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S02E14: Speedily Summing Up Celebration Day 3
29 Plays25 days ago
We're back for one more day of highlights from Star Wars Celebration, including the Star Wars Visions Volume 3 panel and a surprisingly moving Sidekicks of Star Wars session! I came here so you don't have to... but you need to listen!
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Transcript
Greetings from Tokyo and Star Wars Celebration
00:00:01
Speaker
It's a wrap on Star Wars Celebration, and we will wrap it up for you real quick. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello from Tokyo, Japan and welcome to day three of star Wars Celebration here in Tokyo, which is done. I'm actually recording this on Monday morning, Tokyo time, from the Toy Story Hotel at Tokyo Disney Resort.
00:00:32
Speaker
I was sitting in the lobby this morning just chatting with my wife and catching up with her and um was just about to start recording this podcast when 6 hit and they kicked in the toy story music which was very cute but very loud and so i have come upstairs they have a little courtyard and you walk upstairs and they have a toy story playground here which is super cute if i was a
00:01:03
Speaker
four-year-old kid like my nephews are, I would absolutely love it up here. So I'll take some pictures and I will post them in the Discord and you can see. Anyway, you're not here to hear about Toy Story or my trip to Tokyo DisneySea last night where we're going back tomorrow or my trip today to Tokyo Disneyland. You are here to hear about Star Wars and day three of celebration. So let me recap what we did.
Family day at the convention and panel insights
00:01:32
Speaker
i Yesterday was the day that my nephew's wife, Conoco, and her two kids came. So it was kind of a family-oriented day. And we got to the convention center pretty much when it opened.
00:01:49
Speaker
And we walked in and we were making our way back to the kids' area. and i somehow got separated from the rest of the group. But then I realized that there was room at the overflow seating for the panel for Star Wars Visions Volume 3.
00:02:08
Speaker
This is one of the big three panels. So I was actually able to see two of the big three panels. i was happy about that. And if you're not familiar with Star Wars Visions, this is the anthology of animated projects, animated shorts, Star Wars themed. The first season was all anime, so very Japanese, highly Japanese influence.
00:02:32
Speaker
of course and it it was great it was really fun i would say that some of them i liked much better than others some of they gave the artists a lot of free reign and none of this is considered star wars canon so some of those first season of visions episodes get a little trippy, but for the most part, I really enjoyed them.
00:02:54
Speaker
And so that was season one. Season two, they kind of opened it up a little bit more. It was more world animation and a bunch of animation studios all around the world contributed.
00:03:06
Speaker
And so they had like, Armin Animation, who does Wallace and Gromit, and a few other, you know, like an Irish studio, Cartoon Saloon, I believe is the name of it.
00:03:19
Speaker
A lot of these other studios. So you had a lot more global feel in season two. well season three is going to be back to the all japanese roots so it will all be anime style of animation and what they did during the session was there are nine shorts and they had the directors of all nine shorts come out and talk about each of their shorts three of the shorts that they're doing will actually be continuations of stories from the first season
00:03:53
Speaker
So those ones are, if you're keeping track, The Duel and The Village Bride and The Ninth Jedi. ah You know, I'm an old man, and if I don't watch something a hundred times, I forget exactly what things are.
00:04:10
Speaker
So now I have something to watch on the way back. to back to the States when I go out there in a couple of days. I'm going to rewatch Visions. But I do remember that the duel was one that was in black and white, and it featured a character called the Ronin, who was a um you know, kind of a a lost Jedi type thing.
00:04:33
Speaker
And that that was my favorite one out of all of them. I think it was everybody's favorite one because people were so excited to hear about the sequel to that that is coming out.
00:04:44
Speaker
So I'm looking forward to Visions. think it's going to be really cool. The other thing that they announced was the release date. So it is going to be end of October. I think they said October 29th of this year that Visions Season 3 will drop.
New series announcement: Star Wars Visions Presents
00:05:02
Speaker
And then they announced that the following year they're going to start a new program called Star Wars Visions Presents, where they will actually do more long form episodic stories. So instead of just being a short, it's actually going to be a series.
00:05:19
Speaker
And the first one of those is going to be based on the ninth Jedi. So if you're curious about that, grab it on Disney Plus, take a look at it. You can see the first version of that.
00:05:31
Speaker
Then they're going to have a second short as part of this volume three. And then the series will be in 2027. So that was fun, that was how we that we spent the morning.
00:05:42
Speaker
Then I hooked back up with my family. It was about 11 o'clock and the food lines weren't too long this time, so we went and got some Star Wars themed Japanese lunch.
00:05:57
Speaker
I had the Jar Jar Men, which was good. It kinda tasted like pork spaghetti, spaghetti with a pork sauce, less tomatoey and more different flavors on it, but it was very good.
00:06:08
Speaker
And so that was fun. And then after lunch, we were able to go to another big session.
Star Wars panel experiences and special guests
00:06:17
Speaker
This was the first time that we were on the celebration stage, which was, you know kind of the main stage where all that, the room where it actually happened, where all of the celebrities were there in person.
00:06:28
Speaker
I had only been in the rooms where it was streaming from there. But we got to go into the celebration stage and we saw a session called the sidekicks of Star Wars. It was hosted by Ashley Eckstein and it featured Ahmed Best, who of course played Jar Jar Binks, and Alan Tudyk, who is a lot of things. I will always think of him as Wash from Firefly. It's the first time that he ever really kind of got onto my radar screen.
00:06:57
Speaker
But he does a ton of of voice work and he was the voice of K2SO in Rogue One and he will be in Andorr Season Two coming up. And then Anthony Daniels, of course, C-3PO was there.
00:07:11
Speaker
And it was funny, I was going into it and I was thinking, wow, they've given poor Ashley the job of hosting this session and Anthony Daniels is gonna be there. If you've ever seen Anthony at one of these,
00:07:25
Speaker
he can be ah bit much he he is quite a character and he has quite an ego he likes everything to be about him and i was feeling a little bit bad for antony i should say this too is i've had a couple of occasions to meet antony daniels face to face and he's always been very nice and very pleasant when i've met him i've also talked to other fans who have not had that experience. But I think he's a lovely human and I think his whole, it's all about me is a little bit of a shtick, which of course has some roots of truth underneath it, but this is not the amateur psychology podcast. This is the Star Wars podcast.
00:08:06
Speaker
Anyway, Anthony Daniels was there. Well, you know, at the very beginning of it, yeah, Anthony made sure to turn all of the attention on him by commenting that he was the actor who was in, who actually had the most lines of anybody in Star Wars Episode IV, A New Hope.
00:08:26
Speaker
I never counted, but it doesn't surprise me. I believe him when he says that that's the case. And ah you know so he had to kind of get that kind of stuff in there. But I'll tell you what,
00:08:40
Speaker
Ahmed Best was just incredibly well-spoken, incredibly articulate, and I am so impressed with that guy. i almost think that Star Wars fans don't deserve to have Ahmed Best because you may know the story, there was so much backlash against Jar Jar Binks.
00:09:01
Speaker
ah that and And he got so much personal heat for being Jar Jar Binks that it actually drove him to a suicide attempt at one point. He was so distraught.
00:09:13
Speaker
And you know you you think about what it's like for this guy to, he told a lot during the show about being just a skinny kid from the South Bronx.
00:09:24
Speaker
of showing up to be in star wars and how he was he was cast he thought at first that he was just going to do the motion capture by the way the first time they've ever done mo motion capture in a movie according to ahmed was him and so he was basically charting the course here And he thought he was just going to be doing the motion capture, but then he wanted the opportunity to do the voice. And so George said, you know, yes, give me a few samples. And George said, yeah, I want you to do it.
00:10:00
Speaker
And, um He told the story about being at the very first table read. And he's there with Natalie Portman, who is young, but you know she's already been in The Professional and you know a couple other movies.
00:10:16
Speaker
ah Liam Neeson is there, of course, just absolute rock star. Even Jake Lloyd, who is 10 years old, but he'd been in a couple of movies and you know was in this Jingle All the Way movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
00:10:28
Speaker
So he very much felt imposter syndrome and was kind of hiding behind the script. And he got to the point with his first line and he really didn't know what voice he was going to do.
00:10:39
Speaker
So he decided that he would do this voice that he had created for his, I think he said his his little ah cousins. And so he got to that first line and he was like, you know, Mui Mui, I love you.
00:10:54
Speaker
His first line in episode one. And he looked over and saw that Jake Lloyd, who was about 10 years old, was laughing. And he said, OK, I've got this. This is why I'm here. Well, he had this amazing experience at the beginning and thinking,
00:11:06
Speaker
he's going to be a star. He's in Star Wars and they're loving his performance. And then he got all of this backlash and it must've just been such a head trip for him. I, not surprised that he was so depressed that he almost took his own life, but he has just completely obviously done a ton of work to come back around and ah To revisit the character as he does in a lot of little fun non-canonical things and canonical things You know, he did Jar Jar several times as a voice in the Clone Wars um But he was just absolutely amazing during this panel told his story and just talked a lot about how the other guys had such an impact on him how Anthony Daniels had such an impact on him
00:11:57
Speaker
and and what an impact the fans and their reception back now that everybody who watched the prequels as a little kid is grown up and they have nothing but love for Jar Jar and have love nothing but love for Ahmed.
00:12:13
Speaker
It's really amazing to see him embrace the community back. It would be so easy for him just to say, forget all of you guys. And he didn't. He is... part of the Star Wars fandom and it's really wonderful.
00:12:26
Speaker
So I could go on and on. It was just a great panel. It was really a highlight of celebration for me. So that was it then. That was pretty much the end of the day and we wrapped it up and headed out to Disneyland.
Upcoming Star Wars Celebration details
00:12:40
Speaker
um I did keep tabs of the closing ceremony ah over the social medias and they announced in the closing ceremony that the next celebration will be April 1st through 4th, 2027. So a couple years from now and it will be in Los Angeles. So I am super excited about being close to home and that will be a lot of fun. That celebration will be both ah getting ready for Star Wars Starfighter, which will be coming out about two months later.
00:13:12
Speaker
It will be a celebration of the Mandalorian and Grogu that will have released the previous year. And of course, it will be the 50th anniversary of A New Hope. So it will be kind of the the main celebration of 50 years of Star Wars. I can't believe it. We are really that old.
00:13:30
Speaker
So that's where I will leave it. Thank you for joining me on this journey. I hope that you've enjoyed it and we will be back in the States. I will probably not do another episode this week and I will be back to normal the following week.
Podcast conclusion and future teasers
00:13:46
Speaker
I found some new guests to be on this. We've got some good plans and it will be really fun. So don't forget to watch Andor. ah Don't forget to hit surprise. Hit surprise. I've done that again.
00:13:58
Speaker
Hit subscribe. Hit like. Tell all your friends about us. We'll see you next time. May the force with Bye-bye. Who's that mindless choice to do? Podcasts, help you see them through.
00:14:10
Speaker
Star Wars is your favorite unit. Let's chat for 15 minutes. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for a sporn trooper?
00:14:22
Speaker
Aren't you a little short for a sporn trooper?