Journalist, blogger and father. Usually found in a Star Wars or anime tee-shirt. Obsessions include epic fantasy and model spaceships.
“I must be allowed to speak,” Luke Skywalker demands of Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi. Historically peacekeepers and diplomats, the voice and spoken word are as important to the function and philosophy of the Jedi as their lightsabers. Having already struck out in anger against […]
From its inception, Star Wars has always existed as political allegory, with its goodies-versus-baddies narrative also acting as the marginalised struggling against far-right supremacy. As a politically opinionated film student, George Lucas imbued his work with a social commentary that would transcend his early avant-garde efforts and supercharge […]
I’d long wanted to start a Star Wars blog, but every idea floundered in its early stages. But when Elisabeth fell pregnant, the idea for Raising a Rebel popped into my mind fully formed. About a week before our daughter Lorelei was born, we posted our first post […]
By all accounts Jake Lloyd should have been a superstar, ready to transition from his breakout role as the young Anakin Skywalker and into a regular cinematic presence. But that’s not the way things went. Aside from a role in the forgettable 2005 film Madison and reprising the […]
In The Last Jedi, Rey asks if Luke created Kylo Ren. But Ben Solo’s fall from grace is not so easily defined and certainly not so simple as having a single catalyst. Of course, Luke’s brief failure as a mentor contributed significantly to Ben turning to the Dark […]
Having a baby is like being given a long scroll of milestone achievements, ready and waiting to be ticked off. Many of these you might expect, made up as they are of firsts – tooth, words and steps – but others are subtler, while some aren’t those you […]
When Elisabeth and I get married next month, we’ll have been together seven years. We met as teenagers at university, where we were both studying creative writing, and now our daughter is almost a year old. But, if I’m honest, we didn’t have all that much in common […]
It’s become a yearly tradition in the build up to the release of a new Star Wars movie that leaked snippets and set images will find their way online for fans to analyse, pick apart and otherwise salivate over. As we inch closer to Episode IX – and […]
Since that first viewing of The Last Jedi in theatres, I’ve had no doubt the title for Episode IX will be Spark of Hope. Not only does any prospective title need to inspire optimism, being the end of a new trilogy, but also imply a fitting end to […]
Recently watching Rogue One, I was struck by its style and storytelling chops as if it was the first time, but then its deeper themes and devices become more apparent to me than they ever had before. I tweeted as much at the time and while the replies […]
