Comic Con: Winnipegger a force in the Star Wars universe

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/10/2015 (3991 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Central Canada Comic Convention was a humble comics/toys/collectibles trade show when it began in 1994 and only bumped up to big-time fan event in 2007 when Lord Vader himself, actor Dave Prowse, came on the scene and initiated what would prove to be an impressive guest list of sci-fi/fantasy performers. In subsequent years, that list would grow to include cult superstars such as William Shatner, Patrick Stewart, Adam West and Julie Newmar.

This year, the guest list includes the likes of Star Trek spinoff stars Robert Picardo and Gates McFadden, and Star Wars players such as Tim Rose, who played Admiral “It’s a trap!” Ackbar in Return of the Jedi. (Previously announced guests Gary and Jake Busey have cancelled.)

Amid the fantasy-based roster of actors and comic-book artists on the guest list is a former Winnipegger who turned his fantasy into reality.

Born in Santiago, Chile, and raised from the age of two in Winnipeg, Pablo Hidalgo, 41, was an obsessive fan of George Lucas’s Star Wars films from an early age. He channelled his passion into a career, working for the story group of Lucasfilm for the past 15 years.

It’s a responsibility that requires extreme familiarity with the myriad stories that constitutes the Star Wars mythology, he explains.

“(We are) tasked with creating and managing the narrative architecture of the franchise,” he says in a phone interview from his office in San Francisco. “We basically help oversee and develop stories in the feature-film space, the television space, interactive space and in publishing, and ensure a level of consistency across the board, so that readers or video game players or viewers can feel they’re getting an authentic Star Wars experience, no matter where they choose to dive in.”

It’s a job Hidalgo was apparently born to do, springing from a youth in Winnipeg when he became an unofficial archivist of all things Star Wars.

“I would read a lot of the books and collate and keep track of all this info, and this was before the days of fan-based Wikipedias and an online community that exists to track Star Wars information,” he says. “I just started doing it on my own.

“What happened was I made myself known to the publishers who published Star Wars guide books and things like that. I was able to freelance out of Winnipeg and get a few Star Wars books published. And that drew the attention of Lucasfilm to me and they recognized I was someone who could write, and as well someone who could speak authoritatively about the brand.”

He was hired by Lucasfilm in 2000, and became enough of a fixture that he even got a walk-on role in the 2005 film, Revenge of the Sith. When Lucas retired in 2012, there may have been reason for panic, but Hidalgo recalls being comforted by Lucas’s handing over the company reins to über-producer Kathleen Kennedy, and the purchase of the franchise by Disney.

“A lot of people assumed that when George stepped out of the picture, Star Wars would fade into the sunset, but we knew that Star Wars was going to have this big, vibrant future. We knew that there was a rich universe with a lot of storytelling potential, and I think it’s finally going to live up to that potential in a way that people only imagined before,” he says.

Hidalgo now goes beyond documenting Star Wars canon to helping create Star Wars canon.

“It’s a collaborative environment,” he says. “In a writers’ room, creating new scripts either for a TV show or for a feature film, I’ll be the guy who’ll be able to field questions about precedents, like: ‘Has anything like this happened in Star Wars before?’

“I’ll be able to offer that kind of information, but at the same time, writers seek each other out for input and inspiration, and I’m really fortunate to have a seat at that table where things like that happen.”

So… has he seen the upcoming Episode VII, The Force Awakens, directed by J.J. Abrams?

“I’ve seen a version of it,” he says, exercising extreme caution, befitting a project that still qualifies as top secret.

“We’re all really excited about it,” he says, offering a non-specific evaluation. “From everything I’ve seen, it does a lot of things right as far as Star Wars goes. It is reverent to what has come before, but it does the very important thing of creating a new space for a new generation to get into.

“Every Star Wars film has to carry off that balancing act of giving you the material that you recognize as Star Wars, but also expanding what the universe can be. From everything I’ve seen, this movie does that really, really well.”

Returning to Winnipeg, where his parents and brothers still live, Hidalgo will make time for a family visit around the convention. He offers a preview of what to expect of his C4 panel.

“I’ll be doing a Q&A session and my hope is to illustrate to people in the audience, especially if there’s any younger people, that it doesn’t matter where in the world you are,” he says. “In Winnipeg, it was hard to imagine a future wherein, wow, I get to be one of the people who shape the future of Star Wars.

“And it did happen! And I kind of want to illuminate how that happened.”

 

Pablo Hidalgo’s C4 panel is at 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30. Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens Dec. 18.

 

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca