#but I believe its all the same continuity? so the millennium trilogy (the first three written by the original author)

[adaptations-polls]

Which version of this do you prefer?

[bkbricks]

Best Way To Watch The Star Wars Saga

The Star Wars films and tv shows came out in an odd order. First off, Episode 4 was the first episode to be released. Odd, right? Of course, it was released as a single film and not called “Episode 4: A New Hope”; instead it was simply titled “Star Wars”. After Episode 4-6 were released, Episodes 1-3 were released many years later. This, of course, can be be confusing to some, and make watching the movies in order a bit difficult. Which order? Should you watch them in chronological order, or by release dates? Below I have listed the best way (in my opinion) to watch all of the Star Wars Saga. This list not only includes each Episode, but also the other movies and even tv shows that came out and add further to the entire story.

Of course, you could add in some other pieces of content to further enlarge the story, adding in even more detail to it. You could read the comics (for example the Darth Vader Comics). You could also add in some video game campaigns (such as the Main Story in Battlefront 2). This list below is simply for the films and tv shows, for those only meant to be watched. So sit back, grab some snacks and prepare for this very, very long Star Wars marathon you are getting ready to begin.

The Phantom Menace

The first film you should watch is “The Phantom Menace”. This is the beginning of the story. In fact, George Lucas (creator of Star Wars) even teased about titling Episode One “The Beginning”, but ultimately went with “The Phantom Menace”. This where Anakin Skywalker’s story (the largest of any character in the entire saga) begins. The overall story of the 6 Episodes focuses on the prophecy of the Chosen One, and this where that story begins.

Attack of the Clones

Next up, you should watch Episode 2: “Attack of the Clones”. If you are a fan of “The Clone Wars”, then this movie is a good one to watch as an intro/prequel into the Clone Wars. After all, this is the movie where the war begins. It takes place ten years after Episode 1, and follows Anakin’s story well. And, of course, “The Clone Wars” is up next, which this episode and that show tie in well together and this episode leads right up to it.

The Clone Wars

“The Clone Wars” tv show picks up about one year after the events of “Attack of the Clones”. This is the first tv show you should watch in order, after the first two episodes. You can learn so much more about the Clone Wars that Episodes 2-3 do not cover. There are seven seasons, and you watch them all in order. Many episodes of this show also focus on and even extend the story of Anakin Skywalker, which is a neat tie-in.

Revenge of the Sith

After you make it through the seven seasons of “The Clone Wars”, watch Episode 3: “Revenge of the Sith”. This film is amazing, and ends the first two episodes and the tv show very well. “Revenge of the Sith” and the seventh season of “The Clone Wars” actually take place at the same time in the story, which is pretty neat and gives you two perspectives on the same time period. This is a pivotal series of events for Anakin Skywalker as he embraces the dark side.

Solo

Six years later, “Solo: A Star Wars Story” picks up. This film portrays the Empire in its earliest days (so far). It focuses on Han Solo, who we will see again as a main character in the original trilogy. Watching this movie before Episodes 4-6 gives you a great backstory on not only Han Solo, but also his co-pilot Chewbacca and his ship, the Millennium Falcon. It also gives you an introduction (in the storyline) to the Galactic Empire.

Rebels

After “Solo”, the tv show “Star Wars: Rebels” picks up, about nine years later in the story. This show has only four seasons, and you should watch all four in order for the full story. Here we can see the Rebellion before it became an organized alliance. Here we focus on a rebel cell, with some returning characters from “The Clone Wars” tv show. The Rebellion has not yet organized, but soon will while these rebel cells deal with the Empire in small, but courageous, acts. In the story, this is where Darth Vader will make his first appearances in combat.

Rogue One

Rogue One offers an amazing transition into the original trilogy. It takes place around 3-5 years after the “Star Wars: Rebels” fourth season ends (except for the season finale, which takes place immediately after Episode 6). Here we get to see a key part of the Rebellion’s plan to destroy the Death Star. In the original 1977 Star Wars movie we saw this plan executed, but never knew how the rebels got the Death Star plans in the first place. Luckily, Rogue One filled that gap, and even leads directly into Episode 4. Literally, Rogue One ends about an hour before Episode 4 begins. Also, the rebels have organized by now and are officially the Rebel Alliance.

A New Hope

So an hour later and we made it to “A New Hope”. This is the original Star Wars film released in 1977. Most of the films/tv shows on this list came about in the story before this film, which is interesting (and great for the prequel lovers). The Galactic Civil War is now in full effect as the Rebels fight the Empire. This is where Luke Skywalker’s journey really takes off, as well as more screen time with Darth Vader. With the Death Star plans, the rebellion attacks and destroys the battlestation, showing the galaxy just how mighty they have become in their fight against the Empire.

The Empire Strikes Back

Episode 5: “The Empire Strikes Back” begins three years after Episode 4. Since the destruction of the Death Star, the Empire has been relentlessly searching for the rebellion to wipe them out. Before, the Empire did not see the Alliance as a huge threat; but now they do. Between Episodes 4-5, Darth Vader learns that his son lives and it begins to pull him back to the light. Episode 5 sees Vader searching for his son, Luke, and after he springs a trap on him, he reveals that he is his true father. Now that Luke knows the truth, he must decide on his future whether he will destroy his father for the rebellion or join him on the dark side. Also, Han Solo is frozen in carbonite towards the end of this episode. He remains this way until the next film.

Return of the Jedi

One year later, Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker sets out to unfreeze Solo and rescue him from Jabba the Hutt. Then, Luke decides to search for his father this time. He believes that he has felt the good in Vader and can bring him back to the light. While the Rebels fight the Empire on Endor, Luke reconnects with his father and attempts to bring him back to the light side, to return the jedi in him. This episode finished off the main story/Anakin’s story presented all the way back in Episode 1. It all comes to a close here. You could stop here, as this is where the main story concludes. However, there is one more show you could tune in to if you’d like the complete saga and want to continue your already-long Star Wars marathon.

The Mandalorian

We finish off the saga with “The Mandalorian”, a live-action tv show based on a bounty hunter. This show does not have much to do with the main story, but does take place five years after “Return of the Jedi”. Instead, we get to see what happen to Mandalorians. They were present in “The Clone Wars” and “Star Wars: Rebels”, however now we can see how much they have changed and had adapted to the tyranny of the Empire. But now that the Empire is gone, we see how parts of life in the Outer Rim are hanging up, as well as some cool scenes of the New Republic. There is currently one season of this show, with season two expected to be released this October.

Once you have watched “The Phantom Menace” all the way through to “The Mandalorian”, you have officially seen the entire Star Wars Saga. I have purposely left out the sequel trilogy and tv show attached to it simply because I do not believe they fit into the entire saga. My previous post explained why I believe this, make sure to check it out! Thanks for reading!

[sailorsanghelios]

Halo for Beginners Part 2: The Covenant

Hey guys! So I’m sorry it took so long to do my second part, the past few months have been kind of rough, but I’m excited to continue my Halo for Beginners series. So now lets jump into some cool lore stuff

Please note the content warnings from the previous post are still in place, and also I will be talking about all factions from a non spoilery aspect that mostly focuses on the original Bungie trilogy.

Here’s a link to my first post in this series!

So I decided to begin talking about the factions in Halo with my favorite faction in the original Halo trilogy… the Covenant. These are the main guys you’re fighting against and shooting at.

So the Covenant is a religious conglomerate that worships the Forerunners, which is the now extinct (or so they say) alien species that created the Halo rings. The foundation of the Covenant religion is that the Forerunners are gods, and they achieved godhood by activating the Halo rings...meaning if the Covenant activates the rings, then they become gods too. If you remember me talking about the plot of Halo in the last part you can uhh...see the problem here.

The Covenant are at war with humanity because of us being the true Reclaimers, or heirs of the Forerunners, and they decided to exterminate us, because if anyone found out about our status their entire society would crumble.

The Covenant are made up of a lot of species, so I’m going to talk about them in order of their caste in the hierarchy, in the most spoiler free way possible.

So first up is the San ‘Shyuum, or as the humans call them, Prophets. They are the religious and political leaders of Covenant society. The human name for them “Prophet” is a bit of a misnomer, because that’s a religious title only some of them possess. The Covenant government is run by three High Prophets, who serve as both political and religious leaders (like think the President and the Pope as the same person). In the time of the first Halo trilogy, these Prophets are named the Prophet of Truth, the Prophet of Mercy and the Prophet of Regret, There's many minor Prophets that work under them, and of course there are Prophets who work in secular work too.

The Prophets in the Covenant are descendants of exiles from their home planet Janjur Qom, who left the planet after deciding to activate a Forerunner ship, while those that remained on the planet thought it was sacrilege. This ship, the Dreadnaught, now serves as the main power grid of the Covenant space station and capital, High Charity. Only a few hundred of them were among these exiles, and for this reason, Prophets have very tight regulations on reproduction, and many of them are banned from reproducing. It is believed that the Prophet homeworld was consumed by its star, and that the population on High Charity is the last of their kind. Because of their home world having a different form of gravity compared to High Charity, all Prophets need some sort of mobility aid, with the lower classes using a gravity belt, and the higher classes having gravity chairs. Because of their non combatant roles, Prophets first appear in Halo 2 when we get to see more of the Covenant outside of combat roles.

So up next is my personal favorite and the namesake of my blog.

The Sangheili! Or as they’re called in game, the Elites. They hail from the planet Sanghelios -points at username and winks-. They’re the second highest ranked species, and one of the two founding Covenant species, after they went to war with the Prophets in like…. 800 BCE or something like that. The two species realized they’d just annihilate each other so they ended up creating a joint society that evolved into the Covenant. They are the military backbone of the Covenant, making up most of their high ranking military officers. They’re a very proud and haughty species, who are fixated on honor and glory. They’re the creators of the Energy Sword (of Energy Sword Sunday fame) and the only ones legally allowed to use them.

Sangheili are very naturally intelligent but millennia of having been pigeonholed as “the warriors” of their society has stunted their non military achievements. To die in battle is the most honorable way a Sangheili can die, and they are often cold and callous to lower ranked species in their command, because they expect the same from them. Some miscellaneous facts about them are they hate doctors because they think they dishonorably draw blood from people. Some Sangheili would rather die then visit a doctor. They also don’t believe in dads raising children, (because they think it promotes nepotism)  and the male figures in their lives as kids tend to be their maternal uncles. Female Sangheili do not serve in the military, but they’re the ones basically running the show on Sanghelios and on their colonies.

So up next are the Jiralhanae, or as the humans call them, Brutes. They are the newest addition to the Covenant, having only been assimilated in about fifty years before the first game. They hail from the planet Doisac and at the time the Covenant found them they were recovering from nuclear war and were easy to absorb in.

The Brutes are probably the strongest of the Covenant species, and they quickly gained more and more social standing because of their might and also how eager they were to please the Prophets. Their society has a patriarchal and tribal basis, which is also reflected in their military units which are often led by a Chieftain. The Elites do not like them at all, and see them as a threat to their millennia long chokehold on being the best of the best fighters for the Covenant, Elite and Brute fleets are segregated, and you almost never see them serving in the same unit. For this reason Brutes don’t show up in game until Halo 2, since the only Covenant in the first game are from the Fleet of Particular Justice, which is an Elite fleet.

This is the Mgalekgolo, or as the humans call them Hunters. (This is the only species where I always call them by the human nickname because I can never remember the real name). These big boys are actually… a bunch of little boys! They might not look it in that big hefty armor, but they’re actually a mass of worms called Lekgolo that formed into one being. The Hunters were the first species the Prophets and Elites pacified and and join the Covenant...because they ate a bunch of Forerunner artifacts in their home planet Te. Because they’re metal eating worms.

The Hunters are very mysterious since they can’t talk the way other species do, and instead vibrate. When a Hunter is formed, it always ends up splitting into two Hunters, and these Hunters are called “bond brothers”. Hunters are deployed in combat more like a tank would be, as opposed to a soldier, and are always deployed with their bond brother. If a Hunter’s bind brother dies, they go into a giant frenzy, and will tear apart anything in its path in a suicidal rampage.

Okay so Kig-yar! Or Jackals as the humans call them. the Jackals come from the moon Eayn which orbits the planet Chu’ot ( and it’s a real life planet that we know of as “HD 69830 d” which is super cool!) Despite their nickname, Jackals are actually avian aliens. They have a large amount of genetic diversity, and have different subspecies, though all of them can breed with each other! Unlike most Covenant species, the Jackals are matriarchal and usually have female leaders. Their entire way of life is based in a history of piracy in their home planet, where they basically just fought each other until they figured out space flight.

The Jackals have a unique role in the Covenant, and they’re not particularly religious. Instead they’re more of mercenaries for hire, who are in a business arrangement with the Prophets.  They’re basically a race of space pirates, and when anything fishy and illegal is going on in Covenant space, it can often be traced back to them.

So the Yanme’e (or Drones as the humans call them) aren’t really focused on very much, and I actually don’t know a huge amount about them. They joined the Covenant sometime after the first millennium and hail from the planet Palamok, and they’re well...they’re bugs. They have a government format that’s similar to a bee hive, where a single female queen is in charge of a colony, and then she has her reproductive drones and her workers. The Queens made a deal with the Covenant to force lower ranked Drones into their service in exchange for...not destroying their planet I guess.

Within the Covenant, Drones are mostly used for mechanical engineering, but they have combat roles too. Like the Brutes and the Prophets, the Drones first appear in Halo 2, but unlike the former two there’s not really a lore reason for that. Maybe Bungie was just like “you know what’d be fun….bugs that shoot you”.

So the lowest on the totem pole is the poor little Unggoy...or the Grunts as humans call them. Yeah the name says it all, these little guys are karmic kickballs. They come from the planet Balaho and they’re the only Covenant species (and honestly known species in the galaxy) that doesn’t breathe oxygen, and instead they breathe methane, and have to wear gas masks. These little guys were absorbed into the Covenant in the 22nd century, and were almost instantly turned into slaves and canon fodder for the Covenant.

These will be the ones you’re shooting the most, and they’re usually quite cowardly and run away when they’re left to their own devices and their superiors fall. However they don’t exist just to be cute joke characters. They can be quite fierce when provoked, as the Covenant learned in the Great GruntRebellion during the 25th century. They’re also very intelligent in ways one wouldn’t expect, such as language acquisition and philosophy. So don’t totally underestimate them!

And last we have…

These are the Huragok, or as humans call them, the Engineers. The Engineers are considered more of...tools then anything and they aren’t technically alive! They’re a biological supercomputer created by the Forerunners and who were left behind and later found by the Covenant. They’re born from essentially multiple Engineers working together to collect pieces and make a new one (if you’ve ever seen that movie Robots from years ago with Robin Williams and how they literally had a “build your own baby kit”? That’s basically what the Engineers do). The most important thing when creating a new Engineer is to have the buoyancy correct so they  can breathe and float correctly. Engineers have unique names based on their initial buoyancy at birth such as “Lighter than Some” or “Drifts Aimlessly”

Engineers are very pacifist by nature, their only drive is to build and fix things. They have been known to help out humans, as they don’t truly see them as foes, and are basically only with the Covenant because they supply them with things to fix. They do like making friends and the very first causality in the war was actually caused by an Engineer defending his Grunt friend against a human during first contact. Also you’ll never actually encounter an Engineer in normal game play in the first three Halo games (they made their first in game appearence in Halo 3:ODST which is also included on the MCC), as they were cut late from development from the first game. However in the first PC release of Halo CE it was possible to mod them back in because the code was mostly finished before they were cut, and possibly this might be possible in the Steam release, if you wanna see squishy jellyfish friends.

So that’s it for my premier for the Covenant species. probably kind of a weird place to begin but it’s probably my favorite part of the Halo lore so I was excited to write it, Next time will be humans and I promise I will get it out quicker.

[austinonymous]

Film Critique- Is Rey A Mary Sue? (Based on The Force Awakens)

A question that many have asked and have answered to various degrees of ‘yes’ and ‘no’- here’s my take on it. Please contain your desire to burn me until I finish giving my reasoning. Maybe?

Firstly, What is the definition of a Mary Sue?

While there’s no concrete definition, a fair way to define a Mary Sue is: “A Mary Sue is an idealized and seemingly perfect fictional character. Often, this character is recognized as an author insert or wish fulfillment. They can usually perform better at tasks than should be possible given the amount of training or experience.” 

Yes that was pulled from Wikipedia but I think its a fair way to describe the concept.

So really the question we are asking is whether or not Rey is better at being Rey than she should be based on her background and how the universe of Star Wars works.

Well, to start off, we need to know her training based on what the movie tells us and base what we can reasonably expect from her off that. So, what do we know about Rey before the events of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi?

1)      She’s lived on more or less on her own for most of her life.

2)      She’s a scavenger and has spent a long time picking through the wreckage of Jakku

3)      She has some mechanic skill and can drive a repulsorlift vehicle

4)      She has not been off planet and presumably never flown a starcraft before

5)      She has experience using a staff as a weapon

6)      She has no experience with the Force outside legends about the Original Trilogy

So, what does she do over the course of the Force Awakens?

Well, the first event that causes red flags is the fact that she single handedly pilots the Millennium Falcon after jumping into it for the first time ever- not only does she pilot it, she then engages in a dogfight with TIE fighters, piloted by trained pilots.

This is more than slightly problematic. The Millennium Falcon is an odd ship, jury rigged and modified in many ways. Indeed, the base ship shouldn’t be able to engage in dog fights at all given its sheer size in comparison to other fighters like the X-Wing or the TIE Fighter. Its just under three times the length of a X-Wing ; for comparision, America’s famous b-17 Bomber was only about twice the length of America’s most iconic fighter at the time (the p-51 Mustang), and one was obviously more suited to dogfights than the other. Its only through the Falcon’s heavy modification of its engines and adding beefed up weapons that give it fire power on par or better than larger ships. Its dual quad-turbolasers alone gave it more fire-power than the larger corvette used by Princess Leia in A New Hope, ignoring the torpedo tubes it also had.

Suffice to say, the Millennium Falcon is not something you can just walk onto and pilot. Maybe you can operate the guns (as Luke shows in A New Hope) but to pull off the advanced maneuvers we see Rey manage by herself with no training in the escape from Jakku? Like how she sent the Falcon into a free-fall, flipping it over to just the right angle for Finn to shoot the TIE fighter with his stuck-in-place turbolaser? And this is a girl who ahs never personally flown a starship before?

Luke was a great X-Wing Pilot, maybe not the best in the Star Wars continuity but still great. This is established as believable because the movie mentions details that explain his abilities. It mentions in A New Hope that he flew a Skyhopper growing up, a ship of similar size to the x-wing and made by the same company as the X-Wing, meaning the control schemes were similar and he didn't have to adjust to the cockpit or control setup. He also is mentioned to have used this ship to shoot womp rats, attesting to his skills at shooting and his connection to the Force- as we see later in A New Hope, his instincts, guided by the Force, are highly precise, honed over years of practice.

Rey has none of that. She’s poor and has never owned anything the size of a X-Wing, let alone the Millennium Falcon. Nowhere in the movie are we given even a single line about her learning to pilot ships through simulations (which yes, is the canon reason why she could pilot). In the context of the movie, without outside lore helping the movie out, she should have crashed the Millennium Falcon many, many times.

Now I’ll give her a pass on knowing the Millennium Falcon and how to repair it better than Han freaking Solo, if only because the movie does give the explanation in the way that she, as a scavenger, knew what parts were universally useful in a way that a smuggler/fighter like Han might not. So maybe she had some way to fix the Falcon he wouldn’t have thought about immediately.

Rey doesn’t have any really bad ‘what’ moments that I can remember until later in the film when she not only resists Kylo’s force mind torture, proceeds to turn it back on him and then mind tricks a stormtrooper immediately afterwards. This is probably the most prickly one to tackle as the Force is purposely set up by Lucas to be as vague as possible more or less- it brings you to places or helps you do things you wouldn’t normally be able to do because its what the universe needs.

Basically it can be used if needed as a giant excuse for convenience and the plot armor of its characters.

But its important to realize that while the Force does set up events or tries to guide the universe back to a state of balance (which is another whole subject to talk about), one’s usage of the Force is never portrayed like that in the films. The Force itself may be more or less an excuse for plot convenience, however the way the Jedi use it is fairly consistent.

The first rule is that the Light Side is the hard path, and the Dark Side is the easy path. The second rule you generally see followed throughout the films is that the force has different difficulties depending on its application. Using it on one’s self is the easiest (intuition or enhancing reflexes). Effecting material objects like rocks or pushing people is slightly harder, while effecting other people’s minds is the hardest to do. This is why some species’ are immune to the Mind Trick- its so complex that it just doesn't work sometimes, as opposed to shoving them, which almost always works.

Obi-Wan is shown to use the Mind Trick from the beginning (which makes sense, as he is a master) but it is not until the Return of the Jedi, a full year or so after his training with Yoda, that Luke is shown to use the jedi Mind Trick. This is despite being able to move objects or summon his lightsaber telekinetically as early as the Empire Strikes Back. In a New Hope, with essentially the same amount of exposure to the Force as Rey, Luke only manages to tap into the Force via his intuition, such as his training with the training droid on the Falcon in A New Hope and then his later success in blowing up the Death Star.

Rey on the other hand is able to survive a direct mental attack by a Dark Side user, and then mind trick a stormtrooper on only her second attempt. Remember, this is her first ever intentional use of the force and she can pull off one of the more tricky aspects of the Force. She’s so much more ridiculously “in tune” with the Force despite the previously mentioned zero real exposure to Force that its absurd. Even Anakin, who has such over-the-top power with the Force that he is able to pilot a podracer as a child with zero training in the Force solely based on his Force-guided intuition (and podracing is a sport that no non-force sensitive human can compete in due to not being able to react fast enough, remember), never shows the ability to even so much as move a rock with the Force prior to training.

Even though yes, you can give the in-universe explanation that Rey is just that much more powerful in the Force than any of her predecessors, or she managed to do a mind trick in a burst of desperation, that still does not excuse the fact that it is ultimately the writer’s decision for her to be able to pull this off. Instead of using any of the other ways they could have let Rey escape her imprisonment (friends save her, more defectors, chaos from the attack somehow lets her out, etc), the creators decided to let her have this incredible power in the force.

You may say that there is an explanation given to us, albeit indirectly- the Force. That would solve the whole issue with being a Mary Sue, which is having more competency than you should based on what we know about the character, right? We have an explanation, right?

But the problem is that, as said before, the Force is essentially a writing crutch- why did the characters all happen to end up here? The Force wills it. 

The reason why Lucas got away with it though is because he rarely used it in that sense. The Force was a supplement to Luke’s or, for instance, even Vader’s skills. The fought mostly with lightsabers or star-fighters. Their piloting/fighting was bolstered by the Force of course, but it was never the way Luke escaped from a bad situation. Half the time he relied on his friends (Han saved him at the end of A New Hope, Chewy and Leia saved him at the end of the Empire Strikes Back, and Lando, R2 and Chewy were all instrumental to saving Han in Return of the Jedi ).

This is the real issue with Rey- no matter how well portrayed she may be (honestly her and Kylo’s development in The Last Jedi was probably the best part of that movie in my opinion), she has skills so categorically superior to previous protagonists without clear in-movie explanations as to why.

Could she grow out of being a Mary Sue? Sure, of course (I’ll detail whether I think they managed that in the Last Jedi at a later date). But I think that we can pretty clearly say that in the Force Awakens, she fits the definition of a Mary Sue.

(Also to clarify I do like her character in concept and Daisy Ridley can be a pretty great actress for the role. I just have issues with the writing of her character.)

[fuzz1912]

Return of the Penultimate Jedi

Thoughts on the film calling itself Star Wars: Episode VIII. Only for those who have seen the film already as there are well and truly spoilers ahead - consider yourself warned. May be worth reading my pre-screening thoughts for some context.

Everything you just said is wrong

I’ve seen glimpses of the usual batch of fawning reviews, which utterly perplex me. Did we see the same movie?

My quick take on leaving the theatre was: what the hell did I just watch? I’ll say this for The Force Awakens - by hewing to the structure and story beats of A New Hope, at least it made sense (even if it seemed pointless). I can’t say the same for this one - I couldn’t even succinctly describe the plot, let alone determine what it was actually about. It really didn’t answer many of the questions I raised in my pre-screening post, though I have to give some credit - it wasn’t simply a rehash of The Empire Strikes Back as I had anticipated; it was just as much a rehash of Return of the Jedi as well.

Let’s get what I genuinely liked out of the way, because it is far outweighed by the rest: as a whole it was enjoyable enough, and had some amusing moments and clever dialogue. As I was reminded by one of our viewing party, the starship battles and some other action sequences were actually pretty good to watch in and of themselves. I appreciated some of the low-effort banter, mostly from Poe and Finn. Benecio Del Toro played a terrific cameo as the morally ambiguous Code Breaker, echoing Empire’s Lando Calrissian. No matter how much scenery they chew, I also enjoy watching Domhnall Gleeson and Laura Dern perform. And at face value, I always enjoy seeing Yoda (but more on that later). John Williams’ music is always a treat, though once again not to level of his preceding scores - there were some questionable instances of using some of his older leitmotifs, though Rey’s theme is starting to grow on me. I also enjoyed the one instance of clearly ripping off the prequels in the opening shot, mirroring the battle reveal that opened Revenge of the Sith.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this

I mentioned in my pre-screening post that there’s nothing wrong with reusing good structure, but that beat-for-beat repeating a story is a waste of creative potential. Awakens did both - but I’m not even really sure what the overall structure of this film was supposed to be. It certainly reused elements of structure from Empire and Return (thanks to the ridiculous naming of this film, I can no longer refer to that film simply as ‘Jedi’), and quite a number of nearly-identical scenes and shots - but as to the overall structure of the film itself, I’m not sure it does have an easily definable beginning-middle-end.

The film is long; really long. Much longer than it needs to be even within the parameters it appears to set for itself. I couldn’t pin down what those parameters were while watching it or upon leaving the theatre but with a little bit of rest behind me I’d say it’s a very slow chase movie and a war of attrition. It has the former in common with Empire, though I’m not sure what the point of the latter is (more on that later). In Empire, only a group of our heroes were being chased whereas here it is the entire Resistance (such as it is). And there was at least one act too many within that slow chase, though I hesitate to pin down which was the most superfluous part - I suspect the ‘out of weapons range and only x hours of fuel’ bit or the ultimately-redundant side trip to the Casino world. There were just too many stops and starts, both within the main conflict and the personal stories (involving Luke and Rey, Rey and Kylo, Finn and Rose, and Poe).

As I mentioned above, the initial acts predictably modelled themselves on Empire - but towards the middle (what I optimistically thought might be the end) it started to throw in parts of Return as well, essentially mashing the two together. The Resistance was being chased out of a base by the First Order like the Rebellion, though the epic ground battle was moved towards the end instead of at the start. Rey went to train with Luke, who grumpily declined for a while like Yoda did to him. After finally relenting, he immediately found Rey straying too close to the dark and finding her own ‘dark side cave’ like Luke did on Dagobah; following which Rey decides that she is better served going after Kylo Ren than bothering to finish her training. Then we skip to the Return bits, with Kylo taking her straight to Snoke where she is tortured and he turns on his master. So far, so similar.

But while the final act resembled Empire’s Battle of Hoth, Luke’s encounter with Kylo echoed both the Vader/Obi Wan duel and Yoda’s death from A New Hope and Return, respectively. The conclusion showing the final survivors of the Resistance on the Millennium Falcon was a less epic recall of a similar but more emotional ending to Empire, but it was followed by a very un-Star Wars epilogue showing a random young (apparently Force-sensitive) slave kid looking to the stars as Luke once did. Obviously having crammed two films worth of reused plot into one, there’s potential for Disney to go a completely different way in the final film, and those seeds seem to have been sown here. But where is that exactly? Defeating Kylo and the First Order, or what’s left of them? To what end, now that Snoke is gone and Kylo is already conflicted?

The State of the Galaxy

A number of the questions I posed in my earlier post coming out of Awakens were essentially brushed aside and dismissed in the opening crawl - despite the film seemingly picking up almost directly where Awakens left off, the loss of Starkiller Base hasn’t set the First Order back at all, rather they are now the dominant power in the galaxy. The Republic, whose only apparent losses were localised to several planets in the Hosnian system, is gone and all that is left is a measly few ships in the Resistance. How the hell did all that happen?

All of the work our heroes did in the original trilogy and the intervening 30 years has been snuffed out in one line of explanatory text. Despite the theme of this film essnetially being about ‘letting the past die’, I really struggle to get my head around how they’ve done this - essentially they are telling us not to look behind the curtain or think too hard (or at all) about the story world (even that established in Awakens) and just accept that these are the new starting conditions for the story. It hasn’t been earned or explained in any way, so they may as well have just hit the reset button completely and done a complete reboot (or told a different story, in a different world).

So any hope of discovering more about who was running the Republic instead of Leia, why or how the First Order was able to usurp power from a galaxy-wide government, is deemed unnecessary. How the First Order itself is maintaining that stranglehold is even less clear - while its “Supreme Leader” is galavanting around on a star destroyer chasing three measly Resistance ships, we see no Governors or Moffs or anything else to suggest the massive bureaucratic structure behind such an organisation (though we do get thrown the tiny morsel that apparently they finance their wars off the back of slavery).

Trivial Pursuit - the First Order slowly chases down the Resistance

It’s important to remember that even in Empire, Darth Vader’s taskforce was only ever a small part of the larger Imperial forces (such that he needed to make special arrangements to contact the Emperor at the capital) and that the Rebellion clearly had a larger fleet that was not present on its Hoth base that they finally rendezvoused with at the end of the film. However, we are supposed to believe that all that’s left of the Resistance (and, by extension, Republic) military - despite having at least three remaining flag rank officers - is three capital star ships, a handful of fighters, and a bunch of transports. Similarly, the best the First Order can mount in order to take down this rump is a dreadnought with a comical weakness, a few star destroyers that can’t move fast enough at sublight speed to engage them, or enough fighters to overwhelm them. Could they not have bothered to have a few more ships on either side, making the scale of the eventual losses seem more significant? This does not feel like an epic conflict - more like a minor brush fire. For it to lead to an incredibly convenient evacuation to a nearby planet that just happened to house an old rebel base - of which Rebellion leader Leia seemed to have no memory - was quite the cop out.

Given their continuing incompetence, I’m not sure how much we really care that the Resistance was whittled down to nothing over the course of this film. They don’t seem to be particularly good at resisting anything, and have a very odd hierarchy. As much as a fan as I am of Laura Dern, her character seemed to exist only as a foil for Poe - and also highlighting the Byzantine rank and command structure (Generals outranking Admirals? Commanders being demoted to Captains, without any intermediate ranks?) of the tiny Resistance. Having her play a human character instead of another species also underlined the Resistance’s human dominance, a missed opportunity to show a point of difference against the xenophobic First Order.

Why was it more important for the Resistance to evacuate the people on the ships instead of fighting to the end or following Finn’s plan to try and escape? Were they critical leaders who could gather a larger political or military force (doesn’t seem like it), or merely a small batch of survivors? What do they hope to achieve with so few people and almost no ships? Can they really put up any more resistance, or does it even matter now that they’re all gone and it appears that they’ve put all of their hopes in the oppressed peoples around the galaxy like the Force-sensitive child at the end? 

While I was impressed that the Resistance finally seemed to have acquired a new type of bomber that wasn’t a B-Wing or Y-Wing, they certainly still had the usual X-Wings and now A-Wing clones. Similarly, the First Order continues to be slavish in its imitation of the former Empire; other than the Dreadnought, its Super Star Destroyers, TIE Interceptors, AT-ATs, AT-STs and shuttles continue to be more of the same art direction (one pines for the evolutionary variety of ships in the prequels). I was also perplexed to see enemy fighters being able to so easily penetrate capital ship hangars - shouldn’t they first have to take down particle shields that are supposed to keep them out as in literally every other Star Wars film? Notwithstanding of course the contrived inability of the First Order destroyers or fighters from being able to speed up and finish the job.

That said, the opening part of the battle was quite fun - Poe’s piloting skills are always a delight, and while the bomber run on the Dreadnought was a little predictable it was nevertheless engaging. The destruction of Snoke’s star destroyer, using the effect of silence pioneered in Attack of the Clones was breathtaking (though if it were that simple, why didn’t the Resistance sacrifice one of their other ships that was inevitably going to be destroyed the same way?). Even Kylo’s attack on the Resistance cruiser and his hesitation at taking down his mother was quite well done - though somewhat undermined by the fact that when his wingmen nevertheless took the shot and took out the bridge, something truly bizarre happened.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane...

For reasons beyond Carrie Fisher’s untimely passing, it would have made a great deal of sense for Leia to die in this film. Much as Qui Gon, Obi Wan and Yoda before them, losing a mentor or leader gives our protagonists a chance at taking up the mantle to become heroes in their own right (we did get a little bit of this, but more on that later). But the moment of Kylo choosing not to take his mother out was a really great display of the conflict within him, and it being ultimately futile was a great note to end on.

However, despite being given the perfect opportunity to see Leia off, we instead learned that she is not only a Jedi descendant but also a Kryptonian superhero - unaffected by a devastating explosion or the vacuum of space, and able to fly through it with no means of propulsion (this time in defiance of Newton’s second law) back into the ship. What was the point of her surviving this, and if there was one, why have this attack take place at all? She could have easily fulfilled the role played by Laura Dern’s Admiral in this tale - instead of her, having Leia sacrificing herself by ramming the cruiser into Snoke’s star destroyer would have been a sacrifice worthy of the character and make an already amazing moment incredibly moving. And how exactly do they intend to deal with Carrie Fisher’s absence in the final film given they have ruled out using a CGI double? Hopefully not through another dismissive line of text in the crawl. 

The Cunning Plan - Finn, Poe and Rose

A staple of Star Wars is the protagonists devising a cunning plan to escape a dire predicament. In this instance, Finn and Poe (together with newcomer Rose) through some technobabble devise a way to stop the First Order flagship from tracking them through lightspeed (a development that didn’t seem to make sense in the absence of using any tracking devices - so novel that even Snoke is surprised by it). So once again we returned to the well of the protagonists infiltrating the enemy castle to enable escape, right out of A New Hope - and the whole endeavour, including the side trip to the Casino world, proved to be utterly unnecessary given the actual plan put in place by Laura Dern’s admiral. 

Nevertheless, seeing these characters work together was enjoyable. Poe’s clashes with Leia and the Admiral were fun, and his short-lived mutiny fulfilling. Rose’s backstory as an exploited slave for First Order weapons dealers - as well as her connection to her heroically sacrificed sister - was a nice touch, if not particularly relevant to the greater story arc. Though Finn’s constant need to get back to Rey started to feel jarring, it was good to see him step up with Rose and become a hero in his own right. His battle with Phasma was a highlight, as was his aborted suicide run against the turbolaser - leading to a pretty effective aphorism from Rose about the point of the Resistance not being about fighting things you hate, but saving people you love (more poignant given her own sister’s sacrifice). It actually made me think of young Anakin’s innocent line in The Phantom Menace about one of the problems in the galaxy being that people don’t help each other - naive, but ultimately true.

Another part of what makes Star Wars an epic space opera is traveling to different worlds and encountering different environments and species - which was one of the issues I had with Awakens, which spent far too long on and around Jakku. This film was even worse in that regard - other than the brief departure from the base at the start and the final battle on the salt planet, the vast majority of the film was spent about two starships. Finn and Rose’s jaunt to the Casino planet to retrieve the code breaker was a nice aside, but felt forced in there for variety and as such was a little perplexing. In the middle of a heated - if protracted - battle, they were able to just pop out for a few hours to the specific place suggested by Maz Kanata over a peculiar FaceTime communication and find not one but two people with the relevant skills. Showing the hardship suffered by those propping up the lavish lifestyle of the war profiteers was a good (though perhaps insufficient) way to lay the groundwork for a wider revolution to come in the next film. Benecio Del Toro’s double-dealing Code Breaker himself was amusing and pretty effective, even if he was a little too omniscient - although this provided some very interesting context when he pointed out that the Resistance was also dealing with the weapons merchants, thereby similarly morally compromised as the First Order.

I’m not going to lie, there was one cameo I was secretly hoping to see on such a world dedicated to glamour and debauchery - and that was from our beloved smooth con man, Lando Calrissian. But not bringing him back was probably the better thing to do given the new ground they should have been covering in these movies (though the same should have applied to many of the other returning characters).

The Ways of the Force - Luke and Rey

We certainly got one forgotten hero back: Luke Skywalker. The final scene of Awakens seemed to have been reshot in much different lighting conditions and reproduced here - again very odd for Star Wars. While Luke finally appeared to have developed an uncharacteristic gruff sense of humour to offset his earnestness, he appeared very single-minded in his desire to stay away from everyone and everything - leading us to believe that whatever spooked him is truly terrifying. It’s somewhat disappointing them to learn that it was set off by a rather ambiguous and unlikely event: Luke appearing to want to murder his nephew, and Ben burning the house down in response.

Though flashbacks were used briefly in Awakens, there were three flashbacks of this particular event from different points of view (clearly influenced by Kurosawa’s Rashomon). Despite Kurosawa’s influence on Star Wars, the flashback technique has never really been used in any Star Wars movie, so seeing so many of them here gave this very much a different feel. Historical information has usually been filtered through a series of unreliable narrators - showing / reenacting that on screen didn’t seem quite right, even if it may have been more necessary given the specific instances shown of Luke and Kylo’s different interpretations of this moment as his fall to the dark side (if it was even that - certainly Luke appeared to suggest he was already too late).

As to the event itself, what the hell was Luke thinking creeping on his nephew like that? Surely if he harbored any misgivings about his potential dark side there would have been other ways to approach it other than standing over him in his sleep with an ignited lightsaber apparently ready to strike? How has that sort of potential misunderstanding ever gone for other members of his family? And given his family history, surely it would have been at the forefront of his mind well before he started training his powerful nephew. How exactly could Snoke have gotten to Ben before that point if he was exclusively under Luke’s tutelage? For Ben’s part, surely there could have been some attempt to understand what was going on before perceiving it as an attack and thereby turning dark and slaughtering a bunch of his fellow students? At least Anakin Skywalker was given a few steps along the way to his turn to the dark side - Ben Solo seems to have just made the decision in an instant due to a critical misunderstanding.

Luke’s island hideaway is apparently an ancient Jedi temple of some sorts - complete with a dark side cave like Dagobah and ancient Jedi texts - taken care of by alien nuns and populated by cute little creatures called Porgs, who in fact serve no other purpose other than to look cute. He is cantankerous in his initial rebuffs to Rey, much as Yoda was towards him. Despite Rey’s incessantly on-message pleas, it takes R2D2 playing a cheap trick on him to persuade Luke to start training Rey.  His puzzlement at who Rey is though is something that continues to echo through to us as well. Something about Rey is clearly special, and yet we learn that she is in fact a nobody.

Despite some repetition of Yoda and Obi Wan’s explanation of the nature of the Force, Rey’s common-ness dovetails nicely with Luke’s view that the Force does not necessarily require the existence of the Jedi; it just IS. Of course, Rey promptly exceeds all of his expectations and he gets spooked again, sensing a similar potential for darkness within her. His view that the Jedi should end and that he would die on the planet seems prophetic, though at odds with one of his better lines in the film when he first tells Rey, then Kylo, that everything they just said is wrong (and promptly lists off the reasons why). Despite constant references to himself being the last of his kind and Rey being a nobody, he does seem to consider her to be the last Jedi.

Rey herself seems driven by a desire to find out who her parents were, despite the fact that apparently she already knows that they were nobodies who sold her into slavery. She is fixated on bringing Luke back to help save the Resistance single-handedly (seems a big ask given the circumstances) until she develops a strange connection with Kylo (more on that below). Once she concludes that Luke is going nowhere, she very quickly turns on him and turns her attention elsewhere. Of course she goes exploring the dark side cave, which this time around seems to have infinite mirror that just shows her herself. Unlike the cave on Dagobah which clearly depicted Luke’s fear that he would become like his father, this one simply tells Rey that she is her parents - or, I guess, that who her parents are doesn’t matter. I’m not sure how this is supposed to lead to any critical development of her character. She promptly decides to leave in the hope of turning Kylo back from the dark side (haven’t heard that one before either).

In her absence, Luke decides he should burn down (not quite sure why) this particular temple and in the process is revisited by the Force ghost of Yoda. Now I absolutely love Yoda, and missed his presence and wisdom in the last film. That said, there were obvious plot reasons why he had no place there, and I query whether or not he was really needed here either. This is very much the cheeky Minch Yoda that Luke met in his twlight on Dagobah, not the wise Grand Master of the Jedi Order that he was for the bulk of his lifetime. As such, he is mischievous and and doesn’t appear to have much of substance to share with Luke, other than somehow physically conjuring up flames to complete Luke’s attempted arson. Yoda echoes the overarching theme of the film of leaving the past behind and dismisses the value of ancient Jedi texts that Luke considers preserving, which of course we don’t really have any knowledge of or connection to anyway. But my biggest issue is that the Yoda on screen is in fact a CGI version of the puppet from Return, not the CGI version of the Yoda we have come to know. This seems to incorporate all of the bad things about the puppet - namely its obviously-manipulated mouth movements - without the real puppet’s charm or the CGI Yoda’s familiarity. It just totally took me out of the moment, which I didn’t think was possible with my favorite character in the saga.

As a reliable deus ex machina, Luke appeared to return to say good bye to Leia on the salt planet and to distract Kylo while the Resistance survivors escaped. Seeing a wizened old Luke as a full-fledged Master brazenly stare down an army and take on his former protege was pretty badass, despite the laboriousness of parts of the duel. Of course he wasn’t really there, he was using the new Force projection power that only appeared to exist between Rey and Kylo (see below) to create an image of himself across the galaxy. The effort to maintain this was so great that it was exhaustion, not a lightsaber, that finally defeated the great Luke Skywalker. I’m still not quite convinced that this was a worthy end to the Hero of the Rebellion, the Son of Suns, and the Chosen One.

The Turning - Rey, Kylo and Snoke

Luke’s final appearance built on the odd trans-spatial Force connection between Rey and Kylo established throughout the film. This sort of Force projection is something we have not seen before, and is an interesting development in our understanding of the Force itself. Previously the furthest tangible reach of the Force was localised within a star system, or the less tangible when Yoda could feel the dissociated pain of losing his fellow Jedi as the Clones enacted Order 66 around the galaxy. Now it appears Force users (read: anyone, according to this film) can converse with others in some sort of quasi-virtual reality across the span of light years. 

Of course the initial connection between Rey and Kylo is apparently created and manipulated by Snoke - who probably could have just as easily used it to acquire whatever information he wanted from Rey about locating and destroying Luke. But it allowed for the relationship between Rey and Kylo to develop - with each of them unable to get out of the other’s head, Rey stops seeing Kylo as a monster and starts to get a glimpse of the conflicted soul within, while Kylo no longer finds her an upstart threat but a friend and partner whose humble ancestry doesn’t matter to him. Whatever Snoke’s original objective was in creating this link, it ended up binding the two together for some possibly higher purpose.

That purpose was certainly not to defeat Snoke, which was pathetically easy. For someone who is apparently the most powerful being in the galaxy, Snoke is amazingly stupid enough not to see that the connection he established between the two would lead to his death - which was way too similar to the downfall of Palpatine in Return, right down to some of the dialogue between them. Rather unsatisfyingly, his death came before we got any context as to who Snoke himself is, and how he ascended to power. Where was he during the rise of Palpatine and the Empire, and why was he not drawn into that particular conflict? Why did they use the Emperor’s / Sith theme during Snoke’s interrogation of Rey if there truly is no connection between them? Snoke’s death also led to some exciting dueling between Rey and Kylo fighting alongside each other against Snoke’s red guards in the throne room, though one wonders what exactly the guards were defending once Snoke was killed (certainly their martial arts demonstrations were way over the top - the sort of thing that Indiana Jones aka Han Solo would grow tired of and respond to with a quick blaster shot to the chest). Shouldn’t they have proclaimed allegiance to Kylo as the new Supreme Leader? Is there some question over the order of succession, as General Hux intimated (of course, again raising the question of where the rest of the First Order’s power structure is).

The interesting part of the relationship between Rey and Kylo is that they both continue to see themselves as part of each other. The moment where Kylo offers Rey his hand in partnership was well played (if too similar to the Vader’s  offers to Padme and Luke), but unsastifyingly resolved - it would have opened up some really interesting possibilities if Rey had committed and joined him. However, despite them return to opposing factions, their connection appears unbroken and their conflict seems to be centered around Kylo wanting to destroy his past (and thereby, the Resistance) and Rey wanting to save it. How that can be resolved, at least on a personal level, will hopefully be the highlight of the next film.

All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again

So where will the next film go? As at the end of this film, we know there is basically no physical Resistance left, but that the ‘seeds’ of revolution have been sowed in the minds of the oppressed peoples of the galaxy (well, on one planet at least), and that there is nothing special about who can access the Force. On the other hand, Snoke is no longer leader of the First Order and instead we have Kylo Ren, who we know to be heavily conflicted and still intimately connected to Rey. His only malicious motivation seems to be to eliminate the past and move beyond it, which has somewhat been achieved with Luke’s passing (and inevitably Leia’s if they don’t find a way to bring her back). What reason does he have to keep in place the First Order’s oppressive power structure? He seems to have been motivated initially by revenge, not a thirst for power. How can he possibly keep such an organisation together, and why do any of the servants of the First Order owe him any loyalty they may have had to Snoke? Perhaps we will finally meet these Knights of Ren that he leads (presumably those of Luke’s students he chose not to slaughter).

Given past experience, I expect all of these concerns to be brushed away again, replaced by a fairly simplistic good versus evil, underdog versus behemoth, redemption tale that pays lip service to the story that came before it without actually advancing it to a logical conclusion. And lots of humorous banter.

*Information many Bothans died for

A few asides: 

Obviously, there are many current political allusions one can draw out of this film, which is a staple of Star Wars across the ages. I haven’t dwelt on them because the issues they describe are supposed to be universally relevant throughout history. 

We learn at the conclusion that Poe and Rey have never met before. Um, what about after the Starkiller Base Battle before she left to find Luke? Did they not have time then? This moment was clearly designed to be cute, just as were the inclusion of the Porgs and Crystal Wolves, but ultimately seemed redundant.

Threepio no longer has a red arm, so one wonders what the point of that reference was in Awakens? Of course, if this film directly followed that one as Finn’s recovery and Rey’s encounter with Luke suggest, where did he get time to repaint or replace it?

Luke refers to the Emperor as “Darth Sidious”. When did anyone who knew Palpatine’s Sith name ever tell Luke what it was? The only survivors who knew were Yoda, Obi Wan and Vader, all of whom never used that name in the original trilogy (primarily because it hadn't been thought of until the prequels were made). 

Finally, I can’t remember anyone uttering the iconic “bad feeling about this” catchphrase; I hope I just missed it, but I’ve heard others say the same. If no one says the line, can it really be a Star Wars film at all?

[ramajmedia]

Star Wars: 10 Things From Empire Strikes Back That Haven't Aged Well

The Empire Strikes Back, the second entry in the original Star Wars trilogy, is rightfully considered to be one of the greatest movies ever made. Not only is it a daring follow-up to a beloved space opera, but it also set the groundwork for how modern blockbuster sequels are made. After all, the darkest chapter of Luke Skywalker’s fight against The Empire didn’t become a cultural milestone for nothing.

RELATED: Blade Runner: Every Version Of The Original, Ranked

While’s almost perfect even by today’s standards, there are some parts of The Empire Strikes Back that didn’t age well after they were first seen in 1980. That’s not to say that the sequel’s legendary status has been suddenly revoked, but these aged aspects provide a good case study for retrospective analysis. Here are 10 things about The Empire Strikes Back that didn’t age well but don’t affect the overall quality.

10 “I Am Your Father”

The Empire Strikes Back is known for a single legendary moment, and that’s when Darth Vader says the words “No, I am your father” to a devastated Luke. Too bad almost everybody misquotes it.

Like a game of telephone gone awry, Darth Vader’s revelation has been garbled after years of repetition. Many people would say “Luke, I am your father” without realizing the slight error in their quotation, though the line’s impact remains the same. And while Empire didn’t start it, the paternal twist has become a cliché of its own thanks to the movie’s countless imitators.

9 The Special Edition

Previously, the most controversial thing about Star Wars were the Special Editions which coincided with the prequels’ releases. Even The Empire Strikes Back couldn’t avoid this, getting prominent changes such as Luke wailing while falling from Cloud City and Ian McDiarmid’s inclusion as Emperor Palpatine in Vader’s hologram conversation.

While Empire was altered the least, the use of early-2000’s CGI to prolong some scenes plus new voice actors and lines were still distracting enough to anyone who saw the original cut. Additionally, the digital effects’ clash with remastered footage only got worse over the years.

8 The Original Reviews

Given its legacy, it’s hard to believe that The Empire Strikes Back was critically panned back in 1980. At best, the movie got mixed reviews while most critics gave it a flat-out negative reception.

Many complained about its heavy use of spectacle, its being a middle chapter with no concrete resolution, and ending with a depressing cliffhanger – risks that Empire and those it inspired (ex. Avengers: Infinity War) are praised for today. Time has since vindicated the sequel, with many recognizing it as the best Star Wars movie and one of the best examples of blockbuster filmmaking.

7 George Lucas’s Hatred

In 1980, no one hated The Empire Strikes Back more than George Lucas did. Despite getting the chance to helm a blockbuster sequel (which were rare at the time), Lucas resented the second Star Wars movie and nearly disowned it.

To Lucas’ credit, his negative outlook stems from the difficulties that emerged from its chaotic production rather than the movie itself. Some of the headaches he contended with include constant rewrites, going nearly three times over budget, creative differences with director/his former professor Irvin Kershner, interference from the Director’s Guild of America, and the aforementioned negative reception.

6 Dinner With The Empire

Things go from bad to worse for Han, Leia, Chewie, and C-3P0 when they enter a dining hall in Cloud City only to come face to face with Darth Vader himself. It’s revealed that Vader used them as bait to lure Luke out – a trap that works perfectly.

What exactly happened in the dining room, however, is never shown. Leaving things up to audiences’ imagination isn’t a problem, but doing so accidentally left the scene open to numerous parodies. The most famous one was made by Robot Chicken, where the supposed lunch was shown in its awkward glory.

5 Boba Fett’s Badass Reputation

Thanks to this movie and most the Expanded Universe, Boba Fett went from cool-looking bounty hunter to galactic badass. The Empire Strikes Back all but solidifies his status as a legendary Mandalorian, but it’s also the only time audiences see him do something.

RELATED: 10 Things We Know So Far About The Mandalorian Season 1

In Return of the Jedi, Boba Fett dies comically when he’s knocked into the Sarlacc’s burping mouth. His status is further reduced when Attack of the Clones reveals that he’s the clone of a skilled Mandalorian, not the self-made mercenary fans thought him to be. In turn, his escapades in Empire look like dumb luck.

4 Goofy Yoda

When Luke first sees Yoda, his would-be Jedi mentor is a kooky old alien who messes with his stuff. This, however, was just a cover for the first of Yoda’s many unconventional tests. The moment the training begins, his demeanor changes.

The only reason why Yoda’s crazy front aged poorly was because of The Last Jedi, where Yoda’s Force Ghost seemingly forgot his true personality. Instead of being the meditative Jedi teacher, Yoda went back to goofing off and can now summon lightning. Thanks to pop culture osmosis and continued misinterpretation, Yoda’s antics overshadowed who he really was.

3 Lando Is The Only Black Man In Space

For its time, The Empire Strikes Back’s casting of Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calirissan was progressive but his legacy didn’t age well. Not only is Lando the only major black character in the sequel, but he’s also the one who sells out Han and friends.

Williams revealed that after the movie’s premiere, kids got mad at him for betraying the heroes – a reception he believes would’ve been different if Lando were played by a white man. Lando is still a compellingly tragic figure, but it’s impossible to overlook the (mostly unintentional) racial subtext.

2 Luke And Leia’s Kiss

After Luke wakes up in the infirmary, Leia makes out with him just to piss off Han. For those who shipped Luke and Leia since the beginning, this was one hell of a treat. That was until they were revealed to be siblings in Return of the Jedi.

If not for this list’s next entry, this accidental incest would be the one element in all of Star Wars canon that aged the worst. The fact that it was something Lucas and company made up on the fly only adds to the unintentional humor of it all.

1 Han Solo’s Casual Misogyny

Watching Han hit on Leia today isn’t as romantic as it used to be, since his actions and words line up more with those of a misogynist guilty of sexual harassment instead of a space-faring Casanova.

Han’s worst moment is when he corners Leia in the Millennium Falcon’s engine room and pressures her into kissing him. This is mostly a product of the time that the movie was made in rather than an indictment of it, but let’s just say that imitating Han’s style of romancing would get you in trouble instead of a relationship.

NEXT: Star Wars: 10 Movie Plot Holes Filled In By The Marvel Comics

source https://screenrant.com/star-wars-empire-strikes-back-havent-aged-well/

[curtdubya]

The official teaser for the next installment of the Skywalker Saga – Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi – came out today, and it is awesome.

There are three primary reasons why I'm excited about this:

Another Star Wars Movie!

Having been born in The Year of the Force (1977), I've loved Star Wars for as long as I can remember. I don't remember when I first watched the original movie or even Empire, but I do recall seeing Return of the Jedi in the theater as an almost-six-year-old, and at that point I had definitely seen the other two films already. As a kid I watched the Droids cartoon and the Ewok TV movies, and of course a number of Star Wars toys. I was a teenager just entering high school when Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy came out, and that started me on a decade-long journey through the Expanded Universe (now "Legends"). Of course, I was the first one at my small liberal arts college to get tickets for the Special Edition theatrical re-release, and I even saw all three prequels in the theater despite my increasing disappointment. More recently, I have been enjoying the Clone Wars and Rebels animated series, as well as some of the new canon novels.

But what has me most excited is the two most recent live-action films: Episode VII: The Force Awakens and Rogue One. I was a fan of Episode VII, even despite some of its story flaws and deliberate (but, I still think, perfectly fine) imitations of the original movie. But I am an even bigger fan of Rogue One, which was about as perfect a Star Wars story as you can get, in my humble opinion.

So, the very first thing I'm excited about is simply getting to see what comes next. J.J. Abrams and the LucasFilm team showed that the sequels are truly the anti-prequels, and I'm hoping they'll continue the momentum of both the previous Skywalker Saga story and the first anthology film by pushing boundaries even further with The Last Jedi.

Which brings me to the second thing I'm excited about:

Darkness Upon Darkness

If nothing else, Rogue One proved that the new Disney-owned LucasFilm is willing to push the franchise into levels of darkness that it has never reached before, even taking Empire into consideration. Sure, in Empire Luke loses a hand, finds out he's the spawn of the second-most evil being in the galaxy, and Han gets frozen in carbonite. The ending is bleak and leaves viewers hanging – by one hand, as it were. However, in Rogue One EVERYBODY FREAKIN' DIES! I did not see that coming. In fact, the first inkling I had that some serious shit was going down was when Cassian was shot and fell down the archive shaft. Yeah, sure, there's a eucatastrophic moment when he comes back and helps Jyn – and then THEY STILL BOTH DIE! Not to mention that the Rebel Fleet is decimated in the attack just as the ships are about to jump to hyperspace. Couple those facts with the images of Darth Vader slicing his way through Rebel troops mere steps behind the stolen Death Star plans, and it makes for a wonderfully dreary film that completely reshapes the original movie by showing you exactly what the stakes were and how tenuous the Rebel Alliance truly was.

All this darkness, in addition to the new teaser, gives me hope that Episode VIII will truly be something original, while still building organically from the original series. In the new teaser, an aged Luke says, "I only know one truth... it's time for the Jedi to end." Of course, the teaser itself is incomplete, making it impossible to know what the finished product is going to look like. But given how much Episode VII followed the original film, and one can hope that DisneyLucasFilm is using the same overall pattern as the original trilogy, which means Episode VIII will be the second act of a play — in which everything goes to shit for Rey and the Resistance. (Note to Self: "Rey and the Resistance" is a great name for a female-fronted Star Wars filk band.)

A lot of people consider Episode V to have been the best movie of the original trilogy (and, really, of any Star Wars movie to date, with the possible exception now of Rogue One). If the pattern holds true, and if DisneyLucasFilm is willing to keep pushing boundaries, then Episode VIII could supplant that. It's kind of an astounding thought, when you consider it like that.

That Poster

The teaser's exciting and all, but what I wasn't expecting was the new poster. I'm not the greatest at visual analysis, but a few thoughts after the jump:

The Last Jedi poster

One thing that stands out immediately to me: Rey has a very Solo-ish look, no? Vest, white shirt, low-slung holster… Are Rey and Ren-Ben the new Leia and Luke? Siblings separated at a young age? The Expanded Universe had Force-sensitive Jaina and Jacen, in which the latter turned to the Dark Side as Darth Caedus. Might the creative team be building off that idea here? Also, Han Solo seems (or seemed) to give Rey a few knowing looks in Episode VII, and given that the Millennium Falcon is on Jakku, there is already at least some kind of link between the two of them, albeit tenuous as we know it now. But hey, maybe I'm reading too much into things.

The other thing that jumps out to me is the gradient of the lightsaber from blue to red. Does this imply a balancing of the Force? Could Rey be the catalyst that combines the Light and Dark Sides and ultimately fulfills the prophecy that Qui-Gon believed was Anakin's role? Given that the blade cuts between Luke and Ren, that could be another indication of Rey as a balancing Force, so to speak. Again, this is all speculation on my part, but those are the things that jump out at me.

Check Out the Teaser

Haven't seen the teaser yet? Check it out below and let me know your thoughts about it or anything I've written above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB4I68XVPzQ

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[transsalamander]

The Transformers never left

Sometimes I stop and marvel at the fact that the Transformers toyline effectively never left toy store shelves.

G1 began in 1984, and throughout the rest of the 80′s Transformers stuck around. By the times the 90′s began, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were beginning to take center stage, and while it is true for a couple of years in the US Transformers were effectively dead, in Europe the line kept going with new toys, and even if you don’t think that counts, that two year period is the only break in the line’s otherwise continuous 33 year history.

Don’t believe me? Take a look:

1993 gave us G2, which meant garish repaints of G1 toys and garishly colored new molds (because 90′s neon).

By 1996 kids didn’t care about robots that turned into vehicles. But you know what they did care about? Robots that turned into motherfucking animals.

Beast Wars began as something of an experiment from the recently-acquired-by-Hasbro Kenner company as a way to reinvent the stagnating brand and holy hell it worked. This new era of Transformers took us all the way to the new Millennium.

The early 00′s is the closest the brand got to true obscurity. Remember Robots in Disguise? No, not that one. Or that one. Yeah, if it wasn’t for the fact that the original G1 kids were beginning to have their own disposable income, that might have been the end of the brand for good, but nostalgia is a powerful thing...

2002 brought us the Unicron Trilogy, which many of the 20-somethings here might be more familiar with as “their” Transformers. Armada, Energon, and finally Cybertron reinvigorated the original “robots into vehicles” theme of the franchise and kept the line alive for a new generation of kids and brings us all the way to 2006.

2006 was a great year for older Transformers fans. The 20th Anniversary of the Transformers animated movie and the 10th Anniversary of Beast Wars meant the return of classic characters with classic alt modes to store shelves. The Classics line and the 10th Anniversary re-releases of classic Beast Wars molds is what hooked me into the world of adult collecting.

Ironically enough, while Hasbro and Takara planned for Classics to be a kind of one-and-done sub-line, its huge success inspired them to continue the line, and while the name has changed a few times, the spirit of Classics (that being offering older characters with classic alt modes in updated molds) has continued to this day. Sure, kids might buy them occasionally, but that’s effectively a decade of nostalgic pandering, even while other lines continued right alongside it.

Another happy accident around the same time was the Masterpiece line that was also supposed to be a one-and-done thing with a highly-articulated, somewhat expensive, screen-accurate Optimus Prime figure celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the line in 2004. By popular demand, the line has also continued to this day, albeit with a size scale reboot in 2011. Nostalgia is indeed a powerful thing.

Anyway, I digress. 2007 of course brought us the beginning of the live action Michael Bay Transformers series, and while some fans like myself fucking hated those god awful movies, their massive success (like, seriously, they reshaped summer blockbusters themselves in a lot of ways) meant plenty of money left over to support the burgeoning adult collector lines that were running at the same time. Even us grouchy adult fans were benefiting from those movies.

I would be remiss if I didn’t take this moment to mention Transformers Animated, which ran from 2008 to 2009 for a total of three seasons and a corresponding toyline. It went largely unappreciated by a lot of adult fans at the time and by all accounts its target audience as well. There were some of us, myself included, that loved both the show and the toyline, and I highly recommend it to anyone who thinks they might be interested. It’s probably the best love letter to the series a fan could ask for.

The Bay franchise is still technically going to this day, but the two year release cycle of the movies ended with the third film, Dark of the Moon. After that the series would move onto a three year release cycle with Age of Extinction, followed by this year’s upcoming The Last Knight. AoE was huge overseas, but both the movie and the toyline saw a drop in popularity compared to the last three movies. It’s not that huge a surprise-- the kids who first saw the 2007 movie are “too old” for that stuff now. It’ll be a couple more years before they’re the next young adults using their disposable incomes to hopefully reinvigorate the line once again.

By the way, as far as TV series go, 2010 gave us Transformers Prime and 2015 gave us Transformers Robots in Disguise (yes, that one), both had/have accompanying toylines, but personally for the last decade I’ve only really been paying attention to the adult collector-oriented “Classics” (now Generations) and Masterpiece lines.

And that takes us to today. 33 years of near-uninterrupted success of robots that turn into vehicles. That’s fucking crazy. No other toyline to my knowledge has done that. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles might be second place if we’re looking for the least amount of time off of shelves. The original series lasted an unheard of 9 seasons with a toyline throughout, but if I’m not mistaken they were gone for a while in the late 90′s and again in the early teens (the 2003 series, the 2007 movie and the 2012 series kept it mostly alive, however). In any case Transformers had a head start.

It’s not like other 80′s brands didn’t try to ride that nostalgia wave either. GI Joe and He-Man both had revivals in the mid 00′s, and Thundercats tried to make a comeback a couple years ago. None of them succeeded (GI Joe’s revival lasted a good 8 or 9 years though to be fair).

I don’t know what it is about Transformers that has made them so everlasting, but as a fan of the series I’m certainly not complaining. If you read this far, thanks. I just felt like rambling about this weird franchise that, while it has a huge following, is also kind of obscure in most social circles. Most people think it was G1, then 20 years later the Bay movies.

Transformers really never left, though.