The Death Star Human Resources Department: November 3, 2023
It's still Halloween, Daisy Ridley has some thoughts, there's a Yoda for all seasons, and more
Hello there
Happy November and welcome once again to the Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter. We’ve got a little bit of everything this week. A look back at Star Wars and Halloween, I find an old interview with Rey Skywalker, there’s some fun Yoda holiday decor, and we have our first non-fiction book review for the Death Star HR Book Club.
As always, thank you for reading Death Star HR. If you like what I’m doing, please subscribe and tell and friend. Word of mouth is the best advertising I have. It’s actually the only advertising I have. Now, let’s get to it.
This Is Where The Fun Begins
It’s only a few days after Halloween, we can still talk about it. Got this photo from subscriber “matt”.
Pretty good. Way better than last year when I tried to the Rebel Alliance symbol and it came out…well, it was the pumpkin carving equivalent of the Battle of Hoth. A defeat. But this Stormtrooper came out pretty nice.
Checking in on the Zeitgeist
On the topic of Halloween, I live in a neighborhood that gets a lot of trick or treaters. As in we passed out approximately 1,300 pieces of candy and turned the porch light off just after 8:00. I think of it as giving me a little insight into watch the youth are enjoying pop culture wise. And I have to say, it’s not looking great for the galaxy far far away. It’s certainly not a scientific survey, but off the top of my head I only saw six Star Wars costumes. Two Stormtroopers, a Mando, a Boba Fett, a Grogu, and a dad dressed as what I’m pretty sure was supposed to be Cal Kestis.
I might have been part of the problem, I didn’t even dress up as Generic Jedi. The Halloween forecast for Dallas was particularly grim.
It was an especially poor showing for Star Wars compared to many other pop culture icons and brands. I saw a lot of Mario, Luigi, and Princess Peach on Tuesday. Quite a few Spidermen and Batmen as well. Plus all the other assorted superheros and villains. More Harley Quinns that I expected. I thought there would be a bunch of Barbies and Taylor Swifts but I only saw a couple.
Anyway, you’re not here for a recounting of costumes in my neighborhood. My point we’re in year 4 of the Disney+ streaming shows and I’ve seen the least number of Star Wars costumes on Halloween since I moved in. Pushing the time line out a little farther, we’re nine years removed from The Force Awakens and every year for the last 9 years we’ve had at least one big Star Wars event, be it a movie or a TV show. This year I thought, given the big push with the show that there might be an Ahsoka Tano or two but no such luck. I don’t know if this is just a one year blip or it’s a trend.
I’ve had this idea floating around in my head for a while that, and it pains me to type this, we’ve reached Star Wars saturation. While I am not a Marvel junkie like I am for Star Wars, I think there’s some chatter among that fanbase that the last few movies and TV shows have been less than great. That sounds familiar. For Star Wars, when there’s so much of it out there, it’s easy for it to just blend in with all the other entertainment options we have. Up until the sale to Disney, a Star Wars movie was an event. Because there were so few of them. If you want to include the Special Editions, you had nine movies in 28 years. Sure there were a few other things here and there like Droids, Ewoks, and the Holiday Special. And yes The Clone Wars initially ended right before the Disney sale. But none of those things are events like the movies are, and like how Disney has tried to make the TV shows.
So it there a lack of interest among the youth of today? Was it just a bad Halloween for Star Wars? I don’t know. If you have any insights, drop a comment.
Daisy Ridley Dishes on her Grandfather
I’ve been pretty clear that I’m not a big fan of The Rise of Skywalker. It kicked off from the very first second of the movie when the opening crawl revealed that Emperor Palpatine was back and he was going to the big bad for the movie. It became quickly apparent that there was no real plan for the Sequel Trilogy. And on the topic of Palpatine, changing Rey from a nobody to a Palpatine was not my favorite move. I will gave Daisy Ridley credit, she seemed to handle it the best you can, telling Rolling Stone:
What was interesting about the last one, for me, was that you can be a hero and not come from anywhere or you can be a hero and come from literally the worst person in the universe. You’re not your parents, you’re not your grandparents, you’re not your bloodline and you’re not the generations before you. So, I always was like, sure.
The Rolling Stone interview is from earlier this year, but I saw it in a recent GameRant article. I’m not that far behind in Star Wars news. From a certain point of view, I think actually that’s what Rian Johnson was going for in The Last Jedi. The whole point of making Rey the daughter of drunken scavengers was that the galaxy is bigger than Palpatines and Skywalkers. You didn’t need an exclusive bloodline to be powerful or to make a difference in the galaxy. Rey was a nobody but she was going to be a Jedi and lead the Resistance.
Of course Rise of Skywalker undoes the ideas in The Last Jedi. Suddenly Palpy is back and Rey is his grandaughter. And we’re back to nothing but Skywalkers and Palpatines. I give Daisy Ridley credit for handling the changes in her character graciously. Even when the changes make no sense.
Great Moments in Star Wars Merchandising
I received a text from my sister a few days ago with this…
Pretty great, right. You get a witches hat for Halloween AND the Santa hat for Christmas.
Honestly, they should include a Pilgrim’s hat for Thanksgiving and give you an excuse to leave Yoda up for 3 months. Hell, replace the lightsaber with a champagne flute and it can be New Years Eve Yoda. Four holidays for $200.00 seems like a steal.
The Death Star Human Resources Book Club
Lies! Deceptions!
- Saw Gerrera
OK, that might be a little harsh. But Inside the Star Wars Empire: A Memoir isn’t exactly what you’d think.
Title: Inside the Star Wars Empire: A Memoir
Author: Bill Kimberlin
Year published: 2018
Pages: 219
Status: Non-fiction
Summary in less than 20 words: A Star Wars memoir that contains a lot less Star Wars than you would think.
We all know the phrase never judge a book by its cover, but how are else you supposed to initially judge a book? I was doing my Friday lunch hour browsing at Half Price Books looking for Star Wars Legends paperbacks and decently priced vinyl and saw Inside the Star Wars Empire: A Memoir, by Bill Kimberlin. I mean, if I see the Death Star and the Millennium Falcon on the cover, I’m going to at least pick the book up and have a look at it. The back promises a “funny and insightful tell-all” from someone who spent twenty years at ILM1. And it delivers, sort of.
Kimberlin is a pretty interesting guy and has had a pretty good career. He’s worked on blockbusters like The Abyss, Schindler’s List,2 and all three Back to the Future films. Oh, and a little movie you may have heard of called Return of the Jedi. And therein lies the disconnect between what the book’s cover implies and what you actually get.
Even with a very generous estimate, at most I’d say 1/3rd of the book covers Star Wars. Part of it is simply Kimberlin is only credited with working on Jedi, he’s not an O.G. Lucas guy that started with Episode IV before it was even called Episode IV: A New Hope. So there’s some about working on Jedi and then there’s some bits about the Special Editions and how Lucas used the money he made from the SE to fund the Prequels. I suppose there’s an interesting thought experiment here. What happens in an alternate timeline where people decide they aren’t interested in the Special Editions and they don’t make nearly as much money. Do the Prequels still happen? Or do they happen on a much smaller scale? Also, how about a timeline where this happens?
There’s part of me that’s worried this was George’s idea for a movie starring Jar Jar and trying to pass it off as comedy. On the other hand, Star Wars is kinda silly. I enjoyed the seriousness of Andor as much as anyone but there’s a lot of room for humor in Star Wars. I keep something of a running list in my head of series or movies I wish Disney would make. Two of the three are funny, or at least could be funny. Or maybe they’d only be funny to me. Maybe I’ll post the list next week3.
So if the book says it’s a Star Wars memoir but you don’t get a whole lot of Star Wars, what do you get? You get a book that’s somewhat disjointed and reads more like a series of short essays than a book. Kimberlin talks about working the effects for various movies such as the D-Day beach landing in Saving Private Ryan, the girl in the red coat in Schindler’s List, and getting humans and toons to interact in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He talks about trying to get a movie made and getting in theaters for American Nitro, a documentary about drag racing he directed. If you’re interested in the movie business and specifically the effects industry, you’d probably find it fairly interesting.
Kimberlin is also an interesting dude. He writes about trying to find his family history, which as he finds out includes a grandfather who was a bootlegger. He hangs out in a guy in Houston who was a con man and buys his life rights. I immediately wondered if Kimberlin was the first guy to buy the life rights. He writes about his one movie becoming a cult classic. Unfortunately the downside of this is that the book is kind of all over the place. A stronger editor to really decide what Kimberlin’s story actually was would have made it a better read.
I get why the cover the book was a scene from Return of the Jedi. If the book cover was just a picture of Bill Kimberlin and a caption saying something about a career in the special effects business, I probably would have judged the book by the cover and passed right by to look at the Star Wars paperbacks. If you have an interest in the movie business it’s worth a read. But just don’t pick it up expecting to really learn a lot about the galaxy far far away.
From the Depths of Wookieepedia
We’ve got one today that’s a little more interesting than weird or amusing, which is what I usually go for. Today’s entry is Stephen Bayley. That’s his real name. You may know him better as Stormtrooper TK-421. You know, one of the Stormtroopers guarding the Millennium Falcon on the Death Star. Eventually Luke and Han overpower TK-421 and his buddy and steal their armor as part of their ill-conceived plan to rescue Princess Leia.
Bayley was an uncredited extra in A New Hope and as far as I can tell, that was his only acting gig. He doesn’t show up in the IMDB credits for the movie, nor does he show up in IMDB at all. In addition to playing TK-421, he was also a Stormtrooper in some of the scenes where you’ve got Stormtroopers running around the Death Star. Bayley was also a hand model, when a close up of Darth Vader’s hands on the control stick of his TIE Fighter was needed, Bayley put on the gloves.
It’s pretty wild if you think about it. As far as I can tell, Bayley was an extra on Star Wars and then he just went on and lived his life, working as an engineer. And then last year someone in the UK 501st tracked him down and interviewed him.
My favorite part of this interview is the interviewer asking Bayley some questions that only the real Sickos would appreciate. Bayley, to his credit, plays along and answers the questions but pretty clearly is like “what is this nerd stuff?”
News From the HoloNet
Billy Dee Williams Sent Death Threats Over The Empire Strikes Back
The inability of some Star Wars fans to differentiate between real people and fictional characters is troubling.
Andor season 2 may still be a way off, but this Star Wars theory has us convinced about a big cameo
Emperor Palpatine’s #1 Fan is excited.
Guillermo Del Toro's Scrapped Star Wars Film Was 'Jabba the Hutt Scarface'
How do you say “say hello to my little friend” in Huttese?4
Late Artist’s ‘Star Wars’ X-Wing Model Fetches Over $3 Million USD at Auction
My bid was $3,099,950 short. Damn.
That’s it for this week. If you like what I’m doing, please subscribe. I’ll catch you next week, and may the Force be with you.
Industrial Light & Magic, for the people who don’t know. The special effects company Lucas started.
Calling Schlinder’s List a blockbuster feels like, since usually you think of summer popcorn movies as Blockbusters
That’s what we in the biz call a teaser
"Settah nee choo wanna wanga tah myo little pateesa”