#i think luke was no more or less flawed than anyone else in the series

[rowsdelusions]

Flatline (Luke Hemmings/reader)

Flatline (Luke Hemmings Imagines)

Title: Flatline

Rating: None

Pairing: Luke Hemmings/Reader

Word Count: 2116

Warning: Language

Summary: You're the guy's tour manager for their new tour

Author's Note: I am entirely grateful for all the love and support my last story got!! >_< It means the world to me that people like my stories! I hope this one is to your liking as well. I've got a few ideas for the other guys so don't worry!! I'm in the making of a few but wanted to ask if anyone is up for a series of imagines based off of their songs?! I did my Older one and this of course is Flatline, but just wanted to ask if people would like that?! Again, thank you so much for the support!!!

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“You guys are on in 5 minutes. So do any last minute touch ups and rituals; and if you need me for anything I’m always here you just have to get me.” I say smiling at the group of 4 men who I have grown to love over the short period of time I've been their tour manager. Their personalities and them as people just make it so easy to fall in love with them. Except for one; Luke. Anytime I would try to be close and nice to him like the rest of the boys I am not even given the cold shoulder I just get a blank stare or just a nod yes or no. It’s like he’s numb. If he had given me the cold shoulder I would at least know he just doesn’t like me, but I just get a blank stare.

I’ve asked the guys if I did something that offended him and why he didn’t like me, and they would just look at each other with the same look they are having right now when they see I’m waiting for a confirmation from Luke after I announced they had 5 minutes left and I got nothing back not eve a blank stare this time just nothing. He doesn’t look at me at all. Not looking up from putting his makeup away into his makeup bag even with the uncomfortable silence that wafted over the dressing room once everyone knew he wasn’t going to respond back.

It was like he was in an entirely different world that no one else was privy to except for him. But his face didn’t show the bliss that you get when you're daydreaming. It held nothing but concentration. Not knowing what had him so concentrated that made him look like he was about to explode into a million pieces, I walked over to him to see if there was anything I could do to help him. He might not like me, but I'm still his tour manager and bottom line I will do anything to make this tour more magical than the last even if talking to him has me on an edge of a cliff from nerves.

“Luke, is there anything I can do for you? You guys are on in a little less than 5 minutes.” I said to him softly, barely over a whisper looking at him with so much sincerity that a tour manager probably shouldn’t have for the lead singer of the band she is managing, but I couldn’t help it. Even with all the blank stares and nods. I couldn’t help but fall in love with him, going beyond the platonic love that I have for the other guys. He was just perfect with all his flaws, although I don’t think he has any he might be standoff-ish with me, but I can’t help but see how he interacts with the other guys, the crew, the fans during a show or in general, and his family when they come to some of the shows.

He always gives anyone he’s talking to his full attention sometimes looking like a puppy while doing so but it’s endearing. It shows he cares even if what you're talking about isn’t all that important. I can’t help that when he does his makeup how beautiful he looks and the look of being alive and doing what he loves while he's on stage makes me feel like I’m in the presence of an angel. Suddenly getting caught off guard from my thoughts by the man himself. When he abruptly stands up pushing the chair he was generally sitting on while cleaning up his makeup. I back up not out of fright but more out of shock looking around for a moment noticing all the guys are not in the room anymore.

The look of confusion crossed my faces wondering when they left, but before I could get too far in my wondering, Luke asked, “Are you going to be on the side of the stage for this show?” Even more confused, I answer in an unsure tone.” umm… I guess?” It sounded like more of a question than I intended. I tried to recover from it.” I was going to get the schedule for our next stop situated during this show so I wasn’t planning on it but if you want, I can just do it after the show.” Not even a second passed before he answered me,” Can you do it after the show? It will be easier if you were by the stage tonight.”  I stare at him for a moment, questions in my head that I’ll never asks run through it before I ponder any longer on them though I see that he’s waiting for an answer looking almost nervous but I see on the wall clock that he has to be on stage in 2 minutes so leaving my questions in my head I answer him,” Yeah I'll be there on Cals side.” Without anything more said between us he leaves the dressing room leaving me with nothing but his presence and the questions in my head left unanswered.

By the time I composed myself in the dressing room and went to my designated spot on the side of the stage on Cal's side, the boys were already on their third song. When I got there, I was handed an earwig from one of the workers on tour so I can hear the tech crew and everyone else if there's a problem that needs to be fixed. Getting a weird look from the crew around me made me self-conscious, questioning why everyone was giving me that look on top of the questions I have from my discussion with Luke.

Putting all my focus back onto the show, I see that instead of Luke having his talking part first like usual it’s Michael who is doing his. Confused, I turned to the closest person on the crew besides me and asked,” Why is Michael doing his talking portion at this moment and why was I not informed by this?” The crewmate looked nervous when I asked, not knowing if it’s because there scared on losing their job or something else, I try to clarify more for them trying to ease their nervousness," I’m just asking because any new changes need to be made through me, you're not losing your job and I’m not mad I’m just wondering why this decision was made without at least talking to me.”

Seeing their nerves not lessening, but answering anyway in a rushed stutter manner,” The guys asked for this request and said not to tell you.” Turning towards them like they had a second head I see the crewmate walking briskly away stopping where a bunch of the other people apart from the crew where and talking heavily with them before they all stopped once they saw I was looking over them. Why is everyone being secretive about something and why did no one tell me about the last-minute change on the show.

I questioned myself, getting madder by the second once I saw that even more people were looking at me. Staring ahead after I get tired of the stares that are burning holes into my head every passing second, I try to focus on the show making sure it goes off without a hitch. Even though I see that each of the guys are going in a different order for their talking portions than what we’ve planned in the start of the tour, I see that after Michaels talking portion and a few songs, Ashton went next for his talking portion.

Why are they going in a different order than the one we picked even when there's a different order Luke always goes first so it’s easier on the guys and the crew to switch out guitars. Why did the guys not tell me about this or Luke when we were talking in the dressing room earlier. They clearly knew it was happening from what I’m seeing on stage and what the crewmate told me when I asked about it. Worrying even more, questions ran through my head that I was going to ask the boys once the shows were done. I didn't realize how much time went by with all of my worrying.

Until I heard Luke doing his talking portion missing all of Cal’s one, I tried to pay attention pushing the worry and questions till after the show. I hear Luke make a nervous laugh continuing the nervous streak while talking like he did with me earlier in the dressing room,” I know that you all have realized that we're doing things in a different order on this show and that is because… I have something special I'm going to do for this show.” he laughs at the end when he hears the fans screaming at the top of their lungs. “As I know how exciting this is. I need you guys to do me a favor. Can you do that?” 

He questions the fans in an exciting tone, the nerves still blatantly present though how much he’s trying to hide it from the fans covering some of it up. I've spent enough time with these guys to see all of their tell-tell signs. Coming back from the fans screaming yes. Luke laughs again, "okay, good so for our last and final song I would like you all to please be courteous because I'm going to be bringing someone out for this song and I would love it if you all sing along with me.”

Drowning out all the exciting screams from the fans I grab the closest crewmate to me,” What is he talking about bringing someone on stage?” I asked hurriedly. When I don’t get an answer from them, I hear Luke start to talk again this time with an almost desperate tone that you wouldn’t have catched if you didn’t know him well.” Now can I please get are ever so brilliant tour manager on stage please.”

Looking confused I see Cal walking towards where I am on the side of the stage walking towards him in an almost run. When I reached him, I asked in a hurried manner,” What the hell is going on?” looking down at me he says in a calm tone,” Everything is going to be explained but you just have to trust me and go on stage please.” Looking into his eyes, seeing them have a pleading look, I slowly nod my head.

Walking with Cal on stage was the most nerve-wracking thing I’ve ever done. My admiration for the boys is growing. When we met Luke in the middle of the stage all the fans were screaming. Blocking them out I turned to Luke asking what I’ve been dying to ask him this whole evening. "What the hell are you doing and what the hell am I supposed to do up here?” Giving Luke my must baffled look and all I get in return is him saying, "Just please listen to the lyrics it will explain everything I promise and all you have to do is stand here looking beautiful.”

Before I can question him anymore, I see him giving a nod to the other boys, and next thing I know I’m hearing the strums of Cal's bass and Lukes's voice combining into their song Flatline. Hearing it before and loving it like any other song they release. I still don’t understand why I'm out here in front of 10,000 fans until Luke turns towards me walking, chest to chest singing the chorus of the song looking nowhere but my eyes, and all I can do is be hypnotized.

Not once looking away from him even when everything clicked into place. He likes me, that's why he has been acting the way he has. The man who made me hypnotized in every sense likes me, and I've never noticed. Without thinking I lean up to his face, wrapping both of my arms around his neck, my hands reaching into his beautiful blonde hair, curling my fingertips into the curly pieces I move his head down to my own. Looking into his eyes for permission but instead of him giving me one he grabs my hips and crashes his lips against mine. The kiss felt nothing like I’ve ever had before, like everything was aligned. Breaking apart when the fans' screams reached a new level, I looked into his eyes with the brightest smile on my face, “I fell the first day I met you.”

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AHHH, I hope y'all like this one because I do!!! and if you guys want to see the song series pleaseee let me know!!! thank you for the love and support!!!! >_<

[art--cat]

Ten Minute Sketch of two characters who I think are surprisingly similar (the colour is off). Biana and Annabeth.

Why I think these two characters are similar: Biana and Annabeth have both had someone telling them that they are going to be part of something big from a young age, in Biana's case her family, in Annabeth's, Chiron. This results in both of them becoming, desperate to prove themselves and over confident despite not actually having done anything yet.

There are many common issues shared between these characters; however I feel the most important flaw is their character development. We follow both Biana and Annabeth throughout most of their teenage years, 12-15 and 12-17 respectively. What character development do we see? None.

Biana remains a spoiled brat who believes she is entitled to whatever she wants, or at the very least she can do as she pleases. We see this in book one, when her spotlight is threatened and as a result she is a awful person/friend to Sophie, and we see it again in book six, when she goes directly against her team leaders orders (resulting in injury (the mirror incident)). Biana doesn't grow as a person at all over the course of three pivotal years of adolescence, making her character bland and irritating.

Annabeth has the same issue. When she was 12 she used people to get what she wants, lacked any care for others emotions, physically attacked her friends (especially Percy) and held herself on a pedestal above anyone else. We see all these issues in PJO book 4 and 5 with her unacceptable behaviour towards Rachel caused by a feeling of entitlement to Percy (despite still having a lot of mixed feeling around Luke). Then we see all the same issues pop up again in HoO. She has not changed since she was twelve.

Biana and Annabeth even play a similar role within their respective fandoms, the ones who are loved because fanon has become more relevant than canon. In fan works both of these characters break from their consistent behaviour within the books, making them seem like less cliche YA teenage female side characters.

Finally both Biana and Annabeth have given as much as they possible can to their series.

Annabeth would be a better character if they has just left her out of HoO. Introduced a new child of Athena. There was a natural segue for her to be off building Olympus. This would also add much needed conflict to Percabeth, and honestly do Annabeth more justice.

For Biana, I simply don't see anymore for her to contribute, and don't fully understand why she's on team valiant.

Anyway, that was way longer than I intended, I don't hate Annabeth (Biana on the other hand...), just feel that they have some common issues, most of which are more of a common writing flaw in long series than an issue with the actual characters :).

[rynnaaurelius]

(this got long, sorry, I just kept thinking)

I don't think you're wrong about how to judge Luke, but I think it's really difficult to separate Luke's feelings towards the gods from his personal relationships. The rage he feels is personal.

(Which, I think, is part of why Ethan is so important as a character)

I don't think the sky situation in TTC was that clean-cut, particularly considering his actions in the next book with Antaeus and trying to save Annabeth's life while being happy to let Percy die, in contrast. Luke outright says that he knows that Annabeth won't die holding up the sky since Artemis will save her, and there's a lot of ambiguity thrown around this entire situation (A lot around Luke in general in TTC, to be honest).

Moreover, he's basically running on righteous fury and trauma for the entire original series. From where he's standing, if the endgame is a safer world for all demigods, Annabeth included, there's a lot he's willing to do.

He owns the consequences, and he acknowledges that Annabeth may justifiably no longer love him as she once did at the end of TLO, neither of which strike me as the actions of a bad person. He doesn't dispute causing Annabeth pain, nor lack guilt for it, IMO. He does dispute what he did it for, and whether it's worth it, which is the question, I guess.

He genuinely struggles to end with reconciling his affection for Annabeth (and Thalia, too) with his determination to make Olympus pay, as long as they choose different sides of the war from him--I mean, hell, outside of the sky situation, Luke works pretty hard to keep Annabeth alive and unhurt when she's around--which I think is pretty revealing.

All of this rambling is to say, I think it's really, really difficult to call Luke Castellan a bad person. A traumatized mess taking it out on the world, and the king of rationalizing your life choices when choosing violence, yes. But he's also why Percy extracted that promise of better treatment for demigods, and it's hard to hate him when he cared as much for his siblings and cousins as he did.

(and this has gotten REALLY long but I also wanna tag on that I do think Annabeth has every right, and probably should be, mad at him over everything. People are complicated)

Every time I see a "Luke Castellan was a bad person" take cross my dash, I get closer to writing a five thousand word meta about how the entire point of The Last Olympian and, arguably, the entire original series, is that Luke Was Right, Actually, and that Percy should've been radicalized in Heroes of Olympus

[michaelyew]

In an adaptation/rewrite of tlo I have some changes I'd like to make. Aside from the obvious. And I really like this book, it's my favourite from the main series, but it needs some updating!

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Firstly in order to fix The Last Olympian we need to fix some things in The Battle of The Labyrinth.

I want Beckendorf to have a bigger role in this book. He was introduced in the second book, but here is where he could really shine as a son of Hephaestus This whole quest is about his dad! He should be able to get more screen time in this story so that we can care about him on his own merits instead of as one of Percy's friends or the tragic love interest. For that, I think he should be a part of the questing trio. 

"But what about Grover!"

What about Grover? He has his own reasons for going into the labyrinth, he doesn't need permission from Chiron to look for Pan. He's a smart boy with some brains, he can see the maze as a lead and go in after them on his own. This also creates the same conundrum of Threes that came up in the book before, which we'll come back to later. Percy can intrust Tyson's care to one of the other demigods set up to be his friend in TLO: Michael Yew to establish their friendship and trust, Lee Fletcher to give him some purpose besides dying, the Stolls to once again affirm that the Hermes cabin takes on responsibility for other campers, ect. When Tyson later sneaks off into the Labyrinth after Percy, this sets up a later conflict that establishes whatever choice more. This also fixes something else that's always bothered me, which is that it kind of felt that Percy only truly accepted Tyson once he showed how useful he was. Plus he always seemed to feel responsible for him. By having Percy take the time to make sure Tyson is being taken care of outside of his talents, that establishes more concretely how much Percy cares about him as a brother without painting him as a burden.  

So Charlie goes on this quest and sticks it through to the forges. Grover in this version still goes off with Tyson for that sweet sweet character development, but the questing party stays at three. It's here that the parallels set in, because in being burned alive by the volcano and being yeeted to Calypso, Percy is not only saving Annabeth but also Charlie. Saving him from certain death by explosion and flame. It does have the unfortunate side effect of there being TWO incidents of Percabeth having emotional kisses in front of their friends, but we can fix this by having Charlie fight a Telkinhein or something it's fine. Beckendorf drops out of the main story from here to make way for Rachel but he still has one good scene of protecting camp at the end. Plus, I want him to be present when Amnabeth tells Hera she only cares about perfect families and I want him there to defend his dad. 

So for those counting that makes three counts of narrative consistency stacked against Charlie's life (which makes a lot more sense than just killing him off because you needed a martyr). With this we go into The Last Olympian. 

I wouldn't change much about the plot line from here on out. We have the setup of Charlie returning the favour to Percy by saving his life, we get some sweet last scenes of him being a demigod and a hero, the setup to TLO is bomb and it's fine. I'd like more scenes with Michael because if you're gonna set a character up to be front and center then kill him off you could at least give him more than 35 lines.

What I do want to make a point of here though is that Percy lives in BoTL. What happens to Beckendorf specifically from that moment doesn't actually matter so long as it makes a big enough impact on Selina to drive her to reach the conclusions that she does. He could live or die or be yeeted to Calypso, lose a limb or two, it doesn't matter so long as he's put down for the count for the rest of the book. Percy lived, and the rule of threes doesn't actually make an impact again outside of Bianca's death (because if it did someone should have died in Sea of Monsters but they didn't). So I like to think he lives, but I'd be more ok with him dying in this scenario than I was in canon.

However on to Selina, who still needs to die. And it's at this point that I will make people angry by saying that I think Charlie's impact on her is much more meaningful if they were best friends instead of dating. I want a scene in the earlier books where this is established so that we know that they are close. And I want them to be friends because the point of Silena's ark should be that she hurt her friends and she feels awful about putting them in danger and got them killed, not that she's changing herself for a man (or dying for one that's possibly still alive). I just think this would be much more powerful if romance wasn't the main emotion involved. 

That being said I want her to be 50% gayer for Clarisse because we were given Patroclus and Achilles parallels with girls and by GD they will be gay. I will stand for nothing less. I want them to have a relationship that's established at the end of BoTL in the background and I want it officiated in TLO because if you're going to compare them to one of the great mythic queer relationships of antiquity then they WILL BE QUEER. 

Again it would be neat if Michael lived because the alternative is that Percy killed his friend and then never talked about it again and it's never brought up again and it just exists as a thing everyone quietly knows until he snaps in Tartarus. Which I'm not saying that having that conversation instead wouldn't be cool, but the ending kiss is very iconic and I don't think that strong of a tone shift could work. 

Now I want Ethan to live not because I'm bitter and not because almost every person of colour dies in the main series but for one very important reason. Through the entire series, every time we see him, Ethan never actually did anything wrong. He was forced to fight in the arena by Luke, he didn't directly hurt or kill anyone, in fact he's never actually aggressive in any of his later appearances. Yeah he joined Khronos, sure, but it's not like he had any other options. That was his tragedy. Ethan was a son of a minor goddess, a goddess usually seen as evil by other demigods to boot, who was neglected and mistreated by the place that was meant to keep him safe. He had to join Luke because the alternative was being killed or recruited anyway. And he didn't deserve to die for it, the price of his redemption was never that steep. It makes much more sense for Ethan to return to camp and have a hand in rebuilding it with his own hands and making amends for the minor gods with his own power. His fatal flaw was the desire for justice at any means, him being killed when he's so close to freedom and respect doesn't jive with that.  

Additional notes: 

- The romantic subplot between Annabeth and Luke was creepy and we didn't need it. He was a big brother figure to her, that's enough betrayal drama on its own. 

- In general we need more canon ethnicities. In a TV adaptation this is easier obviously, but honestly we shouldn't have to assume things based on names or how little they're described. We should just get to know. 

[reallydampcake]

My thoughts on star wars now that i have seen them all:

(TROS spoilers ahead)

I have loved the star wars movies for as long as I can remeber, I’ve seen the prequel trilogy and the sequel trilogy more times than I can count and I have never felt anything other than enjoyment from these movies.

The new trilogy has not mande me nearly as angry as it seems to have made everyone else, I dont think they’re bad movies at all, to me they make a good amount of sense for me to see a good flow to the story. There are no characters that I hate or dislike as both trios (luke, han, leia + poe, fin, rey) I really love, because of their bond, how much they care for each other and the way they always work as a team. I sat through each movie and never come out feeling like my time was wasted or that I was wronged. I will happily watch and enjoy every single one of those nine movies again with no hesitation, just because I like them all so much.

Also, I’m a huge fan of romance in movies I love watching people fall in love, become friends and have relationships, so all this fighting between ships is silly to me. Rey and Kylo/Ben, Poe and Finn, even if one is established to be clearly real in the movie, it doesn’t make the other any less existent just because it wasn’t announced with a big fanfare, shown with a kiss or spoken out loud. ( I honestly saw both ships as cannon as i saw clear connections and lead ups.)

I really like Anakin Skywalker, The way he turned to the dark side made sense to me and his personality that everyone hated, I understood. I can understand why he acted like he did. I liked his story.

It just makes me really sad to see that, when I come on the internet to look at content about my favorite movie series, all I seem to see is fighting between separate groups and so many people saying they hate the new movie, it is a “fact” that it is terrible because it didn’t happen exactly how they wanted it to, or because one aspect of it was disappointing. And as someone who has spent 5 years of my life doing film and drama studies (acting, characterization, storytelling, directing, filming and a shit tonne of other things in that area), I objectively dont think the movies are really as bad as everyone says (although they all have some bad flaws, plotholes, etc..).

I know its probably super dumb of me to write a whole ass post out of the blue about this but im fed up of all the negativity and I wanted to get out what my opinion and relationship is to Star Wars. I know I didn’t cover everything but I wanted to get out the main points for me.

(Also if anyone wants to talk about anything star wars then pls hit me up, I’d love to have a discussion about it)

[thebastardofgloucester]

So...The Rise of Skywalker (Spoilers, obviously)

No Star Wars movie is anywhere close to perfect. Frankly, they all have serious flaws of logistics or plot logic or characterisation changes or deus ex machinas or lack of originality (which includes A New Hope when you look at its inspirations). It's pointless and silly to pretend otherwise. At its best, Star Wars overcomes that with captivating characters, glorious spectacle, and John Williams.

I think you'll all be familiar with how much I disliked The Last Jedi (and chafed at being lumped in for disliking the movie in with bigots, unimaginative fanboys, and the like).

I liked The Rise of Skywalker. A lot. It had more than enough to offset its major shortcomings, in my opinion. It was not 'soulless,' it was not a complete recreation of Return of the Jedi anymore than The Last Jedi was a rough retelling of The Empire Strikes Back, and it was not as bad or incoherent as Attack of the Clones, jfc are you high

There are certain areas where I am more sympathetic to that not being the case for some people than others. I don't think it completely junked The Last Jedi, but it did demonstrate a huge gap in creative visions, preferred plot structures, and other priorities. Blame for that should not lie with JJ Abrams (or Chris Terrio) or Rian Johnson, who did what they thought was best, and what they were hired to do, and what they thought audiences would enjoy. It should lie with the Lucasfilm story group and Kathleen Kennedy, who had every opportunity to make a trilogy with a united vision and simply declined to do so. (There are a set of different issues with Disney that I'll get to)

Anyway, here's my take on individual components.

Rey ‘Palpatine’

We might as well start with the single most contentious part of the film, and where it is perceived (wrongly, in my opinion) to clash the most with The Last Jedi: Rey being of the Palpatine bloodline.

Rey's arc was about pushing past her own past traumas and doubts and the repeated attempts of other people to define who she was to make her own identity. It is about the refutation of destiny, of genetic determinism. I'm not really sure how anyone really came away with a different impression. I understand being annoyed that Rey couldn't just come from nothing, but call me an annoying fanboy - I wanted some explanation for how Rey was a match for the grandson of literal Space Jesus. Anakin being the most powerful Jedi ever born (and how he was failed by those who were supposed to guide him to that destiny) is kind of central to the entire mythology of Star Wars. Is it reductive and elitist? I guess. I certainly enjoy having Jedi not born of the Skywalker bloodline in the old EU and the Clone Wars/Rebels story. I was frustrated by killing off all of Luke's students as part of resetting the universe in The Force Awakens, and never learning anything about them.

Honestly, as somebody who was in the Rey Skywalker camp (and wrote fanfiction to that effect!), I was glad to be wrong. This was better. It gave Rey more agency, and emphasized found family.

The exposition is weird and clunky. JJ clearly meant for Rey to have some kind of blood link to the previous mythology of the series - you cannot watch the sequence in Maz's castle and tell me otherwise. Rian didn't want to tell that story. JJ did. Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm threw their hands up in the air and Disney raked in the cash. Looking at that Maz castle beat, there's a very good case to be made that Rey was supposed to be either a Skywalker or a Solo, and Palpatine was JJ's attempt to not completely throw out Rian's idea (that her parents went into hiding, becoming 'no one,' abandoning her and being killed somewhere else - their motivations in TLJ (drunks ditching her) are imputed by Kylo and Rey's own fears of abandonment, remember).

Weirdly, I think that of the outcomes, Palpatine was the best one. Explaining how Rey ends up alone on Jakku when she's related to either Luke or Leia is pretty hard without further damaging their characters. Palpatine having lovers, mistresses, whatever before Mace melted his face is gross but entirely plausible. The timeline is...confusing - I guess there's enough basis for Palpatine still having agents running around, chasing down Rey, that even years after his death Rey's parents would leave her behind in an attempt to protect her. It's a bit muddy, but so was Anakin being Luke and Leia's father before we had the prequels. A novel here would probably help if it is written competently)

The point is that Rey's arc refutes genetic destiny. Instead of being afraid of her, as the Jedi were of Anakin (and to an extent, the Skywalkers were of Ben) Luke and Leia (specifically Leia) allow her to grow into her own person, and ultimately she chooses to take the name Skywalker to honor them (and Ben's sacrifice). The problem in my mind is less that Rey is a Palpatine by blood or a Skywalker by choice, and more that she's the only Jedi standing at the end of the trilogy. Making Finn's absolutely obvious force sensitivity a bigger deal narratively in TROS would have helped a lot (more on that later). And we still have the important implications of Broom Boy! He's not erased from existence, there simply wasn't room for his story in these 2.5 hours.

The First Act (and a bit)

The first 30 minutes or so of The Rise of Skywalker are...nuts. They feel less like a movie and more like a series of trailers or a 'previously on' for a movie we never saw. It's about as well done as it could be at establishing plot threads, the situation of the Resistance v the First Order, and where characters are starting from, as you could reasonably expect, but it's like cramming the entirety of the Jabba's Palace segment of Return of the Jedi into about half its runtime, at most.

What it comes down to, and I said this at the time, is that The Last Jedi is a very bad sequel to The Force Awakens. That doesn't (REPEAT: DOES NOT) make it bad film, or even a bad Star Wars film. But in terms of what the middle movie of a planned trilogy should be. It is. Not Good. JJ had seeded hints of Rey's origins and opened a bunch of mysteries. You can contend that he never intended or was never capable of answering them, and I think that's entirely unfair and reducing JJ's opus to the unsatisfying ending of 'Lost' is stupid and lazy, but they were there. The Last Jedi threw all of that out with extreme prejudice. I deeply disliked that; other people didn't. Either way, you had a problem (and you would have had even more of a problem if Colin Trevorrow had directed Episode IX as planned - this could have been SO. MUCH. WORSE.). The Rise of Skywalker is a natural sequel to The Force Awakens, though Palpatine's return could have been foreshadowed much better (or at all, if we're honest?) and it really makes me wonder how much changed from the first drafts of The Force Awakens to the version of The Rise of Skywalker we saw on screen.

I saw some criticisms that we had to read the tie-in material (including a bit from Fortnite??) to understand all the specifics of what planets these were, who Kylo Ren was murdering, etc...I don’t really think any of that was particularly important. It actually opens up a ton of new storytelling opportunities and made the universe feel big again, which The Last Jedi didn’t, at least for me. Apparently the planet Kylo is fighting on is Mustafar. That...doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense (maybe we finally have a Star Wars world that isn’t a single biome?) but it wasn’t actually that important. We saw Kylo searching for the Sith Wayfinder and murdering anybody in his way, we saw Poe and Finn being pursued from one end of the universe to another, and we got the 16 hour deadline before the fleet was ready (which was...weird, admittedly, but not in the slightest less weird that the fleet running out of fuel on a slow-motion chase or needing to fly off to an entirely different system to find a ‘code breaker’ to counter a techo gadget thing that let you trace people through hyperspace.

And yeah, if you are going to forgive The Last Jedi the dumb codebreaker/fuel shit which led to the detached Canto Bight B plot, you have to just acknowledge the Wayfinder thing as a macguffin that gets the plot moving in a certain direction and gives a clear path from narrative point a to narrative point b. Rian is not ahead of JJ on this aspect.

The subsequent fetch quest is less about the macguffin and more about the character beats on the way. Kylo and his boy band pursue Rey, Rey realizes her powers are kinda scary and hella impressive (including the healing mechanic, which is entirely precedented in past canon), you get to see some brilliant, funny, and touching moments between the trio we were not allowed in The Last Jedi, Rey discovers hints about her past, and Lando shows up.

We also get to my least favorite part of the film.

Poe Dameron is Better Than This

I do not understand why they ret-conned Poe into having a past as a smuggler, or why Keri Russell’s character was even necessary. You could explain it as youthful rebellion, maybe after Poe’s mom Shara Bey died (both his parents were Rebel veterans - that’s a lot of pressure), but it fits awkwardly into the established timeline.

The one good thing that came out of it was a moment where Poe is tempted to leave the Resistance, but that only makes sense because of Poe’s terrible hotheaded, reckless characterization in The Last Jedi, neither of which at all fit with his portrayal in the Poe Dameron comics (which are excellent). Poe eventually gets where he needs to be, and the conversation with Lando after Leia passes is one of the best moments of the film, and justified bringing Lando all by itself. Oscar Isaac is apparently really frustrated with Poe’s character and I cannot blame him. Rian Johnson started this weirdness, and it is one of the greatest flaws of The Last Jedi and more people need to acknowledge how racist it was to reduce a 30-something brown-skinned veteran to an impulsive, out of control idiot who gets physically and verbally smacked around by two white women, and JJ didn’t really try to fix it. I guess his arc kinda works in a vacuum. I still deeply dislike it. Cutting that entire section down to the bare bones would have made more room for...

Finn and the Triad

The dynamic between Finn, Poe, and Rey was fantastic. There is abundant basis for Finn and Poe to be canon romantic interests, and I cannot conclude it was anything but Disney’s cowardice that prevented that from happening (and honestly, same for Finn and Rey). JJ is no more to blame than Rian - I genuinely believe this came from higher up. It sucks. A lot. What we do get is precious, and frankly makes Rian’s argument for separating them (that they would get along and it would be boring) kinda silly. They are also incredibly funny together - John, Isaac, and Daisy play off each other so damn well, and I was cackling when the Falcon was on fire and Poe was mad about BB-8.

Finn is absolutely force sensitive. It is apparently what he was trying to say to Rey, he has feelings that turn out to be correct like three times, he wielded a lightsaber with some proficiency in The Force Awakens. It’s canon. Why it isn’t explicit is a function of the Force User plot becoming divorced from Finn and Poe in The Last Jedi. JJ and Terrio also could have fixed that, and chose not to.

We got a tantalizing glimpse of what could have been with Janna and the other defectors. It was really good, but it wasn’t nearly enough, and I am Mad about it. To borrow from some great ideas on twitter, Janna could have revealed that her unit heard about Finn on Jakku and it inspired them to defect. They could have together swayed a bunch of reluctant stormtroopers to rebel (they were otherwise just treated as facist canon-fodder, which, not great when a lot of them are child soldiers!). It was perfectly set up from TFA and they just...dropped the ball.

Like I said, I’m Mad. TLJ did nothing with Finn as a defector or the child soldier thing in general, and TROS did the bare minimum. Huge, huge wasted opportunity. We got promises that we’d get to find out more about who Finn is and...we didn’t, or at least, not in the theatrical cut. TLJ had a scene of Finn and Phasma talking about his being a traitor/defector. Rian cut it down to a fight scene and the ‘Rebel Scum’ line. Writers jail for both of them, tbh, though JJ clearly cared about Finn (he’s why the character exists as he does, as why Boyega was cast, and maybe if TLJ doesn’t make Kylo into Rey’s co-protagonist we get something different. I'm not going to blame Rian for something JJ could have fixed if he cared to.

And least we got something, I guess.

Kylo Ben

I think the first time I actually cared about Ben Solo as a character was when Kylo symbolically ‘died,’ and Ben was saved by Rey’s healing abilities. That was excellent writing, even if it was not subtle. I liked Leia and Han (as part of Ben’s memories) have a role in helping him find some sort of redemption. I was frustrated and mad that Anakin Skywalker’s grandkid could be a straight up space fascist with even fewer redeeming qualities. He still deserved to die. He had no family to go back to and he was directly responsible for thousands of innocent deaths and closely linked to the death of trillions. Like Vader, you don’t just come back from that.

Like Anakin, Ben made his own choices. Was he manipulated by Snoke/Palpatine? Sure. He still had multiple occasions to chose differently and did not. It’s part of his flaws as a character. Han and Leia did their best as parents - we find out Leia even abandoned her Jedi training because she was afraid for her son. Ben’s inevitable fall (which mirrors that of Jacen Solo, a truly fascinating character who I will always be Mad about) soured the sequel trilogy from the start in some ways, but it is hard to envision it without Ben turning. I don’t know. I think without Ben being who he was we simply have a different set of movies.

The kiss is...I don’t even know. Rey clearly cared about Ben, and believed he could change, but also refused to compromise who she was in order to pull him back to the light. I would have vastly preferred a forehead kiss or something along those lines.

On balance I’m glad he got a Vader redemption. I think Palpatine came back in part because Ben simply was not a particularly captivating villain, and without him to provide contrast and make the stakes clear, Ben’s redemption is not possible, and that’s arguably an even worse outcome, especially given how he was manipulated so much at an impressionable age. I’m really glad Leia had a chance to influence his turn as her final act in this life (Carrie deserved a better ending but it was the best they could do after Carrie’s death imo).

Grandpa Palps

First, Palpatine finding a way to survive and setting up multiple contingency plans to return to power is completely in keeping with his portrayal in both the old and Nu EUs (a big part of the post-Endor stuff is Operation Cinder, where Palpatine posthumously ordered the scouring of dozens of Imperial loyalist worlds to spread fear and prevent the Empire from continuing without him). Palpatine also LOVES his superweapons - he built two Death Stars, ffs. A fleet of them is not exactly a stretch in terms of strategy. The Rise of Skywalker definitely felt like it owed a debt to one of the more divisive bits of the old Star Wars EU - the Dark Empire series of comics by Tom Veitch and Kevin J Anderson, which have cloned Palpatines, Luke turning to the Dark Side, an ungodly number of superweapons, and a planet where Palpatine hides and builds them after his defeat.

I don’t think his survival ruins Anakin’s arc - Anakin’s actions still destroyed Palpatine’s Empire (that he helped to build) and its 26 year reign of terror. The galaxy got 30 years of relative peace and then a war that was not nearly as destructive or large scale as the Galactic Civil War. People saying it makes Anakin’s arc irrelevant are just being silly.

Retconning Snoke to a cloned puppet (probably an unwitting one) is actually not a bad writing choice. It explains why he was such a cardboard cut-out villain, and why he was so easily defeated. Honestly, I’m far more okay with how he died in The Last Jedi now that I know this (even if the pacing and the placement of that scene is still utterly bizarre).

The new EU set up cults and fanatics around the Dark Side and its avatars in the emperor and Vader. None of that felt particularly implausible to me as a result.

Legacies in the Sequel Trilogy

I really loved the ‘thousand generations live in you’ conceit. I loved the power of the old Jedi, snuffed out by Palpatine, helping Rey defeat him one last time (including my girl Ahsoka, RIP, I'm sure you went out like a badass). These are legacies and powers that don’t require blood ties or dynasties, they just rely on the force spanning the whole of the GFFA.

Ben is offered the chance to either turn away from his grandfather’s dark path early enough to warrant redemption, or to follow it through until the end. He actually chooses to do neither. With Leia’s dying intercession, he ends up following Anakin’s path to an extent, but his story is ultimately about the tragedy of expectations, fears, and the immense weight of the Skywalker name and legacy. All of his family are caught up in it. Rey is mostly apart from it, and then explicitly subverts her destiny to be Palpatine’s heir, and faces her fear of ending up there, by intent or just fate. As Luke says, some things are stronger than blood. Rey’s story is the ultimate testament to that, and it’s a pretty powerful message.

Leia. Oh god. I was absolutely thrilled when we found out she trained as a Jedi, and then served as Rey’s Jedi Master after Luke failed Rey so badly (after failing Ben). I think Luke’s story from TLJ to TROS is easily the most consistent, honestly. He made mistakes, both with Ben, and then with Rey, and he recognized it. The Rise of Skywalker acknowledges that Luke wasn’t right in how he handled training Rey either, and that went a long way to making me better accept how Rian portrayed him as flippant and dismissive and cynical.

Carrie’s absence was so badly felt. As I’ve said previously, I think they did the best job they could with the footage they held back and Carrie’s recorded audio. They managed to give her a relatively coherent story and an effect on the plot which she didn’t really have in The Last Jedi. I’ve seen speculation that it was supposed to be Leia, not Luke, who gave Rey that pep talk on Ahch-To, and in some ways it might have made more sense. Selfishly, I’m still glad it was Luke, because it helped reconcile my feelings about him in The Last Jedi. But they really did a great job in a really, really tough situation.

Rose Tico

Let’s just get it out there: the film’s treatment of Rose Tico and Kelly Marie Tran was inexcusably bad. Whether her character was a great addition to the cast in the Last Jedi or not, KMT faced horrendous abuse from various bigots and assholes, and after making a lot of public promises they reduced her to barely a minute of screen-time and no real impact on the plot. It’s shitty, it’s bad, and JJ and Disney should feel bad.

Introducing a character like Rose mid-way through a trilogy is risky, and while it worked with Lando, JJ clearly had no idea what to do with her. It’s just a mess, it’s the biggest black mark on the film, and on the sequel trilogy more broadly. Nobody comes out looking good here, and Rose Tico needs a Disney + series of her own or something. Protect Kelly Marie Tran at all costs.

The Rest

- Lando was great. So great. I wish we’d gotten the line that his daughter had been stolen by the First Order (and thus was potentially Janna) - we’d better get a book or a film or something. Lando’s conversation with Poe salvaged his character arc. Billy Dee Williams did a damn good job getting in shape for the role. He came out as genderfluid recently. He’s an absolute treasure and thank god they didn’t waste him.

- I just wanted to reiterate how HAPPY I AM THAT JJ ABRAMS MADE LEIA A JEDI HOLY SHIT

- It was a blink and you’ll miss it moment for people who didn’t read Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath series, but the death of Temmin ‘Snap’ Wexley in a battle where his step-dad (Wedge Antilles) made a brief appearance was devastating and I still don’t know how to feel about it.

- The space battles were awesome. Lando and Chewie bringing in the cavalry was what we were so cruelly teased for in The Last Jedi, which I am still mad about. Forget the logistics, forget the story logic, it was awesome. Maybe in the future I’ll be more annoyed. I honestly doubt it.

- Hux lives (and dies) for drama. He’s the pettiest son of a bitch in the GFFA, he would absolutely turn informant to win his fight with Kylo Ren, especially if he suspected that Kylo had killed Snoke and then was an incompetent child. His dying shortly thereafter is honestly exactly what the character deserved.

- On the cavalry moment, and the galaxy rising to destroy the First Order - I loved it in Return of the Jedi’s special edition, I love it here. There’s a thematic resonance with our heroes overcoming their fear and the galaxy at large being stirred to action. I just wish we’d gotten a few ragtag forces to show up at Crait, but that was a choice Rian made. I’m glad JJ chose differently. It was incredibly Star Wars.

- The 3PO stuff was weird, especially given how emotionally centred it was in the final trailers. It was also tied up in the Poe stuff I disliked. I don’t really know what else to say. At least R2D2, BB-8, and him felt like characters, not purely plot devices.

- Chewie - his reaction to losing Leia was absolutely devastating, his relationship with the next gen trio was great, and his death fake-out was...weird. I could go either way with that - killing him would have been a huge risk I could have respected, on the other hand if he was going to go out he deserved better than that (like, say, a moon getting dropped on him saving the life of Han Solo's kid). His ‘death’ did set up a crucial character beat for Rey. And there were, in fact, two transports, I remember that.

TLDR;

It was a fun movie! It tried to do way too much because The Last Jedi was not an effective sequel to The Force Awakens, and that’s on Kennedy and the LFL story group more than anyone else. It nailed the broad strokes of the Jedi/Force plot in my opinion, including subverting genetic destiny and the power of blood ties over everything else. In the process, it let a number of characters down, who were unfortunately also the characters of color, which is: not great.

I found it rewarding as a fan. It rewarded my faith in the goodness of the denizens of the GFFA and the power of found family. I’ve loved Rey from the start and I’m thrilled with how her arc ended with her burying the Skywalker legacy and making a new start with her new family in Poe and Finn (and Rose, damn it). I’m glad it made me feel better about Luke Skywalker and finally made Leia a bona-fide lightsaber wielding Jedi. I was exhilarated coming out of it, instead of exhausted and frustrated like I was in The Last Jedi. It didn’t make me hate Star Wars. It had extreme Return of the Jedi energy, and that is literally all I needed out of this film.

Here’s to a load of more complex, nuanced, and adventurous storytelling that the Skywalker saga never really allowed. I’m still excited for the prospect of Rian working with his own characters in the universe. I think JJ should probably be done.

Chuck Wendig said that the Star Wars universe was junk. Fun, whimsical, exciting, but ultimately not really a well-crafted piece of art. I’m inclined to agree.

[smoochcal]

numb without you (part five)

a/n: maybe 25 notes is too much to ask on each part before you get the next part of the series, so for now once the previous part gets to 20 notes then I will post the next part. thank you again for always standing by me and supporting my writing. it truly means the world to me. if there is anything you would like to see happen or any predictions, you have for the next part please inbox me and let me know :)

pairing: readerxluke

word count: 1.5 k

summary: luke apologizes for shutting you out / spending time with bestfriend!luke

playlist: numb without you by the maine, sink or swim by lewis watson, fallout by marianas trench, sorry by halsey

warnings: swearing, mentions of a hookup and nausea

----------------------------------------------------

Luke’s POV:

This is it. You’re in the car with her and she’s driving so you have about thirty minutes to state your case and give her a million reasons to not push you out of the car while driving away. You know you fucked up. Majorly. Big time. One of your worst fuck ups in the history of fuck ups. But you have to make this right, and now is your chance.

You clear your throat and wipe your hands on the tops of your jeans.

“Look I know what I did was a shitty thing to do, especially in a situation like this, but my anger got the best of me. I mean you really fucked my other best friend behind my back and didn’t mention it nor planned on mentioning it until you realized you were pregnant with his child. That shit hurts, Y/N. So yeah it was shitty for me to shut you out like I did but it was also shitty of you for keeping me in the dark for this long about something pretty serious between you and Calum. But you two are going to have a baby now I guess which is cool. Super stoked for the both of you. I just…god I don’t know. I just don’t want this baby to force the two of you into something neither of you want. I will be by your side throughout this entire pregnancy, if you’ll have me. I still care about you, Y/N. Always have, always will. And I’m sorry again. I’m so so so so so sorry.”

-------------------------------------------------------

Y/N’s POV:

Well, there it was. There was Luke’s big apology. You are happy he made the effort, considering you know how hard it is for him to admit his flaws at times. You kind of wish he wasn’t giving this long speech while you were driving the half hour home, knowing if you weren’t so focused on driving that you would be able to better comprehend his words. By the time he’s finished half of your drive is over. You know you should forgive him. You did put him in a tough situation, and he is your best friend after all. You clear your throat ready to give him a response.

“I accept your apology, but it was a really shitty thing to do. Especially to someone who is now prone to be highly emotional. I know I put you in a rough spot, but you have to know this wasn’t purposeful in the slightest. I’m going to be a mom now and there is nothing I can do but be all in for it. And you have to support me with that,” you reply, taking a deep breath and turning on some music so you can delay the conversation you two need to inevitably finish.

Luke plays around with the music on your phone until he lands on a song that he deems perfect for the last few minutes of your drive. You recognize the song almost immediately, causing you to smile until you really listened to the words blaring through your car speakers.

“An empty room, I'm empty too And everything reminds me of you So many things I shouldn't have missed The more that I push And the more you resist It's easy to say it's for the best When you want more While you leave me with less I know you're fine, but what do I do? I know you're fine, but what do I do? I'm awake, and trying While you're sleeping like a babe Beside him”

As you pull into the driveway, you wipe the tear threatening to fall from your left eye hoping Luke didn’t see you. This song always got you feeling extra emotional, but especially now that you sort of relate to it. And Luke knew that. He had to, he’s your best friend.

You park the car and go into your apartment, expecting Luke to follow which he does. You throw your car keys on the hook by the door and settle in on your couch. Luke sits on the other end, much farther than you would like him to be but you don’t want to give him that satisfaction that he is right. Even though he is.

“Do you want me to get you some salted caramel ice cream? I know you don’t have any in the freezer, but I could go to the store and pick up a couple of tubs? And then we can binge watch some Parks and Rec until you want me to go home?” Luke says, nervous that you will turn down his offer.

You smile and nod and he mumbles that he will be back in twenty minutes and asks you to put his favorite blankets that you own into the dryer so they are nice and warm for when he gets back.

Him being gone gives you some time to think to yourself about all of the events that happened in the past 24 hours. It also allows you to think about the feelings you’ve had for Luke that you have shoved way down in the pit of your stomach and haven’t allowed anything else to bring back up. And that leads to you thinking about how you were planning to make a move with Luke the night you hooked up with Calum. And obviously you didn’t but maybe that is because you assumed he was going to try something that night. And once he didn’t you were thoroughly disappointed and went outside to get some air. You know the rest. That’s how you ended up here.

You like him, anyone can see it. Except him. Which is the exact reason why this situation is so frustrating. You could also mention the fact that you are currently carrying his band member’s child. But you really don’t want to get in to that tonight. Bottom line is you like him… a lot. But what can you do about it now that you are in the current situation you are in?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luke comes back with four tubs of your favorite ice cream (salted caramel) and you pull the now warm blankets out of the dryer. He puts three of the tubs of ice cream back in your freezer and finds two spoons in your silverware drawer. You two meet back at the couch and you cover both of your legs with the blankets. You can feel his jeans against your leggings, but you try not to make a big deal out of it. You grab the remote to your tv and put on the latest episode you were watching. Not like you and Luke haven’t watched this show four times over already. The two of you sit together comfortably, watching the characters on the show tackle yet another ridiculous project as you shovel spoonfuls of ice cream into your mouth.

Luke smiles at you every time one of the characters does something dumb and you return his smile with a laugh at the dumb jokes made. Sometimes you wish your life was as simple as the characters in this show, mainly because of the one thing that happens with this kind of show. Happily, ever afters. That’s all you really wanted with Luke but it’s not like you can tell him that. Not now, maybe not ever.

You pass the tub of ice cream back and forth until the two of you cannot eat any more. Luke offers to get up and take the half melted half eaten tub back to the freezer. You thank him for allowing you to already stay off your feet, but you also remind him that you are not even showing yet and barely feel any different. He still insists on helping you out anyway he can, assuring you that this is how he is going to make it up to you for all the shitty things he has done the past couple days.

By the time the two of you are done eating and the episode you were watching was finished, Luke decided it would probably be best if he goes home. You don’t fight it as you have had an already emotional and busy day and you are quite tired. You walk him to the door and thank him for the wonderful afternoon that the two of you have shared. He reminds you that the pleasure is all his and calls an uber to get him home.

The minute he gets in the car, you feel an overwhelming wave of nausea. It looks like your worst nightmare has already started.

Morning sickness.  

[kaleidographia]

[Analysis] The "Weird" One: Where The Last Jedi Fits

I have a confession to make.

This may be a weird way to start what is essentially the first post of a new media critique blog, but I consider it to be essential knowledge. Every reviewer and analyst brings their own unique perspective to their writing, and I am no different; sooner or later, this truth will make itself known. To know this fact about me is to gain a new understanding of what makes me tick as a consumer of art, and it is one that it best to get out of the way as soon as possible, for it is better for a reader to lose interest now than to string along until the awkwardness of hiding such a secret reveals itself.

Here it is:

I LOVE the Star Wars prequels.

Oh, not only do I love them, completely and unironically, I actually do not care much for the original trilogy. It’s all right. But it doesn’t make my heart sing.

Attack of the Clones does.

Okay, okay, I can already hear the groans of disgust and the clicks of mice leaving my blog to the wilds of the web, but I promise this is going somewhere. I am not unaware of the many flaws the Prequel trilogy has, and I can’t in good conscience call them cinematic masterpieces, but I think this opinion derives itself not from poor taste, but the relative lack of blockbuster quality movies that tap into very particular themes and structural quirks that I appreciate. I may dive into those specifics at a later time, but the reason why I am bringing this up now is because it inextricably ties into my feelings about the most recent film in the franchise’s main series, which would be impossible for me to discuss without addressing this aspect of my formative film influences.

The Last Jedi has already received tons of coverage, controversy, and counter-controversy, so if you’re interested in picking apart the finer aspects of the plot and characters, feel free to look those up — I am sure there is a brilliant video essay on Youtube tailor-made just for you. I am more interested in the meta-narrative surrounding its position in terms of fanservice to what is an enourmous empire of not only fans of the original trilogy, but fans of its many derivations, spin-offs, and cultural foundations.

Star Wars is no longer just a film about a space farmer who learns he’s a space wizard and goes on a perfect beat-by-beat hero’s journey. It encompasses more than that: two sequels, an expanded universe of books upon books, comics, videogames, pinball machines — a holiday special (and no, I have not watched it) — toys, cartoons, parodies, reiterations, iconic images, phrases, cinematic touchstones, and, of course, the Prequels.

When the new Sequel trilogy was announced, the filmmakers had a real challenge to contend with: How can one follow up on not only a legacy of films, but also a legacy of expectations of what such a sequel would be like? I am not just referring to the fact that Disney, post acquisition of Lucasfilm, decided to just toss out the previous expanded universe, label it “Legends”, and start afresh with a new canon. I am also referring to the literal millions of fans who were already thoroughly familiar with not only the films but also their cultural impact. How could one possibly please them, especially when the Prequel trilogy was so universally mocked?

It was clear that Disney needed to win the crowd over, and to do so they leaned heavily into a safe bet: the Original trilogy. The Force Awakens released with a sort of wink-and-nudge, reflected in its story beats, characterization, and practical effects, that said “hey, we hear you. We know you’re scared because you don’t trust us to do this material justice and we know you love the original films, so we’re gonna give you exactly what you’re looking for”. It’s hard not to see the fanservice and whether or not it was successful has already been discussed to death, so I won’t get into it here, but the point is — and I am sure this wasn’t really intentional — to someone like me, who actually liked the prequels and a lot of the expanded universe, this approach felt incredibly alienating. Everyone was having fun with the new film, but to me it felt like it was saying, “all those things you love about Star Wars are not the reasons why anyone else loves Star Wars,” and I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty hurt, but at the very least The Force Awakens gave me a cast to fall in love with.

This is why when The Last Jedi was in production, I was intrigued to hear that this film was going to be “weird” and “unlike any other Star Wars film”. My expectations were tempered by the fact that ultimately this was going to be a Disney movie anyway, so it was probably not going to reach my standard of Weird (my dad showed me Koyaanisqatsi when I was 7, to give you an idea). Nevertheless, after the very safe rehash of Episode 4 that was The Force Awakens, I was just hoping for anything that might show me the franchise still had room for creativity.

I was in fact happy with the result, although it doesn’t surprise me at all that it attracted controversy. Some of my close friends, whose opinions I highly respect, hated the film for various reasons and I can even agree with them on some points. Others, like me, loved it. Overall, however, what I like most isn’t necessarily anything about the film itself, but its position as a nod to fans who wanted their corners of the Star Wars universe acknowledged. To put it bluntly, as a Prequels fan, I felt represented.

Going even beyond the Prequels, The Last Jedi contains themes from my favourite piece of Star Wars media, the Bioware-produced videogame Knights of the Old Republic and its Obsidian-produced sequel, which layer critique of what it means to be a Force user and what the role of Jedi and Sith are in the grand scheme of things. “Jedi” does not necessarily mean “good”, a fact Luke highlights in his role as reluctant mentor to Rey, and while there are some things I would change about his portrayal here, this perspective is absolutely one I wanted to see more of in the main series. Even as a kid, good-vs-evil stories bored me; it’s one reason why the Original trilogy failed to speak to me, because even though I wouldn’t have been able to articulate why at the time, the setup was just too easy. It didn’t challenge me to think that there’s a side that’s inherently good and a side that’s inherently evil, but when Knights of the Old Republic put decisions about when and how to use the Force in front of me, that was a much more interesting proposition, and the idea that doctrine about the nature of the Force could be wrong or even damaging was outright enticing. I honestly can’t remember whether playing the games or watching the Prequels came first, but I get the feeling it was the games, because that malleable view of what the Force means and who the Jedi and Sith are has carried through for me ever since.

The Last Jedi does kind of play it safe in some ways, ultimately being a Disney property that has to sell lots of merchandise and bring people to theme parks, but it also boldly rejects just about every expectation one might have of a “Star Wars Film”, characters make mistakes, they fail, things go wrong at the worst possible times, some act selfishly or foolishly, and by the time the credits roll there’s actually very little to be excited about, as the heroes are in a much worse position than they were when the film started, which was already very bleak. But in a way, that was the most exciting part to me, as someone who grew tired of the popular culture perception of Star Wars and who felt shut out of the Sequel trilogy by its first film; The Last Jedi may have been agonizing, but it was agonizing in a way that promised more, giving hope to those of us who were looking for a less straightforward narrative at a time when powerful politicians can be comically villainous in public and yet people would bend over backwards to excuse their actions as if an “evil empire” didn’t already exist. Over the last couple of years I have seen people post a gif of Padmé Amidala’s iconic line, “So this is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause”, saying this was the only part of the Prequel trilogy that aged well, and yet to me the truth was already glaringly obvious back when the film was released, contributing strongly to my own critical interpretation of it. The Last Jedi is a film that picks up on the thought that people can make foolish and terrible decisions and runs with it, but it is by no means the first in the series to approach this theme.

(I should note that as a Brazilian, whose country was freshly out of a dictatorship when I was born and which is now hurtling towards another at full speed, my views on what counts as an Evil Empire and how and why a democracy dies may be somewhat sharper than the average American’s. This is by no means the only reason why I’m into this kind of storytelling, nor is it exclusive to me, but it is a big one, and it would be short-sighted to ignore it.)

Ultimately I understand why The Last Jedi is so polarizing; it doesn’t pull punches and some of the punches it throws are even a bit misaimed, thus the description of it as “weird” and “unprecedented” makes sense. It just isn’t quite as weird or unprecedented when compared to previous attempts at broadening the scope of the Star Wars narrative both within the main film series and the expanded universe (at least pre-Disney; I haven’t engaged with any post-Legends canon aside from the Rebels cartoon, so I can’t say for sure). It also serves as a complete 180° turn from the Sequel trilogy establishing itself as a safe haven for Original trilogy fans and a middle chapter leading into a final film we still know nothing about, so whether its narrative leaps will pay off are still a mystery. In any case, The Last Jedi rejects superficial concerns in favour of theme, leading to a certain degree of dissatisfaction from fans who really wanted to know Rey’s parentage and what exactly was up with Snoke, but I think this is a good thing, because they gave new meanings to previously established Star Wars tropes and drove the whole thing into uncharted territory. I for one am glad the franchise has freed itself of these particular burdens; it simply remains to be seen whether the conclusion will maintain this momentum.

All this to say, I like the Last Jedi because it likes the things I like about Star Wars, and now I know I’m not the only one.

[i-just-like-commenting]

Themes in Luke Cage s2: The Quest for Control

What separates the good Netflix MCU seasons from the weaker ones are how well integrated their themes are into the setup of the story. Daredevil‘s first season did it well with its exploration of the thin lines between heroes and villains, the difficulty of choosing what is good. The first season of Luke Cage focused heavily on the idea of not being able to go backwards, only forwards. The first season Jessica Jones and even the deeply-flawed Punisher tried to tackle issues like sexually assault, survivor’s guilt, and PTSD. But none of them ever quite reached up to the level of that first season of Daredevil.

Then along came this season and I’ve got more themes than I can wrap my head around. I’ve only watched it through once, so take this as a preliminary digestion of what I saw and feel free to add your thoughts and nuances to my arguments.

I’m going to start with the theme that is central to Luke’s character arc for this season: the quest for control, and particularly the idea that this quest is futile. This idea that one can achieve omnipotence is the hubris of classic tragedy, and make no mistake that this season is a tragedy.

Luke’s journey is probably going to be the most controversial element of this season. I get this, to a certain degree. Sometimes you want your heroes to be paragons or to triumph over adversity. Sometimes you want them to skirt the dark side. It’s certainly best if you can have a mix of both, but there aren’t many black superheroes out there. It’s easy for me, as a white woman, to appreciate Luke’s struggle with the dark side this season because I have, at this point, plenty of representation of white women both noble and messed up available for me in media. If that is not what you want right now, I respect that. That same issue is why, as a person with a mental illness, I dropped the second season of Legion once I started seeing where it was going (though rest assured, Luke doesn’t do anything nearly as awful as what David does by the end of that show).

Luke throughout the first season was a very reactive character, partly because his story didn’t actually begin that season. It began in the first season of Jessica Jones, where Luke is a very active character, actively hunting down his wife’s killers. And what does he get for it? Well, he finds out that a woman he cared for was involved in Reva’s death and had been lying to him the whole time, and then he gets his mind controlled by a telepathic supervillain who tries to force him to kill Jessica just like she was forced to kill his wife, and he is only stopped by a shotgun blast straight to his head that nearly does him in.

It is thus perhaps understandable that Luke Cage didn’t want to be a hero anymore and was trying to live a quiet life. His arc for the first season was realizing he loved Harlem too much to do that. In the meantime, though, he was a highly reactive character. This is not always a bad thing for superheroes; go too far in the other direction of actively hunting down bad guys and you get Frank Castle. It did mean that the villains drove most of the plot rather than Luke himself. (spoilers follow...)

In the second season, motivated I believe by being so out of his depth with the Hand in The Defenders and seeing Misty lose an arm, Luke tries to take back control of his life. The problem with that no one is ever really in complete control of their lives, and in trying to get total control, Luke winds up becoming more controlled than ever.

We open with Luke attempting to hunt down every stash house selling heroin with his name on it – not because this drug is particularly more lethal than any other, but because it is using his name without his permission. This focus on controlling his image is one that hounds Luke throughout the season. He’s reluctant to sign promotional deals not so much because he doesn’t want to make money, but rather because he doesn’t want to be “bought.” He doesn’t want Nike or whoever to have any control over him. He wants to be his own man.

Yet thanks to not copyrighting an app early on, he is easily found by almost anyone, most of them armed with cameras. While Luke is sometimes able to promote himself – his “Yo, I’m Luke Cage” speech with all its chest-thumping and dabbing being the most prominent – it also means that when Bushmaster wipes him out, the video goes viral, and is sold without his permission to ESPN, leaving the narrative entirely out of Luke’s hands.

Unable to have control of his public life as a hero of Harlem, Luke shifts his focus to control of his personal life. He refuses his father’s efforts to reach out to him, and when Claire pushes for them to reconcile he dismisses her. When Claire questions his excessive force with Cockroach, he accuses her of “castrating” him. Given that Luke doesn’t much demonstrate many other signs of toxic masculinity, I think this hyperbole has less to do with her “unmanning” him and more to do with taming him, making him docile, under someone else’s control. While I firmly believe Luke was never in any risk of hurting Claire, he does get angry enough to break her wall, losing control of himself and losing her. Once again the quest for control backfires on him.

Even the fan-service-y cameo episode with Danny Rand serves toward this theme of need for control, as Luke works on self-control of his anger through Danny’s advice. To a certain degree this works; Luke is in much more control of his emotions towards the end of the series than towards the beginning, but that doesn’t solve his biggest issue, his frustration with trying to control the criminal world that swirls around him.

Much of his vigilante work involves him chafing at the restrictions and controls presented by legal options. He’s not alone in this. Misty Knight has a similar path of trying to determine how comfortable she is with following the law versus going her own way. She was this close to going full Scarfe and planting evidence when the lawful means of going after a domestic abuser weren’t working, and turned in her badge because she felt that she’d crossed a line and could no longer be police. She scorned at Ridenhour’s compromises, and started assuming a vigilante role.

Misty, however, has power thrust upon her unexpectedly when she is made the temporary commander of her precinct, and in being in actual control makes her realize how much she misjudged the people who had been in control of her before. Heavy lies the crown as they say, and instead of becoming more rogue in her new role, she becomes more conformed to the establishment, more willing to strike deals and work in the system. The downside of this is her having to accept that her “wins” might be fewer and far between. The upside is that she probably the only character in this season to come out in a more positive position than she was in the beginning. To gain control, she has to give up some control, albeit on her own terms.

Contrast this to the walking disaster that is Mariah Dillard Stokes this season. Mariah’s miserable childhood has left her unable to develop trust with anyone, and so she takes on all decisions by herself and keeps control of her assets in her hands, despite repeated efforts by Shades to convince her that he wants to help her share her burdens. Probably due to the stress of taking all of this on herself, Mariah spends about half this season drunk and thus very not in control of herself, making more and more bad decisions as the series progresses. Trusting someone else means giving up control, and when she’s done that she’s been hurt, horrifically. So she trusts no one, betrays everyone, and winds up alone and dead.

These two parallel paths offer two possible models for where Luke goes after the end of this season. This season ends with Luke deciding to take absolute control of Harlem, taking Mariah’s place as the power-broker keeping a wall around the neighborhood and making deals with the bad guys to keep them out.

Yet the utter irony is that Luke only winds up taking this position of “dictator” (more on that term later) as an option of last resort. He is forced by Mariah’s machinations to take her position, with Mariah specifically having chosen him as her “heir” over her own daughter. He loves Harlem as much as she does, and Mariah finds he is the only person to be reliable around her - reliably against her, that is. And of course she also chooses him out of spite, to see how long he can remain incorruptible if he follows her path.

It is a trap. Donovan tells him so, bluntly. But Luke walks into it because he believes he’ll finally get his control in the end, and because it is the only option he sees left.

And try as I might, I have a hard time imagining what alternative he really had. He stops a gang war by becoming the boss of crime, he ends bloodshed, and the scale of what was unleashed on Harlem was beyond anything anyone was prepared to handle by other means. So perhaps this is the best choice among bad choices – for now.

Less forgivable is his decision to turn away Claire in the final scene (and if I can criticize the show for a moment, I really wish we could have seen her to know how she reacts to that rejection). That is a decidedly Mariah move, pushing away the one who loves you because to love is to let someone else have some control over you, if only your heart. (There are direct scene-for-scene parallels between some of Luke’s moments with Claire and Mariah’s with Shades for precisely this reason).

This arc for Luke seems to borrow heavily from Bendis’ run on Daredevil where Matt Murdock declared himself the new Kingpin of Hell’s Kitchen, and established a peace by force much as what Luke is planning. It did not end well for Matt; he wound up losing all his friends, his girlfriend, and going to prison. I hope it doesn’t go that far for Luke. At the very least, he seems open to continuing to work with Misty Knight, though that door-closing shot (a direct reference to the end of The Godfather) doesn’t bode well for that relationship continuing. But we also got a glimpse of connection between him and Danny Rand that promises maybe, maybe he can be convinced to be a true dictator.

Because, as anyone who has seen The Dark Knight knows, ancient Roman dictators were an emergency position created to deal with crises, at the end of which they were supposed to give up their power. Can Luke make the hard choice, the truly strong choice, and know when it’s time to relinquish his quest for total control, to be vulnerable, to allow himself to not be omnipotent?

I guess we will have to wait and see. Though I have other reasons to hope, but that will require another post on another theme of this season: families, both good and bad, found and hereditary.

[cupidsbower]

The Last Jedi

I really enjoyed this movie a lot. No major spoilers until the cut.

When I saw The Force Awakens, I didn’t know what to expect of this new series, but after seeing it, I had a pretty clear expectation of what the rest of the series would offer:

A re-interpretation of the main themes of the original trilogy through a new generation of characters. This includes clever and sometimes ironic riffs on iconic moments.

Enjoyable action/adventure.

Engaging characters.

With that in mind, I had a couple of specific expectations for The Last Jedi. The main one was this: it would be a tragedy, have a negative story climax, and an ironic complication, all through the lens of the memories of The Empire Strikes Back.

And that is exactly what I got.

This was perhaps the biggest task in this new trilogy, especially as Empire is generally considered the strongest of the Star Wars movies. It’s a lot to live up to. How do you have a genuine negative climax, which can be intrinsically disappointing if you hit the wrong beats, but still remain true to the themes of Empire, do something new, and have a good amount of action/adventure and character development?

I really wasn’t sure how they’d pull this off, and I was careful not to get spoiled so I could watch the movie fresh and give it the best chance to work. I do have a few quibbles, but overall, the creative team did a really strong job of hitting all the right notes.

SPOILERS AFTER THE READ MORE!

SPOILERS!!!

I want to start with the story thread I thought was weakest, which was Finn and Rose going off to find a code-cracker.

This sequence didn’t add a lot to the overall plot of the movie, and the pace didn’t match up well with what was happening with the fleeing rebel fleet, or Rey and Kylo’s plotline. For that reason, it dragged in places. There was still a lot to like in this sequence -- I loved that the scoundrel (the ironic riff on Han Solo) ended up being a scoundrel through and through. I loved the payoff of the boy at the end, staring up at the stars. I liked both Finn and Rose. But that’s about it. The rest just felt like pleasant enough padding with no thematic goal, until they get to the First Order’s ship and the sneak-in-and-blow-it-up plan finally fails. Ha! I really loved that. And that’s when this plotline really started to bite; I just wish it had got there sooner, or the casino stuff had more teeth. That said, I didn’t want less Finn on the screen, I just wanted his role to have more depth. Where was his development, the questioning of what it means to be an individual, to make his own choices? Hopefully we’ll get to that in the final movie. I’m also kind of hoping we get Lando in the third movie, and maybe that tie-in everyone thought would be part of Rey’s story will end up being part of Finn’s -- a much better thematic match, as far as I’m concerned.

Other than that, I loved pretty much everything, but I think my favourite part was Luke, Rey and Kylo.

Luke has always been a pivotal role in this series, and my god was The Last Jedi clever in how it reinterpreted that. As a young man, Luke was completely sure of his own righteousness -- that is what helped save Vader. But that righteousness tends to wear away along with youth, when you see the price of your mistakes. Poe, making just that kind of hotheaded mistake in the fleet arc, seeing how it nearly cost everything, seeing how it was borne of good intentions, was a gorgeous and ironic contrast to Luke’s horror at the consequences of his actions.

But more than that, an older, more world-weary Luke flinching from Ben at just the wrong moment and so causing a flip to the dark side? Gorgeous storytelling. Just spectacular. That is so bitter. It’s the absolute antithesis of the “new hope” that Luke symbolised in episode IV. Luke rejected Vader and his dark power in Empire, and that was the heart of the negative climax, the thematic linchpin, the thing that made the movie so fantastic and unexpected. Of course Luke rejecting Ben and his dark power is what created Kylo, and it is the ironic dark heart of The Last Jedi. It’s not out of character for Luke (or Anakin) to react badly to someone they love when power is in the mix. The counterpoint of Rey rejecting Kylo’s power, but not rejecting Ben, sets up the act to come in the next movie beautifully.

I also loved Rey in this sequence. I thought the riff on Luke’s journey into the cave, with Rey’s hall of mirrors was fantastic. That sense of no family, no past she carries into the future, but just herself and what she makes of herself -- so creepy and lonely, but so thematically on point, especially in the way it contrasts with the Skywalkers.

Finally, I loved Kylo in this movie, which was an utter surprise. I thought he was just going to be a whiny white boy, and he is, but that’s actually what makes him so great, because it’s so knowingly done that way. The climactic scene between him and Rey was so damn clever -- a brilliant inversion of the “I’m your father scene” from Empire, with bitter ironies threaded all the way through it. I think it was the highlight of the movie for me. I didn’t think they’d be able to make Kylo interesting, but he’s actually the perfect bookend for this whole saga, a cracked double of Anakin, with the sandwich of Luke in between. The same flaw runs through all three of them, playing out in different ways. All the facets of white male privilege, and the way that nature/nurture acts upon them.

This is a much subtler playing out of the theme than I expected from this series, and I really, really like it.

The battle between Kylo and Luke was a satisfying resolution after that build up. The gorgeous little things -- the salt planet that looks like Hoth, the riff on Kenobi’s fight with Vader, the fact Kylo left footprints in the salt and Luke didn’t. But also the bigger things -- Luke letting Kylo be angry, using it to the Rebels’ advantage, but also just letting him have his moment of vengeance for Luke’s lack of faith. Luke’s failure as a teacher, just like Kenobi and Yoda before him. Kylo’s pettiness and lack of self-awareness, and his raging insecurity. The way Luke’s journey ended with him looking up at a setting sun.

Ahhhhh.

This film really was at its absolute best with the Luke, Rey and Kylo sequences. I’m very much looking forward to how that arc is resolved in the next movie.

Finally, there’s the fleet sequence, which I also enjoyed a lot. Let’s start with Poe. I loved two things in particular about his arc -- that Poe was wrongheaded from almost beginning to end, but that his need to test authority was admired by his commanders, even while his actions were castigated. They are the Rebels, after all, and what is a rebel but someone who questions authority?

Poe could have been another Kylo, just without the Force aptitude. But he wasn’t. He made a mistake, he eventually realised he made a mistake, and he wasn’t rejected for it, or backed into such a corner there was no way out for him but to break everything and flee into the night.

And the reason for that? Leia. General Leia and Vice Admiral Holdo. It is no accident that they are both women. They were tough, determined, forward-thinking, and compassionate. Binary thinking was not part of their command strategy. Where Poe was so sure of his rightness he didn’t listen to anyone else -- if he was right, everyone else was wrong -- Leia and Holdo demonstrated a more mature self-assuredness, one not threatened by the mistakes of youth, even while recognising it and dealing with it.

Poe’s lesson was one that Ben didn’t get the chance to learn, and it’s a lesson that will make Poe a better person, and a better leader.

I really loved Carrie Fisher and Laura Dern in this section of the movie, and could have watched about an hour more of them commanding the rebel alliance.

I’m glad they didn’t kill off Leia now. Apart from the fact it would have weakened the ending of Luke’s arc, I like that Leia is still alive out there in a galaxy far far away, that she’s the last survivor of the original trilogy, even though Carrie is gone. Still kicking ass, and taking names, as well as building bridges and leading the way.

In all, The Last Jedi was exactly the negative climax I expected it to be, but in a subtler way than I had hoped for, especially given that so much of the movie plays out in over-the-top action sequences. It was less overtly tragic than Empire, but far more ironic and bitter, which is fitting for 2017, which is a more ironic and bitter age than the 1980s. It was about the destruction wrought by male privilege, with a clever stripping away of heroism and nobleness from the tragic male figures, and a parallel investment in a more compassionate heroism in the women.

It was a good movie. I really liked it, and I have high hopes for the next one.

[theliterateape]

Culture in Real Time

by Don Hall

“I have a surprise for you in honor of February!”

Dana and I have this thing we can’t quite find common ground upon concerning birthdays. She is a minimalist from a wholly unsentimental Pennsylvania family. I’m a materialist raised by a mother who calls presents “prizes” and gives gifts as a part of her love language.

While I’m old enough not to care, I still want my birthday to be a celebration of me. It’s small in spirit but, in that self-diagnosis we all attempt on our own psyches, I was the child of a beautiful woman who attracted men who wanted her but tolerated me. Birthdays were my mother’s way of reminding me that, at least to her, I was someone of note.

“I’m putting the blue in the toilet!”

Another unusual record skip in our marriage is those Tidy Bowl tablets you put in the tank and turns the water blue. To her, they are a sign of white trash, low culture, unnecessary expense. To me, they are an odd bluish signal of semi-wealth and extravagance. 

For the most part, the toilet remains clear. She likes it that way because she can then examine the color of her urine to see if she been hydrating properly (too yellow and she’s not). Once in a moon, she indulges me with a tab of unnatural blue with a hint of ammonia. It’s stupid but I love it every time.

We are both Aquarians which means we both are almost zealous in our personal independence and the sight of her in the bedroom and I on the couch, doing our separate things in the same space, is common. We do well together.

Our differences—in terms of how we view money, consumerism, art, reading, politics—are bizarrely cultural.

My DNA is mostly Irish. Some British, a bit African American, some Native American, but mostly Irish. I have the fair skin and propensity to addictive behavior of someone Irish but culturally I’m not one who embraces Ireland or her ways. Culturally, I’m a bit trailer trash, a dash biker gang, a sprinkling of Southern United States with a Midwestern sensibility.

I’m an American mutt.

A child of the seventies, a GenX guy who came of age in the 80’s, I’m the archetype of classic rock and slightly retrograde sexist attitudes that almost every Motley Crue and Scorpions song conveys. I still call women I meet “darlin’” and “honey” as a sign of friendliness. I prefer to throw the rock and roll horns to a thumbs up. I have tattoos but most are quotes from my favorite authors.

Culturally, I’m a fucking mess, man.

I have friends who live a more culturally identifiable life. I’ll admit to being somewhat envious of them.

Arlo is black. I mean, black black. He is originally from a tiny county in Georgia and laughs as I tell him how much he fits the stereotype of a sixty year old black man from Georgia.

"You could be played in a movie by Louis Gossett, Jr." and he cackles.

Arlo has a love/hate relationship with his cultural bedrock. He loves the food. "Barbecued pork, collared greens, black-eyed peas. My gramma's kitchen table was what I think Arab suicide bombers dream of instead of virgins." He loves the music. "Mississippi John Hurt, John Hooker, Buddy Guy? Sh-eee-it." He hates the drug culture which he was surrounded by growing up. He hates the idea that all black people can dance. "No one in my family had any of that. No dancing."

Jim (his Korean name is Junghoon but everyone who knows him calls him Jim) tells me he feels out of place when he sees his family. "I guess I'm like a self-loathing Jew in that I'm Korean but by way of Decatur, Illinois." Culturally, he is a "no zone" in that his parents tried to instill the cultural markers of a second-generation Korean kid but he was never really into it. "I always hated kimchi. Hot Pockets. Pepperoni. Keep your Bibimbap to yourself. Give me a bag of Doritos, please."

Culture is comprised of four things in increasing levels of significance: symbols, heroes, rituals and values.

What the three of us all have in common is comic books. All three of us claim to have learned to read courtesy of Stan Lee.

The Fantastic Four. The Avengers. The Amazing Spiderman. The X Men.

The difference between the DC world and the Marvel world was that the heroes in DC were gods and the heroes in Marvel (mostly) were humans with godlike power.

These were the legends and fables of growing up. These were the morality tales of my youth.

From Peter Parker I learned that with great power comes great responsibility. From Logan, his mantra that "The pain let's you know you're still alive" resonated. Daredevil showed that any liability can be overcome (with the help of some radiative waste). 

Bruce Banner instructed that anger can be managed. As an angry Irish-esque kid in Nowhere, Kansas during high school, I needed that lesson. Arlo loved Luke Cage ("But not the Netflix one. The one with the chains and the afro. I was country-black but he made city-black look cool.") and Jim was a huge fan of Ben Grimm ("He always felt like a freak but had his family to give him a purpose.").

I had girlfriends who had broken my heart but nothing I could compare to Peter Parker's grief from Amazing Spiderman #121-122 ("The Night Gwen Stacy Died"). Not only did he lose his great love, he snapped her neck trying to save her. Holy fuck! I was seven years old when I read that and the gravity of a beloved hero failing so horribly was traumatic and took me years to process.

Iron Man #120-128 has Tony Stark dealing full-bore with his alcoholism in "Demon in a Bottle." 

The entire early X Men storylines find an incredible synthesis of the civil rights issues of the late sixties. While the debates about discrimination, non-violent vs violent protest, and inclusion bypassed my ten year old brain, the ideological battles between Charles Xavier and Magneto set the groundwork for when I started reading James Baldwin in high school.

Even more pervasive in the Marvel Universe was the idea that heroes were as flawed as the villains. Doctor Octopus was the bad guy but not evil. Galactus was not evil but simply trying to survive and his means of staying alive involved eating planets. The crossover of villains to heroes was commonplace in the Marvel Universe cementing an ethic that anyone—even Magneto—could find redemption.

My friend has a kid who loves his superheroes. His introduction to them was the MCU and the films of the Avengers. One day, he and his kid were watching Captain America: Civil War and the child wanted to know if Tony Stark was a good guy or a bad guy. My buddy had a bit of a conundrum because in this case there was no easy answer.

This is a bedrock principle of Marvel: there are no good guys or bad guys. Every character is flawed and can make mistakes. Every hero gets to take turns being selfish, afraid, greedy, and enraged. Every villain has a tortured past and is only the villain out of misguided and traumatized perspective. Like the Netflix Daredevil series when Kingpin doesn't realize he's the bad guy until the thirteenth episode and then is astonished by it.

“Culture is how you were raised,” a friend tells me.

Comic books and the desire to be one of these flawed superheroes are culturally important to me. They are as defining of who I am and who I wish to be as natural hair on a black woman working in an office defines her or traditional prayer rituals are to someone raised in a church. These heroes have been a part of my life since I can remember having memories and I've been engaged with them since that nebulous time.

Isn't that culture? My cultural identity?

We GenX types were raised, in part, consuming pop culture in ways previous generations did not. Hours upon hours of televised stories infused into the soft tissue like an army of Manchurian candidates waiting for the buzzwords to activate our consumerist triggers. The advent of VHS tapes made viewing movies the ultimate babysitter. While a kid born and raised on the streets of Detroit might have very little in common with another born and raised in Idaho, both had cultural roots in their mutual boners for Jill Munroe and devastation over the death of Lt. Colonel Henry Blake. A black kid in Birmingham, Alabama could be as racially different from a white kid in Salt Lake City, Utah but both could bond over Star Warsand Nintendo.

As I read it, culture is comprised of four things in increasing levels of significance: symbols, heroes, rituals and values. By that quite academic frame, it seems that as we parse out our differences in our current multi-cultural war in America, it is a fixation on the symbols that trip us up. Skin color, hair, clothing and style, food, language, sexual proclivities and the presence of certain genitalia are all surface-level identifiers. They are the symbols of each human on display. 

I knew a (white) guy who grew up on the South side of Chicago, went to predominantly black populated schools, had mostly black teachers, and whose only friends were black. He dressed black, spoke black, acted black. Did any of that make him somehow less white and does that make any difference? I know a (black) woman—you'd know her, too, if I shared her New York Times Bestselling name—who, if you talk to her on the phone sounds like the secretary from Ferris Bueller's Day Off but looks like Weezy Jefferson from Good Times. Did her accent and nerdy mannerisms make make her less black and does that make any difference?

“Culture is how you were raised,” a friend tells me. “A lot of it is hidden in the back. It’s not just the food you ate growing up but why that food and not something else. It’s what your family decided to spend money on and what they wouldn’t spend money on. It’s those weird rituals you’d practice every holiday. It’s the clothes you wore but more deep than the fashion is why you wore those specific clothes.”

He tells me a story about clothes. His family didn’t have a lot of money so they saved cash by handing clothes down from one sibling to the next. It was frugal and smart with five kids. By the time my friend got the clothes (he was number four of the five) the strain of wear, the places his mother had stitched up, was obvious. And his little brother then got new clothes because four was the limit of the physical shirts and pants.

My friend spends a lot of money on fashion. He wears the latest trends and has a closet full of suits. He says he spends maybe a third of his take-home on shoes. “That’s culture in real time.”

I don’t dress up for much. I own no suits. I have ties but they’re mostly Marvel, Star Wars, and Beatles ties. My dress shoes are either decent tennis shoes or boots. When I was a kid, my mother wanted to please her aunt. Her aunt was a church-goer so we joined her church. I remember the day she told me I couldn’t go to church because my clothes weren’t up to snuff. “You can’t go to church dressed like that!” she guffawed.

I recall being embarrassed. I didn’t have anything nicer. She laughed at my best clothes. It obviously stuck because I still cringe at the memory. As a result, I bristle at the idea of dressing up for anything or for anybody and I do not go to church. “That’s culture in real time.”

While a follower of The Avengers as a kid, I was never a fan of Captain America. No good reason for that. Steve Rogers just never did it for me. That is, until Chris Evans portrayed the character in the MCU movies. Maybe it was my time to appreciate his retro-goodness; maybe I needed to be a bit older to fully appreciate his specific kind of superhero.

Perhaps I needed to live some life before the ideas that the “I can do this all day” persistence did me any good. The belief in something so strong that he’d go against all of his friends in a fight. His loyalty to Bucky despite the fact that his childhood friend had become a villain. His enduring love for Peggy Carter. His stalwart acceptance that he is almost a century older than he looks and most of his friends are long dead.

I didn’t need those values as a kid. I need those values today.

Dana is fourteen years younger than I am. No, I wasn’t looking for a third wife who was born when I was entering high school. It just worked out that way. The age difference feels sometimes like I was encased in ice for seventy-five years only to be resurrected long after the war was won.

The differences we have are bizarrely cultural. She is a free spirit. I am a worker bee. She is a poet in need of inspiration and subject to the mood swings of that breed of writer. I am an essayist who approaches writing like the laying of bricks to build a house who becomes more a follower of Stoicism the older I get. She grew up in the same house she was born in. I grew up moving from place to place with no true sense of a physical grounding. She is relentlessly frugal. I am an impulse buyer.

But we make it work.

Once in a while I wake up in the morning to take a leak and the toilet water is blue.

[padawanlost]

The Last of the Jedi & Ferus Olin: Character Development

A few days ago I decided to read The Last of the Jedi series again, and I’m not surprised to say it was frustrating. As much as I like Jude Watson (she knows how to hit me right in the feels), when I comes to Ferus Olin characterization she loses me. Ferus being her OC probably influences her writing but I think she went a bit too far with him. We’ve already discusses my personal opinions of Ferus and overall role in SW franchise but most of these discussions were focused around the Jedi Quest series and not the The Last of the Jedi and, imo, TLotJ series only exacerbates the problems from JQ. And this is what I want to talk about. This is not about Ferus or his actions but about Jude Watson’s development of him and how that is probably the reason why Ferus is such divisive character.

For those not familiar with both series, let me present some context

The Jedi Quest by Jude Watson is a series a book set between TPM and AOTC. Ferus Olin is introduced as the perfect padawan who always follows the Jedi Code and a rival to Anakin. He constantly criticizes Anakin behind his back, overhears his conversations with Obi-wan, tells Obi-wan to “beware of Anakin”, etc. He leaves the Jedi Order, by choice after a convoluted series of events leads to the death of another padawan.

The Last of the Jedi by Jude Watson is a series of books set after ROTS. it involves Ferus (and a bit of Obi-wan) fighting the empire and impressing Palpatine to the point he thinks about replacing Vader with Ferus. Right now, I’ll be discussing only the first book of the series The Last of the Jedi: The Desperate Mission so here we go:

Obi-wan is in Tatooine guarding Luke with occasional visits of force-ghost Qui-Gon Jinn. He’s grieving, depressed and frustrated. During a trip to the city, he hears the name Ferus Olin and immediately wants to know more about the former padawan:

Ferus had been a Jedi apprentice. It didn't matter that he had left the Order at the age of eighteen and had been a civilian since then. He had been one of them, and he was still alive.  He had kept track of Ferus in the beginning. He'd always thought that after the Clone Wars he would contact him.

 The problem is here is that it’s hard to believe that Obi-wan kept track of Ferus. Not because there was something wrong with Ferus but because that’s not the Jedi way. Once you leave the Order, you leave the Order. As we saw it with Ahsoka, to dwell on the fate of a former Jedi is frowned upon. They made their choice and, as a Jedi, the right thing to do is to let them go. I can see Jedi dwelling on lost friends such as Anakin thinking of Ahsoka and Obi-wan thinking of Anakin and Qui-Gon. But in both cases, there was a deep bond and tragedy involved. Ferus, on the other hand, was more of acquaintance/casual friend. And, the clone wars kept Obi-wan pretty busy so I have a hard time believing that he would have the time to keep tabs on a former apprentice who chose to leave the Order.

I can understand Obi-wan interest in the present, after losing everyone he’s probably desperate for a connection with anyone who understands what he’s going through but the idea of Obi-wan worrying or keeping track of Ferus right before the clone wars seems a bit ludicrous to me.

“After Anakin had turned to the dark side, Obi-Wan had cause to remember Ferus. It had been Ferus who had first warned him about Anakin. Ferus who had sensed that Anakin's great gifts hid great unrest. Ferus who saw Anakin's power - and feared it.  He owed him.”

And here we are. The biggest problem with Ferus Olin in the Jedi Quest series was too aware. Not only was constantly praised for his formidable skills he also was completely aware of everything that was wrong with Anakin and where it would lead them. He is described as so unique, that as a teenager he saw what no else did. Because Ferus not only sensed all that but also actually told Obi-wan about it, Obi-wan nows feels he owes Ferus to go and save him.

Ferus is in trouble and Obi-wan is torn between helping him and leaving Luke alone. He talks to Qui-Gon about it and just like in the Jedi Quest series, Ferus amazing qualities and potential are brought forward:

"Speak of what you know about Ferus, not what you can guess." "He was the most gifted apprentice, second only to Anakin." "With so many gifts, he is a formidable opponent of the Empire." "But I would have to leave Luke alone," Obi-Wan said again. It was a duty that Yoda had charged him with, and he knew it was vital. "You will not be leaving him alone. I will watch over him. He will be safe for a time. There is danger for Luke, danger that is close. I can feel it, but I can't see it. I sense that Ferus is the key."

 So Obi-wan leaves Luke in a ghost’s care and go save Ferus. He runs into people from Ferus daily life and they all seem to care about him. He inspires loyalty from his neighbors and those following him (in fighting the Empire).

 “Ferus is more than  a man to the Bellassans. He’s a symbol”.

"I miss his jokes," the woman with the holsters said. "He made us brave," a man said. "I joined because of him." Obi-Wan couldn't believe what he was hearing. The Ferus he had known as a boy had been a careful rule-follower. His skills had been excellent, but his style lacked Anakin's brilliance. What had Ferus said to him once? Everyone liked him, but no one was his friend. This sounded like a different Ferus. Ferus a magnetic leader? Ferus with a sense of humor?

Again, the same problem from his characterization remains: Ferus is too good. Not only he’s a good person, even his flaws are turned into something positive. If his biggest “flaws” in Jedi Quest series were that he was too serious and stiff (to the point no one liked him), now he’s also funny, charismatic and a natural leader.

Yet it was Ferus who had seen into Anakin's heart.. It was Ferus who had stood up to him, to Anakin's Master, and said, Something is not right here. It had been a brave move for a Padawan, to challenge a Master about his own apprentice. Perhaps it shouldn't surprise him that Ferus was now capable of this. The seeds for leadership had been there. He just hadn't seen them....  Because he'd always been thinking of Anakin. He had been the Chosen One. And their closeness had blinded him.

 JW apparently wants us to believe the only reason no one realized how amazing Ferus was is because everyone was looking at Anakin. His earlier “flaws” from the previous novels were not really flaws as much as they were “hidden abilities” no noticed because of Anakin.

 At the end of the novel, Ferus and Obi-wan finally talk about past. Ferus asks about Anakin and Obi-wan, of course, lies by saying Anakin was killed by the Empire. And because JW can’t seem to pass on the opportunity to show us Ferus is the better man, she bring back the reasons Ferus left the Order by having Obi-wan ask him if Anakin had anything to with it. Ferus, being the good, wise and insightful man he is, decides the past should stay in the past and that he doesn’t want to cause Obi-wan further pain by mentioning Anakin.

Ferus Olin doesn’t really do anything wrong/evil throughout the book that makes him dislikable but the way Jude Watson describes makes him even less sympathetic if you already disliked him from the previous series. She presents him as the ultimate good person but it falls flat because she doesn’t give him any real character flaws to overcome. From the moment he’s introduced he’s always tried to do the right thing and be a good person, not unlike characters like Anakin, Obi-wan and Qui-Gon Jinn. But differently from them, she refuses to give him any personal or moral shortcomings.  Older Ferus is the same Ferus from the JQ series, expect he’s better, wiser and friendlier.

[haggisandtoast-blog]

My Thoughts on The Last Jedi

This is going to be a long post.

I think I’ve waited long enough to make a spoiler post about The Last Jedi. Obviously if you haven’t seen it yet stop reading now.

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Ok, I enjoyed the film and am really shocked by the negativity it’s received. It’s so refreshing to have such a shakeup in terms of the “normality” of the Star Wars formula. If this film had been a retread of Empire like Force Awakens was to New Hope it would have kept the series in a stagnant cycle of fan service and repetition. That it goes against those expectations and does something new is fantastic.

Now to get into some of the complaints. I’d like to make some comparisons to elements from previous movies that people seem to have forgotten or are ignoring.

1. That’s not how the force works.

Luke and Leia’s uses of the force, how are they any less believable than say Starkiller bringing down a Star Destroyer from orbit, or hell even one film earlier when Kylo Ren holds a blaster bolt in place for what, 15 minutes while he talks to Poe and wipes out a village. It was something we had never seen done before and yet it was a new aspect of the force and I don’t remember anybody complaining about it. Kylo even questions if Rey is projecting herself, and then dismissed it as it would “tear you apart” it is literally established in the film before Luke even does it.

2. Snoke and Kylo Ren. Does nobody else remember we knew literally nothing of Palpatine before his appearance in Empire Strikes Back, and back when it first came to theaters, they didn’t have an actor yet so his hologram was actually a woman with heavy prosthetic makeup. Then we meet him proper in Return of the Jedi and still we know nothing about him save he rules the Empire. Yet nobody complained that we needed to know who he was or where he came from before Vader dropped him down a reactor shaft. And what Kylo does to Snoke is a great show of how far he’s progressed as a Dark Side figure. He did what Vader never could, he overthrew his master to take his place as ruler of the galaxy. That’s real character growth, and establishes Kylo as THE Big Bad.

3. Rey’s parentage. They weren’t Skywalkers or Kenobies or anyone really, they were nobodies. And that is great! It makes Rey that much closer to Anakin to make Kylo even more envious. Anakin was a nobody before Qui-Gon found him, he was a slave to an alien jerk, with a gift for machinery and skilled at piloting. And what is Rey? A slave to an alien jerk (for food at least), with a gift for machinery and skilled at piloting. That her path so closely mirrors Anakin’s puts her further on a hero’s journey and makes her a perfect foil to Ben Solo’s turn to darkness. She’s a hero who can truly stand on her own and doesn’t need some genetic ties to make her great.

4. Luke’s temptation by the Dark Side. It’s not the first time it’s happened to him. In Return he totally walked the fine line when he severed Vader’s hand and almost finished him, but in his hesitation he realized what he was about to do was wrong and stopped. And that’s exactly what happened with Ben, he felt the darkness Snoke had established in him and for a brief moment reacted exactly the way he did years earlier when facing Vader. But that he overcame it shows he was a stronger person. And if you want to get into speculation who’s to say Snoke didn’t have something to do with pushing Luke to that point to give Ben the incentive to turn.

5. The Knights of Ren. People saying they are meaningless seem to forget we have another movie coming. With Kylo now the Supreme Leader he’s going to need to replace those Preatorian Guards, and who better than the freaking Knights of Ren?!? They’ve been established, and he was even called out as their leader in Force Awakens, so they will most definitely be at Kylo’s side for the final film, unless JJ forgets that he even introduced them, in which case it’s on him for not using his own material.

6. The Kid. His name is Temiri Blagg. The first revealed in a new generation of force sensitive children. How does that not inspire hope and possibilities? We are seeing the beginning of the Resistance’s “Spark” light the fire in those who are oppressed and downtrodden. There were so few force users in the original trilogy, and yet the prequels established that anyone could potentially be a Jedi, it makes sense that years later there would be countless force sensitive people who don’t even realize what they can become. It pushes the franchise in a new direction and shows that there are others out there with the power to fight back. And ending on that kid staring up into the sky is a perfect reflection of where Luke started his journey all those years ago.

7. Time for the Jedi to end. Let’s face it, the Jedi in the prequels are pretty much established as arrogant and flawed. For all their talk of balance they go pretty out of their way to wipe out all that is seen as evil. The Clone Wars goes even further in showing the issues the Jedi seem too self absorbed in their hunt for the Sith. That both Luke and Yoda (freaking YODA!) acknowledge this show that it is time for something new. To just bring back the Jedi as they were would go against what Yoda talked about at the end of Revenge and would have just put the series back into a cycle of good and evil. That Rey now has the possibility to make something new, possibly something even better than the old Jedi order is fantastic, and paved the way for even more creative elements. And I don’t know if I’m the only one who noticed but it seems Rey took at least some of the old Jedi texts as they can possibly be seen in a drawer of the Millennium Falcon when Finn gets a blanket for Rose.

So you may hate it or love it, but it happened, I give Rian Johnson credit for pushing the series in a new direction, I only hope with JJ Abrams back he doesn’t try to play it safe and undo all the great new possibilities we’ve been given to expand and explore in that galaxy far far away.

[falkenscreen]

Gilmore Girls

Gilmore Girls is better than everything else that’s out now, so let’s talk about it.

The show, still deservedly a favourite among very many, has a conspicuous and especial place in the lives of many a Gilly, this author no less. Having watched the now classic (non-sequentially) following its release, when I was just a few years shy of Rory, I returned to it in 2019 to watch it the whole way through, now a few years shy of Lorelai.

The difference in perspective, and all that which still resonates to boot, is astounding.

Somehow the ending wasn’t ruined for me, nor A Year in the Life which we’ll get to later. I’m far from the first guy to write about or fall madly in love with Gilmore Girls and if you’re not listening to Kevin T. Porter’s and Demi Adejuyigbe’s Gilmore Guys then you’re really missing out. Take these as the reflections of a most ardent fan who came to the show relatively afresh, did a Luke, went all in and found something that still sets a standard in scripting, character-building and female-driven storytelling, for which we are sorely lacking and still so grateful to Amy.  

Spoilers herein for Gilmore Girls and A Year in the Life and, just so it’s out of the way; Jess, obviously. Dean quickly became a one-note boyfriend (who cheats), Logan (yes he did grow as a person) never near actively enough supported Rory in furthering her aspirations unlike others around her and Jess was the only partner who both held a candle to her intellectually and didn’t let Rory coast on her least forgiving qualities. I’m not counting Marty.

First thing’s first – story and plot. More often forgotten than not, they’re two different things. Gilmore Girls, as it was hurriedly pitch in a last ditch attempt to sell a show to the network, is about a mother and daughter who are more like best friends. Whenever it’s just the pair interacting the show was at its far and above best and never got tiring, not once, and was never as strong when Yale split them up or the revival, atypically and so consequentially, chose to see Rory and Lorelai apart for whole stretches.

Exceptionally cast, as good as Alexis Bledel was its Lauren Graham who ultimately drove the show and she never gets near enough credit for her nuanced portrayal of one of the most complex characters in modern television. Just look at the wordless despair, affection and resolve that passes across her eyes in the seconds before she steels herself for the proposal and season 5 cliff-hanger. Ask yourself how many performers can achieve such a range of emotion without dialogue in so few beats; there are few.

Significantly, mother and daughter besties are actually not what the show is about. What’s really going on is the tragedy of intergenerational disharmony as the mother who rejected her wealthy upbringing for a more regular life sees her daughter in turn rebel against her for the elite world she abandoned. With story and plot elements as strong as this, there was much to work with.

The spectre of a 16 year old Lorelai with a little bundle rocking up on the porch of the Independence Inn pleading for any job hangs over the show’s entire run. There’s been a fair few critiques over the years that Gilmore Girls is elitist or insular for its focus on small-town Connecticut which for many who haven’t been there can appear like a privileged haven.

Gilmore Girls is more accurately about a young woman and mother who didn’t get the support she needed from her family and set out to make a life where she wasn’t reliant on anyone but herself. The show, thankfully absent hackneyed flashbacks to supplement a narrative which didn’t need padding out, did however proffer us one glimpse into Lorelai’s early years establishing that Richard, amidst a great disdain for what was then very scandalous, insisted Lorelai marry the useless Christopher.

Anyone who thinks Lorelai’s circumstance or Rory’s for that matter reflects a privileged position needs to check it and on the matter of Connecticut there are many families who arrived there far from being a Richard or Emily, this author’s included; it being as diverse a place as the show’s myriad of characters suggests.

Now to Rory. Many (most) viewers were disappointed in the arc she undertakes and continues well into A Year in the Life. Yes it’s frustrating when you see characters you love take paths you’d rather they didn’t (those hoping for a happier end to Jaime’s story can relate) but her simply being on this trajectory as disappointing as it is isn’t a fair criticism of the show in and of itself and is one it has been unreasonably burdened with. For those who hate to see elitist Rory, it bears acknowledging the subtle parallel the series draws with Lorelai’s own (if more widely relatable) snobbery; think just how many times she judged or forewarned of someone simply for their being rich.

Those who were sad to not see Rory (or Lorelai) grow in key respects at least until the very end of season 7 point to this as a flaw in the series. This mistakes however the important distinction, one drawn as rarely as between story and plot, as regards character building and character growth. For the volumes we come to learn about Rory and Lorelai they conversely (and uncommonly for a character-driven series and moreover one of this length) don’t grow very much. We may not like it but hey, it’s a fact of life and often people don’t change, sometimes even after 10 years. It’s an unusual, dramatically refreshing theme befitting a drama and yes, Gilmore Girls is a drama. Like The West Wing given the volume of dialogue and hilarity it remains funnier than most comedies yet is still at the core a coming of age drama.

It is a nominally rare thing to see sustained character growth in this most distinct of series, later rendering Emily’s arc in the four most recent instalments all the more resonant. When Lorelai cautions Lane in season seven (the only era of the show when overwrought story beats infamously overtook character-driven drama) that she had best prepare for a circumstance where Lane’s children embrace the religiosity Lane rejected, it could fairly be highlighted as an unnecessary meta intrusion or an annoying ‘state the moral’ moment. It is however one of the only occasions emblematic of explicit character growth, coinciding as it happens with Rory having to contend with her most consequential instance of professional rejection. For being distinctive it resonated all the stronger in a series that would rather grow its characters and their world than the characters themselves; in modern terms a relatively novel and here welcomely idiosyncratic approach to storytelling emphasising bittersweet and very relatable aspects of our lives and interpersonal relationships.

The realm of Star’s Hollow being invested with a great deal more personality than most fictional settings, Lorelai and Rory’s narratives notably ground to a halt in Summer to see a musical tableaux of the town. If admittedly outstaying the welcome, it was a nice opportunity to say a farewell to the only significant character herein which didn’t get any dialogue. An affectionate ode throughout to small town life, it was well to remind us that every stop on the highway has a Taylor and Kirk, though rarely ones so lively and repeatedly entertaining; even if Kirk towards the end did go over the top.

Who never went over the top was Melissa McCarthy; it being a special pleasure to see her in pre-mega fame mode sharing her best moments alongside Yanic Truesdale, as well as a few hints at the more exaggerated roles she would later take on in some of Sookie’s most strident moments. The pop culture references were too a joy for any junkie; with the show (take note modern cinema) graciously never skipping whole beats to let one-liners or hark backs sink in, instead trusting that we’d get it or appreciate the resonance nonetheless.

This was conversely one of the flaws of A Year in the Life; but for allusions to Game of Thrones and a couple of other tidbits there wasn’t much acknowledgement in the scripting choices that this world had aged at all. There still being the ‘no cell phones’ sign in Luke’s after all these years, as fond a recall as it is, was just too much a stretch; on par with the infamous Game of Thrones-esque (yes Gilmore Girls did it first) roll credits moment when Rory delivers her manuscript.

For all its flaws and clustered cameos the addendums did however bring back Jason Stiles for a dignified farewell. A character very short-changed by his series’ conclusion (and lack thereof), when written out there was never a sense of closure like that proffered his contemporaries which fans indeed got ten years later.

And this brings us to the much touted ‘last four words.’ “Mum,” “Yes,” “I’m pregnant.”

It’s both a lacklustre and exceptional end in respects. Sure it would have had more of the intended resonance those ten years ago when Rory, mirroring Lorelai’s earlier experience, found herself at a stage of her life still yet to realise many of her goals that a newborn child would then and here implicitly affect. It still bears its impact but like much of A Year in the Life’s recurrent storytelling and character motifs it doesn’t resonate as desired and as it would have that era ago within a world and set of people who have now inevitably aged.

The theme and consequences of unplanned pregnancies has also already been widely explored in the series between the experiences of Lorelai, Christopher, Lane and, most unnecessarily, Luke. It’s far from improbable that any one or all of these figures, including Rory, would experience an unplanned pregnancy, yet when it came to introducing April the familiar story beats had already been well played out, as distinct from the more intimate and procedural arc with which Lane’s pregnancy is treated.

Rory’s announcement does however reflect the core theme of the series in children and parents, despite intentions and efforts made, replicating their forebear’s cycles. Despite it being foreshadowed that Logan is the father, he being evidently modelled on Christopher, here the show does not go for a bittersweet note but a heartfelt, cautionary one. As the series repeatedly reminds us, it’s far from unfortunate that children have similar experiences to their parents, or indeed that families continue to procreate. It’s just that, as when Rory dropped out of Yale, whatever happens in children’s lives may or very likely will still happen in spite of anything and everything a parent may want or try, and we’re all just along for the ride.

A Year in the Life’s highs and lows notwithstanding, it was well worth the hours to spend that much more time with our girls and loved ones (the most hilarious Paris’ return was probably the highlight) as it was over so many months and years. If you’re craving the qualities and depth that so much modern storytelling is so lacking, look no further.

Gilmore Girls is now streaming on Netflix

[jstma]

WRITING THE PILOT

Writing the scripts for Alonso has been challenging. A script isn’t an Ikea flat pack, where one just follows a list of instructions until completion. Granted there are rules and guidelines, plus endless books and websites claiming to hold the answers and abilities needed to craft a perfect script, but ultimately, it’s your story. You are the one that’s going to make it, it’s nobody’s else’s, and writing it is not an exact science. As I’ve previously stated, I’m not a professional, yet, and my only previous experience writing scripts was for my short degree films, the longest being 3 minutes. However, since I made the decision to develop a TV series I craved one challenge, to write a full 30-minute pilot* script for Alonso. I haven’t done anything like this in the past, so doing so is really pushing myself in a new direction. And let me tell you, it’s more time consuming than you might think!

It may or may not be clear to you why I chose to write a full episode because on top of that I still needed to write a script for the animation I was creating. Two scripts in such a short timeframe does seem a little much. But it was sitting down to write the animation script that pushed me towards writing a full 30-minute episode. Why? Well not only has it been a desire of mine from the get-go, I also needed to explore the characters and truly know the story I was trying to tell. How can you make an animation about characters you’ve never written about; how do these characters even interact with each other? I’ve mentioned a similar problem back when I was developing the concept, and I suppose stories continue to answer those kinds of questions years into production. A story expands and evolves over time, Luke Skywalker is a very different character in A New Hope that he is in Return of the Jedi. So, before I could write a short story with the characters, I wanted to dream up their first episode, so at least I know what that may be like, with the goal of learning all about them during the course of writing it. As I’d already written outlines of the series in my pitch bible, that was the first place I started, from which I knew the general plot of the first episode. It was a case of fleshing out the details and giving the episode a beginning, middle, and end. Again, there is no right or wrong way to write a story, I simply followed my instincts and tried to stick as closely to the characters personalities as I could. This may sound silly but, in some instances, I let my characters write themselves.

I found this became easier to do the further into the script I was. For example, I added a time travel sequence towards the end of the episode as I felt there was a lack of action, in this scene the two protagonists, Alonso and Jeff, are thrown hundreds of years into the future after one of Jeff’s magical spells goes wrong. There they see how their lives and actions are to shape the world, and the importance of their adventures. The purpose of this scene was to show both the characters and the audience that Alonso and Jeff have shared destinies, furthermore it also teased the scope of the show and its many possibilities of storytelling. It was by far the easiest part to write, and I found the more ridiculous a scenario I placed the characters in, the easier they were to write. It’s as if I could watch the scene in my head, then jot down my interpretation as a script. The point I’m trying to make is that if you know your characters, and the scene is moving the plot along, the sequence should right itself. For me, the difficulty was arranging the scenes into a good order, like when characters should be introduced and how long a scene should last. The hardest scenes to write were ones in which characters just stood around talking with no real goal in sight, nothing for me to move them towards. During the middle section of the episode I had characters interact at a retirement party in the local saloon, this was a good opportunity to show off how each character interacts and allow the audience to understand the various relationships. However, I couldn’t get this to work, and it ended up being overlong and with no clear focus. 

Characters just stood around small talking, which sounds odd considering I was writing it, but it felt like I was stuck with them in a strange awkward conversation. As soon as I began cutting the scene down to its core objectives, the episode began to feel tighter, as well as freeing up time for the more interesting action sequences. Before I continue it’s worth noting that one page of A4 script is roughly one minute of screen time, so a 30-minute pilot is around thirty pages long, the party scene took up nearly ten pages which would have been a bore to watch. When it came to planning out the script I did a few things, firstly I got a stack of sticky notes, onto which I plotted out from start to finish every scene and story point I wanted to include. Some were already decided from the pitch bible which I used as a basic marker, others I added to give the story some interest. I stuck these notes onto my wall to form a timeline of events, which was a great Idea as it really helped visualise when certain things were to happen, and also meant I could experiment by changing the sequence of events by simply moving the notes around. I also marked out the beginning middle and end points, but more on that in shortly. Secondly, once I wrote the first draft, which really was a draft, I laid the pages out on the floor, so I could see how the order and timings translated into the actual script. For example, this is when I noticed if some scenes were too long, or if others came too late. This technique may not be for everyone, but as I’m a visual person, it was a great help. Finally, I printed of finished drafts to analyse in great detail, annotating on the pages as I went, noting anything that came to mind, be it questions regarding the story, spelling corrections or even crossing out large chunks of boring unnecessary dialogue; which was the cause for much of the script’s problems. Like I’ve previously stated, this was a first episode script, so I needed to fully explain the story and also show how fun and exciting the show could be. This is very hard to do, and the first draft was slow and uneventful as I clumsily explained the backstory and character motivation through lines and lines of dialogue, so each time I reviewed a draft I had one objective, reduce as much dialogue as I could, replacing it with interesting adventure and western scenes without losing plot quality. It was surprising how much dialogue I managed to scrap without detracting from the plot. The less exposition, the better.

If there’s one bit of advice I would pass on from this experience, it would be to recommend anyone that isn’t an acclaimed scriptwriter to stick to the fairly standard structure most stories follow, that being the hero's journey. Most books, films, and standalone stories follow pretty much the exact same structure, with certain events only happening at the beginning, middle and end. Trust me, you need to follow this, or you will feel lost and confused. Although it’s an easy structure to follow, there is plenty to explore within it, so reading up on this structure should be your first call. I read The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler cover to cover, and his industry background provides a wealth of knowledge that fed back directly into this project. Vogler uses great examples to illustrate how almost all the best-known stories follow the same structure, which may be hard to believe at first, but on reflection, it’s hard to find a story that doesn’t follow this convention. (maybe include a diagram of this) Follow this and you can’t go far wrong. Scripts develop the more you work on them, so re-write and re-write again, each time changing things up a little and see if the flow improves, and always get others to read it and give you feedback. Sometimes if you know a story back to back, you fail to notice the flaws and plot holes, however, someone who knows nothing about the plot may easily spot a mistake you filled in with your imagination. Trust me it helps. In total it took four re-writes to get the first episode to some standard, which translates to three months of slow work, it’s something you can’t and should work. Seriously, if you think you can write one draft and leave it then you’re wrong. Scripts require time and care to reach their potential, I almost cringe when reading my first draft, it’s clunky and poorly paced and full of awkward dialogue.  However, I’m not done with it yet, and I would love to have someone with experience writing scripts to take a look and make suggestions and alterations, hopefully before the end of this project. That being said, I’m happy with where it’s at.  

[artwithoutconsequence]

Rogue One (temporarily) relieved the biggest fear about Star Wars

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, is an important film in many regards. Let’s not get delusional and say it’s more important than The Force Awakens, but Gareth Edwards’ helmed entry carries a weight that J.J. Abrams did not have to worry about with Episode VII, and that is the question of what exactly are Star Wars films outside of the Episodic saga of the Skywalker family? For those who don’t remember, this question was briefly addressed by George Lucas himself under the “old rules’ when in 2008, The Clone Wars, which would later become the only piece of expanded universe to make the transition to Disney’s canon, premiered as a film. It didn’t go down so well, panned by critics and fans alike. It was fortunate that the series turned out quite the opposite, with many fans liking the show’s depiction of the famous conflict better than the prequels themselves.

But that’s neither here nor there, Disney paid a lot of money for Star Wars, and they’ll be making sure to maximise returns on their investment, and part of that plan seems to be releasing one Star Wars film per year until civilisation ends after an alien invasion goes awry. But Disney knows you can’t have an episodic entry every year. Otherwise we’d be seeing Episode 27 in 2035. No, instead you release episodic titles every other year and have “anthology” films in between. That way episode 27 doesn’t get released until 2055. Much better, right? Let the adventures of Han “Obi” Skywalker and Leia Padme Kenobi reign on!! (You know what, you’re right, that’s a bit unrealistic - it won’t be until the 2099 centennial celebration of The Phantom Menace that Disney acknowledges the prequels, so it will be just Leia Kenobi)

So the first of these non-episodic films is Rogue One, and it’s a story from John Knoll, who has worked in visual effects at  Industrial Light and Magic since the Special Editions of the Original Trilogy at least, and it was initially pitched as a story idea over a decade ago, so it’s been around the docks for a while. It’s the first of no doubt, many non-episodic films, and it’s poetic in a cliche sense that it deals very closely with the events of the first Star Wars film itself.  Now, Disney is calling these movies ‘stand-alone’ movie, which is a bit ingenious, because Rogue One has no feet to stand on without A New Hope, but we’ll talk about that a bit later.

A New Hope’s opening crawl begins;

“It is a period of civil war.

Rebel spaceships, striking

from a hidden base, have won

their first victory against

the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel

spies managed to steal secret

plans to the Empire's

ultimate weapon, the DEATH

STAR, an armored space

station with enough power

to destroy an entire planet.”

And it is in those three yellow sentences where most of Rogue One is set. In an attempt to distance itself from the episodic entries, Rogue One has no opening crawl, and it wouldn’t work because while the Star Wars saga films typically start at Point A and end at Point B over a set amount of time, usually days, Rogue One begins with a sequence fifteen years before the rest of the film, and then picks up the events later. But Rogue One can only distance itself so far from A New Hope and the filmmakers know this, which makes the labelling of it being a “standalone” Star Wars film all the more confusing

There are many things to talk about with Rogue One, most of which has been covered ad-nauseum elsewhere. Overall, i think it is a good film, with some flaws, and scars which clearly point to studio intervention, but there’s one thing I wanted to really talk about in this piece and it was something that i was quite relieved to see.

With Star Wars now set to hit screens at least once a year until the end of time, one of the biggest questions that few people ask is; how are they going to keep it fresh? How are they going to keep it special? Because as of 2017 Star Wars is still special, to most people anyway. Maybe Disney doesn’t care to keep it fresh, or special so long as the money keeps rolling in. But Rogue One is the key indicator as to how Disney will manage Star Wars on the silver screen, if at least for the foreseeable future.

Before Rogue One, however, there was also an indicator, one that was worrying, and that was the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Disney bought Marvel, for arguably the same reason they bought Star Wars -  after years of trying to capture the young-teen boy market (“Does anyone remember TRON: Legacy?”) they gave up and decided to buy it instead. It’s worked too. Marvel movies are big business and have inspired a dull trend in Hollywood where everything has to be one big connected universe.

The true crime of Marvel films however, is that they’re almost factory produced Ford T-models at this point, each rolled out with a different coat of paint. (At least Ford told people it was the same car they were buying) It started with one a year and now we are at one every six months or so, sometimes even less. Trailers come out, almost promising a new adventure never before seen, only for it to be an adventure that very much follows a formula that has been audience tested down to the end credits. What was once an exciting build up now feels like dread as 2017 brings the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth films in the “MCU” to screens this year. (with the exception of anticipation for Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnorok, because with the exception of perhaps Edgar Wright, he has the most unique voice Marvel has hired to date)

They are good films, but they aren’t unique, they barely have any artistic individuality at all, they feel the same, and perhaps worst of all they rarely surprise the audience. Naturally this is a concern that could happen to Star Wars, which arguably set the field in motion for this sort of risk-adverse film-making in the first place. (For those not in the know - consensus largely sees that Star Wars and Jaws killed the New Hollywood era - a almost-decade long spell where directors and writers saw unprecedented control over Hollywood cinema resulting in what could be seen as the greatest output of tinseltown. But that’s another story for another time)

But despite that, Star Wars has always remained special, even if the prequels didn’t meet expectations, it was still an event seeing the trilogy be released; watching the completion of “the circle” started almost 30 years prior. Avengers was an event. When Age of Ultron released, it wasn’t. Would this happen to Star Wars? The Marvelication of Star Wars. That, more than anything should have been the #1 question heading into Rogue One.

And ultimately, on the “special” front -  It doesn’t feel like it now, but in a few years after we’ve seen a new entry every year for five years, they won’t feel as big of an event. Episode XIII will not be as big as Episode VII, and Episode XVI won’t be as big as either.

But in terms of Star Wars being a soulless factory produced machine, Rogue One  went a long way to alleviate many of those fears. Though it’s story can’t stand on it’s own, It makes a big effort to differentiate itself from episodes in terms of style and structure. It both does and doesn’t feel like a Star Wars film at the same time which is an achievement to be touted by Mr. Edwards and co. to be sure.

The film is gorgeous, with some beautiful locations. It contradicts nicely with the tone of the film. Edwards makes you feel the Empire’s oppressiveness throughout the picture, and it’s something that is always there, and it’s felt in a way that’s really only present in Empire Strikes Back. It’s well done because it should be oppressive for the characters living during this time, and it’s something we’ve been told about so it’s good to see. Unfortunately, the tone is somewhat tarnished by showing stormtroopers as bumbling idiots at every moment they show up in the film. Now yes, stormtroopers are notorious for poor aim, but they’re usually shown to be competent/scary at some part in other films. Like destroying the village in the opening of The Force Awakens - it adds credibility to your stock level bad guys instead of leaving it all to Vader.

The Star Wars saga has a distinct style to the stories are told and filmed. The Force Awakens fit like perfect glove, as it should have. Rogue One gave filmmakers a chance to branch out and not only show different things in that giant universe, but show them differently too. Perhaps we visit one too many new planets in the films opening act as we jump around introducing various characters,  It makes the locales a bit less memorable, but the right intent was there.

Some critics have said that this movie put the “War” in Star Wars, which isn’t quite true. All six fimls have signature battle sequences, but they are very much shot in a way where there is spectacle and a large conflict, but you never really lose focus on the main characters. In The Battle of Endor, there is a massive battle occurring outside the second death star, yet the scenes between Luke, Vader and the Emperor feel so personal and carry a lot of the weight of the film. The saga films are space operas after all, the characters come first. Everything else add to the stakes.

Rogue One is the first of the Star Wars films to really zoom out a bit, and that’s partly because we don’t care about these characters as much, but with the conflict directly tieing into A New Hope it does make some sense to focus on the larger picture, even if that means your characters are less engaging than the Skywalker clan and company. It’s actually a bit of a chicken and the egg situation, are your characters weaker because of the larger focus, or is there a larger focus because your characters weaker?

Whether this different style makes for a better movie or not is down to subjectivity, but the fact that the film does have a unique style is a big strength for the future of  these anthology ffilms because it has a tone and style that seems like it won’t translate through to other movies. Partly because the nature of each story will (hopefully) be different. Not every film will be set in the Empire’s heydey, and the expanded universe before Disney showed just how massive the potential for exploring great, unique stories is within that galaxy far, far, away. Because Rogue One is flawed - but it stands out in all the right ways, and has put fears to rest of a once special franchise turning into the Assassin’s Creed of the movie world.. For now. These anthology films should take over as the main storytelling point of the Star Wars galaxy. It’s much bigger than just being a world of Skywalkers. Disney run the risk of not only Marvelifing Star Wars, but adding in the worst parts of Harry Potter too. The Skywalkers are just a tiny part of an enormous play, much like our own place in our universe, and hopefully Disney will see that before it’s too late.