#I think Disney thought since it’s Obi-Wan that they had to go bigger

[siennahrobek]

It’s hilarious how some people hate Obi-Wan’s show. It looks terrible or cheap, or everything is convenient, or nothing makes sense or so much is retconned. I just think it’s really funny much energy people put into hating something.

[kenobiapologist]

Star Wars Novel Rankings

In celebration of the end of this year, I made a tier list of all of the Star Wars novels I’ve read since I joined this fandom in 2017 (which you can use to rank these books too). And I named all the tiers in a dorky but appropriate fashion. I would love to hear your thoughts on my rankings, as well as how you’d rank the books yourself! I’ve had a blast reading Star Wars novels from both Disney’s canon and the Legends extended universe over these past 3 years. Here’s to many more years of reading stories from the galaxy far far away! 

I put longer (but not more coherent) thoughts below the cut.

The Chosen One: Bringing Balance to the Force and My Depressed Soul

1. The first spot of top tier had to go to Matthew Stover’s Revenge of the Sith novelization for obvious reasons. You simply cannot beat it. It’s a masterpiece. I literally had to put the book down to scream when I read the prose associated with the opening battle over Coruscant. It gave a whole new meaning to the triumphant music and the synchronous twirling of Obi-Wan and Anakin’s starfighters as they weave through blaster-fire in the battle over Coruscant. The rest of the book is the same way. You can’t put it down. I have wAyyYyYy too many feelings about this book oh my god.

2. Thrawn was a surprising book for me. For being centered on an admiral of the Empire’s navy, it had so much heart in it! I loved reading from Eli Vanto’s perspective too. god dammit I love that freaking Wild Space hillbilly dweeb with all my heart. I think his experiences getting to know Thrawn and learning from him guides the reader to feel much the same way as Eli by the end. Thrawn is a trusted friend, not the enemy you expect him to be. I could have done without Arihnda Pryce but she’s supposed to be unlikeable so I won’t blame Timothy Zahn this time.

3. The Clone Wars Gambit duology is basically Karen Miller writing fanfic and I’m HERE FOR IT. As is tradition with Karen Miller’s Star Wars novels, the emotions are dialed up the eleven. Our favorite dumbass Jedi team is back at it again with a mission to save the galaxy and this time they end up going undercover as two lumberjacks from the boonies. Anakin holds an energy shield back from collapsing with his bare hands like a total badass. Obi-Wan is in love with another woman despite it always ending in tragedy, while also bickering like a married couple with Anakin every ten seconds. get a fucking room, you two. These two books inspired one of my fics so they’re near and dear to my heart.

Jedi Master: These Books Have A Seat On The Council Too

4. Wild Space was appropriately named, I’ll tell you that. It’s a wild ride from start to finish. *slaps the front cover* this book can fit so much of Obi-Wan’s suffering in it! @forcearama has elaborated on the many reasons why this book is a gem in Snark Wars blog posts (linked here). It’s also the beginning of the best team-up since Anakin and Obi-Wan...Bail and Obi-Wan! These two bastards get under each other’s skin but it makes for the perfect character development. This book is the reason I screech with delight whenever Bail Organa appears on screen, or is mentioned in conversation. Bail gets a mysterious tip about trouble on a planet, and Obi-Wan decides to go with him to investigate. Cue Sith-induced suffering. It’s cool to see a normal person experiencing the weirdness of Force sensitives and how the world has this extra level of sensory information in it. Plotwise this one isn’t the best, but I think the interactions between characters really shine in this novel. Karen Miller’s writing is like a cup of hot chocolate to me. Indulgent character insight, full of sweet moments, has a bunch of extra marshmallowy dialogue, you’re reading it to have a good time but not to be satisfied with plot. You get me?

5. Do I even have to explain myself here? Kenobi by John Jackson Miller is both an interesting western-style tale set on Tatooine, and a beautiful character study of a man stricken with grief he keeps suppressed. How does one continue on when their whole family was murdered and their whole culture burnt to ash? I wanted to give Obi-Wan a hug the entire time I read this. The characterization was spot-on, from the way he wrangled animals to the way he severed a man’s arm off in a bar with his lightsaber. And when he meets a woman named Annileen Calwell, or Annie for short, Obi-Wan can’t bring himself to call her by her nickname ever and if that doesn’t just break your damn heart fucking fuck.

6. Ahsoka was the first Disney canon book I ever read and it kickstarted my love for E.K. Johnston. The writing is simplistic, but that makes it easy to jump into. Overall, it’s a quick and enjoyable read. By far the best parts are the flashbacks that mull over memories Ahsoka has of the time before Order 66. That shit hits you right in the heart, man. And the part where Ahsoka equates Obi-Wan and Anakin to her adoptive family ohhhhhhh god the tears they flow like a river. There are scenes that allude to Ahsoka becoming the vital part of the Rebellion we know her to be from Rebels, balanced with her current struggles to survive and find herself. Despite having cast away her identity as a Jedi and having any remaining bits of her culture destroyed by Palpatine, Ahsoka shows us all how bright a hero can shine in the darkest of times. AND SHE WAS WRITTEN AS QUEER! finally some good fucking food.

7. Oh shit, another E.K. Johnston book? Don’t be surprised. She’s a prequel fan and so am I, hence why Queen’s Shadow is so high on the list. E.K. Johnston pays homage to our favorite queen and badass senator Padme Amidala. There’s politics, there’s solidarity between female characters, and Bail Organa is in it so you KNOW I simply must give it a high rating. All jokes aside, I thought the story added lots of little details to the world of Star Wars without it being all stereotypical sci-fi nerdy language. You know how people want to describe something beyond our technological capabilities so they throw a bunch of nonsense together like “pre-praxis crystal bio-anode circuitry”? I’m looking at you, Karen Miller, I love you but please. There is none of that in this book. It makes sense, it adds color and culture and life to the worlds of Star Wars. Most of all, it devotes time and love to developing Padme outside of her place in canon as Anakin’s wife, Queen of Naboo, and Senator. She is all of these things, but she’s human too. I do agree that the pacing is slow, but it’s something meant to be savored, I think. E.K. Johnston really shines when she’s writing dialogue because she gets these characters. That’s something to appreciate, because not all canon books agree with the way we’ve perceived the characters as an audience.

8. Rogue Planet chewed me up, spit me out, and declared me an even bigger stan for The Team. People who say Qui-Gon would have been a better master for Anakin can ~get out~ because I could read about these two hooligans getting neck deep in space shenanigans all damn day. Anakin is like twelve, which is a time in his training that we don’t get a lot of in canon. Personally, I think it was equal parts heartwarming and funny to read about their adventures. There is some angst sprinkled in there because hey, we’re reading about Anakin here, let’s not forget the emotional trainwreck that is Anakin Skywalker. The duo is sent to a planet that makes super fast ships that are ?sentient? or at least biologically active. They bond with the pilot, which makes Anakin perfect for this mission. There’s a scene where these little floof things attach all over tiny Anakin because he’s so strong in the Force and it’s god damn adorable how dare he?? I’d probably rate this one even higher if I read it again, but it’s been awhile. Characterization is spot on and reminiscent of Matthew Stover’s writing in how it highlights the strong bond between Obi-Wan and Anakin, how they’re fated to know each other. I’m a sucker for soulmates, what can I say? 

9. Lost Stars reads like a movie. Not a script, but just the perfect amount of detail that you can imagine the scenes but the pacing is still quick, the dialogue smooth and natural. I couldn’t help wishing this was a film because the story was so all-encompassing. The highs and lows of the emotions of both protagonists, their relationship developing, the differences in culture. Folks, this book has it all! It’s a totally different perspective on the events of the original trilogy, seen from the side of Imperial cadets training to become pilots. Eventually, one splits off and joins the Rebellion while the other perseveres in the Empire. It’s like star-crossed lovers, but covers so much more ground than that. And the characters are fully developed. These original characters knocked my socks off, and that’s hard to do since I’m usually an Obi-Wan stan through and through. For anyone uncertain of reading Star Wars novels, this book is a great place to start. Action-packed, emotion-filled, and stands on its own despite weaving perfectly into the established universe. What more could you want?

10. Back at it again with the prequel shit, amiright? Queen’s Peril is E.K. Johnston’s most recent Padme-centric novel and it does not disappoint fans that wanted a taste of the Queen’s side of the story. Set during the events of The Phantom Menace, we get a “behind the curtain” look at how all of the handmaidens came to be more than their title suggests. There’s teenage girls getting stuff done! It makes more sense why Padme was elected ruler of her home-world, and you come to appreciate that a royal leader is not alone; there’s actually a whole team at her side to help her overcome everything from the drudgery of daily governing to Trade Federation blockades that threaten to starve her people. I think if you enjoyed Queen’s Shadow, you’ll enjoy this book a lot. For those that are unfamiliar with Johnston’s work, I wouldn’t recommend this one first because it does cover events you’ve already seen in movies and therefore is a less suspenseful companion to them. On the other hand, because it does tie in with TPM, it doesn’t suffer from the pacing issues of Queen’s Shadow to the same degree. I read this all in one sitting, so it’s definitely fun, but wasn’t compelling enough in its character development to elevate the book past some of the others I’ve listed already.

11. Thrawn: Treason was a refreshing return to the Grand Admiral we all know and love after the second installment in this series slowed things down a bit. Although it wasn’t as character-driven as the first book (which I love with all of my heart), there were still many moments that had me cackling at the disparity between Thrawn’s immense intellect and the other Imperials’ sheer stupidity, and that’s what we’re here for in a book about the Empire, right? There’s a lot of pressure on Thrawn, as his TIE Defender project has been pitted against Director Krennic’s Project Stardust. Who will get the funds? We just don’t know?? Tarkin sits in between the two and as usual, manipulates everything to his advantage. Palpatine questions Thrawn’s allegiance to the Empire after some of the choices he has made, leaving him in even more of a pickle. Thrawn is sent on a wild goose chase task that should definitely end in failure (on purpose because Imperials all want to watch each other burn as much as they want to watch the Rebellion burn), but you know Thrawn will find a way. My main squeeze Eli Vanto makes his return after being absent from book 2. Missed you, my sweet sweet country boy. He doesn’t have a leading role in this novel, but every scene he’s in makes the story better. Thrawn says “perhaps” way too often for my taste, but if you can ignore that, this book is a solid read. Equal parts action and deductive reasoning, as any Thrawn book should be.

12. Most of Dark Disciple had me thinking this was going to be a top tier book, and damn do I wish we could have gotten this animated. We follow Quinlan Vos and Asajj Ventress on a mission to assassinate Count Dooku. Why the Jedi thought this was a good idea, I don’t know. But I’m here for it all the same. 3/4 of the adventure were intriguing, but the ending didn’t do it for me. I won’t spoil things for anyone who hasn’t read this yet, but after all of the character development, to have it squandered so quickly just left me disappointed? I got really attached to everyone in this novel, and I’m sure you will to. I’ve read this and listened to it as an audiobook, and actually I think it’s more memorable as an audiobook. Would recommend, except for Mace Windu’s voice being exceptionally southern for no reason. Weird. I think this novel captures all of the great things about The Clone Wars show; time to really get to know each character and their motivations, action and adventure with the darkness of impending doom tinting everything, and lightsaber fights! Plus, Obi-Wan and Anakin make appearances in this book and it just adds that extra bit of spice. Worth the read, even if you know they aren’t going to get Dooku in the end (which I am still mad about, screw that guy).

Jedi Knight: Passed the Trials but There’s Room for Improvement

13. Few books in the Star Wars universe are centered around characters with no use of the Force, but in Most Wanted, we see a young Han Solo and Qi’ra struggling to survive on Corellia and it provides a humorous but compelling backstory to both characters in the Disney canon. Han is his usual lucky goofball self, and Qi’ra is smart and cunning. You can see how they grew into the versions of themselves in Solo. While the book stays on the lighter side of things (typical of stories written for a younger audience), there are still moments of depth on droid rights, viewing the Force as a religion, and what life is like in a crime syndicate. Addressing these heavier topics without it killing the pace of the story is hard to do, but Rae Carson pulls it off flawlessly. I went into this book with no expectations and was pleasantly surprised by how much fun I had. Han and Qi’ra start off as competitors, but eventually have to learn to work together to survive as more and more people start hunting them down. They’re honestly so cute together, I loved their dynamic. It makes Solo a better movie, and although I liked it on its own, characters like Qi’ra needed a little more time to get to know, which you can get here!

14. Thrawn Alliances was not what I expected at all, and it took me a lot longer to get through. Hell, it has Thrawn, Anakin/Vader, and Padme in it! What’s not to love? Apparently, a lot. The different timepoints and perspectives in this were more jarring than anything else. Although the interactions between Thrawn and Anakin/Vader were enjoyable, it was not enough to elevate this book into the Jedi Master tier. Things felt dry, the characters didn’t grip me like in the first Thrawn, and it all felt like a ploy to introduce Batuu into canon before the launch of Galaxy’s Edge.

15. Leia: Princess of Alderaan was a dive into young Leia’s life before we see her in A New Hope even though this was marketed as a journey to The Last Jedi book, which I disagree with. We really haven’t seen any content about Leia in this time period before, and although I can’t say I was looking for this, I did enjoy it. The book was a little long, but there was adventure and the seeds are planted for Leia to be a bigger part of the Rebellion. The romance wasn’t too memorable, but Holdo wasn’t pointless in this (a stark contrast to her brief appearance in TLJ just to sacrifice herself). There’s a hint about Leia being Force-sensitive but it’s not in-your-face. It’s a typical coming-of-age story but in the gffa. The best part about this is seeing Bail and Breha as parents. I’m forever in pain that we didn’t get to see more of this in movies because it’s so so sweet. Leia must choose what kind of person she is going to be--and what kind of princess she will become. It won’t be for everyone, but I liked it.

16. Master and Apprentice was a typical Star Wars novel, which means it’s full of original characters that are strange and outlandish to serve the plot, a new world full of beautiful landscapes, and Obi-Wan suffering. I want to make it clear that this book is 80% Qui-Gon, 10% Rael Averross, and 10% Obi-Wan. I was expecting it to be 50% Qui-Gon, 50% Obi-Wan, as the cover suggested. Although I was disappointed by that, the story overall was okay. Qui-Gon is kind of an asshole in this? When is he not, though. We really get to sink our teeth into the way he and Obi-Wan fundamentally disagree with each other, so much so that their teacher-student relationship is falling apart. Tragic! They go on one last mission before calling it quits. Qui-Gon is in over his head with prophecies, Obi-Wan just wants to follow the rules, and Rael Averross is Dooku’s previous apprentice that is living his best life as a regent until Pijal’s princess comes of age. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a solid book. I just don’t vibe with Qui-Gon and want to whack him upside the head every time he avoids confrontation with his own student. My protectiveness for Obi-Wan is showing again, isn’t it? Yikes.

17. James Luceno is one of the most analytical authors I’ve ever read anything from, but it seems to always work? Tarkin is all about...well, Moff Tarkin. He’s ruthless, intelligent, and just downright evil. His backstory was compelling and I found myself drawn into the story by the details, although it is dense and took awhile to finish. I’m not interested in him as a character, but despite that, I enjoyed this story. The plot wasn’t memorable enough for me to recall after 3 years, but it’s similar to how Thrawn rose through the ranks of the Navy, just in a different part of the Empire’s governing body. We don’t get many books completely focused on a villain (I don’t count Vader ones because we know who he was before and the whole damn saga is about him), but this one is good! Don’t be fooled by it only being in the Knight tier. I think people who read a lot of sci-fi will like this book a lot. This is like the opposite of Queen’s Shadow, basically. If you had gripes about that book, you might like this one instead.

18. Battlefront II: Inferno Squad was a worthwhile read for anyone who played Battlefront II. Iden Versio is a great protagonist in the game, and I think Christie Golden totally gets her character. She’s nuanced and relatable. The whole team is interesting and getting introduced to each member before the events of the game makes everything mean more. That’s the real goal of any prequel story, I think. Accomplished! The action scenes are on point, the plot served to highlight what makes Inferno Squad special, and you get a sense for the morally grey area anyone must function in as an operative for the Empire. Although not necessary for the greater canon, it’s a great adventure. Iden and her squad members infiltrate the remains of Saw Gerrara’s group (they’ve become a bit of extremist) and destroy them from the inside. It’s got the suspense of a spy thriller and all of the nerdy space opera elements you expect from Star Wars. Although it’s weird to jump into a story not knowing any of the characters, you’ll get attached to Inferno Squad fast. Well, except for Gideon Hask maybe. He’s kind of a dick.

19. If you’re craving some Dark Side action, Lords of the Sith will give you what you’re looking for. Sidious and Vader crash-land on Ryloth and have to work together to survive, and also defeat the Free Ryloth Movement led by Cham Syndulla. It’s all fucking connected, guys. I love when people weave together stories that fit into the canon timeline like this, bringing in side characters and allowing them to develop some depth. And a chance to sink into the mind of a Sith Lord is always fun, if you’re in the mood to read about destruction and anger. It’s cathartic sometimes. If you’re always wondering, why didn’t Vader just stab Palps when he had the chance, this book explains their dynamic more. It didn’t really change my opinion of any of the characters, which is why it’s not higher on the list.

20. Catalyst suffered from being in a really boring part of galactic history. Despite that, Galen Erso and Orson Krennic have a hilarious relationship that I would have loved to see on-screen. This book really develops Krennic to become more than just the whiny entitled evil man we saw in Rogue One. He’s ten times worse now! But I mean that in the best way, I laugh whenever he’s in a scene, that sassy man just brings me joy. James Luceno is at it again, making things as detailed and dry as possible. I read so many of his stories right at the beginning of my journey through Star Wars canon and it’s a wonder I didn’t quit. Some of them are dark as fuck. And also slow as hell. With this one, I think it all comes down to what you want out of a Star Wars novel. Some people will really enjoy the plot. I think seeing how Galen became a part of Project Stardust was interesting and every time something about the Death Star became more clear, I screeched because I knew what it would eventually become. This book may not hold your interest though, which is why I put it lower on this list.

21. Star Wars: Clone Wars was a decent retelling of the Clone Wars movie. I liked it because I liked the movie, but you have to be able to sit back and enjoy the ride, not thinking too much about the silly parts. For that reason, it’s pretty far down in the rankings. Ahsoka is young and liable to get on your nerves. I certainly wasn’t her biggest fan at this point in the series. The biggest problem is that Karen Traviss is very anti-Jedi. Some authors for Star Wars tend to do this? To me, it’s weird. I didn’t notice it too much because it was one of the first Star Wars books I read, but it contrasts starkly with the truth of the prequel trilogy and some of the other entries in the Clone Wars Novel timeline, like Karen Miller’s books. Needless to say, although this book wasn’t super memorable aside from the familiar plot, it kept me reading Star Wars books, and so it is at least an average book. Plus, any content with Anakin and the clones is worth it for me. I love them.

22. A New Hope was good, for Alan Dean Foster. I’m not a fan, I’ll be honest. But this novelization stands on it’s own. I’m going to have to do a re-read to really go in depth on why this isn’t farther up on the tier list, but the movie is always going to be better to me. If you want to re-live the great beginning of the Original Trilogy, it’s worth your time. I mean, the story is full of adventure and mystery and lovable characters. What’s not to love? I just feel like the movie really elevates the narrative with a great score and fun character design/costumes/sets.

Padawan: These Books Have Much to Learn

23. Attack of the Clones was more entertaining than The Phantom Menace because the characters are in funnier situations. Obi-Wan and Anakin chasing Zam Wesell through the levels of Coruscant? Hilarious, just like the movie. Anakin and Padme falling in love as they spend time together? Holy fuck it’s so much better than the movie. Please read it for that alone. Outside of that, the writing style didn’t really impress me. And my experience with it wasn’t super memorable. There was potential to really make the inner dialogue of these characters impactful, to really develop the story of Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Padme beyond what we could get from the movie scenes alone. I didn’t think it went above and beyond there. Not a bad story at all, but you don’t get to look at Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, or Ewan McGregor the whole time either, so therefore I must rank it lower. So many beautiful people in that movie, holy shit. You can understand my, dilemma, yes?

24. I enjoyed parts of The Phantom Menace book, like deleted scenes with Anakin living on Tatooine before Qui-Gon and Padme meet him. The additional depth is lovely, but I think a story like Queen’s Peril adds more to TPM than this book does. The story overall is still fun. I love this movie so much, it’s hard for me to be critical. I did put a lot of post-it flags in my copy, so it does develop the characters and get you thinking beyond your expectations from the movie. What more could you ask for from a movie novelization? I’d say not much, if I hadn’t read Revenge of the Sith and had my fucking mind blown. In comparison to that, this one is just okay.

25. The Last Jedi novelization wasn’t bad, necessarily. It tried its best to bring this story up to par with some of the interesting novels that don’t have movie counterparts. But still, the plot suffers because of how this movie was made. It’s very focused on Rey and Kylo, and Finn’s little adventure with Rose seems pointless in the grand scheme of things. I’d rather read this again versus watching the film, but that’s all I’ll say on this because I’m trying to keep my opinions on this movie to myself to avoid digging up old arguments. Jason Fry did well, and of the two Sequel Trilogy books I’ve read, I would recommend this one over Ep. 7.

26. The Force Awakens falls short and I think it’s because of Alan Dean Foster’s writing style on this one? It didn’t really expand on anything from the movie, while taking away the beautiful music and visuals. This novel is the antithesis of Revenge of the Sith’s novelization, and for that reason I ranked it fairly low. I wouldn’t read this one unless you really really love the Sequel Trilogy.

27. To be fair, I read the new Thrawn book before I went back and read this one. Even so, Heir to the Empire didn’t impress me at all. Thrawn didn’t seem like a thrilling villain with lots of depth like he did in Timothy Zahn’s reimagined Thrawn novel. We barely saw him. A lot of time was spent on the Original Triology’s trio, which waasn’t bad. I thought Luke, Leia, and Han were all written fairly well. The latter part of the story was redeemed by the interactions between Mara Jade and Luke, for sure. Enemies to lovers, anyone?? Without Thrawn, this book would have been an entertaining story, but for all of the praise it has received from long-time Star Wars fans, I was expecting to be blown away and I wasn’t. Maybe I have to continue the triology to figure out what all of the fuss is about, but after this one, I’m not super motivated to read more. Change my mind?

28. Cloak of Deception really shines when you’re following Palpatine’s perspective because you can feel the undercurrents of his master plan to destroy the Republic underneath his calm persona as a Senator. Other than that, it’s a forgettable plot. This is all about galactic politics and some terrorist group trying to blow up some government officials. Basically the most boring parts of the prequel trilogy. I listened to the audiobook of this at the beginning of this year and I already forget what it’s about. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan should have been able to bring some humor and energy to get you rooting for the good guys,  but there was barely any of that. I was disappointed in all of the characters. Everything felt distant, removed from the heart of the characters. Some people in reviews have argued that the events of The Phantom Menace really pinned this novel in a corner because you already know what happens, but I disagree, because we know how Revenge of the Sith goes and The Clone Wars show is that much more tragic and heartbreakingly beautiful because of it. Prequels can be done right. This ain’t it, Luceno. Sorry.

29. Star Wars: The Old Republic, Fatal Alliance needs to go home and rethink it’s life. I’m a huge fan of the Old Republic and I’ve put like 200 hours of my life into playing that game, so I was hoping for some fun content in this part of the timeline. Sadly, this book captured the worst parts of the game, like the fact that there’s way too many factions at war with each other. Jedi, Sith, Empire, Republic, Mandalorians. They’re all here. They’re all ready to throw down. And I’m tired. As with many of the books in this lower tier, I felt there wasn’t enough description of the world or the people in the story. We’re in the gffa, be a little weird and wacky. Be big and bold! Make things terrifying, or beautiful, or both. But give my mind something to work with. The number of characters made the plot messier than it could have been, and it definitely isn’t worth the read. I can’t speak for all Old Republic books, but this one didn’t impress me.

A Sith Lord?! On My Bookshelf? It’s More Likely Than You’d Think

30. So underwhelming, you might as well just read the first half and then stop. Last Shot is absolutely terrible, except for Lando Calrissian’s characterization, which was spot-on. If the whole story had been from his perspective, I probably would have a much difference opinion on the novel as a whole. Sadly, this is not the case. Han was boring, he bottled up his emotions, and seemed drastically different from the badass he was in the original trilogy. There are different timepoints in this novel, and in all of them, Han is unrecognizable. Don’t nerf one of your main characters like that. Daniel Jose Older and I might just not get along. I thought his writing style didn’t fit Star Wars at all. It was like breaking the fourth wall, totally pulling me out of the story constantly. Also, there were little to no descriptions of body language, locations, or movement. It left me feeling disoriented the whole time I was reading. I thought one of the most interesting things would have been seeing Han, Leia, and baby Ben being a family at this point in time, but Han’s family was there as a prop, nothing more. There was a big bad item that was going to cause galactic destruction and our heroes had to go save the day. There was barely any tension and no one lost an arm so I’m pretty pissed off. Is it Star Wars if no one gets their appendage removed? I can’t tell you how much I disliked this book. Which is sad because I was hoping to enjoy it. I like Han. I like Lando. I like space adventures. I’m not that hard to please, or at least I don’t think so.

[ariainstars]

TRoS Speculation: Maybe It Was Intentional…

All right, since the subject obviously doesn’t let me go, new speculation on my side. WARNING: this is a longer post.

 Ever since the 80es, Star Wars has become a universal phenomenon with millions of fans all over the world. And while fans often agree, they more often than not disagree about the characters, the themes, the different turn of events etc. Star Wars touches very many different kinds of people deep down due to the emotions it provokes. Many of us have grown up with the saga, some with one trilogy, others with another. Others have read the EU novels or watched the TV shows first. The saga’s themes are so many that they appeal to all kinds of people, and the approaches are varying. There are very many topics on which we will never make everybody agree. Being the foundation for many fan’s view of the world, the root to a lot of their ideals, the source of many a dream, the saga has become a hugely personal matter. No wonder viewers all over the world can quarrel about it so venomously and get downright aggressive if you only introduce a new line of thoughts. Many fans feel that the saga belongs to them and not to the man who created it and the creative studios who are now employing it to develop new stories.

We have made our mistakes in our fandom, too, in the years since The Force Awakens came out. We were so excited in what we believed was investing into a redemption arc, love story and happy ending, connecting all kinds of dots throughout the saga and analyzing it from almost every angle. Some of us simply thought that who didn’t think like us was stupid. But many other fans believe that this saga is only about Good against Evil and not about human feelings. They keep seeing it as some superhero story, a comforting world where to retire when reality got too much, a place where bad things happen but then the hero eventually comes to take care of it. They stick to their conviction that the good guy (or the one you root for even if he’s a villain) is the one who’s the coolest. Many of them love the OT above all and plainly refuse to see anything positive about the PT or ST because they always expected to see the New Adventures of Han, Luke and Leia. Some of them have waited for literally decades for the OT’s continuation. We, who also love the other trilogies (or at least the sequels) were at times disrespectful and arrogant looking down on them and believing that they simply don’t know what the saga actually is about. And all of us need heroes. We apply our own problems, needs and expectations to them and wait for them to fix the problem as an example for us. That’s also why we expect them to get their happy ending.

I have seen videos and read articles about how highly divisive The Last Jedi was. Some fans (a few of them even with tears in their eyes) openly declared that the saga was ruined for them. Similarly to us, who identify with Ben Solo and / or Rey, they had often found courage in the examples set by their heroes and it was offensive and hurtful to them to see Luke Skywalker reduced to a hermit who drinks green milk, rejects the ways of the Jedi and was personally responsible for his nephew’s fall into his abuser’s clutches. They were entitled to their feelings of disappointment and inner numbness as we are now. I know of people who actually survived many ugly periods in their lives finding solace in the saga. Some in one part of it, some in another. And we all got duped and let down, each by one chapter of the sequel trilogy, like some naughty, sadistic kid was kicking apart our favorite doll house a few days before Christmas.

I assume now that The Last Jedi was an experiment to gauge the audience’s reaction. It touched many a sensitive issue. My personal approach is that in order to like it, you don’t only have to be a fan of the sequel trilogy and its characters in general, or a hopeless romantic who wanted to see Rey and Ben Solo’s love story. You have to accept in the first place what the prequel trilogy painstakingly tried to explain to us (though it wasn’t actually said but more shown): that the Jedi were no heroes but got destroyed by their own hubris, and that Anakin Skywalker was largely a victim and not someone who became a villain because he enjoyed being evil, like the typical Batman or Superman villains. The prequels are not a fairy tale like the original trilogy but a cautionary tale following the lines of “society creates its own monsters.” It was only logical to deduce that if the Jedi were so perfect and the Old Republic so idyllic as Obi-Wan described them to Luke when they first met on Tatooine, Vader’s rise and the creation of the Empire couldn’t have happened in the first place. This was never said as clearly and concisely as by Luke to Rey during their second lesson on Ahch-To:

“Now that they’re extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified. But strip away the myth and look at their deeds: the legacy of the Jedi is failure, hypocrisy, hubris. At the height of their power they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire and wipe them out. It was a Jedi who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.”

This is the message of the prequels in a few sentences, and a pivotal change to the “superhero approach” to the Jedi which might qualified if you only watch the OT and never question its themes on a larger scale. If you accept the Jedi’s failure for a fact, all of the rest falls into place - Vader being but a broken, sad old guy, Luke’s disillusion, his decision to give up the ways of the Jedi, his first lesson teaching Rey that the Force is not some kind of superpower, his forgiveness towards his nephew, the glimpses of goodness we saw foreshadowing Ben Solo’s redemption. The prequels also make much more sense this way than watching them expecting to see the Jedi being super-cool heroes and Anakin becoming Vader because he thought it might be fun.

But many fans chose not to see or accept what The Last Jedi actually was trying to say: that things couldn’t continue the way they did, because the Old Republic and the Jedi (though they didn’t actually have bad intentions) were deeply flawed. Leia tried to build another republic without any major changes that we are aware of, and Luke wanted to rebuild the Jedi Order without effectuating the considerable changes their Code would have needed. Both failed. It was e.g. never explained why Luke spirited his students away to a lonely planet for their training, but the fact that they were taken from their families when they were too small to make a choice and stick to it - Ben e.g. wanted to be a pilot like his father and not a Jedi - already shows the same pattern. Luke had not learned from the faults of his teachers until his exile. Logically, Episode IX ought to have continued these themes and showed the ST protagonist finding a new and better approach to the Force. Instead, what we got was another (in my opinion: redundant) Ultimate Battle of Good Against Evil, in other words some kind of superhero film which largely ignores the themes of its predecessor.

Any fan is entitled to his opinion. If someone hates the PT because it shows a stagnant society and the Jedi as highly flawed, because they didn’t get to see Darth Vader becoming over-the-top cool but were confronted, in Anakin, with a deeply compassionate person crushed by expectations he never could meet in the first place, if they judged him a whiny brat instead of an intelligent guy who clearly saw through the flaws of the society he was forced to live in and simply didn’t find the right words to express it: they’re entitled to it. Same goes for not feeling the tension between Rey and Kylo in the ST, for judging Kylo quickly (again) as a whiny brat instead of a complex, tormented character, for not appreciating new characters like Rose on account of not being Star-Wars-y enough. These feelings mostly stem from the fans’ long-standing wish to see an actual continuation of the original trilogy, not a new instalment where a new generation takes over and the old heroes are relegated to the background and, additionally, their characters and past decisions are openly criticized.

We may claim that fanbros are simply too stupid to understand what the saga is actually about. Well, maybe they are, or they are just too lazy to look at the bigger picture. But they have a right to that.  Of course, it doesn’t entitle them to harass the studios, directors, creative team or actors the way they were, mind you: what e.g. Kelly Marie Tran, Ahmed Best and Jake Lloyd had to endure was a disgrace. There are very many fans who disagree with the PT and ST without getting bitter or even vicious.

This doesn’t mean I have changed my mind. I still believe that the Jedi were everything but heroes, that Darth Vader is a tragic figure, that the main themes of the saga are family, hope and new beginnings and not “the coolest ones win, ka-boom, the end”; that what it means to say is that human feelings are in the end more important than power, even an enormous power like the one the Force can provide.

We who are angry and disappointed with TRoS now like to blame how it went that way due to the influence of angry white dudebros, misogyny, Calvinism, racism, the overall political situation, the Mouse only wanting to make money etc.

But we ought to consider that The Last Jedi, which was so deeply controversial, hit theatres only two years ago. Have mentalities, politics and social structures and Disney’s overall approached changed so considerably, in so short a time, to produce two so radically different approaches to the saga within the scope of two years?

Sorry, I can’t believe it. it doesn’t really make sense.

The Mandalorian is met with universal acclaim, no doubt partly due to the fact that it’s a standalone story without the huge dynastic weight the saga has on its shoulders. Being a TV show, it had more time to introduce characters and situations and develop them. And it worked out fine. It had all the Star Wars themes - a lot of action scenes, sure, but it was also about belonging, family, redemption, protectiveness, friendship. Meaning that the studios didn’t lose track or are too dumb to think up a good story.

The Rise of Skywalker seems to bring the saga to a closure, but it could also be a wholly new beginning; the beginning of what I was foreseeing and still believe was in the cards - a new galaxy with a new and better political order kept together by a common belief in the Force as a whole; a new Jedi order where Force-sensitive children are not torn away from their families but can choose whether they want to become Jedi or not; and where Jedi are not taught emotional detachment. This would mean balance at last, a balance from which everyone would benefit. I have no idea how Ben Solo could be revived but I still am certain that he would be an excellent father figure, the perfect foil to his grandfather; and that the best thing for Rey would be to take care of children who are lost and abandoned the way she once was. And with Rey being a Palpatine, there is an interesting ground from which to explore her character’s tendency to the Dark, mirroring Ben’s. The basic approaches for this kind of development were all there in The Last Jedi. But a project like that would be something completely different from the original saga, and it would take a lot of time. Maybe that’s why the studios dropped it in favor of appeasing the angry fanbros who didn’t receive The Last Jedi well at all.

Anyone has the right to think that the original trilogy is the one and only and that the rest is rubbish. But the heroes of that story had their friendship, their family, their adventures, their successes, their happy ending. Even the heroes of the prequel trilogy had their moments, including Anakin Skywalker. Our heroes didn’t. That’s why this ending is so bitter for us and so hard to stomach. Essentially, we were right - we knew that Ben and Rey belong together, that Ben would redeem himself and make peace with his family, that balance would come. What we didn’t get was our happy ending.

The Force Awakens was still more or less accepted, because despite the many new themes and choices it wasn’t subversive and controversial in its approach. The actual wasps’ nest was stirred with The Last Jedi. No argumentation could convince antis that it is actually a well-made film and that their personal approach on the saga is too narrow-minded to appreciate it. They wanted the same villains, the same settings and costumes, the same heroes (or at least rehashes). And they had a right to want that, exactly as we had the right to expect a better development and ending for our new heroes. The hardcore OT fans wanted and expected The New Adventures of Han, Luke and Leia kicking ass. Well, it seems The Rise of Skywalker took care of that, finally giving them what they wanted and ignoring or “correcting” the course of events from The Last Jedi.

So, that’s it now. The OT fanbros got “their” Star Wars. I hope they’re finally appeased. They can ignore anything that happens next. That the saga is finished does not mean that the Star Wars universe came to a standstill.

If fans of the original trilogy felt entitled to ask for The Last Jedi to be removed from canon, or at least to be “fixed” in some way, so can we. In case you didn’t see it yet, the petition is already there: https://www.change.org/p/lucasfilm-continue-ben-solo-s-story

Let’s tell the studios to keep TRoS the way they prefer, but that we wish to have our Star Wars now. Let us not steep down to the level of who made the lives of actors who played characters they disapproved of a living hell (see above) or say over and over “Star Wars is dead” when we don’t know what’s in store for the future. With the Star Wars universe, you always have to be patient. In the meantime, we can write and read fanfiction and other stories and purse our own lives, telling our own happy endings.

Happy New Year everyone. Feel free to reblog. 😊

  P.P.S. On a side note: Rey’s last scene shows her where Luke used to be, on Tatooine watching the suns set. The twin suns. In A New Hope, this was shortly before he met the other half of his soul who had been separated from him right after birth - his twin sister. Considering that it was explicitly said that Rey and Ben Solo share the same soul, it might be a hint about the future. I’m not trying to make false promises or to fuel wrong expectations here. Just sayin’. 😉

[mara04world-blog]

Star Wars deserves better

Let me know what you think!

So that’s my imagined scenario how they could fix this awful situation (if it’s even that awful – I like to think positive). Some pointers first: Ben had a prophecy to fulfil and only he could do it, after Anakin declined the offer of the Father. The dyad is still there and Rey is his counterpart in the realm of reality. There is balance after TROS but maybe we will see Abeloth in the future?

After his disappearance Ben would still have a job to do/prophecy to fulfil. Because to be clear I’m not very satisfied that he would be only a force vessel to drain – even if it was out of love. (Maybe it would be ok with some mourning and a real finish to his story – but even in the cinema I was perplexed because it didn’t feel like an end.)

So as we all know the emperor got back even after maybe being blown to pieces. At least he fell pretty deep and still survived. I don’t think he died and got resurrected. Maybe there was a clone – like in the legends - in which he transferred his life force into. What would be your opinion, if it was Ben’s duty to make sure, that the life force of Sidious really becomes one with the cosmic force once and for all? I know it’s not in everyone’s favour that I speak of the life force of Sidious or any Sith to become one with the cosmic force, but what other possibilities are there. Why should it be different for darksider – the force (energy) is the same and according to Qui Gon all energy from the Living Force, from all things that have ever lived, feeds into the Cosmic Force. It’s a lightside ability to become a forceghost but not the becoming one with the force per se. How he will get that done is also up to our imagination. Maybe he really has to drag his “soul to hell”.

And that got me also thinking. Will he be a gatekeeper or more interesting will he become the father (one of The Ones alongside the son and the daughter) because Anakin declined that offer. So then there would be a chosen one to balance the force in the ethereal realm (Mortis) and his other half of the dyad will keep the balance in the galaxy (the realm of realty). Rey wouldn’t train as a Jedi like the PT-Jedis but like the prime Jedi, who I would like to believe, is balanced. Maybe she even became the new prime Jedi with all the voices at the end. I like to think, that maybe even the PT-Jedis knew after becoming one with the force that they did some thinks the wrong way. Even Luke noticed that he got something wrong after the destruction of the temple. Don’t get me wrong on Luke. I love him ever since I was little. So he noticed that he made mistakes and that is the reason he thought the Jedi must die. I guess he tried to build the order too similar to the PT-Jedis. We can talk about the attachment rules all we want, but to think about how no one can be good all the time and every person or Jedi has not so nice thoughts ones in a while is more compelling. And through pain someone can gain strength and everyone acts in anger ones in a while. And thinking about the symbol on Arch-To for the Prime Jedi, I think he got the balance of light and dark right.

And I know a lot of fans will say balance is about the absence of the dark side, than I would say, that was not GL intention – therefore the PT. Because Balance is achieved by the chosen one by destroying the Sith and not the darkside. And just maybe the prophecy is also of destroying not only the Sith but of the PT style Jedis as well (it doesn’t say a chosen Jedi but a chosen one will destroy the Sith). Because both parties had extreme, absolute views on things. I remember Obi-Wan saying “Only a Sith deals in absolutes” but like GL has shown us in the PT the Jedis also had a very absolute way to deal with things - and unfortunately Luke later on too. But he thought his problem was that he didn’t fear the dark side enough. In my opinion his problem was that he feared it. He should have accepted the darkness as part of the bigger picture. “What is there to fear about the dark side”. The passage in TLJ “The island. Life. Death and decay, that feeds new life. Warmth. Cold. Peace. Violence.“ can be seen as a life circle . And there is no light without darkness. When everything is just good, would we still know that everything is good?

So I really think that RJ was on the right track here. I was also shocked and angry about Luke first, because he wasn’t the farmboy Jedi and my childhood hero anymore. And then he died and I was even angrier, but after a while I could live with that. Because to get a nice story about Luke they should have started about 20 years earlier and maybe I wouldn’t have lost my favourite SW girl too – Mara Jade. During my second viewing I noticed, that RJ gave us something instead. Mara and Luke’s forcebond and a way to the same definition of balance I would have thought of. So maybe RJ is the real fanboy here. And with Sidious still lurking around Luke would have to become a PT style Jedi. Therefore he couldn’t become the father, because he was a Jedi –The last Jedi. And I also got the Mara and Luke kind of romance - including the voice of the emperor in the head of one protagonist - just the other way around. (Side note: would it have been easier accepted to have a love story and a living redeemed darksider if the roles were reversed – just look how many fans Mara Jade has)

Of course that’s all stuff that you can’t put EASILY into a film (not even a 3 hour version) and still be a film for GA. A way would be – without changing the movie (that is my intention after all) that Anakin wasn’t only there for Rey, but also for Ben (maybe that can be shown later on). He was there in the pit and gave him the chance to choose, like he got the chance before. And because Ben isn’t selfish, he chose to become the father/the One and furthermore forces Sidious life force to join the cosmic force. And Rey and Ben together keep the ultimate Balance on the realm of reality and on the ethereal realm (Mortis), where the force original is from. Maybe we can see them as Gatekeepers and how closed the gate between them is, is up to discussion.

So another point is, that there wouldn’t even be a problem left with the balance after RTJ, because Anakin could restore balance in the realm of reality, but without a counterpart in the ethereal realm (father), who died alongside his children after Anakin declined the offer, there was no ultimate balance. Sidious the last Sith could survive and gain strength again (took him some time) and Luke had to become a real PT style Jedi and not a choosen one. And I like to think it is not about how many force users are there, it is more about how strong is the light combined and the dark combined with Sith or Jedi (PT) unbalancing and fighting the scale like the extremists they are. I remember that in the Legend there was a race, which was against the Jedi-believes, because they thought that it was unnatural/against balance (unfortunately I can’t remember more). And I hated that thought back when I was young, but I can definitely life with it know. It wouldn’t even have made a difference for achieving ultimate balance if Anakin choose otherwise, because there were Siths and PT Jedis during the reign of the father. It would even have been the wrong decision thinking about that there are no PT Jedis and Sith by the end of TROS.

So why should there be a new father? After the death of the father, the son and the daughter, there is supposed to be balance. Yeah, that got me researching. One easy way out: Because of the mother, who became Abeloth aka. Chaos in short. The dark side and the light side especially when they are balanced is order compared to chaos. Following the Legends with The Ones dead, chaos can reign, because there is no one there to contain it. Even Luke of the Legends believed that the Sith and Jedi must become the new Ones together and keep the balance.

How to go to Mortis? Mortis will draw there visitors in for example through a door/gate. And where do we also find doors? In the world between worlds, which maybe has an access point on Exogol following the interpretations of the VD.

So furthermore speculations about Disney and LFL. I don’t really want to think, that they are dumb. I think they are cunning. This mystical aspect of the force or the events, which could follow TROS need time and explanation. Even the acceptance of the redemption and that Ben was a victim too needs time. And do they make time right now! - Especially with the comics. And here I remembered something I learned in Marketing. Negative PR is 10 times stronger than positive PR and it is still PR. And look at the social media activity right now compared to the aftermaths of a happy ending. The only aspect which they really would have to be careful about is timing. Let the hysteria/negative talk go down a little pit, but not too much and then BOOM-Forcelightning ; ) and of course don’t let it look too planed but also don’t let the masses think, that they are the driving force. Maybe there are answers in the extended cut or the story group will give us something. And just maybe I got some pointers right. Please let me know what you think.

[whereismywizardhat]

I know I’m not the first one to say it, but the thing that has really been driving me mad every time I devote brain space to The Rise of Skywalker is that it is a thematically dead movie, that not only cheapens its own trilogy, but the original trilogy too.  Like, every negative stereotype of the sequel trilogy is represented in force.

I hated this movie.  I truly loathed it.  I put spoilers under the cut but the basics are that I’ve been ruminating on it since I saw it opening night and it’s made me more mad the more I turn my brain back on.  Any good reviews of this movie you see are probably because this movie moves faster then the Millennium Falcon, shooting stupid, pointless sequence after stupid pointless sequence into your brain so quickly that it makes you forget that what it’s showing to you is utterly banal and gross.

I think that the Sequel Trilogy is, ultimately, a failure.  A lot of people believe Return of the Jedi is the weakest of the original trilogy, that cast fatigue and the beginnings of Lucas’s drawbacks showing as a writer hurt that film overall.  If that’s the case, then The Rise of Skywalker shatters it’s predecessors because the film’s contempt for the Last Jedi in turn tells you that none of it was worthwhile.  The Last Jedi was a flawed film, but it was trying to drag Star Wars into a place that was healthy for the franchise.  Rise of Skywalker says “No”, and tells you that the sequel trilogy was afterall nothing but digging up the corpse of the Original Trilogy and parading it in front of you one last time.

Rey being born of nobody was important both as a way of getting away from the weird eugenics thing that Star Wars courted as Anakin Skywalker went from “Powerful Jedi” to “Virgin Birth Chosen One”, and as a way of differentiating herself from her nemesis.  Kylo Ren is the heir to some great dynasty, Rey comes from nothing, it’s part of their yin/yang thing.  Making her a dynasty too destroys that, brings back the eugenics in full force, AND adds a bunch of plotholes to boot.  “They sold you to save you” is probably the worst dialogue I’ve ever heard, including Anakin’s attempts at flirting under Lucas’s pen.

Palpatine being alive is... nonsensical.  A desperate plea for forgiveness to twitter after not explaining Snoke.  Going in, I assumed it was an evil force ghost, the sequel’s equivalent of that period from Legends where Palp’s rapidly decaying clones were being burnt through and he tried to possess Leia’s baby in the womb.  Not so much.  It seems Palp just... kind of appeared through a plot hole.  Exxegol is fine as a base, I thought it was Korriban/Morriband and was disappointed that they didn’t go with the Sith planet (except they did, I guess Sith all use the same firm for designing their ).

Which goes into Kylo Ren.  Adam Driver was really just... not given anything to do (a recurring problem).  To his credit, the character is on the ball for the first half of the story.  It’s just... all chemistry with Rey is gone, a problem Finn has too.  The movie doesn’t have time to take a breath to allow the actors to emote at each other, and Kylo takes the worst of it because he’s already a terse character and the mask is back so you don’t even get his face.  The film gives one moment that works with Kylo: his vision of Han.  I’ve seen some comments on this that didn’t like it, but to me it’s quite obviously the light side equivalent of Rey’s evil Rey scene.  Rey looks forward and sees evil, Kylo looks backwards and sees a version of the first films climax with what he was supposed to do.  It’s... the one moment in the entire film where I felt like there was some actual craft in what was going on.  That’s without getting into how robbed Kylo Ren was as a villain.  The Last Jedi basically set up Kylo Ren as the ultimate big bad, having achieved everything Vader wanted.  Here, he’s back to being a lackey of a weirdo in a bathrobe, who doesn’t even have the benefit of being a force ghost who he can’t stab. 

I mentioned Finn before.  Finn has... no presence in this film.  He screams after Rey, he gets a one film love interest while the previous movie’s love interest kinda just sits there scowling in the background while a hobbit whose name I didn’t catch gets more lines, he has some force sensitivity but the kind from the original movie where you squint at the screen and learn what the audience just saw while Rey has taken levels in D&D paladin.  He has about the same amount of significance in this film as Obi-wan did in Phantom Menace, that is to say none except we know he’s an important character in a movie that came out before this one and he gets one action sequence near the end.

Poe makes out slightly better, taking up a lot of screen time.  Poe has never been a consistent character in this trilogy.  One movie he’s a compassionate cool dude, the next he’s a fuckup cowboy who doesn’t play by the rules, this one is he’s a weird stand in for Han Solo, being handed Han’s smuggler backstory and acting like Han did in ESB’s first half (without the UST with Rey).  He is just as unimportant as Finn, but ALSO has to be given a lot of screen time to actually establish some rapport with his castmates because he wasn’t previously given any time with Rey and only a small amount of time with Finn.

The supporting cast from previous movies... may as well not exist.  Other then Leia, all the original trilogy characters are just around.  Chewie gets a fake out death.  Lando shows up, gives a speech, and disappears til the end.  Wedge makes a cameo ten second after his stepson dies and has no reaction to that, and the only reason I know that is because I’m so invested in Wedge that I bought the tie-in novel because it had him in it.  In fact, most of the supporting cast from Force Awakens dies.  Snap, Hux... that’s about it.  I’m sure they would have killed off Rose if JJ thought that letting her languish in the background with no lines wasn’t a worse fate for the character.  As previously noted, one of the Hobbits from LoTR has a bigger role then she does.  The movie also introduces an entire legion of runaway Stormtroopers... for no reason other then to introduce Finn’s third love interest in three movies, Tika.  She’s fine.  I’ve heard there’s a deleted scene that says she’s Lando’s daughter kidnapped by the FO.  Glad we got the weird “Who’s Your Daddy?” thing out of the way with this side character before the fans bullied the director into retconning it to being Mace Windu’s secret love child.

Consistently, this movie feels like a fever dream fan fiction with a budget.  I consider A New Hope’s original cut to be the platonic ideal for an adventure film in terms of pacing.  Prologue, Three Acts on Three Planets, with the tension ratcheting up with each planet.  It’s follow up is a slower, more cerebral film after a bombastic opening.  Rise of Skywalker takes neither option, instead going for a hypnotic, Fincher-esque pacing with no brakes.  It doesn’t want you to realize what you’re watching is shlock.  What isn’t a calculated spit in the face of it’s predecessor, The Last Jedi, is a stab at the hypothetical second JJ Abrams Star Wars film which didn’t exist to reference back to.  Rise of Skywalker exists, and it exists to appeal to the most toxic elements of the Star Wars fanbase.  I don’t think it’s salvageable.

Somewhere, out there, there is a version of Rise of Skywalker that is thematically coherent.  Maybe there’s one that actually follows up on it’s predecessor like... every other Star Wars saga film instead of an imagined film that didn’t happen.  I dunno.  Regardless, it really makes me question whether Disney actually understands what they’re doing, or if it’s all just luck and nonsense that let them become a monopoly.

I guess it wouldn’t seem so awful if the Mandalorian wasn’t just sitting there.pursuing a part of the Star Wars universe that feels fresh and original rather then ruining better films.

[thisisthepartwhereyou]

FILM REVIEW #2: A New Hope (1977)

To write a review for a movie which is now about 47 years old and has such great cultural status may seem a little pointless, but after seeing and reviewed Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019), I felt motivated to to take another look at the rest of the series in the order that each part were released. And I figured, while I am going through them, I might as well share my thoughts on them, for fun.

Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope (or just Star Wars as it was originally known) is the very first installment of the entire franchise, which you can kind of tell. Written and directed by George Lucas himself, this is the first available chapter to one of the most iconic stories ever told, as well a the beginning of one of the most lucrative movie franchises of today. Though take things with a pinch of Crait-salt, as the version I am reviewing is the current Special Edition with all those infamous changes.

Most of you probably know the plot: "There is a war between the heroic rebels and the the tyrannical space-empire, and in the middle of it one of the rebel-leaders, princess Leia, gets captured by the merciless imperial lord, Darth Vader. Though before she is caught she manages to send away two androids holding imortant, military plas that could change the direction of the war. The two droids flee and crash-land on a nearby desertplanet and come across Luke Skywalker, a young farmboy of apparently simple beginnings, and Obi-wan Kenobi, a mysterious old warrior who has past connections with Vader. It is up to them to bring the droids to the rebel forces, and in order to do so they take help from the scallywag smuggler and pilot Han Solo and his lojal wookie-friend Chewbacca."

What can one say about a movie which has been reviewed and analysed thousands of times, and which I probably have seen at least a dozen times myself? Well, I am going to try and focus on what I thought about this time, which is this: It's not that great. For it's time it is certainly ambitious and impressive, but considering all the following installments, the very first one is not that strong. The main reasons for this? Simple: Its long and boring.  

For diehard-Star Wars fans this might be a controversial thing to say, but that is how I feel. For a movie featuring ray guns, robots, aliens and laserswords, this movie goes at a surprisinlgy slow pace and has an overall dry tone that can be a little tiring. In a sense it is understandable, as the storytelling is very reminiscent of an old-time warfilm. An earlier critique I've had of the Star Wars-films in general is that they hardly ever feel like actual warfilms despite despite the title, but seeing this one again, I can't help but to notice a similarity to Kelly's Heroes (1970), a warfilm that I sadly am not much of a fan of either.

Though, also like Kelly's Heroes, this movies strenght lies in the memorable and entertaining characters.

Few bad guys i cinema has a stronger presence than Darth Vader, but it's also worth noting that the sidevillain Tarkin, as brilliantly play by Hammer Horror-veteran Peter Cushing, manages to be just as threathening, if not more so. The guy blew up an entire planet without batting an eye.... Talk about icecold! When it comes to the heroes it's more of a mixed bag.

Luke is not an especially interesting here in the beginning; he is goodhearted but young and naive, longs for adventure but has no clue of the dangers and is also a bit of a brat. If you count the whole trilogy it works pretty well since it illustrates the big character development, but by itself, his role in here is not really much to mention. Han Solo has a couple of cool moments but is otherwise very prone to nagging, and people will either love or hate the ineloquent Chewbacca. The two droids C-3PO and R2-D2 are a fun and heart-warming duo, but the hero I liked the most was definitely Leia, who if you look back is a pretty non-typical damsel in distress from a time when most fictional princesses followed the old Disney-standard. She has an ironic bite, but is not unneccesarily mean. She is tough, but also compassionate. And greatest of all, she is not afraid of taking charge in a chaotic situation.

While the story is pretty traditional for a fantasy, with the elements of oppressive evil, a young hero, an old and mysterious wizard, a princess that need saving and an odd assortment of allies, its spin on these traditional stuff is still distinctly its own. While a trained and nerdy eye can tell where inspiration from works such as Flash Gordon and Akira Kurosawa's samurai-films come in, it is done subtly and re-mixed enough so that one can't really call it stealing or even a noticeable tribute. What we see here is the first part of a then entirely new, fictional world with its own rules, its own history and its own environments. My favorite example of this is when Luke and Obi-wan go into a seedy bar in Mos Eisley: We bear witness to all kinds of weird creatures, assumably from every corner of the galaxy. While they don't have any bigger impact on the story later in the film, they do manage through visual storytelling paint up a picture of a wide and colorful universe, full of wonder and danger. At the same time we learn that androids are not welcome in the bar. It is not explained why, that's just how it works. This is just the right level of worldbuilding, establishing things without getting overly explanatory.

This scene, and plenty of others, display plenty of practical effects which are impressive considering the time they were made in. Though, while we are talking about the effects, I can't exactly ignore those controversal Special Edition-changes. This movie is probably biggest sufferer of them, especially in the addition of unneccesary scenes or edits that does match the rest of the movie. Although, while several of these stick out more han giraffes in a petstore, there are a couple of nice polishes that do the film som good, including improved key-ing, digitally added extras and touched up green-sceen effects.

This movie was a surprise hit when it came out. Though if it hadn't had some great follow-ups, I wonder if the franchise had managed to become as big as it is now. Plenty would argue that Return of the Jedi (1983) is the weak link in the original trilogy, but from my perspective, I think this is the one. Purists probably feel inclined to start with A New Hope when introducing Star Wars to those unfamiliar with it, which is understandable. But keep in mind that it might not be that succesful to show it for chilren, as the slow pace and the lenght might be a bad combination for kids who are into action-action-action.

In the end, I give this movie a rating of 6 out of 10. ---

[brian-lozano91]

Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi review

The Last Jedi is the ninth film in the Star Wars series and the sequel to The Force Awakens and is Directed by Rian Johnson (Looper, Brick) it stars Daisy Ridley, Mark Hamill, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Carrie Fisher, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Gwendoline Christie. The story is Luke Skywalker's peaceful and solitary existence gets upended when he encounters Rey, a young woman who shows strong signs of the Force. Her desire to learn the ways of the Jedi forces Luke to make a decision that changes their lives forever. Meanwhile, Kylo Ren and General Hux lead the First Order in an all-out assault against Leia and the Resistance for supremacy of the galaxy.

This film is getting a lot of controversy, in one in hand fans are loving this and others are hating this. Reading and watching a lot of those reviews I can understand why.I want to talk about the best part of the film. The best parts of the film has to do with everything with Rey, Kylo and Luke. That entire storyline which is the main focus is absolutely fantastic, the reason is the character of Luke is great because it’s different from what you think the character was going to be. Everyone thought he was going to be another Obi-Wan, Yoda or the way he was in the Expanded Universe. However making Luke a grumpy man who doesn’t want anything to do with Rey, the force or the jedi. The fact that he has lost his way and belief because of what happen with Kylo is great storytelling. Also the way they shot the flashbacks with Luke and Ben in the hut and the way they showed what happen and the different perspectives on the people telling it, which makes Rey and the audience think what was happening and who’s telling the truth and felt reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon. Which has different perspectives on what happen in the story and makes the audience think about who is telling the truth and who’s lying.

I loved that, it was something new and different from what Star Wars usually does and I do like Rey and Luke’s dynamic with each other. Rey’s reaction to the way Luke is the way the audience feels about Luke. She wants Luke to come back and help them. Also Rey trying to find some kind of closure to who her parents are and where she belongs in the force and wants Luke to be her mentor. Everything here is on point and I feel this is where the screenplay shines. But not only the screenplay but the acting is fantastic here. Mark Hamill as Luke a character he hasn’t played since Jedi is really good here. I Love the fact that Luke was really grumpy and didn’t care, then we find out why in flashbacks and the way Mark Hamill acts in those scenes are so powerful. He is really good and I’m glad he came back. Then when we get to the end, I know a lot of people were kinda disappointed when he came back. But I feel it did show Luke’s full power and finish his character arc in this movie and finishes his storyline completely, giving a nice finale to his story.

Daisy Ridley is really good in this and is proving she is an actress to lookout for, she is not as charismatic as she was in the first one but her role in this movie doesn’t call for that. She is more serious and dramatic. I liked her is this film, she unsure of herself and where she belongs in the universe. She looking for a parent figure someone to show her the way and the fact that Luke isn’t willing to help her and when she starts talking to Kylo, she starts to wonder if Luke was telling the truth then trying to get him back into the fight. She is great, I felt for her character, I wanted her to find out about her parents. Then when we find out about her parents is so different and new that I understand why people didn’t like that because it felt like a really big deal in the last one and then when you find out and it’s not, I get it but to me this was so much better. She is not related to anyone important, she’s her own character, unique that what we need for a character.  She doesn’t interact with the rest of the characters until the end of the film so the whole time it’s Luke and Kylo

Then you have the second side plot where we have Poe and Leia trying to survive fighting against the first order. I really like this part of the story because it did something different with the character type of Poe, because Poe in this movie it the typical hero character that does whatever he wants and does reckless things and will always work out in the end. In this movie his actions have consequences, in the beginning Leai slaps him and gets mad at him for not following her orders. From their he keeps making reckless and rash decisions because he doesn’t trust Holdo. He learns a lesson in the movie and it was nice to see that in a big movie. Also Oscar Isaac’s role is  bigger here because in the last movie he really didn’t do anything except in the beginning and the end, here he was the main side plot.

Going into the negatives, I thought that the side plot with Finn and Rose is not that great, it’s not bad but it could’ve been better or actually taken out of the entire film because it doesn’t effect the plot whatsoever and it felt that they were just giving them things to do because we couldn’t come up with anything to do, which is a shame because the actors John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran are really good and both are charismatic and had chemistry but their side story was so unnecessary. The problem is their story is dealing with saving animals and not that you can’t incorporate them in a movie but it’s just so on the nose and also we don’t need to see this in a Star Wars movie, this idea would work in a Star Trek. At least in the episode films if you need a spinoff and had this story idea then I feel it could work, but the main films need to stay away from the real world problems, then we get some bad dialogue or motivations that don’t make sense at the end. For example, Finn was going to kill himself at the end to save everyone but then Rose saves and pushes him out of the way, the reason for that is because as she says we must learn to save ourselves. Because love is what will win this battle. Why? The scene would’ve been more powerful if Finn had died at that scene, his arch felt like it was finished especially from the last movie and it would’ve given Rey more of a purpose for the next film to stop the first order for Finn and we would’ve been behind him because we like Finn.

Also I noticed this in the film and it took me awhile and listening to a lot of reviewers that this new Star Wars does feel a little to political. Like for example, most of the men in this movie do feel kind of dumb and angry and easy to react. Why do we need this in Star Wars and why now. Previous female and male characters in the old E.U. and even recently in Force Awakens, Clone Wars TV show, Rebels, Rogue One and the new canon books felt well written. Both genders felt the same and none were different then the other. So I don’t know why they did it here it makes men look stupid and kinda sexist, which I don’t think it was their intention I think they just wanted to make strong female characters. But you don’t make them like this and don’t shove a political message down our throat if you wanna do it be subtle. Also the way Disney is treating the old fans is disrespectful telling them they don’t matter and discontinuing the E.U. or now Legends doesn’t make sense. I understand that they want to do a new cannon but why not have both. Also saying that your theories are stupid, come on man just explain why you did the changes and you feel like it was the right one, but don’t bash the fans who don’t like it.

Their is so much controversy with this movie, the fandom is so divided with it. I understand why their our things in this movie that would make people upset, they change things that people didn’t expect and Luke’s character is up for debate, I liked it and made sense to me but I’m not argue with anyone if they didn’t like it and also the political message and the way they depicted the men and women in this movie. I get it and people are allowed not to like this movie and are allowed to be angry because of Disney behind the scenes. They are clearly trying to get rid of the old which I understand but I wish they could do it in a better way. But I still really like this movie. As for a recommendation I still don’t know about that, I say see it just to form your own opinion.

4 out of 5 stars

[lucaswolcott-blog]

Task #1: The Survey

« ° B A S I C S ;

name ? Lucas Andres Wolcott 

nickname ? Luke (only at home)

when’s your birthday ?  27 December 1995

birth place ? Ft Lauderdale, FL (And then moved immediately to Tampa)

age ? Twenty-two

sexuality ? Demisexual panromantic

preferred pronouns ? He/him

which grade are you in ? Junior/Third Year

is your current hair colour your natural hair color ? if not, what is your natural hair colour ? It is my natural hair color.

eye colour ? Brown

height ? 5 ft. 10 in.

what are you complimented on most ( physically & persona-wise ) ? I’m most complimented on my hair and chill personality.

do you have any tattoos or piercings ? none.

if not, would you like one/some ? I want a few tattoos, but I would like to draw them out myself. Haven’t decided what yet.

what do you do for fun ? Mostly sleep or draw. I also binge watch whatever show catches my attention or listen to music.

what’s your preferred clothing style ? Comfortable. I prefer shorts and t-shirts, but as it gets colder, I’ll switch to jeans and layers.

left handed or right handed ? Left handed

when free, people will most likely find you … ( place ) In my room napping.

« ° P E R S O N A ;

how would you describe yourself in five words ? Relaxed, creative, handsome, friendly, and just a little bit lazy.

are you a flirtatious person ? I mean, not really, no.

do consider yourself unique ? Not many people can fall asleep anywhere at anytime, so I think that’s pretty unique.

are you talkative or rather shy ? Neither. I talk when talked to.

biggest dream ? I would love to be able to make a living off of selling my work, but for now, I’m dreaming about being an illustrator for children’s books. That’d be fun and a good way to get my name out.

are you good at keeping secrets ? I’d like to think so. I mean, I usually forget secrets told to me after, like, a few weeks. However, I’ve not told.

are you happy ? I think so, yeah.

do you consider yourself book-smart or street-smart ? Street smart.

main character trait ? People usually comment first on something about how calm I am. I don’t know, it’s weird to talk about myself.

worst habit ? Oh, messing with my hair. It takes awhile to tame the bedhead, but then while I’m working on my art, I just mess it up again.

biggest pet peeve ? Loud crunching in quiet rooms or during lectures.

if your life would have a title song, what would it be ? “Tender” by Blur is pretty chill. 

who do your friends compare you to ? Sleepy! From Snow White. Oh! Or the Dormouse from Alice in Wonderland. Lots of Disney.

life motto ?  “Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” - Oscar Wilde. I had a huge Wilde phase when we read his work, so I kind of scoured the web for stuff he said.

« ° L O V E ;

are you in love ? Not really, no. Love my friends. Love my family. Absolutely love my cat. Don’t have a romantic love for anyone though.

do you have a crush ? Not at the moment.

celebrity crush ? Is it bad the first person that came to mind was Ewan Mc/Gregor? Loved him as Obi Wan. Emma Wat/son is very beautiful too.

do you believe in love at first sight ? I believe it can happen for some people. Not something I think would happen to me.

thoughts about marriage ? Right now? Nah, I’m not ready. I think it could be in my future but it has to be someone special.

what does your ideal partner look like ( inside and out ) ? I want someone who is my best friend first and foremost. They have to be able to take things slow and be understanding. I’ve not really thought much about my ideal partner’s appearance though.

would you consider yourself a flirt ? I’ve accidentally done it a few times, but I wouldn’t say I would ever do it on purpose.

cuddling or making out ? Cuddling is very underappreciated.

when i was … 15 i had my first kiss and it was … Awkward.

make out song ? I suppose something very... Energetic? Or something that’s like trippy. No in between on that one.

turn ons/offs ? Listen, I’ll let you in on a secret. I’m a virgin. This is like... The secrets that have yet to be unlocked. I can tell you nail biting is a turn off already though just because of the sound. 

best love song ever ? Totally “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley. I’ll just say “Tender” again

dumper or the dumped one ? I’ve only dated twice and both times I was the dumper.

ever experienced heartbreak ? Yeah, but it’s more personal than I’d like to share.

« ° T H I S OR T H A T ;

tea or coffee ? Tea. There’s some relaxing tea out there.

frozen yoghurt or ice cream ? Ice cream

chocolat or vanilla ? Chocolate

shower or bath ? Shower

movies or books ? Movies

comedy or adventure movie ? Comedy

day or night ? Night

black&white or color ? Color.

chinese or italian ? Ooh, tough. Chinese.

hugs or kisses ? Hugs

spring or fall ? Fall

tattoos or piercings ? Tattoos

money or fame ? Money for the financial security. Or, fame to be known and share with the world what you love. Also, you can be famous for good deeds. I’ll take fame

romantic cuddles or hot sex ? Romantic cuddles. Again, cuddles are underappreciated.

fair or theme park ? Theme park.

love or lust ? Love

« ° F A V O R I T E S ;

song lyrics ? “When the days they seem to fall through you, well, just let them go.”

song ? “Under the Bridge”

quote ? I’m just going to point to that Oscar Wilde quote again. Or, the one where he was, like, challenging the wallpaper to a fight to the death.

actor ? Tom Hanks

actress ? Julie Andrews

movie ? Scott Pilgrim vs The World is pretty great.

book ? Can’t go wrong with The Lord of the Rings.

memory ? Definitely when my parents took my brother and I to Chicago one Christmas, and we got to see snow for, like, the first time ever. 

joke ? We all know six is afraid of seven because seven ate nine. But why did seven eat nine? Because you need three squared meals a day! Ever since I was told the rest of the joke, it just became my favorite.

guilty pleasure ? There’s this makeup show called FaceOff, and I love watching it for the cool designs. 

« ° A  F E W  S I T U A T I O N S ;

how would your character react if…

if they walk into the shower and see a huge spider sitting right in the middle of it ? He’d talk to the spider. Then, he’d try to ease the spider out of the shower because “Don’t want you to drown, little guy.” And, once the spider was clear, he’d take his shower.

they found out they won the lottery ? First thing he’s doing is pinching himself to make sure he’s not dreaming and that he didn’t fall asleep again. Second thing, he’s calling his parents. Then, he’d tell a select few friends.

if they find a someone’s wallet on the floor which holds lots of cash ? He’d check the ID and then if he doesn’t see the person, he’d turn it in to the nearest store or place that can take it. If he’s high at all, he’s taking some of the cash or even possibly setting it right back on the ground.

they hear a knock on their door and when they say “enter” their ex walks in ? Depends on which ex, but it’d be safe to assume he’d hug her and try to carry on a normal and calm conversation, even if with one of them, he’d be wondering how she found him.

if their house was on fire and they had 60 seconds to leave ? what 5 things would they take with them ? If it’s the frat house, his phone, wallet, sketchbook, picture of his family, and laptop. If it’s his home-home, his cat, sketchbook, phone, wallet, and then he’d grab whichever family member he passed by the arm.

« ° O V E R - A L L ;

when was the last time you tried something new ? Well, I tried working with a new medium in class recently. I don’t think I like carving much.

would you ever give up on your life if you could save someone else’s with it ? I mean, not to be selfish, but it depends on the person. For a kid, absolutely. For family, positively. Strangers... Not so much.

are you happy with yourself ? If I’m honest, no.

what chances do you wish you had taken ? I wish I had applied to bigger art schools. Don’t get me wrong, I love where I am, but I wish I’d seen if I could have gotten in.

what’s the first thing you think when you see yourself in the mirror ? “Holy shit that awful bedhead” or “God I’m still tired.”

[nntodayblog]

This Guy’s Problem With ‘The Last Jedi’ Is 40 Years In The Making

Ernie Fosselius

250

In a galaxy far, far away, an ominous-looking spaceship prepares for landing. Clouds of smoke pour from exhaust ports as the craft slowly descends, its foreboding features coming into focus. But something’s not quite right. Is that a handle on its hull? Is that even smoke? What kind of alien contraption is this?

Apparently, it’s the clothes-ironing kind.

In a scene transition from the latest “Star Wars” movie “The Last Jedi,” what initially appears to be a spaceship ready for touchdown is soon revealed to be something far less imposing ― an iron ready for household duty. We were watching the First Order press its laundry the whole time.

To most fans, the scene is just an innocuous sight gag. Laundry is hilarious, amirite? But to devotees of a cult 1970s parody called “Hardware Wars,” the iron cameo has a lot more steam.

@rianjohnson if I was a Disney exec, I would have given you two trilogies for this reference alone. #hardwarewarspic.twitter.com/nmwGg2Ei7T

— Tom Seery (@ts1138) January 11, 2018

.@rianjohnson When I saw that iron in The Last Jedi all I could think of was Hardware Wars. Great stuff. pic.twitter.com/i0jCwAOxAj

— Paul Pawuk (@JediNut) December 28, 2017

@rianjohnson any confirmation of the ironing scene in #LastJedi being a tribute to 'Hardware Wars'? I loved that movie when I was a kid. Just one more reason to love this new film!

— Josh Pattison (@Zozmachine) January 7, 2018

Director Rian Johnson confirmed last year that the iron scene in “The Last Jedi” is an homage to “Hardware Wars,” the first-ever “Star Wars” parody.

San Francisco-based filmmaker Ernie Fosselius created the trailer-style spoof back in 1978, lampooning the big-budget spectacle of what later became known as “A New Hope” with a 13-minute, intentionally hokey short film. Whereas “Star Wars” features special effects-driven spaceships, droids and stormtroopers, “Hardware Wars” features mundane household appliances like irons, vacuums and steamers buzzing around space.

“May the Farce be with you,” the obscure film beckoned about a decade before “Spaceballs” hit theaters.

But what was initially a small parody project has since grown into an unprecedented tour de Force. Thanks perhaps to its endearing cheesiness, and the persistent popularity of “Star Wars,” “Hardware Wars” became one of the most successful short films of all time, reportedly grossing around $500,000 in the first year of its release. It’s still revered by supporters today.

And that’s why so many fans loved the “Hardware Wars” reference built into “Last Jedi.” It’s just that ... the film’s creator didn’t.

It’s true that reactions to “Last Jedi” have been mixed overall. Some audience members loved Johnson’s update of the franchise, some hated it, and some are just professed members of the “alt-right.” As for Fosselius, he’s decidedly not a fan, and he’s been carrying around his arguably legitimate reason for decades.

Ernie Fosselius

Ernie Fosselius at work in the 1970s.

A NEW GRUDGE

Over the course of an hourlong interview last month and a few subsequent email exchanges with HuffPost, we attempted to unpack Fosselius’ feelings about Johnson’s “Hardware Wars” reference ― and Fosselius’ broader, “Star Wars”-related grievances.

His story began with a few phone calls.

Following the release of “The Last Jedi,” Fosselius said he was “flooded with calls” congratulating him on the “Hardware Wars” allusion. Many of these admirers even supposedly told him they had no intention of seeing “Last Jedi” until they heard there was a “Hardware Wars” reference in it.

Sounds pretty good, no? Uh, no.

“This is the phrase that got me: ‘Aren’t you happy that you finally got into a “Star Wars” film?’” Fosselius said of the various well wishes he received.

“No, I’m not,” he explained. “I did the parody. Why would I want to get into an actual ‘Star Wars’ film?”

Let’s clear some things up: Fosselius didn’t just get into a “Star Wars” movie. He’s already been in a number of them. According to the filmmaker, “Star Wars” sound designers Ben Burtt and Gary Rydstrom were early fans of his work and they brought him into their studio to do character voices, sound effects and miscellaneous vocal grunts for “Empire Strikes Back,” “Return of the Jedi” and even Lucasfilm’s “Indiana Jones” movies. Fosselius said he wound up rearranging a John Williams piece in “Return of the Jedi,” too. (Burtt and Rydstrom did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.)

Still, Fosselius harbors an even bigger issue. Fans misconstrued his parody as a tribute to George Lucas’ movie, he says, rather than a full-fledged spoof. And as a result, he believes he’s been miscast as “the number-one fan of ‘Star Wars.’”

“That’s how things work,” Fosselius said. “You get absorbed into the thing you’re spoofing because it’s revised. Your intentions are revised.”

So when people told Fosselius they’d spent money on “Last Jedi” tickets just to see the “Hardware” reference, he was annoyed.

“I thought, oh, great. I’m doing business for [‘Last Jedi’]. I’m bringing in customers for their movie,” Fosselius said. “Look, you got to understand. ‘Hardware Wars’ was a parody. It wasn’t a fan film. Oh, god. I’m never going to live it down. It was turned into a fan film.”

“It really sort of pissed me off,” he added, “because I spend my entire life trying to make a name for myself in a very obscure profession, because it’s what came naturally to me, and I consider [my parodies] art. I thought everyone was going to have fun with it.”

THE FARCE AWAKENS

Back in San Francisco in the late 1970s, Fosselius and his team certainly had fun putting together “Hardware Wars.”

Their parody style was simple: create “a really crappy version of something that was huge.” With “Star Wars” being “big budget,” “big box office” and “technically so advanced that you can’t even imagine how they did it,” it was the perfect target.

“I was surrounded by a lot of people who were Trekkies, and [‘Star Wars’ mania] was the next huge leap over ‘Star Trek’ worship, you know?” said Fosselius. “And there were already rumors out about how amazing [‘A New Hope’] was and people had that glazed look in their eyes saying this is the best thing that has ever happened in movies. That’s a call to me. Yeah, let’s put things into perspective.”

The parody’s creator described the project that followed as “a spontaneous group effort.” He delivered the initial pitch to producer Michael Wiese in a Chinese restaurant in 1977.

“For props, he used what was available,” Wiese told HuffPost. “A soy sauce bottle was a spaceship. He just had me on the floor. Of course, the people in the restaurant were like, there’s a crazy person in the booth.”

But the antics worked; Wiese was onboard.

From there, Fosselius recruited an eclectic group of friends and a number of co-workers from the animation company Imagination, Inc., where he worked on “Sesame Street” cartoons.

Their budget was nearly nonexistent, reportedly only $8,000. But that worked for the purposes of mocking a big budget blockbuster with an intentionally chintzy production.

“Everyone said, ’I got the camera’ or ‘Let’s do this and borrow that’ and ‘I work at a place so let’s get in there at night and shoot in there,’” he said. “It was probably the last thing that I know of where that was possible.”

Pretty soon, steam irons and toasters were soaring through space on obviously visible fishing line, while droids 4-Q-2 and Artie Deco traversed desolate landscapes complete with suspiciously earthling-like sunbathers in the background. Heroes like Fluke Starbucker (Scott Mathews), a Luke Skywalker knockoff with a lopsided wig; Princess Anne-Droid (Cinthia Freeling), a Leia wannabe with stale bread buns for hair; and Ham Salad (Bob Knickerbocker), a Han Solo-esque “ace mercenary pilot and intergalactic wise-guy” were teaming up to save the galaxy from evil ne’er-do-wells like Darph Nader.

It was tacky. It was corny. “It was magic,” Fosselius said.

According to the filmmaker, even the short movie’s casting sort of worked itself out. For example, Imagination, Inc. animator Jeff Hale seamlessly slipped into the Obi-Wan-Kenobi-type role of Augie ‘Ben’ Doggie because he had the voice for it.

“I said, ‘You have a British accent. You gotta play him,’” Fosselius said. “He had a beard, so it was perfect.”

And legendary voice actor Paul Frees ― a friend of Imagination Inc. co-founder Walt Kramer ― somehow consented to provide narration for “Hardware Wars.” At the time, he was the go-to guy for everything from voice-overs in movie trailers to playing the voice of God in different projects. (He reportedly narrated the original “Star Wars” teaser.)

“This guy makes more money than anybody ever made in the voice-over business. He’s the main guy. So for the balls to go over there and say, ‘Oh, we need a couple of voices,’” said Fosselius, recalling how Kramer convinced Frees to do the lines in exchange for some maintenance work on his recording equipment.

Fosselius said Frees called him one day after “Hardware Wars” was released.

“I answer the phone and [Frees] says, ‘Are you Ernie?’ And I go, ‘Oh no, he found out something. The unmistakable voice of God!’ And I was like, ‘Yeees, sir,’” Fosselius recalled. ”[He goes], ‘How did you get my voice?’ I said, ‘Well, remember Walt Kramer fixed your machines and you agreed to read a couple of lines?’ ‘Oh right. Never mind.’ Click.”

“He’d forgotten about it,” Fosselius said. “But it scared the crap out of me. I thought I was gonna get sued.”

The film was said to be initially available on 16 mm through Pyramid, a nontheatrical distributor known for educational films. Students watched “Hardware Wars” in classrooms and it gained a grassroots following from there.

Pyramid sent the film out to festivals where it won various awards, including the Most Popular Short Film of the Year at the 1978 Chicago Film Festival. Eventually it was enlarged to 35 mm and played in theaters across the country.

“For years, it ran with ‘Rocky Horror’ every Saturday night at the UC Theater in Berkeley [California] among other ‘cult film’ venues in other cities,” Fosselius said.

THE LUCAS EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

Though Fosselius’ film was a financial success, the “Hardware Wars” creator said he didn’t see a lot of profits from the movie. Still, he mostly laments the fact that his original goal ― to create a belittling spoof ― has been lost.

Today, “Hardware Wars” is one of the most revered “fan films” ever, and Fosselius thinks George Lucas might be partly to blame for it.

Over the years, Lucas has apparently spoken openly about “Hardware Wars,” listing it as one of his most-loved parodies in a 1999 interview on “The Big Breakfast.” He’s also reportedly referred to it as a “cute little film” and his favorite tribute to “Star Wars.” In 2003, Lucasfilm gave “Hardware Wars” a Pioneer Award at the Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards.

The award, in Fosselius’ mind, passed down a misleading verdict: If anyone thought “Hardware Wars” was making fun of “Star Wars,” they were wrong. It was a fan film. It won a Pioneer award, after all!

“It was upsetting,” said Fosselius, “because it wasn’t like Lucas was saying, ‘Oh, that was fun and everybody likes it, and no harm done. That was a parody. It was a spoof. It was fun. It was satire,’ No, he has to make it that I did it because I love the film so much I had to imitate it. That’s how I took it. And if George says that, then that’s the law, and everyone is now thinking that’s what happened.”

Further dismissing any notion that he envisioned “Hardware Wars” as a “Star Wars” tribute or fan film, Fosselius added, “I’ll say one thing. I’ve been in a room with George Lucas about five or six times ― I mean, over 40 years ― and he never talked to me. He never said how he felt about [‘Hardware Wars’].” Representatives for Lucas did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

A few years after “Hardware Wars,” Fosselius parodied Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” with a short 1980 film called “Porklips Now.” Whereas Lucas had virtually ignored the parody artist, “Porklips Now” allegedly earned Fosselius a 3 a.m. call from Coppola himself.

“[Coppola] said, ‘Ernie, I’m gonna be doing some work with Jerry Brown. Come over to my house tomorrow at 10 o’clock,’” Fosselius said of the phone call. “I go, ‘Oh shit. Wait a minute.’ That’s the first thing he said. He didn’t say anything about [‘Porklips Now’]. And it’s Coppola, so I’m thinking ‘Godfather,’ you know? Like, ‘Oh shit.’”

The filmmaker took some precautions. He called a friend to tell him he’d be going to Coppola’s house the next day. He gave the address to the friend and said, “If you don’t hear from me, something bad happened.”

Once there, the director quickly got to the point.

According to Fosselius, Coppola said, “You know, I didn’t like that you made fun of me and the film. It sort of pissed me off. But you got a right to do a parody, so be it. Whatever. Now I’m asking you to help me work on this campaign.” That campaign was Jerry Brown’s 1980 presidential run.

“I love this guy for this, and I respect him,” Fosselius said of Coppola. “He told me and he was honest about it. So that I thought was much better than never talking to me and figuring out some way to discredit me.”

Coppola told HuffPost he couldn’t remember whether or not he asked Fosselius to work on a project for Brown, but he said, “I like and admire Ernie Fosselius and so it could be possible.”

Ernie Fosselius

Ultimately, Fosselius said that the “Hardware Wars” reference hidden inside “The Last Jedi” isn’t the end of the world for him, but “people are making money on this,” he reiterated.

“You can call it a tribute, but a real tribute would pay my rent for a month, or buy me some art supplies,” Fosselius said, “or say something nice about me in the press.”

The “Hardware Wars” creator said he’s still trying to figure out why Johnson wanted to add the tribute at all.

“That’s all I wanted to find out,” he said. “Are you a fan? Why’d you put that in there? Because it might have just been to gather in all the ‘Hardware Wars’ fans that might not have gone and to convert them to being ‘Star Wars’ fans because, ‘Look! We’re cool. We put this obscure reference in here, and everybody showed up.’” Like Burtt, Rydstrom and Lucas, Johnson did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

Next time, he’d appreciate a heads-up.

“If you call it a tribute, wouldn’t you want to find out if the person wanted a tribute like that or what that would actually mean?” he said. “It does cement in the idea that I’m a fan, that I’m the number-one fan because I got the number-one award, and all that stuff, which is completely bogus.”

Fosselius still hasn’t seen “The Last Jedi,” and he probably never will. He doesn’t like the digital films and special effects of today ― it “physically bothers” him. He’s nostalgic for classic parodies, too.

“Satire’s probably dead by now,” he said. “It’s pretty dangerous. It’s not something people do.”

With that spirit in mind, Fosselius is able to look back on his film fondly, regardless of those who misread it.

“It was that magic that happened when you throw something out there, invite people to come in [and] bring in whatever they got, and hope you get some sort of really exceptional things happening,” he concluded. “It was a very magical kind of a mix.”

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BEFORE YOU GO

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Bill Bradley

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Reference source : This Guy’s Problem With ‘The Last Jedi’ Is 40 Years In The Making

[hannibaltabu]

"Amazing. Everything you said in that sentence was wrong."

I just got done listening to the Mr. MoKelly spoiler-filled Nerdcast on Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

I was supposed to be on the podcast (and I was counted near the end), but I had to appear on a special edition of the Hall H Show podcast to promote the brand new Black Com!x Day in San Diego, February 17, 2018. I love Mo and Tawala, I love Star Wars and I love Nerdcast but this was about promoting independent Black comics, a financial benefit for me, so I had to make a call. Plus, my wife is in Cuba and couldn't pick up my youngest from Shakespeare rehearsal on this side of town, since the Nerdcast is in Burbank.

Regardless, I liked The Last Jedi even more after seeing it twice, and the following -- like the Nerdcast itself -- will be chock full of spoilers. If you have not seen the movie, you might wanna move on. Unlike their show, mine will have no profanity. Most of what I have to say will be a rebuttal, so I'll start with a declarative statement:

I can admit it's not an amazing movie, but I really thought it was a fantastic Star Wars movie. I liked.

... and then ...

Still amazing after the second screening. I'm in Normas Lee happy with this film.

iOS dictation made that weirder than I intended, but whatever. That was supposed to be "enormously happy."

Okay, here we go ...

Mo said there was nothing quotable about The Last Jedi. Ignoring the title of this post there was ...

"This isn't gonna go the way you think!" (used a lot with my kids already)

"The greatest teacher, failure is."

"He's a troublemaker. I like him."

"Hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you can see it ..." "... you'll never make it through the night."

"I'd like to put my fist through this whole awful, beautiful city." (may have missed a word on this one)

"Permission to jump in an X-Wing and go blow something up?"

"I really don't want to do this right now."

"... I'll hold."

I was cracking up too hard to get the "Have you seen some weakness in my apprentice?" speech.

Mo said, "We know nothing about Rey."

Kylo made her admit the truth: her parents were not some cosmic royalty. They were not high ranking Jedis. They were civilians, normal jerks. The darkness rose, so the Force -- always making Force sensitive children -- dumped a bungload of midi-chlorians (or whatever) into Rey and made her powerful. The stable hand boy with Rose's ring on the casino world could be next, as he already has control over some of his telekinesis.

This fits Disney's mold incredibly well, making Rey a new everywoman heroine. Anyone can be this powerful. It could be you. That is gonna sell a bungload full of merch.

Mo said: "We learned nothing about this principle cast."

Finn has been hugged twice in his life now and kissed once, leading him to do all kinds of crazy and sometimes stupid things. About 2/3 of the way in, he grew up a little, and beating Phasma freed him from a lot

Poe Dameron was not a believer, he was a gun set in one direction. In a different world, he could have been the most dangerous pilot in the First Order's apparatus. It took a lot for him to start to mature so he could lead instead of just fighting, which he did mostly because of his parents (as seen in the Marvel comic).

Leia wants to pass the mantle of leadership on to Poe, her new "son," into whom she has poured all her lost hopes from Ben Solo. That tragic tale led her to do all kinds of interesting things, from demoting him to stunning him.

We got a LOT from Rose, who grew up poor, lost everything to the First Order, lost her sister fighting back, was inspired by Finn, who she had a crush on and then had to deal with the real guy, then saw that she still was attracted to him once he tried to not be the idiot he's been for so long. She was likened to Knives Chau from Scott Pilgrim, which I thought was a spot on analysis by Thomas Cunningham the 4th (we're rarely on the same side, so this was weird).

Ben Solo never had a chance. He had too many expectations heaped on his shoulders, was too powerful and had a master who knew too little. He got the Obi-Wan treatment and it ended essentially the same way, with him under the sway of a powerful, organized Dark Side user.

Luke was broken by every failure in his life. He accomplished exactly two things in his whole life -- the first Death Star at Yavin and "allegedly" turning Vader (which no one can prove, honestly). He failed his sister, he failed his friend, he failed his nephew -- all at the same time -- and wasn't man enough to do anything about it, instead pointing to his organization's history as a precedent for him to give up. Sadly, that fits whiny farm boys from Tattooine (who either failed into the Dark Side or this) and Mark Hamill acted his butt off in this role.

Leia had become everybody's favorite auntie, as quoted and shown in the reverence she's showed by everyone on screen. She played the role well, from "I changed my hair" to shooting Poe to revealing Holdo's plan.

The casino sequence got Finn to his resolution with Phasma and swings the camera to the new Force sensitive kid. That doesn't happen without the casino scene. Saying it was a dumb sidequest ignores the plot's development.

Tawala is mad at the X-Wing working so well on the dreadnaught, ignoring the fact that the large scale, shock and awe philosophy of the Empire (sampled enthusiastically by the Cosplay Empire, also known as the First Order, but never really played originally by the latter) has a well documented weakness against snub fighters. The First Order are so hell bent on recreating the Empire that they didn't learn anything, which makes the Yoda quote even more interesting. The Jedi failed. The Republic failed twice. The Sith failed. The Empire failed. The First Order ain't doing so well. What is the galaxy trying to teach its inhabitants that they're not hearing? That's the question that most haunts me from this film.

Likewise, Tawala asked why not send in a fleet of X-Wings. The Resistance was on the ropes. They lost ALL their bombers in one run on a single dreadnaught, which wasn't even the biggest thing the Kuat Shipyards ever built (the Eclipse was much longer, dunno if bigger). The Dreadnaught was a fleet killer -- and against capital ships, that's likely true. They could barely field the fighters they had.

Mo said, "There's no gravity in space." There is gravity in the bombers. Momentum would carry the bombs through the vacuum. I was more mad that the bombers were so slow.

Tawala is mad about Rey's dream sequence from The Force Awakens not matching the recollections of two people who were actually there. That's illogical. The dream sequence was an interpretation of the facts, not a retelling of it. Many on the podcast kept trying to say The Force Awakens is a factual recollection of events. That's clearly -- based on this -- not true. Despite the fact that it doesn't matter, based on new canon from the Darth Vader Marvel comic, lightsabers turn red when they are bloodied in anger.

The emperor's "As I have foreseen" was not prescience it was psychology. The Dark Side cannot be reliably used for information. Tawala and Mo misunderstand how the Emperor worked. His myth was way bigger than his actual ability. All of the movies have proven that Dark Side users are limited in their ability to gain knowledge and prescience from the Force.

Mo judging Snoke by the Emperor's yard stick is not judging this movie on its own terms. Snoke was what he needed to be. Historically, I want to know where he was around Endor and what he was doing, but I can move on now without questioning it, despite his vast power.

I can also tell my Star Wars Ring Theory link didn't get absorbed by the class here ... if you love Star Wars you should check it out, it messes with your understanding of a lot, especially the prequels.

It takes maybe 60 seconds for a non-powered person to die in vacuum. For the daughter of Vader to telekinetically figure how to save herself in that amount of time is not implausible. Leia's force abilities already shown? Communication across distances, sensing the safety of her brother from a distance. This isn't that big a leap for someone of her heritage given how far Rey got without training.

Someone wondered why Yoda's Force ghost wasn't fighting the First Order. Yoda is free from the cycle of life's struggles. He needed to teach one last lesson to his final student. To say he should fight the First Order after he already died is illogical, even if there was a powerful enough Force user in the Resistance who could reach him. You also forget the Bindu, which was a largely spiritual creature, could use lightning as a weapon too.

"Face" /= kill. Tawala forgot that in ROTJ Yoda told Luke he must "face" Vader before he could become a Jedi. Luke (like Tawala) misunderstood and said, "I can't kill my father" or something. You forget that Jedi lie and misdirect a lot. Spirit, come on, guys, this is stuff in movies we've seen a million times.

Mo thinks that he was cheated because he didn't know why everyone was after Luke as a non-factor. If Malcolm X or Marcus Garvey magically appeared today and went to the middle of Times Square to start speaking through my mobile 15" speaker, it would galvanize a freaking nation and terrify the power structure. Luke the Jedi wasn't the threat and even Luke said that. Luke the Legend was what Snoke had to stop, what Kylo had to exceed, what Leia wanted to manipulate. The Legend could inspire, could sway worlds and systems to resist. Luke the Jedi was just moderately successful. He was nobody's #1 seed. He was a Cinderella story wild card winner.

I will admit to wondering why no star destroyers went to lightspeed away and then jumped back in front of the Rebels until I remembered that Hux is literally bad at everything he does.

"Two hours in the middle" doesn't give credit to the entertaining dialogue, doesn't give credit to the time for character development for Poe under Holdo's stoicism, doesn't count Leia's "you made me get out of this bed" and shooting her favorite boy ... tripping, Tawala.

Tawala asked about arms purchasing but doesn't know that the Empire worked with the Mining Guild and the Banking Clans even after the New Order was established. Likewise, comics canon show that the Empire subcontracted a lot of weapons development, as does the Tie Defender program on Lothal.

Rick asked how Benicio del Toro (or as Mo called him, "Benicio del Lando," which was fair) knew about the small ships. While Poe was trying to mutiny, he told Finn about them while Benicio was hacking the door. Rick apparently missed that.

IN SUMMATION:

My final ranking of all the Star Wars films based on my tastes.

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode 6: Return of the Jedi

Episode 8: The Last Jedi

Episode 2: Attack of the Clones

Episode 4: A New Hope

Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith

Episode 1: The Phantom Menace

Rogue One

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Episode 7: The Force Awakens, or whatever

Ideologically, the BBC's Will Gompertz wrote a review I pretty much agreed with that summed up my thoughts.

These are my opinions. In the immortal words of the philosopher Robert Ginyard, "you don't like it, so what? I don't care."

[typegripe-blog]

Movie Rant #1 - Star Wars Thoughts, Part 1

With the release of the trailer for Episode 8, I thought I’d share some thoughts about the sequel trilogy so far.

Now this might be an unpopular opinion but I’ll open this right away and say that I prefer the Prequels to Episode 7. Now it could be argued that I first saw the Prequels when I was young and I am just bitter about Disney owning Star Wars now and that I am going to just hate anything different. But I don’t believe this is true. I watched The Clone Wars series for the first time months before Episode 7 came out and I loved it. And on top of this while I did not enjoy Episode 7 very much, I thought Rogue One was one of the greatest Star Wars movies that has ever been released. I would go so far as to say it’s tied with A New Hope as my second favourite. (Empire obviously being the best.)

And don’t mistake it, as a movie by itself Episode 7 is way better than the prequels. Acting, shots, editing and dialogue were way better. When considered with the rest of the series, I think it just doesn’t fit in properly. That being said, I do believe all the movies are worth watching.

But why did I love Rogue One beyond belief but only felt an empty hole for The Force Awakens? Well here is my main reason:

SPOILER WARNINGS FOR EPISODES 1-7, THE CLONE WARS AND ROGUE ONE

It Builds On Instead of Taking Away:

In the prequels (and especially in the Clone Wars) you get a sense that the Jedi have become complacent. They are weak because it had been over a thousand years since the Sith disappeared into the shadows and they did not believe the Sith could ever return. Mace Windu dismisses Maul as a Sith when Qui-Gon suggests the possibility. And Obi-Wan and Yoda flat out refuse to believe that a member of the Sith is controlling the senate when Count Dooku flat out says so. If you get passed some of the poor dialogue choices and cringey romance, we see that the fall of the Republic and Anakin’s belief that the Jedi are corrupt actually comes together quite nice.

In the Clone Wars it just goes even further. We see Anakin discuss with Tarkin how the Jedi aren't​ willing to take the steps necessary to end the war and that the war only highlights their incompetence and failures as a group and so called ‘keepers of the peace.’ As well we get how much affected Anakin is when Ahsoka is abandoned by the Jedi and how willing they are to let her get executed for a crime she didn’t commit.

So why is all of that important? Because it gives us motivation and insight into characters we didn’t actually know that much about. We see how shamed Yoda is by his failure to prevent the atrocities that occur to the Jedi and we see how Obi-Wan feels he failed Anakin so completely. And most importantly we see the human that is behind Darth Vader, and we see how broken and twisted he’s become.

On top of this we see where being all ‘high and mighty’ got the Jedi. The pompous Jedi were destroyed because they didn’t believe anything could ever touch them. The characters we sympathise with are the Grey Jedi. Qui-Gon Jinn is caring, willing to use tricks, gamble, disobey the council and in the end he’s the only one who truly sees Anakin’s potential and actually believes that Maul could be a Sith. And to an extent Obi-Wan follows in his footsteps. We are led to understand that true power in the force should come from balance.

When Obi-Wan and Yoda train Luke, they teach him the Jedi ways but try to teach him to be more mindful. They don’t want him to make the mistakes they made. By Return of the Jedi, we see Luke use force choke, force manipulation, intimidation and is walking this fine line of good and evil. In the end he chooses good, but his good isn’t the 'good’ of the old republic. He has family and friends, he doesn’t believe in the cold blooded approach of the Republic era Jedi, his is much more of a Grey Path.

So we assume that he is going to be the best Jedi ever. That he learned to be one with the force and really walk that middle road of balance. He won’t make the same mistakes the Republic Era Jedi made….

……Except he does. According to Episode 7, he trains some people to use the force but instead of being the awesome Jedi we believed he was at the end of Episode 6, it turns out he’s just as bad as the Republic Jedi. Kylo Ren pulls an Anakin and kills all the other Jedi and turns evil.

And this is where the problem lies. Where the prequels gave us a universe that was designed to strengthen and give more meaning to the original trilogy, Episode 7 throws anything learned aside in order to ensure that the story continues.

Anything accomplished in Episode 6 means nothing from the start of Episode 7. The Empire is not defeated, the good guys are still a tiny rebellion. The only good government is conveniently destroyed so that it’s still the story of a small group of ragtag rebels fighting the big scary Empire. Sure, the empire would not be completely destroyed at the end Return of the Jedi. But their leader is gone, he had no real contingent, no heir. Most groups seemed to support that the Rebellion won. So why is the First Order more powerful than the original Empire? Why was there no one to try to wipe out the empire remnants in over 30 years? It felt like they wanted to have a story to reflect A New Hope so in order to do so they had to dismiss any progress at the end of the original trilogy. It makes it feel as if the original trilogy just shouldn't​ have happened because it turns out nothing was accomplished.

Say what you will about the old Expanded Universe bit at least the Thrawn Trilogy was only a few years after Endor, and even then Thrawn is only barely keeping together a shattered force. As well, the villain wasn’t even a force user. He didn’t compete with Vader like Kylo Ren, he was so different and yet just as intimidating a foe. If anything Thrawn only strengthened what Darth Vader was and contrasted with him in a lot of ways. But I digress, my love of Thrawn aside I’ll go back to Episode 7.

On top of Luke turning out to be the exact same as Yoda, we get the fact that Han and Leia aren’t even happy together after all this time. That’s not really a big deal and doesn’t actually take away from the story, it’s just that it’s another thing that was just destroyed for the sake of making Episode 7 more interesting. Nothing from Episode 6 is shown to have made any lasting effect on the universe.

We get to the biggest culprits now: the fact that everything had to be taken up a notch from the original trilogy.

The Death Star was a monumental thing that shook the universe and took the funds of an entire empire to build. It could blow up worlds and it seemed like an impossible task for the rebels to take it down. But that’s nothing​ now, who cares about the Death Star? It has to move to a world to blow it up. No, now we have the Star Killer Base. It can shoot across the universe and eats suns. The Death Star was the size of a small moon? So what? The Star Killer Base is a literal planet!

How did the first order afford this? Where did it come from? Why did they have to 'outdo’ the original trilogy just for the sake of having bigger and better? It makes anything that happened before seem silly because the empire is just bigger and badder, so why did the death of the emperor even matter? Why did blowing up the Death Star matter? It all ended up being pointless after a few years anyways.

And then there is Rey. Ugh. I’ll get to her in a second.

I may not be overly thrilled by Kylo Ren but there are some things I genuinely thought were great about his character. The fact that he wore that helmet to mimic Darth Vader, the fact that he obsesses over Vader are great. They show how important and long lasting the terror of Vader was and that after more than 30 years, Vader is the epitome of villains. On top of that, I love that he loses his temper in a more childlike fashion just smashing stuff at random instead of the cool hatred Vader has when he chokes those who fail him. As well the fact that his lightsaber is imperfect and shows that he is obviously somewhat self taught and not a real Sith or even fully trained Jedi. He shows a Dark Jedi that did not have a mentor like Darth Sidious and never completed his training like Anakin and I actually enjoyed that.

But then there’s Rey. I think she was the worst part of Episode 7. Out of everything they did, she is what ruined the movie for me. She feels more like a fanfiction character than someone that should actually exist in the movies. In A New Hope, Luke doesn’t use force powers, he doesn’t even really use a lightsaber despite him holding it on the poster. He proves his connection to the force by making a 1 in a million shot to blow up the Death Star. Anakin Skywalker, the most powerful Jedi in the universe, is able to Pod Race and is a pretty good pilot but he doesn’t use force powers until after years of training.

Rey does all of this in one movie. She’s just better than every character that’s been in a Star Wars movie for no reason other than to make her cool. She is an exceptional pilot, despite being relatively segregated from most of her home planet. When did she learn? How did she have the time? Who’s ship did she practice on?

She uses force pull more powerfully than Kylo Ren despite never having any training and Kylo Ren actually having training from Luke. She uses force manipulation despite only masters being shown to use this power (even Luke only uses it in Jedi after a few years of practice). How did she even know this was a power? Why was she able to use it so effectively? Why didn’t she have to move her hand like every other Jedi that uses it?

They make every other Jedi look like an idiot because she could figure everything out in a matter of days while it took others years. The Prequels show how powerful Luke is because he is learning to use the force at an older age in a matter of days. He can lift stones and jump around all because of Yoda’s training and his innate abilities. But even he has nothing on Rey because she just instantly knows how to use every force power the plot needs her to learn.

What’s wrong is that Episode 7 doesn’t follow the same rules that the other movies have established. It was like they wanted to have a bunch of nostalgia moments but didn’t care that putting them in made no sense or just made Rey feel way to overpowered.

This went a lot longer than I expected to go, so I’m going to talk about Rogue One (and why I fanboyed so hard the first time I watched it) in a second part.

If you have any comments, agree or disagree let me know why! I would love to hear it! Thanks!

[thehappiestblogonearth-55]

Breaking Down the First 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' Teaser Trailer

Late last week at Star Wars Celebration 2017, Lucasfilm released the very first teaser trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and it looks eerily similar to the first teaser trailer for The Force Awakens.

The trailer opens with a suspenseful soundtrack, similar to the second Force Awakens Trailer. We get this buildup right before an orchestral punch that shows Rey out of breath. As she’s gasping for breath we hear Luke say “breath.” We can assume from this that a big part of this film will be Luke training her in the ways of the Jedi, similar to when Yoda trained Luke in the Empire Strikes Back.

© Lucasfilm

Here’s on thing you may have missed from this opening shot. The cave behind her is the same one that Luke walks out of later in the teaser. That means that she’s still on Oktu where Ep. 7 left us.

If you didn’t know, Oktu is a real island called Skellig Michael on the southwestern coast of Ireland. It’s actually the location of an ancient Christian monastery and is a protected historical site.

After the opening with Rey, we get a sweeping view of the island over the sea and we also hear a new soundtrack which is actually the force theme. Just one of several themes heard in this new trailer.

© Lucasfilm

After some more amazing views of the island and Rey looking out over some crashing waves, we hear Luke say

“Reach out”

with a shot of Rey’s hand reversing gravity on some pebbles. This was apparently part of the footage shown to Disney investors last month. it appears that Rey’s training will follow Luke’s closely. Remember that Yoda made Luke levitate rocks as well in the swamp.

After Luke whispers

“What do you see”

the music shifts to Rey’s theme, composed by John Williams in The Force Awakens. We get a back shot of Leia whose looking at some sort of star map. What you may have missed is that she’s probably standing on the bridge of a battleship (we can assume this because of the window) and Admiral Akbar is standing in the background.

© Lucasfilm

If you listen very closely, Lucasfilm mixed in the audio from Leia in A New Hope. You can hear her say

“Help me Obi-Wan.”

This was Luke’s first sight of his sister back in A New Hope and this subtle voice over is a reminder of his connection with his sister through the force. Leia represents the last remaining light in the force, as Luke has disappeared and his image has grown distant.

As we move on from there, we see the other side of the force; darkness. The camera pans in on what appears to be a crushed helmet of Kylo Ren from The Force Awakens. This could be on Kylo Ren’s ship after he was forced to retreat angrily. It is interesting to point out that this is eerily similar to The Force Awakens trailer when we see Vader’s helmet melted while Kylo Ren looks at it. Ren modeled his helmet to pay tribute to his grandfather so I think this shot is supposed to show some sort of family connection.

© Lucasfilm

During this scene, you can also hear Vader’s iconic breathing and you can barely make out the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi as he tells Luke about Anakins fall.

“Vader was seduced by the dark side of the force.”

Right before Rey labels this side of the force darkness, we shift into the next musical theme which is John Williams Kylo Ren theme.

Now that Rey has reached into the dark side of the force, and the light side, this third image is something that she calls

“the balance”

It’s a literal image of the balance of light and dark. There’s a beam of light shining in surrounded by darkness. The light is shining on a small bookshelf on what looks like the roots of a tree.

© Lucasfilm

In the expanded universe (EU) novel Shattered Empire, Luke Skywalker tracks down two force-sensative trees that once grew underneath the Jedi Temple in Coruscant. One of these trees eventually gets planted in the home of Poe Dameron which could explain why he’s such a good pilot. Maybe the other force tree could be part of the roots that we’re seeing in this image because Luke planted it on this island.

While it’s unlikely that they would bring in the EU into this movie, it could be a reference.

Now what about the books we see on the shelf? Rey takes one down and looks at it and it has the symbol of the Jedi Order on the front. Luke was probably able to recover these old texts from around the galaxy, maybe in the ruins of that Jedi temple that we see later on. While this shot is happening, you can barely hear the voice of Yoda from The Empire Strikes Back saying

“It surrounds us and binds us”

There’s also the sound of a lightsaber powering up. Now this balance between the light and the dark has been at the heart of the entire Star Wars saga. However, Luke says

“So much bigger”

Suggesting that this film will go much deeper than that. There’s a couple things in the EU that could explain this. One of those being the concept of Grey Jedi knights. That refers to a Jedi who walks the line between the light side and the dark side of the force. They also operate outside of the Jedi code. Although some story execs from Lucasfilm have denied this, it could make sense that Luke could be experiencing this.

It’s just like the color of Luke’s clothes throughout the films. Starting white and slowly turning black as he became closer to his father but then ultimately returning to grey at the end of The Force Awakens. 

I highly doubt that Grey Jedi will literally turn up in this film but it’s something worth pointing out.

As the camera pans around the mountain on the island, we see two interesting rock formations that appear to resemble humans. Although they could very well be just random rocks. But let’s assume for a second that these aren’t just random rocks.

© Lucasfilm

The large rock in front of where Rey is training appears to be a monument that Luke maybe created to one of his old Jedi buddies. Then again, it could just be a big rock. Okay, moving on.

This is where the trailer kicks up the action.

So first we have these shots of what I’m guessing are resistance fighters kicking up the soil into the air on a remote planet called Crait. They appear to be flying towards First Order walkers nicknamed Gorilla Walkers because of the larger front arms on them.

© Lucasfilm

At first I thought they were releasing smoke like skywriters do, but it appears that the smoke they are kicking up from the ground could be for some kind of smoke screen effect to protect them.

The next shot we get of Finn could be taken a million different ways but here’s what I think.

© Lucasfilm

After the battle with Kylo Ren, Finn obviously has some recovering to do. My best guess is that he’s now on some sort of ship or an escape pod sending him back to get help. The only issue with this is that in the trailer you can see flashes of blue light on the upper right side of the screen making it seem like he’s mad the jump to hyperspace. I’m not sure that a single pod could make that jump.

Also, if you translate the letters on the left side of the shell being reflected, the top says “stable” while the rest makes no sense. So I guess Finn is alright.

Since he’s in his own pod, I would imagine that wherever he was recovering was under attack and he had to be shipped off to keep him safe. I’m guessing that’s the next scene that we see with Poe and BB-8 running from a blast in a resistance hangar.

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Those two engines on the left side of the screen belong to an A-Wing which we get a quick glimpse of later on in the trailer.

Moving on we see the Millennium Falcon in a dog fight with Tie-Fighters. I’m interested to see who is flying the Falcon considering it won’t be Han Solo. It may be Chewbacca.

We also get some action shots of Rey running with Luke’s lightsaber (not on the island) and Kylo Ren (without his mask) turning his tri-saber which he apparently still has.

Next we get an interesting shot of Luke and R2-D2 watching a building burn down. the building appears to be a Jedi temple. Also, and more importantly, it looks like the same scene that Rey saw in the flashback from The Force Awakens. It was the scene from The Force Awakens Trailer when we see Luke’s hand touch the top of R2-D2.

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In the next shot we get our first look at Captain Phasma as she marches in with her soldiers. I feel like she’s probably marching into the hangar where Finn was being kept and where we see that explosion with Poe and BB-8. She’s probably looking for Finn. Proving even more why Finn had to be ejected.

The last part is a shot of Luke exiting a cave saying

“It’s time for the Jedi to end”

© Lucasfilm

This could mean so many different things. Honestly, I have no idea what it means so I’ll leave this one up for interpretation.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi opens in theaters December 15, 2017.

Breaking Down the First ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Teaser Trailer was originally published on The Happiest Blog On Earth