Alex Robinson and Pete Bonavita have spent at least 794 minutes watching Star Wars - and more than 14,000 talking about it. In their podcast Star Wars Minute, the pair break each film into 60-second chunks, dedicating a 20-minute podcast episode to each minute of film time. While this might seem excessive, the trend for obsessive over-analysis - or microculture, as The Ringer critic Ben Lindbergh dubbed it - is taking off.
Another example is The West Wing Weekly, in which hosts Hrishikesh Hirway and Joshua Malina discuss each of the TV show's 156 episodes with an array of guests. Robinson and Bonavita are part of a growing community of "minute makers", who are dissecting everything from Jaws to The Lord of the Rings. "We've thought about doing other movies, but they're rapidly scooped up," Robinson says. "Every day, it feels like we get another email from someone asking if it's OK that they're covering a new movie minute-by-minute."
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Robinson and Bonavita have also branched out with a second podcast, which discusses The Beatles' songs. Star Wars Minute's following is small, but dedicated. The podcast earns its hosts £4,000 a month from the crowdfunding platform Patreon - and an ever-expanding Star Wars franchise ensures there's still a galaxy-sized amount of screen time to over-analyse.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
