BONUS - SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY

You might want to buckle up, baby... Our two best star-friends Brian Rudloff and Sam Stovold welcome us into their tribe (or should we say family?) for an extra special episode of Marvel Star Wars Explorers! Podcast pals Sean Davis and Kev Young round out the crew for a roundtable debate over the latest anthology film from our favorite franchise, Solo: A Star Wars Story.

The discussion boasts more range than a DL-44 blaster, covering everything from the symbolism of Han’s dice to toxic fanboy villains to whether or not the Imperial March should remain non-diegetic. We’ve also officially reached the point where our Star Wars chats can no longer be contained in single installments, so be sure to check out BOTH parts of this summa-verminoth-sized episode! If you listen to this podcast, you’re in this life for good.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Directed by Ron Howard
Produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Allison Shearmur, and Simon Emanuel
Written by Lawrence Kasdan and Jonathan Kasdan
Starring Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joonas Suotamo, and Paul Bettany

Check out the rest of our series on the Star Wars saga:
Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Episode IV: A New Hope
Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Episode VII: The Force Awakens
Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

Solo: A Star Wars Story
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Star Wars: Clone Wars
Star Wars Holiday Special
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure

Episode 94 - AN AMERICAN TAIL and FIEVEL GOES WEST

Scrappy cartoon mice are as American as baseball, apple pie, and an abiding sense of optimism that somehow endures constant alienation and glaring injustice. That combination of the wholesome and the serious defines An American Tail, a poignant re-imagining of the immigrant experience from legendary artist Don Bluth and wunderkind executive producer Steven Spielberg that dared to challenge Disney for animated musical supremacy.

Just because you find some success in America, however, doesn't mean you relinquish your underdog status. By the release of the sequel Fievel Goes West, Bluth was gone, Disney was ascendant once more, and the Mousekewitz family was still seeking a better lot in life. It was time to change the approach.

Brian Rudloff joins us for this special double feature episode, as we try to reconcile two very different films with the same core message: somewhere out there, dreams can still come true.

An American Tail (1986)
Directed by Don Bluth
Produced by Don Bluth, Gary Goldman, and John Pomeroy
Written by Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss
Starring Phillip Glasser, Amy Green, Nehemiah Persoff, Erica Yohn, John P. Finnegan, Christopher Plummer, Madeline Kahn, and Dom DeLuise

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991)
Directed by Phil Nibbelink and Simon Wells
Produced by Steven Spielberg and Robert Watts
Written by Flint Dille
Starring Phillip Glasser, Cathy Cavadini, Nehemiah Persoff, Erica Yohn, Dom DeLuise, Amy Irving, John Cleese, and James Stewart

Episode 52 - WILD WILD WEST

In this episode we go way, way back--not just back to an alternate-history version of the American West, but also back to the retrograde masculinity and offensive sophomoric humor of pop culture in...well, in almost any time, sadly.

An unholy alliance of ego-stroking and trend-chasing can explain much of Wild Wild West, the film that finally gave Jon Peters the giant spider he always wanted. But is the movie the right kind of dumb juvenile fun?

We peel back the layers of Wild Wild West's steampunk aesthetic and latent homoeroticism in a scintillating debate, including a bonus discussion of the music video for Will Smith's iconic contribution to the film's soundtrack. So swallow your pride, don't let your lip react, and enjoy this wild, wild What Were We Watching!

Wild Wild West (1999)
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
Produced by Jon Peters and Barry Sonnenfeld
Written by S.S. Wilson & Brent Maddock and Jeffrey Price & Peter S. Seaman
Based on "The Wild Wild West" created by Michael Garrison
Starring Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Salma Hayek, M. Emmet Walsh, Bai Ling, and Ted Levine