLYING A SNOWSPEEDER JUST SO WE CAN YET AGAIN BUILD OUR AD CAMPAIGN AROUND BEING ABLE TO FLY THROUGH AN AT-AT'S LEGS!

I really loved the game. If I remember correctly, there weren't many third person SW games yet, and the vast levels, coupled with the inclusion of soundtrack-quality music really made the experience for me.

Highlights:

Riding the train across the junk planet

Battling IG-88 in the junkyard.

Finally defeating Boba Fett, and then facing Slave-1 was a "Jesus Christ, what else do I have to do?" moment.

The sound track is still on my Ipod and is very deserving of being placed with the Star Wars OST's, it's a great listen. I never checked out the book, I bought some of the trading cards when they were out, and remember looking through the last issue of the comic in the store, but the game and soundtrack were the best parts of the marketing blitz.

lol Taxi I know just how you felt.

I really dug the N64 game. It was a lot of fun and one of the best games made for that system.

I have both the game and the book. The cheat code for the game required all of your fingers and maybe your tongue to input.

Looking back on the '90s, the brand's re-emergence seems pretty calculated, starting on the die-hard fan level and gradually working up to mainstream awareness:

1989-90: OT released on laserdisc, available for the first time in widescreen format.

1991: Heir to the Empire published, inaugurating the EU of all non-movie media.

1992: Super Star Wars released on SNES, aimed principally at kids who were too young to have seen/remembered seeing the movies in the theater.

Dark Horse publishes first original Star Wars comics since Marvel's license terminated in the mid-'80s.

Stephen J. Sansweet's Star Wars: From Concept to Screen to Collectible.

1993: Lucas confirms prequels in pre-production.

Star Wars: The Definitive Collection (sic) released as a laserdisc box set.

Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back radio plays released on CD and cassette.

1993-1994: First wave of SW-related PC games from LucasArts: X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Rebel Assault, Dark Forces.

1995: "Original" (i.e., non-enhanced) trilogy titles released on video and LD, advertised ominously as "available for the last time."

1996: Shadows media blowout.

Star Wars: The Special Edition trailer runs with Independence Day.

Return of the Jedi radio serial recorded and released.

I seem to remember that this was also when the toy line was reissued, with the action figures now sporting bizarre anabolic man-boobs.

1997: SE versions of OT re-released to theaters; earn millions of dollars, also contempt, fear, loathing, &c.

So yeah, while Shadows was definitely a huge step in reintroducing the SW universe to the public imagination, it wasn't the last or the biggest step in the process. For people who saw the movies but didn't read the books or play the games, something like the Darth Vader Energizer commercial probably went a longer way towards jogging their memories than most of the media tie-ins.

I'm pretty sure Hasbro launched their "Power of the Force" line in 1995. The first several waves of figures were, erm, not anatomically accurate in their portrayal of the characters.

I always thought that Rendar was from a rich family on Coruscant....






You can all beat me up and take my milk money now.

Yeah, Luke looked like Dolph Lundgren. "Father... I must break you."

Actually, the first POWER OF THE FORCE line debuted ten years earlier, from Kenner. This was sort of the last gasp of the original marketing juggernaut, which was running out of gas in the two years following JEDI's release.

Then the second "reborn" POWER OF THE FORCE line debuted a decade later with the laughably Schwarzeneggerian figures you mentioned.

I bought a few toys and figures from each line but I didn't buy a single SHADOWS OF THE EMPIRE toy, which I felt were poorly designed.

The Book was one of the better EU novels I have read, but that is not saying a hell of a lot giving my general low opinion of the EU.
Guri was a interesting charecter, though.
I agree that Dash was a Solo Wannabe. I have a feeling he was in the book with the video game in mind.

I'm probably in the minority, but I'm a die-hard Star Wars fan who utterly resisted the whole thing. It just stunk of being nothing more than a cross-media marketing ploy (which it was). I hate it when corporations try to manufacture a phenomenon. It reminds me of the sad attempts that have been made to create a cult film.

I agree completely. SHADOWS seemed like nothing more than a placeholder just to keep the brand name alive until the Special Editions. After all, there's a good reason why there wasn't a movie made about the events between EMPIRE and JEDI: There was no story there compelling enough to film. (Then again, I say that as if I was still back in 1996, before the taxation of trade routes was ever an issue.)

I remember getting the "art of shadows of the empire" book by the Hildebrant brothers and me and my brothers excitedly thinking that a Shadows movie was in the works, and that it would precede the prequels.

I think that if Lucas wanted to launch a new line of Star Wars stuff (which is clearly what Shadows was all about), he could have done a lot worse than using Zahn's Heir to the Empire trilogy as the basis. I was quite impressed with those novels, as they remain the only Star Wars extensions I've read that actually feel like Star Wars.

One of the reasons I've never liked the idea of a trilogy that takes place after Return of the Jedi is that there's nothing left to do. The Emperor's dead, Vader's dead, the Empire is finished. Chasing down the remains of the Imperial fleet? Bleah. But Zahn pulled it off as well as anybody ever could, I think.

Sure, it has some elements that the prequels have now rendered apocryphal (Cloning cylinders, cloned Jedi masters), but it's still great storytelling. They could have launched a marketing line off of that, and I might have fallen for it. I still wouldn't have bought an N64, though. Some things are beyond the pail.

Oddly enough, I never really felt that way about the Zahn books. They didn't really feel like Star Wars to me at all, more like military SF novels with characters named "Luke Skywalker" and "Lando Calrissian," and the bad guy behaved more like a Bond villain than a Star Wars heavy. "We will crush the Rebels with all due haste! But first, let me show you my art collection..." I think at the time, it just seemed cool, after such a long while, to have more Star Wars, even if it was only in book form.

I'm not really sure I'd ever like to read a Star Wars story again. The principal attraction of Star Wars is that it's audiovisual. It's really cool to watch giant starships rumble across a big screen in THX sound. Reading about it in a book is kind of boring. It's not the kind of world that feels vast and complex and rewarding, like Simmons' Hyperion or Banks' Culture series, and subjecting the Star Wars universe to those kinds of rigors feels inappropriate and silly. Comics seem like a better medium, but most of the ones I've seen are total rubbish.

Although we're disagreeing about the quality of Zahn's books, I actually agree with you for the most part that Star Wars is something that was created to work as movies. Books have too much of a tendency to make the universe comform to science fiction conventions (that series that revolves around alien invasion is the single worst idea for a Star Wars vehicle since the Ewoks cartoon). For the most part, I think that even the idea of Star Wars novels is pretty silly and inappropriate. And you don't know pain until you've read a Lando Calrissian novel. It's just that, as I said, I think Zahn did as good a job as anyone really could with a no-win scenario.

I even have my doubts about Star Wars working on television. I loved Clone Wars, to my own shock, but I'm not crazy about this TV series idea. Of course, I'm still gonna check it out like a good little stormtrooper.

As far as Star Wars comics go, I agree that a great deal of them are crap. Although the old Marvel comics are entertaining for their kitsch value (and a handful of actually well-written stories), a lot of Dark Horse's latest offerings contain stories that pander to fanboy wetdreams like Vader vs. Maul and Vader and Boba Fett vs. a bunch of stormtroopers. Stupid.

The Clone Wars stories (both graphic and -- on the average -- prose) are well worth checking out; John Ostrander in particular deserves nigh-sainthood for his work these past several years. And he's going to be tackling the post-Episode III, "Jedi Purge" era in Fall 2005.

Certain things that work well on the screen in the SW films wouldn't work nearly as well on the printed page, and vice-versa. Writers like Timothy Zahn wisely looked at several of these characteristics and pared down the basics of the story to the key, key essentials that worked for Lucas and which would also work on the page. But then deepened other areas such as the geopolitical situation (also visited by Lucas in the later films) and certain characterizational fillips that -- for reasons of brevity -- simply couldn't be done in a fast-cut cinema series.

Within limits, of course. The Marvel Comics series it ain't, but I still find much of Zahn's non-media-tie-in work to possess an executional flavor not endemic to his Star Wars work, undoubtedly related to the parameters of the shared universe he was working in. Which is not to downgrade the achievements of that novel trilogy at all.

Robert McKee has noted the fractal nature of film structure (although he doesn't call it that) and I find that single insight probably more illuminating that anything I've ever seen in Syd Field. Incidentally, McKee's point is that films have beginnings, middles, and ends and build to a climax, and each act (whether the film has three, four, five or -- rarely -- even more) similarly has a beginning, middle, and end, and builds to a climax, and this is further true for sequences within acts, scenes within sequences, and subunits ("beats" he calls them, perhaps a little confusingly) within scenes.

Field says something vaguely like that in his Screenwriter's Workbook (probably the best of his books, in my opinion), but he doesn't say it so clearly, directly, and well. Another recommendation: Aristotle's Poetics is surprisingly readable, brief, and instructive. You can pretty much get through it in an evening. To get the most out of it, recognize that there are modern equivalents for the classical terms used in most translations:

Classical:

Poet
Epic
Drama
Spectacle
Tragedy
Comedy

Modern:

Writer
Novel
Film
Special Effects
Serious Film
Shawn Levy Movies Greek tragedies were indeed simply serious plays; contrary to what one might expect, there are tragedies -- e.g., by Euripides -- with a happy ending. When Aristotle contrasts "epic" with "drama," he could be talking about novels versus films. He notes, for example, that epics can more easily cover a long range of time while dramas can make use of dramatic music and spectacle.

(A final note: The so-called "Aristotelian Unities" can't be blamed on Aristotle; they're the fault of early Renaissance writers in Italy; perhaps Sydio Fieldi and colleagues...)

Another point:

Novels, in many cases, are simply too consarnedly long for movie adaptation. Novellas are about right. Take a look at Stephen King adaptations. Which is the most faithful? Stand By Me, which is a long novella, and perhaps The Stand, which was, what, six-and-a-half hours on TV minus commercials? Note that other SF films barely scratch the surface of novels, such as Bladerunner, versus DADoES by Dick. Total Recall doesn't even explore all of "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," which is only a short story (but has much less action and violence). The Martian Chronicles worked well because it was LONG on TV.

At Magicon, Francis Ford Coppola suggested that anyone who wants to write screenplays write short stories instead: There's a market for them (unlike unsolicited screenplays), and they can be fleshed out into a shooting script. Many two-hour films have scripts of 120 pages and under. And that's mostly dialogue, with big margins


Finally bought mine for Zelda Ocarina. After much holding-out.

Agreed about the Zahn trilogy's execution, but on that one bit -- the cloning cylinders -- the Spaarti methods used in the novels were different from the Kaminoan school, which relied more upon longer-term créche-gestation than the Spaarti variety (ten years, versus a mere few months or so). As a matter of fact, I think it was mentioned somewhere in the novel trilogy that ten years or thereabouts was the optimum developmental period for a clone, with madness affecting any who were detanked prior to that. Not a bad concatenation.

(Tim Zahn wrote a three-parter short story project in the SW Insider about two years back expanding on the Spaarti backstory during the Clone Wars.)

I quite liked Marvel's run between Empire and Jedi, which I believe was done by David Michelinie and Walt Simonson. The stuff between Star Wars and Empire switched creative teams too often, and lacked any kind of focus. Infantino's section (just before Empire) was visually interesting, though.

The Archie Goodwin run (mostly late '70, on up to Empire) was pretty good. I suspect a lot of my fondness for Phantom Menace stems from the fact that it kinda feels like one of Goodwin's scripts, particularly the notion of a planet with an oceanic "core".

I also liked that one stand-alone story that was drawn by Michael Golden-- think it came out right before the Empire serialization. What ever happened to that guy?

Marvel #38 -- which was originally slated to be the kickoff issue for the ESB adaptation, but when Golden's work finally came through, they cleared out a publishing slot for it, bumping the Goodwin/Williamson run back to #39-44.

Michael Golden ain't as prolific as he used to be, working mainly for Marvel/Epic back in the '80s, his output falling off a bit in the '90s. He still does the occasional thing, but mostly on an as-he-feels-like-it basis. More's the pity, really. Still have his run on The 'Nam. Got in trouble all the time for bringing those issues with me to school.

Speaking of Archie and Al, one of my most cherished Star Wars darlings happens to be the uber-deluxe, three-volume slipcased Russ Cochran-published collection of their entire, unexpurgated run on the L.A. Times comic strip (with lengthy intros from Lucas, Goodwin, Williamson, and Cochran...who has a personal connection to George). Utterly magnificent, and the "Escape to Hoth" arc depicts what is probably the finest, most kinetic "fleet-convoy" sequence I've ever seen in a space-based graphic medium, SW or otherwise. Considering the series' four-panel weekday restrictions, that's saying something remarkable.

Second that "aye" for the David Michelinie Marvel run...my own preferred area of the series, with me receiving my first subscription right during that time (1981). The restored Dark Horse reprints are worth the price for the Michelinie/Simonson/Frenz stuff alone.

There was a great one-off Marvel story by Jo Duffy and I think Williamson that's in one of the ROTJ annuals, called "Ellie," about a Maria-style robot protecting tapes connected with Tay Vanis. They eventually find Vanis, who was tortured by Vader. Great stuff.

I don' think it is a coincidence that the EU stuff really got started big in 1990, when Lucas was having some finaincial problems after his attempts to turn Lucasfilms into something like Dreamworks is today fell flat on it's face with a number of major bombs. ("Tucker","Radioland Murders" ,"Howard the DUck") etc.

Of all the post-TEMPLE OF DOOM Lucasfilm productions, TUCKER is the only one I truly love. But I credit that more to Coppola than to Lucas. The rest are pretty stinky, in my opinion.

I read the book back when it came out and I liked it pretty good (though this was my intense Star Wars nerd phase of my life), but in retrospect it seems kind of dumb.

Willow, I think made a small profit , but not enough to justify the resources put into it. It certainly was not the huge box office hit that Lucas expected and needed.
"Tucker" is a very good movie.....it is one of Coppola's best....but it was a gigantic flop at the box office, at a time when Lucas was already reeling from "Howard The Duck" and the failure of "Willow" to bring in the revenue expected.
A lot of excellent films lose money.
I think it is apparent that the kicking into high gear of the Star Wars EU was dictated by finiancial realities.
I think this was the same time that Lucas sold off "Pixar".

I agree, except I have to go with conventional wisdom that "Last Crusade' is better then "Temple of Doom". I think that "Temple" does not deserve the bad rep it has generally gotten until recently, but It is not as good as "Crusade". I can't go with the "Temple" revisionism. Like most revisionism, it goes way too far to the other extreme. "Doom" has a lot of good stuff, but is uneven compared to "Raiders " and "Last Crusade".
"Willow" comes off like a Poor Man's LOTR. (rumor is that Lucas wanted to do LOTR but could not get the film rights) "Radioland Murders" is a good idea very badly handled, and "Howard the Duck" is beneath contempt.

Count me an extreme revisionist. Although it's not really revisionist in my case, since I never did think much of The Last Crusade. Too much goofiness, not enough fists to the face; I thought this was supposed to be an Indiana Jones movie. I also wasn't fond of the completely disposable love interest, and the final moments were beyond weak. The tests of passage, the immortal knight, the choosing of the grail...compared to the final acts of the previous films, it was dull beyond all reason. I'll take the mine car chase and the rope ladder sequence any day of the damn week. And Mola Ram? That's a villain. The rich dude in Crusade whose name I can't even remember doesn't deserve to be a bead of sweat on Mola Ram's bald head. An action hero is only as impressive as the villain he's trying to stop, which makes Indy extremely weak in this film.

I'm sorry, but...what revisionism? I've always felt that LAST CRUSADE was a creatively-bankrupt, uninspired, rehashed turd of a film that got a pass because of the chemistry between Ford and Connery. It might not be nearly as good as RAIDERS but at least TEMPLE OF DOOM took the series into a different direction, unlike the lazy, sloppy LAST CRUSADE.

By the way, I have WILLOW to thank for my instant acceptance of LAST CRUSADE's shortcomings. Before WILLOW, Lucas could do no wrong in my book. I came out of WILLOW forcing myself to like it but after a couple weeks, I realized that the hollow feeling I had towards it was based on genuine disappointment. I recognized that same feeling as soon as the lights came up on LAST CRUSADE a year later.

On this front, it wasn't a case of Lucas in financial trouble, more a function of waiting for the right moment for the public's perception of SW to change; the series having been in the deep-freeze since 1986 (minus, of course, the West End RPG), with no new film projects on the horizon.

In late 1989/early 1990, when Bantam approached Lucasfilm with interest in having a top-gun author or two work with LFL on continuing the Star Wars story after the events in Jedi, George's personal curiosity was piqued, and worked with Tom Dupree at Bantam at hammering out the storyline parameters -- the "Thou Shalts" and "Thou Shalt Nots" that the writer would be working under. Timothy Zahn was chosen to write the story after recently having joined Bantam's stable, primarily due to his stellar genre track record. His Hugo Award from not long prior to that undoubtedly played a key role in the decision.

George had been sitting on the publishing rights for the better part of a decade -- the Del Rey contract having gone to seed seven years previous -- and was simply awaiting the right expression of interest from someone who'd do it up right, the way it deserved.

(Lucas sold Pixar off to Steve Jobs way back in 1986.)

Great topic but...

the SHADOWS Soundtrack wasn't done by John Williams (although it used a few of his themes), it was written by film composer Joe McNeely. After Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, McNeely was Lucas' first backup choice as composer to the PT had something happened to Williams.

I liked the Heir to the empire books but its been years since i read them. I liked the idea Zhan had for the clone wars and Thrawn was a great villian.

Shadows of the empire used to drive me nuts. I dont think I ever compleated it.

Yeah, Shadows was a decent read, but I felt that the end was rushed. I was hoping for a face to helmet confrontation between Xizor and Vader. All I get is Vader saying "Fire and destroy that skyhook" Bye-bye Xizor.

Guri was an interesting character. It was obvious that she escape the destruction at the end by using the paraglider.

Luke's fight with Guri could have been good, but it was reduced to a couple of paragraphs towards the end.

Who the fuck is named Dash Rendar? Did his parents see that name on an action figure box and they really liked it?