I thought about this one night as I was trying to go to sleep. The big problem with the sequel trilogy was that there was no unifying vision for all three movies. One person just copied A New Hope. Then a different director wanted to challenge expectations. That was controversial, so they got the same person from before, only now he has to deal with plot points from two movies that he has no idea how to resolve. Plus it’s got to be Star Wars-y. He provided what he thought Star Wars fans wanted–a twist parentage, last-minute heel-turn from the villain, feel-good ending, etc. This results in three big problems:…
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Star Wars Just Isn’t Fun Anymore
Everyone’s coming in with hot takes on The Acolyte like they were Top Gunning an aircraft carrier. Critical Drinker, Film Theory, Red Letter Media, and so on–everyone’s got an opinion about every shot. Maybe I’m a fuddy-duddy, but I’m tired of the discourse-on-discourse of it all. Any time something Star Wars comes out there’s a big kerfuffle. From both production and audience, every tiny little thing in Star Wars is being scrutinized and analyzed and debated… EXCEPT whether it’s any good or not. It’s annoying. And it’s all just not fun anymore. You can be diverse and still be good. Hamilton is diverse, but no one brings that up when…
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Star Wars Fans Will Never Be Satisfied
I’m starting to think Star Wars fans will never be happy, no matter what. Anything after the original trilogy has been met with scorn. They didn’t like the Holiday Special because it was cheesy, poorly written, insane, and most definitely not Star Wars. They didn’t like Droids or Ewoks because they were cheaply-made cartoons meant to sell toys. They didn’t like the Ewok Adventure movies because they were low-budget, childish, and too simple. They didn’t like the re-release of the special editions because it monkeyed with the original by adding CG stuff. They didn’t like The Phantom Menace because it was full of non-essential scenes, poor acting, “explained” things that…
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The Books I Read: May – June 2023
How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix So I’ve grown to love Grady Hendrix and his books. He just seems to have a knack for combining grody horror and nuttiness. Like Stephen King if he was fabulously gay. This book is like his other ones — My Best Friend’s Exorcism, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. It starts out tongue-in-cheek to help you bond with the characters, then migrates to horror, then terror. In How to Sell a Haunted House, there really isn’t much “selling”. But there is plenty of conflict between a brother and sister whose parents just died. The sister (main character) is smart,…
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I Can Pinpoint the Problem with The Mandalorian Season 3
So everyone’s been in debate whether this season of The Mandalorian was any good or not. Some people give it a thumbs up because it delivers an engaging adventure and characters. Others thought it abandoned the main characters for others’ storylines (ex. Bo-Katan, the pirates, Elia Kane) or that it violated “Show, don’t tell” or was aimless. I think all that could have been forgiven if this season delivered something the other two seasons did. Give us something unexpected. This season played it safe. Too safe. They didn’t do anything that broke open a mystery or risked offending fans or twisted established lore. The first season delivered two big chunks…
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Some YouTube Videos Worthy of Getting My Like
The first video I ever liked (apparently) was Hannah Hart’s Pizza video from… let me check… ELEVEN YEARS AGO? We were all just babies back then. That’s like… 1997? I’m not sure why–I recall liking “Tacos” and “Grilled Cheese” better (“butter yo shit”). I bet I was drunk at the time. When I rewatched this, I realized Hannah Hart reminds me of my daughter, and I have no problem with that. I was in this anthology and the editor put together a book trailer for it. I love book trailers. Actually I love trailers in general. So if you like names, find mine at 2:09. This was just just a…
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I’m Sick and Tired of the Jedi Cult
Marge, I think I hate the Jedi. The second to last episode of “The Book of Boba Fett” just cemented it. Spoilers: At the end, Luke Skywalker offers Grogu (Baby Yoda) a choice. Choose the lightsaber (something Jedis aren’t supposed to get until later in their training) and become a great Jedi. Or choose the little chainmail shirt that the Mandalorian dropped off as a gift (he wasn’t allowed to see Grogu — that would interfere with his “training”) and leave, forsaking the Jedi training. What kind of sick organization says “either stay and dedicate yourself to me and never see any family or friends or I kick you out”?…
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Late to the Game: The Clone Wars
Okay, so it’s not a game, but it’s on Disney Plus and it’s got all these characters I’m apparently supposed to know. They show up in other movies and shows and everyone freaks out and I’m supposed to know what it means. Who is Asaaj Ventress? Ahsoka? What is the “Bad Batch”? Bad batch of what? Brownies? So basically, I’m binge-watching to catch up on Star Wars lore. It’s… it’s not very good. The animation is cheesy and crappy. I’m not a fan of the character designs, from Ahsoka’s flat chin to Palpatine’s raisin skin. Everyone looks like an action figure. Which I suppose is expected, since that’s always been…
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Robots vs. Fairies
So last month I read “Robots vs. Fairies”, a collection of short stories. I was a little disappointed because it wasn’t so much “versus” as “here’s robots and now here’s fairies” (except for one story at the end). But at the end of each story, the author declared whether they were “Team Robot” or “Team Fairy” and why. Even though the split is even, it felt like Team Fairy came out the winner. But I thought it’d be fun to declare my allegiance, even though I’m not part of the book. (They didn’t even *ask* me! *sniffle*) Even though I probably read and produce more fantasy than science fiction, I…
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The Books I Read: January – February 2018
The Elven by Bernhard Hennen It took me two months of dedicated reading to complete this. Of course, I took breaks along the way, but still, I feel stories can wear out their welcome. We’re not in the era of television-less-ness anymore. We don’t need War and Peace to keep us occupied. And this is a callback to those kinds of books. It’s a saga rooted in high fantasy and Norse/Germanic myths (like elves and dwarves). We’ve got three main characters. Two are elves who have been rivals for a girl elf’s love for whatever thousands of years elves live. The last is a viking who gets treated like the…
