Category: STAR WARS

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May The Fourth Be With You

Back in 2016, Brian Kesinger, a Disney illustrator, started drawing his version of Calvin and Hobbes comics in an adorable and funny mashup of Star Wars Characters. The following comics are just a few pieces of what he produced. Please enjoy.

[Source]

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And Then There's This…

I've loved Disney's foray into the Star Wars universe. From The Mandalorian to The Book of Boba Fett (an absolute surprise as I was not expecting to enjoy it at all since I've never been a big fan of the character), these journeys are what the last six feature films should have been. They pay loving respect to the original trilogy and don't beat the viewer over the head with overwrought CGI effects. For the most part, everything in the effects department is practical, and it shows.

You can tell that the team behind these new stories are first and foremost fans of the franchise and pay it the respect it deserves.

That's why I was looking forward with great anticipation to Obi-Wan Kenobi. And yet…now that I'm one episode from finishing this first season, I'm left disappointed. Yes, the sets and the effects are what I've come to expect from Disney, but the story itself has left me disinterested. I hated the prequel films, and while I understand that in context revisiting the events of those three films are necessary to tell this story, it's left me cold. I know that when I find myself fast-forwarding through the stream every few seconds, I am not relishing the experience.

And my final gripe (Get of my lawn!)…why is so much of this story (and to be honest, a lot of things I've seen broadcast recently) filmed so darkly? It's like the lighting levels are designed for viewing in a theater; not in someone's living room—and most certainly not during the day. Even at night I find myself turning off the room lights to see everything that's happening on screen.

So that's it. I really wanted to love Obi-Wan Kenobii, but I just can't…at least not in its present incarnation. Will I keep watching and even watch a second season? Of course—because I keep hoping (though it may be in vain) that it will get better.

UPDATE 6/26: So I finished the season. I missed fully half of what happened in the last episode because it looked like it was filmed at night under a moonless sky. I literally could not see anything that was happening on screen. The television might as well have been turned off.

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I Am Enjoying This Way More Than I Ever Thought I Would

I really enjoyed The Mandalorian and I'm eagerly awaiting Season 2. In the meantime, Disney has given us The Book of Boba Fett.

When I initially heard they were going to be doing spin-off stories of several of the characters in the STAR WARS universe (remembering Solo: A Star Wars Story and rolling my eyes so hard I thought they were going to get stuck), I was to say the least, skeptical. Boba Fett was never one of my favorite characters, and certainly one whose backstory couldn't have been of less interest.

Yet here I am, singing its praises.

Just like The Mandalorian, the same production crew and show runners are responsible for The Book of Boba Fett. Their love for the original trilogy is obvious in the way everything is being approached in these two stories. I call it "old school" STAR WARS: practical effects, measured use of CGI when necessary, and actual character development that makes you care about the people on that screen. Add in the deference they have to the original mythologies, and what's not to love?

Highly recommended and worth the price of Disney's subscription.

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A Reimagined Star Wars

What would it look like?

Okay, it was one of those weird laying-awake-at-4am-because-the-world-is-collapsing thoughts I had today.

After seeing Denis Villeneuve's imaging of both Blade Runner and Dune, I wondered, "What would a Villeneuve STAR WARS look like?" Okay, we know wresting the property from Disney will never happen, but just imagine an adult rendering of the STAR WARS story; one that included all the gritty details of what life was actually like under the Empire and drove home exactly why there was a rebellion in the first place.

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Released 40 Years Ago Today

The Empire Strikes Back, 1980

Probably the most anticipated film of my young adult life. Like Star Wars before it, in Phoenix, Empire was showing exclusively at the Cine Capri. I remember rushing down right after work to get in the line that had already stretched around the building and well into the parking lot. I bonded with fellow movie-goers, and I remember some of us walked the mile or so to McDonalds at 16th & Camelback (when it was on the northeast corner of the intersection, not on the south side of Camelback where it is now) to bring back food while the rest of the group remained in line. This was of course long before you could order movie tickets ahead of time, so you had to physically wait in line and plunk down your $3.50 (yes, THREE DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS) at the window to get a ticket.

As I recall, we got in for the 7:30 or 8 pm show, so we hadn't waited nearly as long as had been the custom for STAR WARS. When the lights finally dimmed and those famous words flashed on the screen "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…" the theater erupted in screams of joy.

I didn't see Empire nearly as meany times as I'd seen STAR WARS, yet it remains probably my favorite of the original first trilogy.

What are your memories of Empire? I know my readers tend to skew "older," so how many of you actually saw it in a theater when it came out?

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The Rise of Skywalker

I wanted to love it. I really did. After forty two years, the venerable STAR WARS saga wrapped up with The Rise of Skywalker. And yet, last night as I walked out of the theater, I was left with an ill-defined disappointment.

I will, however, give it a solid 7 out of 10. Maybe 7.5. It answered some long-standing questions and paid homage to pretty much every franchise trope ever created, but I—someone who stood in 100 degree Arizona heat for hours to see the first three movies in the 70s and 80s—honestly found myself struggling to give a crap about much of anything that was happening on screen. I appreciate how they paid homage to the late, great Carrie Fisher and were able to integrate her into the film (which was originally intended to be "her" film after featuring Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill's characters in the previous two films) by utilizing existing footage shot for other films and not resorting to CGI, but not even that was able to reach in and grab the heartstrings the way those first three films did. Even seeing the opening crawl and hearing the familiar John Williams' score failed to move me the way they had in times past.

And some of the storyline decisions…

From Jezebel (spoilers ahead; highlight to read):

The Rise of Skywalker is a return to history, but a sloppy one at that. It's more fan service for the older movies than a fitting end for the characters introduced in The Force Awakens. Instead of propelling these characters forward, it yanks them back to the past in ways that truly do not make sense (How is Palpatine still alive and how did he have kids? How did young Leia have a vision that her son would be saved by someone else using her lightsaber in Skywalker, but then still be adamant about putting him through Jedi training in TLJ despite knowing he'd turn dark?). In addition to this baffling attempt to end storylines from ages ago—storylines believed to already have been ended—The Rise of Skywalker doesn't even stick to its own creative choices. There are moments where the stakes are raised, like when Rey kills Chewie, C3PO's memory is wiped, or when Hux is revealed to be the spy from the First Order, but then are immediately undone or resolved, with no lingering or greater thought. It's as if this movie is meant to please without putting anyone at risk. No death feels real. No sacrifice or victory feels earned.

Let's just leave it at that.

I am certainly not the same, naive nineteen year old I was in 1977. I've changed. The world has changed since those heady days. And that may be one of the reasons I was so emotionally unmoved by this last film.

I'm glad I lived to see it. To be honest, one of the things that played a big mental role in me beating cancer in 2003 was the thought that I couldn't die yet…there were still four more movies coming out!

And FYI, I'm definitely Team FinnPoe. There was just such an…energy…between those two, especially during the first fifteen minutes or so of the film, that pinged my little homoerotic heart.

Should you see it? Yes. For completion if nothing else. Will I see it again? Undoubtedly. (But probably not until It appears on Netflix.)

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The End of the Saga

Why am I not excited about this? Why—after FORTY TWO YEARS of waiting for the final episode of the final trilogy—do I not care?

Is it because the first trilogy with JarJar and the midiclorians left such a bad taste in my mouth that I've dismissed out of hand everything after Return of the Jedi?

I honestly don't know.

Will I see it? Of course. For a saga that set the spiritual theme of my entire life, I cannot not see it. Will I see it more than once? That, my friends, is unlikely unless it somehow manages to recapture the magic of the original.

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42 Years Ago Today

20th Century Fox released a little movie called Star Wars.

In some ways it seems like only yesterday; in others, like a different lifetime.

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Unnecessary

One of the movies we didn't get a chance to see when it came out last summer because of financial constraints was Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Based on the reviews I'd read, I took the fact that I missed seeing it when it was in the theaters as a blessing in disguise. When it appeared on BlueRay a few weeks ago I briefly considered purchasing a copy, but again lack of funds prevented me from doing so.

It appeared on Netflix a few nights ago.

I was not impressed. In my opinion it wasn't so much a bad movie as simply an unnecessary one in the Star Wars pantheon. Yeah it provided backstory of how Han and Chewbacca met, how he won the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian, and provided the expected stunning special effects and action sequences, but I came away thinking, "They went to a hell of a lot of trouble  making this film simply to explain away a stupid technical error—Han's bragging that he "made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs" (a parsec being a unit of distance, not time) in the original Star Wars film.

Maybe it's just the curmudgeon in me, but I'm starting to believe there can actually be too much Star Wars; that the magic is being diluted.

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Musing Luke Skywalker and The Last Jedi

I know I've written nary a word about The Last Jedi, which is kind of odd considering the inveterate Star Wars fan that I am and my philosophical connections with the films, but it's not laziness; I'm simply still processing the film after all these many weeks and have been rather tongue tied on the subject. But the other day I ran across the following and found it absolutely amazing and too good not to pass on:

(Warning, spoilers)

Rewatch The Empire Strikes Back and I think it's apparent that there was no other choice for Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi, given the events of The Force Awakens. The entire premise of The Empire Strikes Back is that Luke Skywalker can sense Han and Leia in danger before it happens across the galaxy and drops everything to save them.

Which makes the biggest question in The Force Awakens, to me, "Why didn't Luke save Han?" Not Snoke, not Rey's parents, nothing. Why did Luke Skywalker let Han Solo die?

Luke is the central mystery of The Force Awakens. The opening sentence of the crawl is "Luke Skywalker has vanished." The closing shot is Rey having found him. The film is begging us to ask these questions about Luke. Why are we getting sidetracked by Snoke and Rey's parents?

Because of Empire and The Force Awakens, I don't think Rian Johnson COULD have done anything else with Luke Skywalker and have it make sense. There were slight variations that could have been made, sure, but the broad strokes of what Johnson gave us are pretty much inevitable. I expected Luke to toss the saber the first time I saw the film. That's his thing. I've been on the "Luke is turning to non-violence" bandwagon for a while. But I was furious the first time I heard him say, "Where's Han?" BUT! I realized there had to be a reason for it… My patience paid off in what I find one of the most heartfelt and stunning moments in the film: when Rey realizes that Luke has cut himself off from the Force.

Here we have the single most powerful Force user in the galaxy forced to cut himself off of every instinct he has for fear he'll do the galaxy more harm than good. From Luke's perspective, this abstinence of the Force is heroic. Another Jedi purge becomes impossible. The perspective of the audience hasn't been as sympathetic. But this is also one of the central themes of The Last Jedi: that we can all perceive the exact same thing in a different way.

I'm not just talking about the Rashomon sequence (which I thought was brilliant filmmaking), but the vision Rey and Kylo shared and discussed on the elevator. They saw the same thing and came to different conclusions about what that outcome would be.

"Always in motion is the future," Master Yoda would say.

But let's talk about the Rashomon sequence. Because, to me, this is what made Luke the LEAST Luke and the MOST Luke and the more I watch it, the more heartbreaking it is to me in the best ways. In case anyone is unfamiliar, Rashomon is a groundbreaking 1950 samurai film by Akira Kurosawa, who has always been an intense influence on Star Wars. It tells the tale of a murder in a meadow from three different perspectives. The film never offers us an objective truth on what happened, merely lets the narrators be as reliable or unreliable as our point of view allows.

Our first glimpse of the "Rashomon" triptych in The Last Jedi comes when Luke explains that he'd sensed the Dark Side in Ben. He went to confront him about it and it didn't go well. No sabers were in play. This is how Luke WISHES it would have gone, if at all. The second version is from Ben's perspective. Naturally, he's the hero of this version. Luke practically has Sith eyes and his green lightsaber is almost a sickly yellow. From Ben's POV, Luke arrives to murder him absolutely. There is no question in his mind. And then, the third time, we're given Luke's version. A blend of the two with plenty of shades of gray. And, for my money, the version of the story I believe. And it's the one I think truest to Luke's character, too.

Luke goes to check on Ben and the darkness growing inside him. This wellness check is already filled with self-doubt. Luke, like every creative or heroic person I've ever known, suffers from impostor syndrome. Just like Obi-Wan's.

And here he sees a darkness greater than anything he could have ever imagined. And a future where all of his loved ones are killed and the Jedi order he cared about burned to the ground. What happened the last time he was confronted with an image of this? The last time this happened, he was in the Death Star Throne Room and Vader taunted him with this vision of the future and he lost control. He ignited his saber out of instinct and fought. With rage and anger. But he pulled himself back from doing the thing he swore he wouldn't do: kill his own father. Then he tosses his lightsaber and says, essentially, "kill me if you have to, but I'll die like a Jedi."

Now, he goes to Ben's hut and sees that future all over again. And, as before, his saber ignites. And this is startling to him. He's instantly ashamed of himself and must deal with the consequence of that split-second consideration. We know he'd NEVER kill his nephew. Ben doesn't. Some have said that Luke wouldn't consider this again, but facing the Dark side of yourself isn't a "one time and it's over thing." It's a constant. We learn and we grow and we constantly have to reevaluate that.

And here's where Luke decided it was ultimately the right thing for the Galaxy to end the Jedi and quit the Force. Because these cycles of violence will happen between good and evil jockeying for power. And the constant in Luke's view was the Jedi.

Their failure. Hypocrisy. Hubris. If they were off the playing field, there would be no Vader. Or Kylo Ren. So instead of doubling down and training NEW Jedi to take down his nephew, he simply ends the cycle. VIolence begets violence and Luke would no longer participate.

And that's why I love the end of the movie. Luke finally learned from his mistakes. He could stick to his non-violence, but still set an example that would ignite the galaxy. Which is why his saber never touches Ben's during the fight. It's 100% evasion. He had lost the understanding of the value of the Legend of Luke Skywalker, but Rey helped him find it again. And he could once again believe in himself. And the Jedi.

From my perspective, given Luke's inaction in The Force Awakens, this is the ONLY thing that could have been done with him. And why I've embraced the arc so much. I love it. You don't have to like it, but this is the Luke I saw up there. And when he has his heroic moment on Crait and binary sunset… It's a perfect capstone to his character, given the turn the universe and canon took.

This is perfection. Luke has been my favorite character since he first saw him gaze into that double sunset in the summer of 1977, and I love how his arc has played out. I understand some will never like it, but I'm really happy that Luke became a more complex character who still makes mistakes and isn't an unrealistic cinnamon roll 24/7. This guy is absolutely correct; the internal struggle is never a one-and-done thing and I love that it harkens back to Return of the Jedi and Luke's dark moments, but also his choices. His scenes in the end of The Last Jedi are so moving because of his choices and doing the right thing in the end for both Ben and the galaxy.