A review by dr_matthew_lloyd
Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: Infinities by Drew Edward Johnson, Randy Stradley, J.W. Rinzler, Mike Mayhew, Davide Fabbri, Chris Warner, Scott Kolins, Dan Norton, J.J. Kirby, Dave Land, Ryan Benjamin, Al Rio, Adam Gallardo
3.0
The premise behind Star Wars: Infinities is one of those of perennial interest to fans of epic storytelling: what if it had ended up different? Reimagining stories is one of the ways in which we retell them; changing things up is how we affirm that they got things right (or explore how they got things wrong). The possibilities are endless! Well, not quite - they need to be constrained to four comic book issues. Also, there will be no long-term follow up, so every idea you have has to be covered in those four issues and it has to cover all of the remaining films. No pressure!
These limitations are essentially the main problems with the three "What if?" Infinities stories in this volume. Nothing is ever allowed to go really wrong; in most cases, Leia ends up with that lightsaber we all thought she deserved anyway. There's no time to really reflect upon how these characters might change based on their personalities and the new circumstances in which they find themselves - Han doesn't disappear once the attack on the Death Star fails; neither Luke nor Leia has their destinies dominated by the dark side. It all falls a little flat in execution.
The Star Wars is a different beast entirely. I'm curious about how faithful it is to the 'original script' of A New Hope on which it's based; certain aspects certainly don't feel right for the twenty-first century. Primarily, the relationship between Princess Leia and Annikin Starkiller is awful - he physically assaults her; they fall in love without spending any time together... It's dreadful. But Leia herself is already pretty great. She's perhaps not as competent as she would become in the hands of Carrie Fisher, but the character is much more than the bare bones that many of the others are. In part, this is because of the story's main flaw: it has far, far too many characters and far, far too much going on. Elements of this story would make their way into Return of the Jedi and even the prequels (although, while the former is the well-known conversion of the Wookiees into the Ewoks, the latter seems mostly to be visuals and may have been more the choices of the artists derived from the script). And yet, much of the second and third acts of A New Hope - the Death Star rescue and the Battle of Yavin - fall in the final part of this story, meaning that there's far too much going on (by Return of the Jedi the characters were well-enough established that a vast chunk of the film could be expended on the three-tier Battle of Endor; that is not true of The Star Wars, in this format). On the positive side, though, this means that much of the story is new and that makes it quite exciting, in a way. The use of Ralph McQuarrie's original art also adds to that unique Star Wars feel that's difficult to describe now that we're so used to it. Really, it's The Star Wars that drags this review up to three stars - at least it's interesting in a way that the Infinities stories never quite manage.
The Star Wars #0, a kind of "making of" featurette, answers many of my lingering questions about how this story was adapted. There's not as much of McQuarrie's art as I would have liked, but they talk about the same influences (Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers) that made the original film look the way it does. The story clearly still needed work, and A New Hope itself is far more than George Lucas' vision, but there's some of that charm here and it's certainly an interesting project to read.
These limitations are essentially the main problems with the three "What if?" Infinities stories in this volume. Nothing is ever allowed to go really wrong; in most cases, Leia ends up with that lightsaber we all thought she deserved anyway. There's no time to really reflect upon how these characters might change based on their personalities and the new circumstances in which they find themselves - Han doesn't disappear once the attack on the Death Star fails; neither Luke nor Leia has their destinies dominated by the dark side. It all falls a little flat in execution.
The Star Wars is a different beast entirely. I'm curious about how faithful it is to the 'original script' of A New Hope on which it's based; certain aspects certainly don't feel right for the twenty-first century. Primarily, the relationship between Princess Leia and Annikin Starkiller is awful - he physically assaults her; they fall in love without spending any time together... It's dreadful. But Leia herself is already pretty great. She's perhaps not as competent as she would become in the hands of Carrie Fisher, but the character is much more than the bare bones that many of the others are. In part, this is because of the story's main flaw: it has far, far too many characters and far, far too much going on. Elements of this story would make their way into Return of the Jedi and even the prequels (although, while the former is the well-known conversion of the Wookiees into the Ewoks, the latter seems mostly to be visuals and may have been more the choices of the artists derived from the script). And yet, much of the second and third acts of A New Hope - the Death Star rescue and the Battle of Yavin - fall in the final part of this story, meaning that there's far too much going on (by Return of the Jedi the characters were well-enough established that a vast chunk of the film could be expended on the three-tier Battle of Endor; that is not true of The Star Wars, in this format). On the positive side, though, this means that much of the story is new and that makes it quite exciting, in a way. The use of Ralph McQuarrie's original art also adds to that unique Star Wars feel that's difficult to describe now that we're so used to it. Really, it's The Star Wars that drags this review up to three stars - at least it's interesting in a way that the Infinities stories never quite manage.
The Star Wars #0, a kind of "making of" featurette, answers many of my lingering questions about how this story was adapted. There's not as much of McQuarrie's art as I would have liked, but they talk about the same influences (Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers) that made the original film look the way it does. The story clearly still needed work, and A New Hope itself is far more than George Lucas' vision, but there's some of that charm here and it's certainly an interesting project to read.