star wars

Chris Knight's avatar
Well, they sure showed me.

Toward the end of Solo, there is a brief scene with Emilia Clarke’s character Qi’ra.  And maybe it shocked the audience and made jaws hit the floor but for me it was much more upheaving.

Without spoiling for anyone who hasn’t seen this movie yet, let’s just say that one of the reasons I haven’t written anything about the Star Wars animated series The Clone Wars and Rebels is because I have seen very little of them.  Not only because there was lack of time to adequately invest myself into those shows but primarily that I hadn’t taken them seriously at all.  And at the heartmeat of the matter is one character.  No offense meant to Dave Filoni but the moment they announced this person was getting injected into The Clone Wars I lost all interest in that show and then again in
...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar
The first epic matchup of Saturday Night Massacres ended this past weekend.  With 62% of the vote Robin Hood decisively out-archered Katniss Everdeen for the rabbit dinner!  Not a bad way to kick off this bi-weekly battle across the multiverse.
But hot on its heels is a contest that no doubt a BUNCH of y’all out there will be wanting to cast a ballot in…
The Setting:
Big and Little Enos must get the shipment to the big rally for Zaphod Beeblebrox. Unfortunately taking Coors outside the Solar System is bootlegging and highly illegal. And Bandit’s rig is strictly two-dimensional. The Burdettes have no choice but to cut deals with two seasoned pros in the art of stellar smuggling. First to deliver their cargo of beer to Zaphod in less than 24 hours wins the cash!!
That’s right folks: Han Solo and Peter Quill are taking it to the starlanes to see who
...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Had to get a few supplies yesterday and on a lark I went to the Star Wars toys to ogle the stuff from the upcoming Solo movie.  The timing was fortuitous apparently because some fresh figures had just been put on the pegs including… gasp!… one of the new Supreme Leader Snoke 3.75 scale figs!

“AYYYYYY ain’t got no-BAAAH-day!”

Ever since The Force Awakens I’ve been wanting a Snoke action figure.  Most of my own Star Wars collection got sold a few years ago before I left North Carolina.  The thing about collecting Star Wars: you don’t need to get everything.  Just whatever interests you.  Some collect nothing but Artoo-Detoo memorabilia, others for Yoda and some are into Darth Vader.  Snoke has intrigued me from the moment I saw him and now my new collection is complete for now.

But in all seriousness…

EVERY time I see a ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar
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
...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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
...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

It was on this night in 1978 that The Star Wars Holiday Special – arguably the WORST two-hours of television in history – aired on CBS.

Y’all won’t buh-LEEEVE what is going on here.

So in honor of this misauspicious occasion and thanks to some poor tortured soul on YouTube, here it is (absent some music for copyright purposes):

It’s all here: Chewbacca’s son Lumpy, Mark Hamill’s make-up overkill, Princess Leia’s singing, Boba Fett’s first-ever appearance (the special’s one redeeming feature), Harvey Korman, Bea Arthur (?!), lots of unused B footage from A New Hope, what can only be described as a porno machine… and about twenty-seven minutes of incomprehensible Wookiee grunting.

One viewing and you’ll see why George Lucas has said he would take a sledgehammer to every copy if he could.  But what about you?  Can you endure to the end?...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Two days after the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm two and a half years ago, a friend from high school told me over Facebook that her daughter was wondering about something.  It was a good question then and it’s just as good if not more so now:

“Is Princess Leia from Star Wars now a Disney Princess?”

 Okay, so Leia is now under the Disney umbrella.  Admittedly, that means very little in the grander scheme of things.  I’m not seeing anyone equating Han Solo with Prince Charming after all.

But Leia is a bona-fide princess.  In fact, she’s on a whole ‘nother level from the Disney Princesses.  She’s the adopted daughter of Bail Organa of the Royal House of Alderaan.  That’s a much bigger deal than Aurora’s kingdom or Ariel’s realm under the sea.  Snow White had the witch trying to destroy her… but Leia had the forces of Emperor ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Not for the
first time, not for the last, I am smacked with the realization that the
rest of my life is going to be dogged by my being the man who ran for
school board by blowing up a little red schoolhouse with the Death
Star…

Yes, it’s true: Chris Hardwick used my school board commercial – the one with the Star Wars theme – on his Comedy Central show @Midnight late last night/the wee hours of this morning.  The clip came during a segment called “Smeared Campaigns” and was one of three political ads taken from YouTube.
I would have missed it had good friend Aaron not spotted it.  I was hopped-up on Dr. Pepper and Swiss cheese, wrestling between sleep and stuff about my book, when I happened to get on Facebook and Aaron was blasting my timeline with the news.  Needless to say, I had to
...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Just a wild idea that popped into mind while thinking about yesterday’s horrid news about the revival of Twin Peaks:

If David Lynch won’t be returning to helm the new Twin Peaks, then he should be allowed to direct one of the new stand-alone Star Wars movies.

I’m serious.

It’s been thirty years.  He’s ready.

It almost happened anyway, with Return of the Jedi.  Apparently Lynch was George Lucas’ top choice to direct the third Star Wars film.  But Lynch wanted to take the movie into… well, a different direction.  One that veered away from the vision of the saga’s creator.  By all accounts the two filmmakers shook hands and each went their way: Lucas to pick Richard Marquand to direct Jedi.  And Lynch would soon after direct the sci-fi epic Dune, based on the novel by Frank Herbert.

That was more than thirty years ...

Read more