Julius

Shinji Hashimoto is retiring today:

Disney+ Day returns on 8th September, leading into D23: As you'd expect, it's also been posted by the Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar accounts, so expect news from them too.

Rumoured games for June: Yeah, if God of War is included in the lineup I definitely think we're warming up to that Ragnarök blowout

Yeah, I'll definitely be looking into it! Would prefer to drag some friends along, but if I can't convince them, then I'll just go solo It was funny, I didn't even think about the possibility of it coming over to London next year initially. When Ewan came onstage during the Doug Chiang panel on Saturday (by the way, not sure if you see, but they cut away in the middle of Doug's panel on the stream for Ewan to say bye -- which felt a little disrespectful to Doug?) he said something to the effect of "I'll be back next year, hopefully I'll see you guys in San Antonio or Edinburgh" which is when I started thinking about the possibility. Then during the closing ceremony you hear one of the guys whisper to the other guy about "Europe" and I was sitting there like a kid going "...Celebration Europe? ", and once they brought out Rupert Friend I immediately looked him up to figure out where they were going with this. From a place in Oxfordshire, went to an acting academy in London...oh it's going to be London! So yeah, very excited! What makes it even better is that it's over the Easter weekend next year too, which is genius, as those in the UK attending could potentially go without booking time off (head down on the Thursday after work and come straight back on the Monday evening after it wraps up), though I'd probably want to book time off all the same Curious to see how things are handled next year in terms of the livestream, but even more so how the big panels are handled at Celebration itself. I think lotteries are the smart way to go in terms of who gets into the room, but from the sounds of it they could definitely do a better job of ensuring everyone present at least gets eyes on what's being shown? Either way, I'm just excited by the thought of being surrounded by Star Wars fans

The map shown highlights that episodes of Visions Vol. 2 will come from Japan (as before), the UK (seems like Ireland may have been specified?), France, India, South Africa, Chile...and did they just highlight California as a country? So, fingers still crossed for Cartoon Saloon as they were before! Eh, if you're basing that on your experience with Visions, I'd try not to let it cloud your opinion of anime too much. On the whole it still might not be for you, and if you decide to not check it out based on what you've seen its fair, just think you'd be missing out a bit as at the end of the day, it's a medium and not a genre, so I can pretty much guarantee that there's at least one thing out there that's anime that you'd like. Films are shorter and generally higher quality, so they're normally the better place to start. No idea if you've ever watched it, but Avatar the Last Airbender is a great gateway as far as series go (it's not actually anime, for starters), as it's a Western made show which can help you get used to the style and sensibilities of anime (which it drew heavy inspiration from). It is also basically the Hero's Journey meets Asia, meaning a loooooooooot of overlap with Star Wars themes with some great writing across the board. Oh, and Dave Filoni directed about half of the first season before Lucasfilm picked him up. I'm crossing my fingers that it means we see more of a focus on culture in the GFFA, I feel like that's definitely the reason to get so many studios from different places onboard.

Volume 2 of Visions is coming in Spring 2023: End of this year and start of the next is looking absolutely packed between Andor, Bad Batch S2, Tales of the Jedi, Mando S3 and now this.

Trailer for the second season of The Bad Batch, airing this Fall:

Tales of the Jedi officially revealed, coming this Fall: Ahsoka and Dooku will each have three episodes, with Liam Neeson returning to voice an older Qui-Gon and his son voicing a younger Qui-Gon. Seems from the images shared that it will look a lot like The Clone Wars and Rebels. Looking forward to seeing how this shakes out! Well it's certainly an opinion, and hey, everyone's got a right to voice theirs. I think the thing with Star Wars Celebration is that despite being a globally beloved franchise, 10 of 14 Celebrations have been held in the US (with the other 4 being split between 3 across Europe and 1 in Asia), so once they started spreading it out and streaming the whole thing at SWCA 2015 building up to The Force Awakens, it seemed the smart thing to do. Not everyone can afford the £1.5k+ to put down on a return flight, 4 day SWC ticket, hotel, etc., but more importantly - and the part which for me just pushes it all a bit further to "what the hell were you thinking?" - is just the period we're in that they're doing this; we're "post"-COVID, how many people a few months out from the event want to face the financial risk of these things potentially falling through, not to mention the risk of getting COVID, and so on? It just seems like we're going backwards as quickly as possible. It's a real shame, and it seems disrespectful and tone deaf considering how they kept quiet about the livestream for so long. This should be an opportunity to connect to the fans, not make anyone feel guilty for attending or feel left out for not? I do have to ask out of curiosity though - was the guy who sent you the Mando+ ticket based in the US/North America by any chance? Because, if so, I imagine that might have coloured their opinion somewhat. Like I said before, I think it makes to keep some things exclusive to SWC. Obi-Wan premiere, Mando S3 extended trailer (think the first one could've been shown) and any clips, Ahsoka footage (only three weeks in), Tales of the Jedi premiere, and very likely the Bad Batch S2 premiere...that's quite a bit, and I think all of those could have been kept exclusive. But not showing the panels at all? It's just so weird. Maybe it's just because I've been watching them for so long, though, that like you say it almost becomes the expectation that these things will be streamed The thing that doesn't add up to me, like I said above, is that they aren't even trying to leverage this content elsewhere. There's an argument that people have paid to attend and so on, but why would you not try to get people at home to pay too? The smart business thing to do - surely - is to have a livestream which is basically as it is now (missing all of the big and important panels) on YouTube, but then have some exclusive Disney+ pass that you pay for (say £30 or something - not too high, but definitely premium) and which they advertise a load on YouTube and elsewhere to give those at home the chance to catch all these big panels too (like I said above too, it'll help blur the line between more casual and hardcore fans if something as hardcore as Celebration is pushed more and easily accessible through Disney+). As it is they're just pissing off fans and losing out on money, and that's the part I don't understand. They could then do the same for D23 and other events. To sum it up: Disney are weird

The more Courtois speaks the more I hate him Also reminder that Ancelotti has as many UCL's now as Pep and Jose combined And Raúl bringing out the trophy was a great moment

Unlucky Liverpool, you just so happened to catch Courtois on the day of one of his best ever performances. He was imperious and he's the reason Real won today, but Liverpool did also fall away as the second half went on. Real now have double the number of UCL/European Cups as the next team with the most UCL wins (Milan with 7). Insane. They've put in some crazy performances this season, Carlo is a champ, most UCL's won by a manager (4) and very deserved. Ronaldo must be seething now that some of these Madrid players are joint level with him for second most UCL's at 5 after he left thinking the dynasty was over. That's nice to think about at least

Oh my goodness Courtois WTF Hate him but what a game he's having Also @Hero-of-Time yeah you're right, hadn't thought of that! Crazy to think about, but then again, both times you were up against the almighty Chelsea

These commentators really have Madrid blinders on, jeez. They've beat a lot of great teams to get here through the knockout phases, don't get me wrong, but saying it's almost inarguably the greatest run when they've clearly completely forgot about Barça's 14/15 UCL where they beat City, PSG, Bayern and Juve (in that order), all the reigning champions of their respective leagues at the time?

TAA just turned off there, caught watching the ball and not paying attention to where Vinicius was. There's still time, but against this Madrid side I imagine it feels like they've got Everest to climb rather than any old mountain.

Well, Peter Walton did an atrocious job of explaining that offside. As usual. Get what he's trying to say, and though it did deflect off Konate before bouncing off Fabinho's knee, look at Fabinho's angle of entry and momentum -- his intention is to get the ball out of there, which inevitably (with his angle and momentum) means it's going towards Benzema and Fabinho's own byline. If nothing else, for me, the fact it took so long to check it through VAR is what I think should mean it wasn't a goal, it simply wasn't clear and obvious. I think they should have a timer for how long they have to check it, to be honest. Anyways, I think someone really needs to proofread the laws of the game, in its entirety. From where I'm standing I don't understand how you can have a handball rule which doesn't consider intent (much less reaction times; still think the only reasonable solution is to start lopping arms off) and then have another rule regarding what is and isn't offside depending on a player's intent.

Feel like Liverpool should really have put one of their chances away, unfortunately the lanky traitorous douche bag that is Courtois pulled off some great saves. Got off lucky with that offside call. It was the right call, but it's just a reminder of how quickly Real can turn it on and put it in the back of the net. Far from over, but it has been cagey. Hopefully it opens up in the second half!

Yeah, we don't know 100% what's gone on behind the scenes, but I think there's a good chance it was a Disney call rather than LFL's. Think it will be very telling if we see in September that movie news has been held back for D23. Honestly, I can stretch my thoughts a bit and understand not showing Ahsoka stuff (it's been filming, what, three weeks?) after how the early Mando clip was received at SWC 2019 (hadn't gone through post- and people thought it looked rough), Mando a bit less so (am I reading right that today it was essentially an extended trailer?), but it's not showing the panels themselves which is leaving me so stumped. The recaps are what they are, but as someone who loves the interviews and hearing about the creative process, it's just not long enough to give us that insight Is it the same as the opening panel where even those at the show aren't able to see it unless they're at the other stages where it's being streamed to? That's another bonkers thing to me. The lottery is better than waiting all the time, but this is Star Wars, Lucasfilm, Disney -- they can absolutely get a bigger and better venue. Yeah, imagine we'll see that stuff announced in due course (again, my mind goes to D23, but could be a bit further afield I suppose). I was expecting Sabine and Ahsoka, but not others from the Ghost crew, so it sounds more and more like it's a true and proper Rebels sequel! You don't need to apologise for having a good time, like I said before, I'm so happy to see the love in the room for Rebels and for the prequels this Celebration, just a bit of a shame those of us not there don't get to see a bit more of it! It's such an ass backwards thing, isn't it? There's the fact that it will leak (it's not like some events Disney have hosted in the past where they've taken phones away), so potato quality is ensured -- at that point, seriously, there's no reason to not put it out there. Then there's the fact that we're "post"-COVID (emphasis on the quotation marks), and so some won't have entertained the idea of going due to the stress that might bring. I didn't. And I didn't entertain it because, well, what reason did we have to expect going in that it wouldn't all be livestreamed? The crazy thing to me is that they're not utilising Disney+ in all of this, if Disney made the call to not have these things on the livestream, then you'd think they'd be leveraging it in some other way through Disney+ (i.e. a paid-for Disney+ pass to access these SWC panels?). I feel like when it comes to SWC there are those who know about it and those who simply don't, and the barrier probably seems high for those Star Wars fans not in the know, so breaking down that barrier and getting to them through Disney+ seems the smart thing to do.

Oh man, of all of the panels shown this is the one that I think is going to really piss fans off for not being livestreamed, what with how far back so many fans first started to experience Ahsoka and Rebels -- there's a through line which stretches back to 2008 (!) which is harder to stomach missing out on compared with something newer like Mando. They've dropped the ball so phenomenally hard this Celebration for those not attending, but still, it's nice to see the love in that room! Somehow Huyang returned is the funniest thing going through my head right now, wonder if David Tennant will return to voice him? Also, did they say who was playing Hera? I feel like they would've confirmed it if it was Vanessa Marshall, but I know Ewan let it slip a few weeks ago in an interview that his wife (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) was working on Ahsoka, so it makes me wonder!

Just seen a photo of the thing Patiently waiting for someone to go rogue and put up the footage Natasha Lio Bordizzo definitely looks the part for Sabine, could be some good casting there!

Good luck to you Liverpool fans I'm not too sure how this one goes. I think on paper this Liverpool comfortably beats this Real team more often than not, but then, I think what we've seen Real manage over the last few rounds, pulling out insane results in the closing minutes, just makes them an absolute wildcard and could easily unnerve Liverpool (as it might any team) in the closing 5 - 10 minutes. And while I think Liverpool's starting XI are, in my opinion, stronger than Real's across the pitch, Madrid's bench is filled with players who can instantly take the game in another direction. I just can't logically bet against Real to pull it out of the hat like they've managed to several times this season, they have an undeniable underdog energy around them in the UCL for some reason the last few rounds - despite being recently crowned La Liga champions, and despite having the most European Cups/UCL's in their trophy cabinet by some margin - so if I had to give my verdict on who I think will win, it would be them. But like I said, Liverpool could just as easily win comfortably on the night; I love having no idea where it's going to go! As a neutral, I honestly just hope it's a fun match. This season's Champions League has probably been the one I've enjoyed the most since we won it in 2012, so many crazy results and goals, so I hope it doesn't fizzle out with a clean sheet and that both teams really deliver

Another remastered Star Wars game is on its way to the Switch: KOTOR II comes on 8th June.

Well we get a recap of the Lucasfilm Studio Showcase omitting the best bits, so...woo?

Just officially announced at Celebration Interview with Stig Asmussen from StarWars.com. It has also been mentioned elsewhere that the game takes place 5 years after Fallen Order (14 BBY), meaning it took place in 9 BBY, which means it takes place in the same year as Kenobi.

It leaked yesterday, but now it's official: they're coming out with a LEGO BD-1 (from Jedi Fallen Order)!!! Well, guess now I know how I'm returning to LEGO

Oh man, that's a good shout think Astro's Playroom is honestly still my favourite PS5 exclusive experience, and while I do really want a fully fledged console title, I'd be down for more Astro in any form! Speaking of which, hopefully they confirm backwards compatibility for PS VR titles -- unless I've missed something, don't think we've got that confirmation yet? I don't really doubt it'll happen, but the sooner I know I can play VR Rescue Mission, the sooner I'm onboard to get a VR2 There was also that news recently that there were some 20+ PS VR2 first- and third-party titles slated for launch... ...which makes me wonder what else could be in the works. Resident Evil VIII VR that I'll never touch? Final Fantasy XVI fishing game? Half-Life Alyx, dare we dream? Final Fantasy XVI fishing game?!