The classic Star Wars movie mythos is getting a facelift of sorts. – Don’t worry, purists, this isn’t an article about George Lucas editing breakdancing CGI Jawas into the Mos Eisley cantina. Rather, an intriguing new animated project has been announced, called Star Wars Galaxy Of Adventures, which will take iconic moments from the Star Wars Original and Prequel trilogies and stylise them in a series of shorts, designed to introduce the franchise to a younger generation.
Star Wars Galaxy Of Adventures is making an imminent arrival on November 30 on the new official YouTube channel for the Star Wars Kids branding. The series will launch with six shorts that brandish animation with updated modern aesthetics set to the original dialogue, music and sound effects from the original Star Wars movie scene that each episode will adapt. Lucasfilm states that more Galaxy Of Adventures episodes will arrive in December, teasing subsequent regular episodes in 2019. You can check out the official teaser trailer below:
Apropos to the Star Wars Kids destination, the purpose of Galaxy Of Adventures is to help secure the franchise for posterity by helping “older fans, parents, and other mentors” welcome younger fans to the mythology; an increasingly necessary measure since the franchise has expanded exponentially – across all forms of media – in the aftermath of Disney’s $4 billion 2012 acquisition of Lucasfilm. As James Waugh, Lucasfilm’s vice president for franchise content and strategy, explains to StarWars.com.
“With Galaxy Of Adventures, we wanted to craft something that allowed parents to help their kids take their first step into a much larger world whether they were ready to show their kids the films or wanted to find new ways to explore the content.”
Star Wars Galaxy Of Adventures will arrive as the creative brainchild of director Barry Kelly and Titmouse Animation, who have been given free rein to tinker around with classic Star Wars movie moments in a manner that, while maintaining their original context, expands upon their profound nature in the wider narrative. Yet, at the core of the episodes are what Waugh refers to as “simple stories, unencumbered by the needs of a traditional narrative.”
Indeed, despite the emboldened, experimental nature of the aesthetics, the Galaxy Of Adventures shorts are designed to be comprehensible to children. It’s an especially useful tool as we are now nearly a year away from the December 20, 2019 release of Star Wars: Episode IX, the conclusion of the current Sequel Trilogy, with plenty more movie and television projects in the works. As Waugh further explains of the intent:
“Creating content that is unabashedly for kids in this bite-sized, unique animated form, allowed new moments to evolve out of the old, new ways to look at the content, and ultimately expanded the potential of how Star Wars should look and feel. Hopefully it expands the horizons of younglings everywhere on their path to becoming Padawans and ultimately Jedi Knights.”
Yet, as cinema’s most famous ersatz Yoda, Spaceballs‘ Yogurt, famously said, “Merchandising, merchandising. Where the real money from the movie is made.” Well, the made money – in this case from a YouTube series – will arrive via Hasbro Toys with a sub-line of Star Wars Galaxy Of Adventures toys in the very near future…