I am a bad Star Wars fan (for abandoning the sequel trilogy)

There is a rumor... rumor mind ya so take this with an industrial sized salt lick... that somewhere in the Disney Vault there rests a cut of Star War Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker that is drastically different and better than what was released theatrically last Christmas.  This cut was allegedly assembled by George Lucas: the Maker himself.  This edit supposedly adds new material, removes several elements we saw in The Rise of Skywalker's theater version and perhaps even has a new ending.  The result is a film that is at least forty percent altered from the original cinematic release.

It is supposed to fix the problems that The Rise of Skywalker has, as well as many of the problems that the entire sequel trilogy is rife with.

It is the hope of many fans that "the George Lucas Cut" - IF it exists at all - will be released eventually, and sooner than later.  One possible venue would be Disney+ (where The Mandalorian and the complete The Clone Wars series have made their home).  One must wonder how much the Disney execs will be watching the upcoming release of the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League on HBO Max.  Success for that cut would certainly compel Disney to cast an eye upon potential product for its own streaming service.

I bring up the Lucas Cut rumor because I am increasingly finding myself hoping and praying that it's true.  And that it will get released.  And that it is just as magnificent as it's being made out to be.

Because at this point that's what it's going to take to make me respect the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

Yes folks, there it is.  I am going to always and forever be a Star Wars fan.  But going forward... I'm going to try to forget that Episodes VII, VIII and IX ever happened.  Because there are substantial problems with what should have been a final fulfilling arc in the Skywalker saga.  Problems which can not be ignored any longer.  As far as I'm concerned the Skywalker tale on film ends with Vader's redemption, the Emperor's death and Luke's reunion with his friends amid the celebration on Endor.

Because it is now abundantly clear that Disney had no idea what it was doing when it produced the sequel trilogy.

It was Daisy Ridley's comments this past week that made the kill shot.  It seems that even after the cameras stopped rolling there was indecision about Rey's parentage.  At one point or another she was related to Obi-Wan Kenobi, or was Palpatine's granddaughter, or just what Kylo told her in The Last Jedi: "no one".  I wish she had been nobody special.  It would have made Rey a much more potent character.  Better than that: it would have reinforced the notion that the Force belongs to anyone and everyone.  That it was not the sole provenance of favored lineages like the Skywalkers or the Palpatines.  One of the major themes of A New Hope was that a hero can come from the most humble of beginnings.  Rey was set to follow that theme.  And then they made her a granddaughter to Palpatine...

Did these people seriously understand Star Wars at all?  Did they even care?

Blame can be assigned across the board.  I'm not going to bother divvying it up.  But mistakes were made.  Atrocious mistakes.  The components were there for a majestic trilogy, the one we had been long promised but had come to believe would never be made.  All of the pieces were within ready grasp.  They even had the cast of the original trilogy willing to sign aboard for the project.

The sequel trilogy had everything going for it, seemingly.  And they messed it up.

Personally, what was most unforgiving about what happened in the sequels was how Snoke was treated.  Here was a new character - a fantastic character - perfectly set up to be a truly horrific and fascinating villain.  Snoke brought about the reaction that Darth Vader evoked during his first onscreen appearance: even without knowing anything about him, we knew he was evil.  And we hated him for it.  And we wanted to see more of him.  Snoke had presence.

I can look past how Snoke was killed in The Last Jedi.  What I can not look past is how sloppily it was made out to be that Snoke was just a puppet for Palpatine.  It was complete laziness, and trepidation, and a failure to give Snoke the respect he deserved.  He deserved much better.

Star Wars deserved better.  It still does.

Could I somehow come to give the sequel trilogy enough lenience that it takes a rightful place with the six core saga films that came before?  Yeah.  Yeah, I could.  And I think that many if not most of the Star Wars fans put off by the sequels - and there are loads of them - could accept the sequels.  But not like this.  They treasure this mythology too much than to accept second or third best.  And Disney erred grievously when it took those fans for granted and saw their wallets more than their hearts.

If the rumors are anywhere accurate, there is a cut of The Rise of Skywalker that is a true chapter of the Star Wars saga.  A film that addresses the problems of its immediate predecessors and not only complements them, it makes them better.

I hope that rumor is a true one.  Because if Star Wars has taught us anything, it is that nothing is beyond redemption.

EDIT 09/14/2020:  Had a moment of realization this morning.  Obi-Wan Kenobi said that a ship the size of a TIE Fighter could not get so far out into space on its own.  Yet in the sequel trilogy we see TIEs swooping in and out of lightspeed all the time.  They even follow the Millennium Falcon, aka "the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy".  What kind of consistency is THAT?!?!?

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Unreliable Narrator, or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Sequel Trilogy

Many of you  by now are hearing the rumors: that Kathleen Kennedy is on the way out as matriarch of the Star Wars franchise.  That the operation will soon be run by either Jon Favreau or Dave Filoni.  That the entire sequel trilogy is going to be scrapped and "re-made".

Personally, I doubt that last one is going to happen.  Because I can't but think of all the little girls I've seen dressed as Rey for the premiere of the past few Star Wars movies.  Rey is a true heroine to them.  Heck, she is for me too.  But especially to young girls who look to Rey as a role model.  Not I or anyone else should take that away from them.  Besides, Star Wars was ripe for a female character on par with Luke Skywalker and young Obi-Wan Kenobi.  Rey fits the role perfectly.

But I won't deny that the sequel trilogy is the worst of the three.  I first had a bad feeling about this when it became clear that too much of The Last Jedi was going to be spent on the Resistance fleet fleeing from the First Order.  And then Snoke getting killed.  And then the reveal that the enemy of The Rise Of Skywalker would be a resurrected Emperor Palpatine...

I've had a theory for many years.  It's about Star Trek, the original series.  So many episodes of that show are timeless classics.  And then there were the utterly hokey ones like "Spock's Brain".  You know, the episode where aliens run off with Spock's gray matter so it can serve as the new computer running their indoor plumbing.

How hokey can you get?  But it begs the question: did the over-ridiculous premise of the episode disqualify it from being canon?  Because it just doesn't seem, you know... "Star Trek"-ish.

I've a solution to that.  How the bad Trek can co-exist with the good.  Those episodes are actually fake captain's log entries that James Kirk made when at times he was feeling extra bored.  And then decades if not centuries later the data dump of the U.S.S. Enterprise is being researched by historians who don't know any better.  And they find the stuff about the brain stealers and the space Nazis and whatever else and they assume that those things "really" happened.  When in fact it was just Kirk having his fun.

That's my theory and I'm sticking by it.

So what bearing does that have on a post about Star Wars?

I've re-watched The Rise Of Skywalker at least a dozen times now since it became available on iTunes and then Blu-ray and now on Disney+, and... how should I put this?  It's frustrating the heck out of me.  Part of me likes it.  Part of me is "meh" about it but the larger part of me can't stop thinking how much makes no sense.  Like travel times through hyperspace: it shouldn't be that instantaneous.  And how Palpatine is brought back so late into the entire saga.  A lot of small issues that accumulate.  Plenty enough of them lingering from the previous film The Last Jedi.

And now... I sadly lament that the Star Wars sequel trilogy - episodes 7, 8, and 9 - are the weakest of the entire series.  When they should have rivaled the original trilogy in greatness.

But then something hit me.  And this is going back a ways...

George Lucas was saying as early as 1982 how the entire Star Wars saga was one story being told by the droids Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio.  It was the tale of the Skywalker Family, being shared with the Whills: a mysterious sect that among other things recorded the history of the galaxy.  And their collection of such stories became "The Journal of the Whills": something that Lucas later described was a larger work of which Star Wars "was just a piece".

Let's assume that was and is and ever shall remain George Lucas' notion about how the story of the core Star Wars legend came about.  We can be assured that hundreds of years after the events of the Skywalker saga, Artoo and Threepio are passing it along to the Whills.  We can trust their word.  They were THERE during that time.  They saw it all happen.  Especially Artoo.  At least, they saw everything from The Phantom Menace through Return Of The Jedi.

But did Artoo and Threepio necessarily witness the later events with such clarity?

No.  They did not.  Apart from traveling aboard the Millennium Falcon during Rey's search for Luke Skwyalker, Artoo went nowhere.  He had been in near-total shutdown for years prior to Rey and Finn's arrival.  And Threepio?  He certainly wasn't off on any cosmic adventure.  Not without his little blue buddy.  Threepio was just hanging around the Resistance base, in Leia's company.

It can be safely assumed that the true chronicle of that part of the Skywalker legend ended with Return Of The Jedi or thereabouts.

So does that mean the sequel trilogy is all trash?  Nope.  Not at all.

Because there was another droid who was witnessing those events.  From the first moments of The Force Awakens, BB-8 was an active and integral part of the sequel trilogy.  And we can rest assured that he chronicled as best he could the larger events around him.

The thing is, BB-8 might well be what is termed an "unreliable narrator".  And if he is sharing his knowledge with Artoo and Threepio (who go on to share it with the Whills) it may not be entirely accurate.  BB-8 is a plucky little droid but he seems confused at times.  Maybe he has a circuit burn out in his memory, as a friend has suggested.  Maybe he's just in way over his cute lil' head.  However it is, BB-8's accounting of history might be severely handicapped when compared to that of Artoo and Threepio.  Those two have a counterpart-level base of understanding.  They are check-summing and error-correcting each other.  BB-8 has no such advantage.  And so it is that, sadly, BB-8's recording of many details is spotty at best.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that BB-8's part in the chronicle is ALL bad.  In a general sense his chronicle is accurate.  And if he tells Artoo that Rey goes to Tatooine to bury Luke and Leia's sabers and that she assumes the Skywalker surname, we can be confident that's what really happened.

It also allows for a lot of leeway of interpretation.  Snoke?  He could have been "made" by Palpatine.  He could also have been some Dark Side shlub who existed long before Palpatine was even born (and The Last Jedi novelization indicates that he was).  Hyperspace travel?  That's BB-8's interpretation of what he was told by Rey and others.  The casino?  Okay we can take BB-8 at his word that's what happened.  There are dozens of elements of the sequel trilogy that defy logic... unless we can accept that they're being conveyed by an unreliable narrator.

I put it to the test.  I re-watched The Last Jedi and The Rise Of Skywalker, per my new paradigm.  And lo and behold it works.  It really, honestly works!  The sequel trilogy is much more palatable now.  After fanwanking my synapses to the breaking point trying to "suss it all out" with the problems of the final three movies, suddenly there is a silver bullet for it all.

But in a funny way, I can still accept the quirks and at times misfires of the sequel trilogy as being part and parcel with being true Star Wars films, even without having BB-8's flaws being the cause of it all.  Because in the end, Star Wars is a legend.  And legends are rarely if ever clean cut affairs.  They don't need to be, either.

It's just that it's nice now to have a reason to accept the sequels as belonging with the other six movies after all.

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About Snoke and THE RISE OF SKYWALKER...

WARNING:  This post deals with matters pertaining to Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, which hit theaters less than 48 hours ago.  There WILL be spoilers openly discussed so if you aren't one to have the experience of seeing the movie for yourself ruined for you (take the hint: go see it, now now now!) don't read what I'm about to write.  It is ONLY for those who have already seen The Rise of Skywalker and want to discuss a fairly major element of that movie and the entire "sequel" trilogy as a whole.

No, seriously.  I mean it.  Stop reading if you don't want The Rise of Skywalker spoiled for you.

Still here?

Okay, let it be on your own head.  Here we go...

Let's talk about Snoke.  The late Supreme Leader of the First Order who was infamously bisected by his main boy Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi.  And if your reaction was anything like mine during that opening night screening, you probably saw Snoke's upper torso crumple onto the floor and right as the lightsaber lands in Rey's hand you were thinking "NOW what?!  Where is this going?!"

Snoke's death was the last thing we were expecting.  I think in our collective mind we knew Snoke was going to be the ultimate baddie of the sequel trilogy and maybe, somehow, the master nemesis of the entire Star Wars saga from The Phantom Menace on through (that was my expectation anyway).  Instead we had those expectations subverted by Rian Johnson.  Maybe that's why there's so much disdain for The Last Jedi: many wanted it to go the way they demanded it go.  But I digress...

Very early in The Rise of Skywalker Kylo Ren uses a Sith artifact to locate Exegol, a lost planet of the Sith.  Seems that Palpatine's voice broadcasting from a pirate radio station has spooked the galaxy.  Kylo wants to shut it down so he goes looking for the source.  He finds Palpatine: more than a mere clone, less than the man he had been when we last saw him in Return of the Jedi.  And Palpatine greets Kylo with "Snoke has taught you well."

Kylo declares that he killed Snoke and took his place.  Palpatine responds by revealing some canned Snokes floating in big jars, driving the point that Snoke had been a created being all along that had been used by Palpatine.

Heh.  Okay.  Not what many of us were expecting.  I could accept that.  Maybe.

The thing is, Snoke being created by Palpatine doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't jibe whatsoever with established canon. Not one bit.

The precise details of Snoke's life have not been divulged but we are aware of some things.  That he watched the fall of the Republic from afar is one of them (The Force Awakens novelization).  That Snoke was apparently sensed by Palpatine shortly before the Battle of Endor (a number of sources).  That Snoke had at least one other apprentice before Kylo Ren.  That Snoke was fascinated by the Light Side of the Force just as he was about the Dark Side (does that sound like any Sith to you?).  That Snoke apparently had encountered Luke Skywalker before.  That Snoke had long been a collector of arcane lore and artifacts (The Last Jedi novelization).  That the Imperials who became the First Order would have perished without Snoke finding them and guiding them into the Unknown Regions where he "unexpectedly" became their Supreme Leader.  That Snoke's twisted and deformed body came about because of "injuries from battle" as revealed by Snoke portrayer Andy Serkis..

None of these and more allow for any margin other than Snoke already existing before the events of The Phantom Menace and possibly much further back than that.  Snoke is already ancient and not even in the at-times ridiculous nature of Star Wars lore can someone get retro-actively cloned.

Chronologically, the numbers just don't add up.  The history doesn't work out.

And yet, Palpatine more than just knows about Snoke.  He also has clones of Snoke in his possession.

So here's my own take, no doubt one of a jillion and a half floating around already.  It's how it's worked out in my head based on what we've come to know:

I believe that Snoke was indeed his own person.  For most of his existence anyway.  He must have been.  It's the only way to reconcile his history (what little we know of it) with the officially established canon lore.  Snoke really was out there all along, watching the Republic wane and fall and seeing the Empire rise in its place.

It is a classic trope of evil: that it can never truly create.  It can only corrupt.  Consider the works of Tolkien for a moment.  The orcs weren't created out of whole cloth.  They had originally been Elves, captured by Morgoth then tortured and twisted and bred into an obscenity of life in service to shadow.  And corruption is the number-one weapon of Palpatine's arsenal.  He corrupted and manipulate the Republic.  He corrupted the creation of the clone army.  He corrupted Anakin.  He tried to corrupt Luke.  As now seen in The Rise of Skywalker he tried and failed to corrupt his own granddaughter.

For Palpatine to create Snoke as a meat puppet doesn't fit his modus operandi.  It kinda violates it, to be honest.

Palpatine never created anything under his own power.  But he often did take something that already existed, and then polluted it with his own dark schemes.

For that reason alone, I can't buy the notion that Palpatine just created Snoke from scratch.  As the clones of the Army of the Republic derived from the template of one man, so too was Snoke (if that really was a clone all along) generated from someone who lived and breathed of his own accord.  And that's the best that Palpatine could have done with Snoke.  So if Palpatine did clone Snoke, it happened sometime between the end of the Empire during that thirty-years interval between the Battle of Endor and the events of The Force Awakens.

There is another possibility: that Palpatine had clones of Snoke made but for whatever reason didn't use them.  And so that was "Snoke Prime" that Kylo Ren cut to pieces.

Which lends itself to an interesting theory: that Snoke - if he was a force of evil unto himself - was corrupted by Palpatine.  Maybe without even knowing it.  The most powerful wielder of the Dark Side at the time of The Force Awakens, himself being a puppet on a string with no idea whatsoever that he was being manipulated.  And suddenly Palpatine really does become the ultimate "man behind the curtain", plotting wheels within wheels of schemes that none but he can grasp.

Which, in my mind, makes Palpatine a far more dangerous and formidable enemy than anything we had suspected he could have been capable of.

So yeah: Snoke already existed long before Palpatine.  He found and warped Ben Solo into becoming Kylo Ren.  Snoke however was being played with by Palpatine during the era of the First Order.  And when Snoke was no longer needed, Palpatine maniuplated Kylo into killing Snoke.  Snoke was crushed by his true secret master, just as Han Solo warned Ben that he would be crushed by Snoke.

What's with the Snoke clones then?  Who knows.  Backup puppets?  Something further to play Kylo's mind with?  Darth Sidious/Palpatine has lied before in order to get what he wants.  Who's to say he's not lying when he spoke of Snoke to Kylo Ren?

Or maybe it's none of these at all.  Maybe it's not supposed to be.

Perhaps it is merely nothing more or less than one more mystery from the Star Wars saga, that we will eternally be debating and dissecting and having heated arguments over, before shaking hands as fans and acknowledging that we'll never get a straight answer that satisfies us completely.

In that case, then The Rise of Skywalker indeed failed to tie up all the knots.  It gave us a whole new one to unravel.  We aren't going to solve this one.  But that's fine.  It's okay.  Because what is life without mysteries that we will never understand?

If so, then The Rise of Skywalker truly is a perfect capstone of what has come before in epic tale of the Skywalker family.

It is, in every way, a film worthy of Star Wars.

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World Premiere: "Snoke Is Just A Gigolo"

It's Supreme Leader Snoke set to "Just A Gigolo" by David Lee Roth! You'll never look at your Star Wars action figures the same way again...



The idea has been accreting throughout my neurons since at least April. Guess I had no choice but to do something about it. Made on my iPad Pro, took about 11 hours not counting breaks for dinner and playing with Tammy the Pup. Finished just before 4 this morning.

Dear Dave and Disney: please don't sue me!!!!!

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Star Wars: Making sense (?!?) of THE LAST JEDI internal timeline

Okay, this is probably going to fanwank me into utter oblivion but since today is the quasi-holiday of May the Fourth and in light of the festivities here are some thoughts - that have been nagging at a lot of us these past few months - about Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi...

Taken at face value the internal chronology makes little to NO sense whatsoever. There is ENORMOUS incongruity between the events of the Rey and Luke, and the Resistance fleet, and Finn and Rose, and even Kylo Ren and Snoke. And it's bugged the mynocks out of me... until I began studying this film alongside The Force Awakens and now... it kinda jibes pretty well after all.

(Mind ya though, these are the words of a maniac who once upon a time composed a mini-doctoral thesis explaining away midi-chlorians. So parse all of this as you may.)

The key is bearing in mind what the opening crawl of The Last Jedi tells us from the very start: the First Order has struck across the galaxy. In the aftermath of the destruction of Starkiller Base, Snoke isn't playing in the shadows anymore. He's laying ALL his cards on the table and the First Order has come out of the Unknown Regions to take the galaxy in a cosmic blitzkrieg. As crazy as it sounds, the First Order is apparently more powerful militarily than the Empire was, if it's being able to assault the former Republic worlds on all fronts. This was sadly understated across the span of the film (though I suspect it will be emphasized in Episode 9).

This did not transpire instantaneously after Rey left the Resistance base to find Luke. In fact, it was likely several days between her departure and the First Order fleet's arrival at D'Qar. Snoke was taking his time coordinating the invasion of the civilized galaxy. It was also during this time that Kylo Ren was recovering from the wounds he received from the duel in the forest on Starkiller Base (and that hit in the leg from Chewie's bowcaster). General Hux had to rendezvous with the Supremacy and Kylo got bacta treatment, stitched etc. before appearing before Snoke. That all takes time.

Meanwhile, some days after leaving the Resistance base, Rey arrives at Ahch-To and finds Luke Skywalker. And she is NOT going to persuade him quickly by any measure to get back into the fight. It's likely, given the changes in weather and time of day, that she spends a number of days following Luke around the island.

And that is a beautiful thing, actually. This is a common motif in the story of master and apprentice: the aspiring student having to demonstrate patience and tenacity and a refusal to surrender, until at last the master takes him or her on as an apprentice. As Rey told Luke, she has seen his daily routine: intimating that she has had time to understand how he spends his time in self-imposed exile.

So again, there are several days between Rey's departure and when Luke acquiesces and concurrently several days between the First Order's galaxy-wide assault and its arrival at D'Qar. Why didn't Snoke come out and hit the Resistance immediately? Well, for all how they have just broken his new toy, he still considers them a minor nuisance at best in the greater scheme of things. The bigger threat is Skywalker returning and that's not necessarily something to be solved with all-out military action. So the First Order is taking its time. And only when it is unavoidably clear that the First Order is en route does Leia begin a proper evacuation. Which underscores why there wasn't frantic fleeing from the base at the end of The Force Awakens.

And when the First Order does arrive, it is several MORE days possibly between the jump into hyperspace by the Resistance fleet and its arrival on the outskirts of the Crait system. And it's not long after that when the Supremacy and its entourage arrives. And so begins the long slow pursuit across realspace.

(Kylo enters Snoke's chambers after he's sufficiently recovered, which is after the battle at D'Qar. Again, a clue that The Last Jedi's series of events are more protracted out than is initially assumed ).

So why didn't the First Order simply sent a second task force to jump in front of the Resistance ships and end them all there? Two reasons. The first is that the First Order has committed ALL its military resources to attack systems of the former New Republic. Likely a reinforcement for the pursuit of the  Resistance couldn't be spared.

More likely though: Snoke is being cruel. Making Leia and her comrades suffer the agony of knowing they've limited fuel, limited time, limited life left to them. It's prolonged psychological sadism and Snoke is reveling in it. He's enjoying every moment of this crawl across space, picking the Resistance fleet off one vessel at a time.

Now here is the wild supposition on my part. I've a sense that Finn and Rose were off to Canto Bight and back in much longer than within 18 hours.

How it works out fuel-wise for the Resistance fleet, I can't explain unless that was their overall optimum fuel supply before hitting reserves (which has a real world analogy, by the way). Finn and Rose and Poe must have figured that there was some time afforded them though, 'cuz there sure doesn't seem to be utter desperation on their part. I mean, Rose takes time to admire the fathiers racing, fercryinoutloud! So again, possibly a few days travel to Canto Bight, finding the Master Codebreaker (or someone loosely approximating him) and then getting aboard the Supremacy.

It was during the time that the Resistance fleet was in hyperspace on the way to Crait and then for much of Finn and Rose's mission that Luke was teaching Rey, and also Rey and Kylo Ren's "communion" through the Force. And it was a number of days after Rey abandoned Luke before the Millennium Falcon dropped her off in an escape pod to be captured by the First Order. When she is taken captive, at that same time Finn and Rose and DJ are infiltrating the Supremacy to find the hyperspace tracking device.

And it is at this point that the separate chronologies of the film at last convene and take place simultaneously. Everyone is at Crait and the final moves of this chapter of the saga begin to play out.

Between Rey and Chewie and Artoo taking off on the Falcon in the final minutes of The Force Awakens and that coming together of all the elements in The Last Jedi, there could have been a week or even TWO weeks or more of "story time".

But, it really doesn't matter in the end. Star Wars is after all a legend. And no legend is without the quality of being protean and open to interpretation.

Just my two Republic credits...

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When the odds are against you, remember Luke

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Sequels, Side Stories, Social Justice... A NEW Star Wars Post!

STAR WARS, n.

A never-ending epic mythology loved by many, would be betrayed and killed for by everybody, and is agreed upon by none.

-- from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce (1906),

    appended to by Christopher Knight (2018)

The Force Awakens.  Rogue One.  The Last Jedi.  And in six short weeks Solo...

Clearly, much has happened in the past two and a half years since this blogger - said by some to be more enthusiastic than might be healthy - has posted anything at all about Star Wars.  And that last time was about The Star Wars Holiday Special!

Little wonder that a few had written e-mails asking if I was still alive or if I had gone Amish or something.

Happily, I can sincerely report that my love for the Star Wars saga is still there.  As much as it ever was.  It's been part of my life since childhood and someday many decades from now I plan on making everyone giggle at my funeral by being laid out in my Jedi Knight costume.  I lived as a fan and I'm going out as a fan.

However, that's not to say that some things about this mythology, now firmly in the hands of Disney, are beyond concern and commentary.  Writing as I am now, with three new Stars Wars films just since November of 2015 and a fourth incoming (which will finally push the number of the franchise's movies into the double digits and we are NOT counting that "Clone Wars" animated movie) there is a sense of fresh perspective to approach from.  So let's punch it!

The Sequel Trilogy

"This will begin to make things right," Lor San Tekka tells Poe Dameron with the first spoken words of The Force Awakens.  Was he speaking about the situation of the galaxy now thirty years past the events of Return of the Jedi?  Or was it a sly jab at the prequels: a trilogy panned by many... and not without reason... as being when Star Wars went off the rails?  Whether it was Michael Arndt, J.J. Abrams or Lawrence Kasdan who wrote that line, he must have had a giggle-fit while typing it.

But for whatever reason, the sequel trilogy so far seems to have galvanized many against Star Wars more than the prequels ever did.  And I can't understand that.  Not at all.  Because so far that has happened... the sequels are proceeding EXACTLY as George Lucas meant for them to go!

Way, waaaay back in the day when Episode VI was still being branded as "Revenge of the Jedi", Lucas described in interviews with Reader's Digest and a few other outlets that the Star Wars saga would someday have nine films total.  That after he finished Return of the Jedi that work would begin on Episodes 1 through 3 and then years after that would come the final trilogy.  That one would be about an older Luke, who even then Lucas was noting wouldn't be in the story at the very beginning.  Lucas emphasized that there was to be one ubiquitous thread through the tapestry he was weaving: the droid duo of Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio.  The droids were witnessing this vast story unfold around them, and even at times play critical roles in the tale.  And someday far into the future they would be sharing the entirety of the Skywalker family's adventures with others who would be recording the story and pass it along to others.  Artoo and Threepio were the ciphers through which we would witness this grand epic.

Sometime later, around the early Nineties or so, before the official announcement came out of LucasFilm that writing had begun on Episode 1, George Lucas said something else.  That the then still-planned sequel trilogy would be more "philosophical" than the previous films had been.  That they would be about the concept of power, and what it means to have it and wield it.  The sequel trilogy was also intended to delve deeper into the Force as a concept.  To dissect and examine the Light and Dark sides as had never been done before.

How is this not what the sequel trilogy has been thus far?  Because it seems pretty on track to me.

We know that Lucas' original plot for the sequel trilogy as he gave to Disney at the time of the acquisition was scrapped in large part. But that doesn't mean the themes and motifs he was aiming for were chucked out also.  It would surprise me if Lucas didn't have a large role in consulting about the sequel trilogy.  It's HIS story, after all.  No one knows about where it was headed toward better than he.  In years or even decades to come it will probably come out that he had a bigger hand in the sequels than many would express approval for at this time.  But sooner than later, when it's all spread out before us and we can see the ebb and flow of the Skywalker Family across the span of seventy-some years of story time, it will make sense.  I have faith in that.

So, The Force Awakens was much better than I had anticipated, and it has only grown on me with repeated viewings.  And then came The Last Jedi: the film that schismed the fanbase as few thi... okay as nothing had before, including Jar Jar and those ridiculous midichlorians.

Lemme just go ahead and say it: The Last Jedi is the greatest Star Wars film since The Empire Strikes Back and in time I believe it will be widely renowned as THE best of the series by far unless Episode 9 supplants it.

Rian Johnson didn't play it safe at all.  He incinerated the garden.  Then he burned down the house for good measure.  Sometimes you have to destroy utterly so that you can rebuild and grow and make it better.  "Let the past die, kill it if you have to".  It was time to let Star Wars grow and blossom into something it had never been before but was always meant to be.  And that wasn't possible if it was still clinging to our own expectations.  This is a multi-generational saga of a kind that has never been done in American cinema before or perhaps ANY cinema at all.  But it has to be allowed to evolve and burst forth.  To not be the domain of one or two generations of fans but to belong to ALL of us.  And that's the meaning of the final scene in The Last Jedi: that beautiful moment where the children at the fathier stables are playing with makeshift dolls of Luke Skywalker.  And that one kid uses the Force to nonchalantly grab his broom before looking up at the night sky in wonder and hope...

That would have been the PERFECT final scene for Episode 9.  But it also punctuated Luke Skywalker's character arc and its appropriate ending: as the legend he was always meant to be.  Flawed though he was, Luke rose above that and become something greater.  Something far more powerful than he could have been as the failed and fallen Jedi exile.  In his final act, Luke understands and accepts the choice of Obi-Wan Kenobi decades earlier.
Would we have dared rob him of that, because of our insistence that Luke fit to our own demands of narrative?

Is The Last Jedi a perfect movie?  No.  There are problems I have about its sense of internal chronology (something I might make a separate post about soon).  But it accomplishes what needed to happen for this saga to be something that would be passed down to and appreciated by our children, and our children's children.  And I absolutely must tip my hat to Rian Johnson for having the guts to do that.

By the way, for what it's worth: my Snoke theory sucked, too!

The Standalone Films and New Trilogies

Opening night of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story for me was a cinema on the outskirts of San Diego.  Unfortunately it was the first time ever that I had seen a Star Wars movie at a theater without the company of any friends.  However I like to think that I made some new friends in the hour or so before the projector cranked up.  The Lord does provide, it seems...

Rogue One demonstrates how good the Star Wars franchise can be from here on out if it's allowed to take risks.  Yes, it was about the stolen plans for the Death Star.  But from that one bit of line from the opening crawl of A New Hope Gareth Edwards and his team painted into being, with strokes both bold and fine, a vista perhaps grander than any we've seen on this magnificent canvas.  It was dark, and mature, and unforgiving... and it wasn't afraid to let people we fast came to care about die.  Rogue One was the Star Wars movie that emphasized war in all its savage and gritty horror.  Star Wars needed that, more than it realized.  And that nightmarish moment when those poor Rebels hear the mechanized breathing down that blackened corridor and the red saber ignites...

I kid you not: the whole heapin' theater went BERZERK with screams of terror.  So many of us left the premiere screening with a "thousand yard stare", in stunned disbelief at the butchery we had witnessed.  And that is when I knew: Rogue One succeeded.

Now, we aren't quite at Solo yet.  That's coming next month.  And I can barely believe it either, how much I am NOT enthused about this next film.  Maybe it's the tumultuous production history that's plagued it.  Maybe it's simply that it's not a story that necessarily needs to be told.  But based on the past few trailers, I'm beginning to be hopeful.  It will likely be the first Star Wars film that I won't catch on opening day, but that's okay.  I'm hoping to see it together with friends that weekend though... and that matters more.

My criticism here is that Disney has set a precedent for Star Wars stories beyond the nine episodes of the Skywalker saga.  But by no means should ALL the Star Wars films to come be tethered to that core epic.  It's a big galaxy.  It's a big HISTORY: some 25,000 years of lore and it's barely been scratched into.  If Disney is afraid of lack of marketability with new characters removed from the Skywalker storyline, it shouldn't be.  Well into The Force Awakens I found that Rey, Finn, Poe and Kylo Renn, though I had known nothing at all about them... they had become characters I was genuinely feeling for and empathizing with.  By the time Han and Chewie showed up, I had accepted Rey and the others as being as much a part of this saga as any other character.

There are a lot of stories to tell in that galaxy far, far away.  Across a massive geography and span of eons.  Given how well he did with The Last Jedi, I'm looking forward to what Rian Johnson can show us with his new trilogy.  However...

Saga Over-Saturation

Let me be blunt: I'm afraid that we are getting too much Star Wars WAY too fast.  For so long we went three years between new Star Wars movies.  And then it was sixteen years between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace.  Come a little over a month from now we will have had FOUR new Star Wars motion pictures in less than two and a half years!

Is it too much too soon?

It's not an uncommon concern.  Many longtime die-hard fans are wondering if cranking out Star Wars movies so rapidly is a wise tactic on the part of Disney.  If the toy sales related to The Last Jedi are any indication, there is a fatigue that is setting in.  At 12:01 this morning the new merchandise for Solo: A Star Wars Story went on sale.  I'm going to venture to say that the Solo stuff is going to be the worst selling in Star Wars history.  And it won't be a reflection on the film itself so much as it is how TIRING it is to be assaulted with Star Wars on what is now practically a nonstop basis.

I'd rather have GOOD Star Wars, than to have Star Wars NOW.  Moderation and delayed gratification are great virtues to adopt.  One film a year, every Christmas holiday season, would be plenty.  Perhaps without ever intending to, Disney established a wonderful holiday tradition for all to share and enjoy when they released The Force Awakens and then Rogue One in December.  The Last Jedi continued the tradition and ideally Solo should have been the entry for 2018.

Much the same can be said of Disney's plans for Star Wars in television (maybe I'll finally catch up on Star Wars: Rebels soon.  So much Star Wars, so little time...).  If there are one or two concurrent series, there shouldn't be much fatigue in that (I mean hey, CBS has how many CSI shows now?!).  But if I have to someday load onto my iPad Pro the app for the Disney Star Wars Channel - 27 different series for $9.99 a month - I'm gonna say "forget THAT!"

Remember Disney: we want GOOD Star Wars, not necessarily a LOT of Star Wars.

Diversity and Social Justice Agendas

This is the big one that worries me.

It completely mystifies me: the kerfluffle about Rey and Finn and Poe and Rose and Holdo and pretty much ALL the Rogue One team members...
Some are angry that casting in Star Wars has become "politically correct".  Some are complaining that Star Wars isn't "diverse enough".  And I can't understand either.

Maybe it comes from growing up on a dairy farm in rural North Carolina.  As a young child, my life was filled with so many different people.  It didn't even occur to me that I was "white" and some were "black" and that some were "hispanic".  They were simply people.  Just individuals.  And when I saw The Empire Strikes Back at age six I never saw Lando Calrissian as a "black man".  Even that young I saw that Lando was a unique and complex person who was stuck in a very bad situation.  He was a good man who had been compelled to do something bad and it was because he was looking out for others and not himself.  But was he a "black man" doing that?  Not to me.  He was a man though.

That's not good enough today.  Now we have to fill a social agenda quota: make "so many black" and "so many female" and whatever.  And then there are those who despise the fact that the main hero of the sequel trilogy is a girl.

And it is all completely bollocks.

I don't know how else to put this, but here it goes.  In the Star Wars galaxy there are NO black people.  There are NO white people.  There are NO Asians.  There are NO hispanics.  Whatever planet humanity hails from in that universe, Europe and Asia and Africa are long forgotten if they existed at all.  Those are PEOPLE, dammit!  And to pick this one out and that one out as "examples of racial diversity" is to insult too much of what Star Wars is supposed to be.  We are supposed to be focused on these characters' qualities of virtue and integrity and moral being, not their skin color.

Huh.  Seems that Martin Luther King Jr. had something to say about that once upon a time.

It shouldn't matter what color is the skin of the actors and actresses, or where they come from on Earth.  The question is: are these actors and actresses the RIGHT ones to fill the roles?  It's the good of the story that matters, not any "special interests".

And so far as Rey is concerned: seems that roughly half the population of humanity is female.  And there has been a male character at the forefront of every episode in this saga until now.  Let the ladies have their turn.  They have statistics on their side.

As I said before: I want good Star Wars.  I want Star Wars to be something for everyone.  But it cannot be everything for everyone.  And therein rests the greatest peril to this galaxy far, far away.

Star Wars is a mythology about ideas.  It is not meant to be, and never should be, about ideologies.  And though it hasn't occurred in the film series itself yet, there are already indications that the saga may be taken down paths it should never venture toward.  A "quick and easy way", as Yoda might have cautioned.

So, let's get to the heartmeat of the matter...

I and many others were appalled by Chuck Wendig's Aftermath novel trilogy, which takes place following the events of Return of the Jedi.  They are by a country lightyear the absolutely worst literature of the new Star Wars canon and Wendig insinuated (in a blog post so laden with profanity and raw hatred that in a sane world he should never again be allowed to write for the franchise) that all of the bad reviews that Aftermath received were because "bigots" didn't aprove of his social agenda in that novel and its two followups.

No, Aftermath wasn't given bad reviews because anyone was "a bigot".  Aftermath and its sequels were given bad reviews because the plot was terrible, the characters were cardboard-thin, the dialogue was abominable, there were too many elements from our real world that ripped us out of the suspension of disbelief (playing Settlers of Catan, seriously?), there was an ignorance of science that would be unforgivable in ANY fantasy setting (a single comet spawns an entire asteroid field?  That must have been one big-ass comet...), that what should have been the thrilling Battle of Jakku was turned into a dreary bore.  It was as if an A-list director had been given a hundred million dollar budget to remake Tora! Tora! Tora! and instead made a film about the Pearl Harbor Post Office.

But since it's been brought up...

Aftermath's many flaws were exponentially magnified by Wendig deciding that he would turn Star Wars into a platform for his own social justice agenda.  

Which did nothing whatsoever to alleviate that myriad of flaws which would have been there regardless.  Perhaps if he had been subtle about it.  That particular issue has been touched upon a number of times in what is now considered to be the "Legends" brand: that vast body of work once and still so lovingly referred to as the "Expanded Universe".  It was not anything remarkably new.

But Wendig was hellbent on shoving his own agenda into the faces of those he disagreed with.  People who only came to his books because they trusted him to give them a good solid Star Wars story that would respect them as fans.  He did not do that however.  And based on the rantings and ravings he posted on his blog, Chuck Wendig seems to have a very real and visceral hatred of those who do not believe as he does on some matters.  Just as the Dark Side always does, be it there or in our real world, that hatred within him corrupted his work.

That must never be allowed to happen to the Star Wars franchise as a whole.  And perhaps Disney will have learned something from allowing a propagandist to contribute canon to the saga.

I don't want Star Wars to be a "liberal" mouthpiece.  I don't want Star Wars to be a "conservative" mouthpiece either.  Or for it to be a stage from which to be pro-Christian or pro-atheist or in support of this party or that party... Star Wars is supposed to be BETTER than that.  It's supposed to be something timeless and to harness it to temporal causes, regardless of ideology, would tear apart the greater core of what makes Star Wars so dear to people of all races and creeds and perspectives.

Star Wars should never, ever become a political platform.  Star Wars should never, ever become a social engineering platform.  It shouldn't be co-opted into becoming a stamp of approval or endorsement for anything of our fleeting temporal concerns.  Star Wars is about the heart of the human condition and the universal truths of wisdom and folly, of good and evil.  It belongs to "them": to those who will come after.  When we make it about "us", we are depriving them of some of that.  Maybe even depriving them of all of it.

Maybe Disney wasn't fazed by one author going off the reservation like that.  But the films are an entirely different affair.

Because one of the riskiest things that ANY business can do, at all, is to involve itself in politics.  Because doing so puts the customer base in jeopardy.  Dick's Sporting Goods is learning that even now: sales at its stores have plummeted since the company joined in with the recent matter of gun purchases.  Target has taken a ginormous retail hit in recent years after announcing policies regarding restrooms.  And the half-empty (often worse) stadiums this past season are testament to the "success" of the National Football League making a social agenda more important than kicking a pigskin.

Disney's own ESPN should be sufficient warning: honk off most of your audience and there WILL be a price to pay.

Without remarking upon any issue at all, one way or another, I must make this observation and Disney would do well to consider it.  See that ginormous swath of red across America from this past election?  That's where most of the people who buy tickets to Star Wars movies are from.  Those are also where most of the families that buy Star Wars toys and clothing and books and posters and video games live.  Yeah, there are plenty of Star Wars fans in those blue enclaves along the coasts and in the northeastern United States and around the metro areas... but the red is where most of the action is at.  That big burning crimson is where most of those billions and billions of dollars in merchandising sales alone are being generated from.

That is not a judgment against anybody.   That being said, I can genuinely attest that very, very few of those families would buy action figures of characters who were engaged in some kind of behavior that is in dire opposition to sincere convictions and beliefs about right and wrong.  And it would decimate or worse the overseas market for Star Wars.

That isn't what fans of Star Wars want or deserve.  They... we... want something we can share and enjoy in common, no matter what our stance and vision and notions might be in this real world.  Inflicting the real world so blatantly into this saga out of selfish ideological interest would ruin Star Wars for all.  It would be worse than the proverbial killing the goose that laid the golden egg.  It would be LITERALLY killing whatever that is laying the golden eggs.

Somehow, I like to think that Disney knows and appreciates that.

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