The Piece of Resistance Our community, 1124 want it Our community, 1237 want it Super Secret Police Enforcer Our community, 982 want it Our community, 1090 want it Our community, 1049 want it Our community, 1416 want it Our community, 1147 want it Our community, 1375 want it Our community, 1486 want it Our community, 1380 want it Our community, 1595 want itDisclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.Today we continue our interview series with Michael Price, writer behind the animated series LEGO Star Wars: Droid Tales. In our second of several questions and answers with Mr Price, we asked whether the writer was given a set of rules to follow when writing this saga, or whether he was given free reign over the material. Price is also an award-winning writer for series like The Simpsons and the Netflix series F Is for Family. As such, his skills in adapting adult themes to animated, more kid-friendly environments made way for his growing LEGO Star Wars feature portfolio.
Everything you see below this paragraph and inside quotation marks was transcribed from a Q&A session we had with Price this month. Behold the entire collection as we continue to publish more questions and answers over the course of the next few days. If you’ve not seen LEGO Star Wars: Droid Tales, head back to the first reveal and watch the trailer – and be sure to catch the whole series on Disney XD and digitally and on Blu-ray, hopefully sooner than later. “I would say, more or less, I was given free reign. With the only rule being that we needed to make sure that all the major plot points and story points of the Star Wars saga were covered in our recap.” “We were really thinking about our target audience, or our base-level target audience being someone – a little kid, perhaps – who has never seen the Star Wars movies and wants to know what they’re all about. And what happens in them.” “And who is Darth Vader, who is Luke Skywalker, who is Han Solo?
What is this thing called The Republic? what is The Empire? “So we had to make sure – as long as we covered those things – that main story points of all the six films, and the other two elements we were talking about, Rebels and a little bit of The Clone Wars, were covered, but especially the six films were covered.” “Then once we we’re in that, once we had the story set, once we had the scenes going we were going to dramatize, which ones we weren’t, which way we were going to bridge the things we couldn’t dramatize…” “Because, in some cases, we only had about 10 minutes to cover the action of an entire film.” “Once the story elements were set in place, then I’d say I pretty much had free reign in terms of humor, in terms of jokes, in terms of ways to tell those stories.” “The only other kinds of rules, or constrictions that were placed on me – often, sometimes by our friends at LEGO, sometimes our friends at Lucasfilm, was to keep that young audience in mind and not do too many things that went too far over their heads.”
“Similarly, some of the films, as we all know, have very dark and disturbing material.” “Things that would be very disturbing for young children – such as when, in Attack of the Clones, when Anakin turns to Tatooine and slaughters an entire village of Sand People.” “Or in Revenge of the Sith, where again Anakin, now Darth Vader, lays waste to the Jedi temple, including the Padawan Younglings. Order 66, itself, is a thing that would be difficult for small children – as is the sight of Darth Vader crawling legless out of a lava river.” “And there are other elements in the other three films as well that could be disturbing for young kids.” “So we had to find ways to tell those elements of the story, stay true to the story, but also not traumatize or not show the more disturbing or more graphic things.” “That was a particularly fun challenge, to find ways to do that without really doing it.” This is just one of several interview questions and answers from our series with Michael Price the writer behind LEGO Star Wars: Droid Tales.
Stick around our Star Wars and LEGO tag portals for more – and explore the timeline below!With the end of May the 4th and the rush of brand new Star Wars content light-speeding its way across the galaxy and onto our consoles, new light has been shed on what’s soon to come for Star Wars fans. Lego Star Wars fans get to celebrate a brand new game based off the beloved film franchise, but moviegoers maybe getting the shaft with Traveller’s Tales newest game. There are three things guaranteed in life: death, taxes and Lego Star Wars games. What is not guaranteed, however, is what content will be in those games exactly. Fortunately for us, there is an entire day dedicated to Star Wars and some valuable information regarding the game and its content was revealed to us Lego fanatics. According to Traveller’s Tales, there will be six extra missions that will take place between the events of Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens and all the content that will take place during this time period in the Lego games will be considered as concrete canon for the overall universe.
This is extremely exciting being both a Star Wars and Lego Star Wars fan because for the first time we will all be able to play though a game based off the movie and not already know everything that will be coming up ahead of us. There will be brand new content, dialogue and stories expanding the universe that we have never heard or seen before to further extend the story of The Force Awakens, while also answering some questions to mysteries that film left unanswered. On the downside, however, Star Wars fans who are not gamers or into the kid friendly and often times downright sill, Legoization of the series will be missing out on some important information that will be canon. The Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens New Adventures Trailer revealed a list of levels and stories gamers will be playing though. Although, most of this canon information is kind of throwaway (but nonetheless interesting) like Rathtar Hunting, Poe to the Rescue and Trouble Over Taul, episodes likes Lor San Tekka’s Return are major installments to the universe, characters and lore and most Star Wars fans will be missing out on it completely.
One of the bigger questions that The Force Awakens had left its audience wondering about long after the credits had rolled was who was that old man was who gave Poe the map to Luke Skywalker? I can’t even begin to tell you out of the five times I went to go see the Force Awakens how many conversations of strangers leaving the theater were centered around Lor San Tekka and his part to play in the film other than handing over a map. Some thought he might have been Rey’s father or uncle, others thought he was a plot device and even one person was convinced it was an older version of Ezra Bridger from Star Wars Rebels. While mostly if not all of these theories have already been proven wrong, those who do not follow the Lego games or even give them a second thought might never know who Lor San Tekka truly is, which of course will be explored in his episode in the game. (spoilers if you haven’t seen the Force Awakens yet) Lor San Tekka is dead, he dies fairly shortly after being introduced, meaning we wont be seeing or learning a lot about him going forward.