This month Erin and Rhonda take on one of the biggest pop culture phenomena of our time: Star Wars. We discuss the saga’s connections to both the past and the future, through its ties to folklore and mythology, its profound influence on effects and technology in filmmaking, and the Shakespearean threads woven throughout the series, as well as our undying love for Han Solo and Poe Dameron. Listen now, and may the Force be with you.

*Note: In the episode, I say that I believe that Star Wars Legends is a series of comic books that takes place thousands of years prior to the cinematic timeline, but this is not completely correct. Star Wars Legends, according to Wookiepedia, the Star Wars wiki, “encompasses every one of the officially licensed, fictional background stories of the Star Wars universe, outside of the original six Star Wars films produced by George Lucas and certain other material such as Star Wars: The Clone Wars, created before April 25, 2014,” in other words, every Expanded Universe story that Disney declared non-canonical when it bought Star Wars. However, Legends material does include stories that take place “anywhere from over 36,000 years before The Phantom Menace to 136 years after Return of the Jedi,” so that must be where I got the idea of what I thought Legends was. Anyway, enjoy the episode!

Links:

The Cinema Behind Star Wars: The Hidden Fortress

This Nerdist article about Star Wars and The Hidden Fortress

Videos with side-by-side comparisons

How the Samurai inspired the Jedi

The Hero with a Thousand Faces

How to Be a Heroine

Linguistics of Yoda

Why does Yoda speak the way he does?

Making Monsters

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars

Star Wars Reading Challenge