Latest / Aggressive Negotiations: A Star Wars Podcast / Issue 342: Star Wars Holiday Special 2

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Issue 342: Star Wars Holiday Special 2 · Aggressive Negotiations: A Star Wars Podcast

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We must be cautious. Welcome to the NED party. Hi. This is
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Nick and Ostasu, story editor on Star Wars, The Clone Wars and Star
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Wars bad Batch, and you are listening to Aggressive Negotiations. That's right,
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you're picking up the Deep Space Outer Rim broadcast emanations of your favorite Star Wars
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podcast. Aggressive Negotiations out here as we explore everything that is worth exploring and
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a little more in the Star Wars galaxy far far away and the neighboring galaxy,
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which is a galaxy farther farther away. No either way, I'm Jedi
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Master John Mills, and joining me on this journey as I insist, as
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I demand, is Jedi Master Matthew Rushing. Matt Are you ready for another
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surprise topic tonight? You know what on is we mentioned last week as we're
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recording this. You know, we are in the most wonderful time of the
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year, and I can't think of anything more wonderful than you know, being
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surprised by a topic. But you know, we love it. If people
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would, you know, possibly subscribe to the show as a holiday gift to
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us. You could also tell people about the show and share us over on
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Party dot com. You can also find us on Facebook at Facebook dot com,
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slash the Nerd Party. All of those places are great places to help
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us out, you know. And maybe you're thinking, what could I give
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the Jedi Masters for the Christmas season? For life day? You know,
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what we really like is some reviews over on Apple Podcasts, because it's been
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a long time since that's happened. If you want to brighten our holidays and
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make them merry and bright, give us some reviews. But John, please,
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I am on the edge of my pilot seat. What is this surprise
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topic for tonight? So over on Assembling Avengers, we talked about the Guardians
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of the Galaxy Holiday Special, and on that I mentioned how it seemed like
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a big budget, more perfected vision of the Star Wars Holiday special, the
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much reviled, much mocked, and now ironically liked. I emphasize ironically liked
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venture. You know, between Star Wars and Empire. Everybody you know,
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you used to have to get bootlegs on VHS and now you can just watch
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it on YouTube. Ain't technology grand? While we were talking about that,
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the thought occurred to me that I don't know if the market necessarily is hungry
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for holiday specials at this point, But do you think with the desire for
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more streaming entertainment, with the desire to retain more people on the Disney Plus
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platform, and the fact that they're going to start running ads and most likely
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reconfigure shows to accommodate those ad breaks, do you think the time is right
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for them to go and try to make a modern day Star Wars holiday special
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that is a more perfect version of the vision that they tried for in nineteen
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seventy eight. You know, I think this is a really hard question because,
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you know, as we mentioned in our previous episode, when we were
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talking about Star Wars celebrations and the idea of the Empire and the shutting down
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of you know, holidays all across the galaxy, and you know, the
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kind of the squashing and squashing of religion and the force and all these type
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of things. You know, I think one of the hard things about this
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Star Wars galaxy because it's so varied and there's so many planets. The idea
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of Life Day being on kashik and because we knew Chewy, you know,
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that kind of all made sense. But it seems hard to try and make
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something up that would be like a galactic holiday where every planet would kind of
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celebrate, where you kind of bring together the holiday spirit. And partly just
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because I think it's just hard to translate the idea of what we think of
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as the Christmas holidays, Honika those type of things to the galaxy far far
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away. And so I'm not quite sure necessarily how you do it. You
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know, I don't know if I even in my brain have an idea of
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what would maybe create a better holiday special. And of course the one that
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we got, well, I mean it's a low bar. That's that's for
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darnshore. Creating better than what we got, I would argue could be done
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with a you know, a camcorder and an Instagram account in a weekend.
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But I think that you don't need to stay married to Life Day, because
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my brain goes towards something where you can have a holiday special that maybe is
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more. I mean, if anything you could layer in with what we were
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talking about last week, about the fact that, you know, religious celebration
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would have been stamped out a storyline more focused on the idea that people find
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a way to celebrate, even if they have to do it in the catacombs
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sort of thing. People will always find a way to celebrate their faith or
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their special holidays, even if it's under the yoke of oppression. If it's
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important enough, you'll do it. But stepping away from the in universe canon
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sort of stuff, maybe I'm an optimist, feel free to tell me,
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Like, I see an opportunity for them to have some sort of special with
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rebels all being there celebrating their own or sharing about their own holidays. Like
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its almost like if you want to have a variety show sort of thing.
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It's a bunch of rebels from different cultures talking about the holidays that they celebrated,
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and then finding out that the whole thread of the overarching story is that
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even though they're from diverse backgrounds, they are still working toward a common goal
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of overthrowing the Empire so they can all go back to the way life should
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be. So, you know, I was thinking a couple of things.
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One is that they did the Lego Holiday Special, which I thought actually was
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maybe the perfect version of this because they can be so much more silly and
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self referential and you know, have all the care from all of the different
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uh you know, timelines playing together because it's Lego uh. And so that
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I think that's the thing that works. But I was also thinking if you
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wanted to create something, say in the mand O Verse, you know,
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after end Or, why wouldn't that day, the day that the Death Star
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was destroyed become basically like Endoor Day. You know, it's the day of
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Freedom, It's the day of It's kind of like they're for the July basically,
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but it becomes kind of that holiday where people come together and remember that,
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you know, freedom is beautiful, and it creates this sense of coming
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together because that's what the rebellion did. And you know, so you can
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kind of drive off of those you know, holiday themes that we think of
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and pull them all together. And and to me that that seems like the
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thing if you want to kind of go in universe, that seems like the
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place to play, to create some sort of celebration that kind of happens almost
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basically galaxy wide, you know, except for the Imperial Remnant where people celebrate
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this thing, you know, and it'd kind of be kind of fun to
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see Grogu's first end or day. What you're proposing is an interesting story or
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set of stories in and of itself within the context of a series. I
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completely agree with that. I guess it takes us back to maybe the answer
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is know that the time is not right, maybe the time will never be
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right again to have like one of those old school holiday specials is Star Wars,
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just in a place where there's too much lore around it. Now that
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to your point, the Lego special was perfect because it's not bound by having
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to follow it's not going to have anybody freak out on x or in a
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Facebook group about how it violates Cannon or oh Han Solo would never do that
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sort of thing, Like so, I mean, gosh, I mean,
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as you're talking and it's like, oh, that's a great story that works.
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Is it possible that the audience is the problem now for these things where
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we all take it so seriously that we're not willing to allow the space for
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a silly holiday special that has no impact on the story. That's just an
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excuse for the popular band of the day to come out and perform. I
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mean, maybe it's the death of network television has just cleared the deck and
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we just don't live in that headspace anymore where we want the holiday special.
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Yeah, you know, I think about what you're saying, and you know
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that. To me, I've always enjoyed when my favorite television shows you know,
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did to holiday episodes. You know. I just, of course,
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recently, the holiday episode for Ted Lasso I loved. I thought it was
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fantastic, mainly because they uses it a way to kind of mimic a bunch
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of different holiday films, and each storyline kind of followed a different type of
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Hollywood film and storyline for the characters. So I thought was really fun.
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I still, you know, people may think it's weird, but I absolutely
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love for season two Gray's Anatomy, their holiday episode. It's fantastic. They
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actually did a Thanksgiving episode and a Christmas episode. Both of them are great,
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and it's fun to go watch those again, you know. But so
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there are all of these shows where you know, you have and everybody I
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think, you know, whether it's Mash or a show like that back in
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the day, or I mean, every show had a holiday episode at one
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point in time or another, you know, for one of their seasons,
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if not maybe multiple of their seasons. But I think that you're right in
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some ways where because of the way that television has kind of moved to streaming
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and we just don't have a lot of network television, and the big variety
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holiday special just really hasn't been seen honestly since the eighties anyway, you know,
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those kind of went to the wayside, and so I think that what
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we think of is possibly a holiday special just kind of has gone out the
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window except for and maybe this is just where again Lego kind of falls within
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that perfect framework within Star Wars and fandom where it's like we can absolutely accept
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and enjoy the zaniness of that because they can do anything and everything without us
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worrying about any of the important stuff. And I also just I think the
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original holiday special for Star Wars struggles with this as well. How to create
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something that is in a galaxy far far away but also mirrors our holidays in
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the here and now, and that's just a hard thing to do, I
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think, specifically with something like Star Wars, you know, I mean,
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this isn't even like Star Trek where it's like, you know, them celebrating
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Christmas at some point, you know, you could you could see that,
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you know, if they're just a throwback type of person, but this it's
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like there's no connection. And so to create something that has that feel is
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I think, you know, obviously the original Holiday Special really struggled with that.
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So yeah, I mean, I think it's it's it is. It
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would have to be in the space of you would definitely have to be conscious
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of the timeline. So prequel era or earlier, I could see this Holiday
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Special being said. But at the same time, like prequel era is just
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too damn serious. There's too much happening of a very serious nature. There's
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a civil war, and then in the original trilogy there's a big civil war
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going on, and I think you are boxed in with how serious things need
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to be in sort of the Mando timeline, you know, in the Ahsoka
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verse that we're navigating our way into. It's possible as well that just Star
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Wars doesn't lend itself really to a holiday special sort of thing once the lore
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starts expanding. The Holiday Special exists in nineteen seventy eight, because even George
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Lucas was still figuring out exactly what Star Wars was at that point, right,
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Yep, that's a good point. It's a really good point. We
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know what Star Wars is now, and Star Wars isn't that Star Wars is
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a little too mindful of the different religious and cultural divisions and you know,
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like all of that different stuff going on in the Joseph Campbell thing, but
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there's a part of me that still struggles with it. There would have to
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be some sort of point of attack to embrace that Joseph campbellness of it,
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because the whole thing with Joseph Campbell wasn't just an examination of the hero's journey,
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but the fact that societies need their myths to exist. So maybe the
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point of attack would be the myths that would grow around Luke Skywalker. And
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you put it between the original and the sequel trilogy where people start treating Luke
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Skywalker sort of like Santa Claus in a sense, where he's real, but
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people start telling stories that are greater than reality about him. And the thing
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is that actually reminds me of a book that I think is overlooked from the
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you that's actually quite enjoyable, called Luke Skywalker in the Shadows of mindor which
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addresses that very idea that the legend sometimes gets out of control. Do you
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think that's a possible point of attack, just like or Am I just holding
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on too tight and I was just trying too hard? No? I mean
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I absolutely see how that could be the case. You know, I think
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they could make something like that work. And again, you know, I
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do think we're just hitting on the hardest part when it comes to trying to
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do these things, and four Star Wars, I think you really nailed it.
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It's like, in nineteen seventy eight, this works, this idea kind
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of there's something about it where you're like, oh, we could do that.
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Now, it's just we're too far removed from that, and it just
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doesn't really make sense for us to go down down that road. And you
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know, I don't necessarily know, and I don't think that that's honestly a
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bad thing, you know. I think it's okay for us to step away
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from this idea and allow you know, Star Wars to be its own thing,
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you know, and and to not trying to have to fit it into
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something like that for us, you know, I think I think that's one
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of the places unfortunately where sometimes we just get a little bit too you know,
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you're trying. You know, I think Star Wars is as a round
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hole, and a holiday special is the square peg, and we would just
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be trying to force something that just doesn't need to be forced. Oh for
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something. I see what you did there. They're welcome mean to Yeah,
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well, I think actually then the best way to approach the question is to
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throw it out to anybody listening and say, how do you see the point
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of attack for a Star Wars holiday special in the twenty twenties? Is there
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a point of attack? Is there some way to do a holiday special for
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Star Wars that works? Go ahead and let us know. Like Matt said,
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we're at the Jedi Masters on X the network is at you nerd party,
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the Nerd Party on Facebook and Instagram. Go ahead and reach out to
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us. But Matt, if people want to discuss their ideas, they want
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to make their pitch to you online about how they would do a Star Wars
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holiday special in this modern age, where can they reach you? You could
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find me all over social media under the name Matt Rushing Zoe two. You
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can also find me, of course here on the Network with Drea Kauffman talking
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about every single chapter of the Harry Potter series, one chapter a time.
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You'll find me over on the TFM Network with a bunch of shows, The
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six o two Club, Literary Treks, Warp Five, The Artificial Tango,
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The Orb and A Saddle Up. But John, where can people find you?
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Well, you can find me as Castle Junkie online. You can also
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find me right here on the network, co hosting another show called house Lights
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with Tristan Riddell and Darren Moses, where we look at the work of directors
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by different eras and lenses and all of that type of stuff, and appearing
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over on Matt's show The six oh two Club on the TFM Network every so
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often. They are always very special episodes, much like holiday specials used to
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be. And other than that, Matt, I think I need to go
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wrap my life day presence, So I think it's time to close these negotiations,
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John, negotiations are closed. Join the Revolution, Join the nerd Party.