#re. leia organa ↳ commentary

[ruinreigns]

tag drop leia organa !

[irinapaleolog]

‘Last Jedi’ Didn’t Undo ‘Force Awakens,’ But ‘Rise Of Skywalker’ Retconned Disney’s ‘Star Wars’ Saga

There is a difference between offering unpopular answers to a previous film’s questions and replacing the answers of a previous installment with your own in the next sequel.

Four months after its domestic theatrical debut (not counting Thursday previews), Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ($515 million domestic and $1.174 billion worldwide) will be our last blockbuster movie at least until Tenet in July. I will use this “once a month” Rise of Skywalker post (which will continue until theater re-open or until morale improves) to complain about Force Awakens editors Mary Jo Markey and Maryann Brandon (specifically Markey) arguing in a Mission: Impossible podcast “Light the Fuse,” stating that The Last Jedi (slight paraphrasing) so consciously undid the storytelling of The Force Awakens. We’ve been having this conversation for 2.5 years. It’s one thing when critics, bloggers, pundits, random folks on social media and the like get into this debate. But when the folks actually working on the movies do, failing to understand what a retcon actually is, well...

Star Wars: The Force Awakens used the narrative backbone of the first Star Wars movie to reintroduce the franchise, including a handful of “original trilogy” characters (Han Solo, Leia Organa, Chewbacca, etc.), along with new would-be heroes and villains in a crowdpleasing blockbuster adventure that earned $937 million domestic and $2.068 billion worldwide. I felt the film was too slavishly devoted to the structure and character beats of the original film to its emotional detriment, but my dad (who I was able to fly out for the premiere as a 70th birthday present) loved it, plenty of my fellow critics liked it and the new characters (Rey, Finn, Kylo Ren, etc.) became instant favorites with fans young and old. It also teased character-specific reveals about its new heroine and its new villains while ending on a big cliffhanger.

The Force Awakens ended with Han Solo having been slain by his own son and Finn in a coma with Rey having realized that she had “Force powers” and tracking down a self-exiled Luke Skywalker. We weren’t told if Rey’s lineage or Snoke’s origins had any bearing on the story, we weren’t told if Finn would survive his light saber battle with Kylo (although we all presumed he would) and we certainly didn’t know for sure why Luke, now looking like an elder hermit, had skipped out on the “First Order versus Resistance” battle and hidden away at the first Jedi temple. It is entirely fine that The Force Awakens left these threads dangling in the wind, and that the film (which was absolutely guaranteed to have a sequel) ended with a glorified “To be CONTINUED!”

Yes, I would argue that much of the speculation and debate over Snoke’s origins and Rey’s parentage was not from the movie but from bloggers and writers who spent the next two years offering what at best were educated guesses. With J.J. Abrams not returning to helm The Last Jedi and Colin Treverrow already signed to direct “Star Wars IX,” we really had no idea A) what Abrams’ answers to those questions might be or B) if those threads really mattered at all to the grand story. It was possible that Snoke was just a political operator, and that Rey’s obsession with her parents was purely part of her “the belonging you seek lies not behind you but in front of you” character arc (personified in Finn and Han risking capture and death to rescue Rey from Starkiller base).

Now it is 100% fair to not be happy with how things played out in Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. The middle flick in Disney’s Star Wars trilogy revealed that A) Rey’s parents were nobodies who didn’t even love her and B) Snoke was merely a stepping stone to Kylo Ren seizing control of the First Order. Sure, maybe you wanted Rey to be a Skywalker or a Palpatine. Maybe you expected Snoke to have a backstory or a reveal as some long-ago Star Wars character (Mace Windu?) reborn as a genocidal dictator. But there is a big difference between “I didn’t like Last Jedi’s answers to the questions Force Awakens posed” and “Last Jedi knowing rewrote or retconned Force Awakens.” Just because the onscreen events didn’t match your head-cannon doesn’t make them incorrect.

The Force Awakens no more gave us answers to its questions than did Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes offer an explanation to its infamous “now the apes rule our Earth too” cliffhanger. If you listen to the DVD commentary to that 2001 “re-imagining” (which was still so disliked that it didn’t spawn a sequel despite earning $385 million on a $100 million budget), you’ll hear Burton specifically stating that he intentionally didn’t offer an explanation for why the Abraham Lincoln statue now resembled Tim Roth’s ape baddie specifically so whomever directed the follow-up could offer their own answers. You can debate whether that was the correct choice, but I would argue that Abrams, again this is not a criticism, did the exact same thing in The Force Awakens.

He left Luke on an island, put Finn into a coma, turned Poe from a “dies in the first act” cameo to a major supporting character and said “Okay, it’s your ball now, go play.” In a sense, that was generous of him, since it meant that The Last Jedi had more freedom to use that first film however it chose. The problem is that Treverrow essentially got sacked and Abrams came back to helm the third installment. The result was a retroactive retcon of The Last Jedi’s character beats and plot twists. I don’t think Treverrow’s (alleged) script for Star Wars IX is the best thing in the world, but it was at least a “yes, and...” sequel to The Last Jedi. Rise of Skywalker essentially ignored The Last Jedi, to its character-specific detriment.

Rise of Skywalker opened with Rey again being unsure of her Force abilities and lacking confidence in her own powers, Finn pining over Rey and caring more about her than about the “cause,” and Poe regressing to a conventional hot-shot fly boy sans earned maturity from his failed leadership in Last Jedi. Retroactively making Rey into a Palpatine and Snoke into a “cooked in a bottle” clone while bringing a cloned Palpatine back to life not only negated the storytelling of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi but (to a lesser extent) the original Star Wars trilogy. Bringing the Emperor back to “life” negated Anakin Skywalker’s final sacrifice in Return of the Jedi, while retroactively making Rey Sheev’s grand kid, which Luke and Lea apparently knew all along, turns their previous interactions into a mess of contradictions.

It matters whether the people working on the movies know that offering unpopular or controversial answers to a previous film’s mysteries is not the same thing as rewriting or negating that prior installment. The Last Jedi was (somewhat) controversial partially because it gave unexpected (unpopular?) answers to questions teased in The Force Awakens. The Rise of Skywalker was (somewhat) controversial partially because it walked back those reveals seemingly to retroactively retain the answers that Abrams had in his head while making Force Awakens, with “new” answers that A) weren’t terribly popular themselves and B) wasted valuable screen-time which could have been spent on a forward-moving sequel to both Force Awakens and Last Jedi. Last Jedi didn’t retcon or undue Force Awakens. But Rises of Skywalker managed to retcon not just its predecessors but the entire Star Wars saga.

[benperorsolo]

The novels make it clear that family in Star Wars is about love and connection. Since reylo babies would most likely actually appear in novels or comics, we can expect to see similar themes. Stories about Rey and Ben as parents would focus on the connection between them and their past and their future. 2/2

Agree with basically all of this, except that I don’t agree that canon makes it clear the Organas are Leia’s true parents. I think it makes it clear that both the Organas and the Amidala-Skywalkers are her parents. I.e. Leia references Padme as her mother several times, and expresses a desire to know her. It’s tragic, and Ben indeed comes by this habit honestly, but Leia’s unresolved feelings towards Anakin --her refusal to acknowledge that she is of his blood; her refusal to acknowledge this aspect of her true family-- is what compounds into the dysfunction and unresolved trauma that leads to both her political destruction when she’s ousted as Vader’s daughter on someone else’s terms, and Ben’s own trauma with Vader leading him to embrace the Dark Side under the belief that Vader was his true legacy. So I would say that Leia’s unwillingness to accept herself as a Skywalker --which is reflected and mirror-imaged in Ben, because Leia sees that legacy of one of Dark whereas Ben sees it as one of Light, which is why he rejects it in favor of playing ‘Vader’s heir’-- is part of the trauma that the ST is trying to heal and resolve. She has made progress on the front of Anakin since ROTJ for sure, but the trauma’s continued existence I think looms very large on the screen.

But ofc, yes to the rest of this. And Rey/Ben/Solo kiddo stories would be about family, hope, love, redemption-- all those Star Wars themes. It wouldn’t be like Rey and Ben would be like ‘all right, we have to have a kid on *marks calendar* this date to perpetuate your line’. Probably part of the story would be Ben struggling to come to terms with his own villainous legacy as well as the legacy of his family and how to raise his children within that in a way that doesn’t tear them down. In the context of the verse, being a Skywalker is not really an uplifting life sentence. It’s really only out-of-universe that we the audience re-contextualize it in such a way because we can see the commentary of darkness followed by light that the writers are making.

[redscullyrevival]

I finally saw The Last Jedi and I liked it - what I wasn’t entirely anticipating is that I also really enjoyed it! I will now commence bullet point blabbering about the film below the cut and it shall not be spoiler free. 

I now understand all the raging nerd-hate this movie has been getting - this film aimed to straight up burn this motherfucker down, huh? 

Loved it. 

Personally I was very… underwhelmed with The Force Awakens. It was a fun romp and I loved the new characters and the nostalgic twinge of the familiar but oh boy the entire thing felt far too beholden to the pedestal of A STAR WARS FILM! in slow steady blinking lights. 

The Force Awakens has that octane Abrams pacing but it is also just so damn stiff. So ridged. And obviously deeply afraid to wander off the path. 

I understand that the first re-introduction to such a beloved franchise playing it (excruciatingly) safe made sense; but I was still upset with the final product, with the final choice to deliberately aim to be nothing more than what I’ve seen and felt before.

The Last Jedi on the other hand turns out to be a long, cozy, chat about how A STAR WARS FILM! should be struck down so something new can grow. 

Hallelujah!

The visceral attack this film must feel like to a particular kind of Star Wars fan is no doubt very intense and in all honestly I do have some pity for folks who found this new film to be dismissing the legacy they feel connected to in deeply personal ways. 

*clappy hands*

But oh, I loved it so much!

Every twist and turn, every aspect of this film pushes the anticipated rhythm of A STAR WARS FILM! away; all the momentum the film gains is for the final purpose of rejecting everything easy and expected, for pushing past, well, the past. 

Hot damn, the nerds are kind of justified for once.

The Last Jedi came for them! It went so hard! The more someone had dug themselves into the belief that STAR WARS was a solid thing they knew and understood on a fundamental core level then the deeper the cut would go as the film raged on. 

The anger, the hate from certain fandom circles makes total sense. 

Because this film done changed the Star Wars. 

And it was about fuckin’ time. 

So prepared was I to sit through The Empire Strikes Back: The Remix that the intense gut fans-hate-it reaction the film got opening friggin’ day got me all kinds of delighted, how I saw it such a reaction signaled that this new film would be something actually new. 

And the fresh air of The Last Jedi comes from some pretty drastic subversion of A STAR WARS FILM! It is down right beautiful.

Ultimately, if the choice to change Star Wars was just to grim dark and edge it up then it’d be pretty terrible I agree, but The Last Jedi managed to alter and course correct massive change without breaking the frame of the how and the why and to whom these STAR WARS stories are told. 

I mean, in my opinion anyway. 

I felt the film put a lot of care and love into explaining to the audience what was right and natural about change, explaining that strength could be found in letting go of our nostalgia and expectations and opening up to new experiences in old sandboxes. I felt The Last Jedi was an oddly gentle film that knew it was going to frighten some while igniting others and did it’s best to show it’s good will towards signaling hope and legend and legacy into a shared experience. 

*shrug shrug shrug* YA FEELIN’ ME?!

I know I already have a spoiler warning above the cut but now I am going to really get up in this film and push my eyeball up against it’s eyeball and hey if you wanna see all particulars feel free, but this is now specific spoiler territory, thanks and happy holidays:

I was so enthralled with Finn and Rose’s quest and I was ecstatic when it didn’t work out.

The two went on a space goose chase for a daring rescue mission and got into ruffian escapades and thought on the fly and were brave and funny and were livin’ that STAR WARS life - and they failed spectacularly.

Their mission, their rip’roarin’ escapade, was in fact a brash and ill thought out plan that almost got absolutely everyone killed. 

Precious, lovely, daring, and confident Poe Dameron was a horrible leader. 

His belief in a desperate gamble; his total confidence that he was in the right and the stuffy Vice Admiral didn’t know when to take a risk; the audience knowing his qualities as sure fire STAR WARS leadership was all for nothing and people died for it. 

I said HOT DAMN!

This film made General Organa and Vice Admiral Holdo, two older women who don’t run around with blasters in hand but who have no less twinkle in their eyes the true leaders of the resistance. The true bearers of the spark of rebellion. It was their matured tried and true mentorship that ended up saving them all - not the cocky charisma of a younger good looking man.

Also Leia is confirmed Force Sensitive™ bringing to an end decades long old guard fans bickering and moaning over if she has pretend magical powers or not and why if she did that’d be “not right”. 

(Seeing Carrie Fisher bathed in moonlight was emotional)

And then, oh man, Rey’s parents? Wonderful, soulful, bright and strong Rey? Because she is in a STAR WARS film and can use the force everyone including people who’ve never seen The Force Awakens assumed her parents were a part of the legacy, a part of the grand scheme.

NOPE.

In fact, to really drive it home just so fans can’t possibly be confused, Kylo Ren tells her “You’re nobody. You don’t belong in this story.”

He said that with his mouth words!

But there she is all the same, good old Rey. And she’ll remain. Without being so and so from extended universe’s kid or a character only in some comic book or Luke’s secret child or whatever. 

Rey is just a character made to be there and to use the force because, hey, it’s a STAR WARS MOVIE! We needed someone to be the Luke this time around so why not Rey? 

PS we shattered Luke’s lightsaber and made Rey indebted to jack squat of this franchise. She searched for her purpose and her parents and only found the strength of herself and her own choices. Peace out!

That tickled me senseless, having the cultural institution of STAR WARS being full on assaulted for two and a half hours.

That tickled my pickle. 

The Last Jedi is hyper self aware media, but it was still fun. It was still a good time but it laid down hard and fast with changing the lifeblood of STAR WARS that even I, who is nowhere near as big a fan as someone you could probably hit with a stone’s throw, admit to feeling some uncomfortable chafing at times while watching.

STAR WARS is a legit cultural institution by the way, I didn’t just say that for the fun of it - that’s absolutely 100% true. 

Star Wars as a media, as a franchise, has an ebb and flow of patterns, style, symbols, and motifs that dictate a tonal cohesiveness which designates something as recognizable as STAR WARS.  

What I’m doing when I all caps “Star Wars” is I’m trying to defer attention to the known concepts and ideas of Star Wars media as a whole cultural institution and experience rather than just invoking a cluster of films, only I’m trying to do all that just through the written word.

Star Wars is a film and STAR WARS is all that which defines the franchise as well as our shared cultural understanding of said franchise, ya fell me? That’s how I approach talking about this kinda stuff online anyways. I feel most will understand what I’m doing with the capitalization and all that but hey, now ya know ‘fo sure. 

Anyway

Shit y’all! Luke Skywalker is a funky sore spot huh? Loved that too. 

Lets get to that Kylo Ren:

Kylo Ren’s entire set up is that he ain’t Vader and fuck, ain’t that the truth. But in a good way. Duh Kylo Ren is not Vader, he is a different character. And, now, he isn’t even remotely similar to Vader as a STAR WARS character. 

Everything about Kylo Ren is opposed to Darth Vader; while he gain’s definition with this new film Kylo Ren didn’t even remotely start out as a mysterious villain like Vader originally did. 

We all knew, in that STAR WARS fashion, that Kylo Ren had to be tied to the legacy. We all knew that he had to be tied to the lifeblood of the franchise. And Ben Solo absolutely is. 

We knew this before Han ever revealed it through dialogue and that’s why it wasn’t a big reveal in The Force Awakens. Of course Ben Solo turned to the dark side and is Kylo Ren. Of course. Of course he has some weird Vader obsession, the character needed to emulate Vader so as to take up his mantel in the narrative and in the franchise. We needed a baddie in a helmet, stat!

But oh, look what has happened though, oh man:

Luke Skywalker in a moment of fear almost murdered his own nephew  -because he is in STAR WARS. 

We all know if there are Jedi then there is a light and a dark side of the force; we all know that if you are a master of and a teacher in the ways of the force you open yourself and your students up to a choice; and we all know that fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. 

Kylo Ren being a direct response to Luke friggin’ Skywalker is as far from Vader as you can get but fits just so right within the cleansing fire that is The Last Jedi. 

The hero of the first saga ignited the villain of the next. 

That ain’t very STAR WARS and something tells me that is the biggest kick to the crotch for a lot of folks. 

I, of course, dug the hell outta that choice.

Kylo Ren is actually interesting now. Mischief managed.

The very not subtle social commentary the film was dishing out was a pretty pie to boot. Bit on the nose but hey, ain’t that STAR WARS at least? Didn’t even have to dig this time around, gems sitting right on the surface.  

… Damn, I’m tired. I still have plenty to talk about though. Hmm, well, lets close this out on a different note (and that’s a pun):

The music of STAR WARS is bonkers recognizable. Like, I keep saying Star Wars is a cultural institution that uses motifs and symbols as devices for defining itself, right? Yeah, the use of music in this film is a pitch perfect example of that. 

The Last Jedi seamlessly flows from theme to theme, with specific well known scores highlighting emotional call backs and in-story referenced characters - the use of music is the most traditionalist aspect of this new film (they even shook up the editing this time around - shock and awe). 

Smart though, if they fucked with how STAR WARS did music then even an impassive twerp like me would be pretty upset. 

For my money, the musical score is still the best thing about a good old Star War.  

[newscultofficial]

Princess Leia From 'Star Wars' Got Her PhD at 19 and She's Officially the Best Disney Princess

It’s no surprise that Princess Leia is a badass. Not only is she royalty, but she kicks butt, she’s sassy, and she’s the goddamn head of the rebellion.

But, what if I told you that Princess Leia can add “doctor” to her vast resume?

Recently discovered by Dr. Becca Harrison‏, according to the director’s commentary on the 2004 DVD re-release of the Star Wars trilogy, Leia Organa got her Ph.D… at…

[thechurchillreview]

DOESN'T CONTAIN WONDER WOMAN SPOILERS. What does a successful (money-wise, with critics, moviegoers, comics fans) Wonder Woman mean for the future of the DCEU? How about the landscape of the superhero film genre in Hollywood after the fact? Just some personal thoughts along with my own adoration for Wonder Woman! 

The reviews of Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman, the newest DCEU installment, seem to be more positive than the ones for Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice alongside David Ayers’ Suicide Squad. The most memorable moments in Dawn of Justice were Gal Gadot’s smiling Wonder Woman kicking Doomsday’s butt singlehandedly and Ben Affleck’s Batman Arkham Asylum inspired fighting sequence towards the end. So, when it was announced that Wonder Woman was receiving the next solo live-action outing, I was extremely worried...Especially after the dismal treatment and narrative role of Amy Adams’ Lois Lane in both MoS and Dawn of Justice seriously miffed me. 

The humorous Wonder Woman Hark A Vagrant! commentary filled comic is by Kate Beaton. The WW ice cream gif is from 2011′s Justice League: War, borrowed from Tumblr user @wouldyouliketoseemymask. Comics pictured are Wonder Woman: Paradise Lost, Wonder Woman #25 under Gail Simone, Rebirth Wonder Woman: Year One, and New 52 Wonder Woman #41. 

At the same time, I sincerely hoped, almost prayed, that Wonder Woman would surpass the quality melange (I feel tonally and for watch-ability purposes Stereotype Squad is the strongest entry. Wasn’t overly serious or gritty for the sake of gritty versus having substance) of the previous DCEU flicks whilst being true to her iconic character. That’s a bit of a Herculean border-lining on unfair request, I know. But, if DC Comics/Warner Bros. did screw up Wonder Woman, I’d never give another cent towards anything in the DCEU because she’s one of my all-time favorite comic book heroes. I can’t begin to picture myself being forgiving of such a possible butchering combined with history in the making!

My introduction to Wonder Woman was through Super Friends, a series I never gained any enjoyment from viewing. Not due to her, simply all in all. To the point that for a long time I didn’t recall I’d ever seen it besides some Cartoon Network gag featuring said cartoon with Brainiac and Solomon Grundy complaining about not having pants. By the early 90s, I had finally read my first comic book story arc (The Death of Superman my sister’s boyfriend owned) which is ironic since he’s one of my most loathed heroes, yet his supporting cast and villains were and remain fantastic in my eyes to this very day. I learned about the DC Comics trinity and Marvel Comics as I devoured episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, X-Men: The Animated Series, and Spider-Man: The Animated Series. I’ve always had an affinity for superheroes, the varied powers with rad animation/visuals, numerous art styles, varied characters, costumes (unless objectifying, particularly on the women, I’ve never grasped this society standard), themes, subtexts, and etc. I was less influenced by solely the likes of Batman and Spider-Man, no, Princess/Senator Leia Organa, Buffy Anne Summers, Sarah Jeanette Connor, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, The Secret of NIMH’s Mrs. Brisby, Aliens’ Ellen Ripley, Ferngully’s Krista, Fa Mulan, Belle, Jasmine, Lady Kluck, Inspector Gadget’s Penny, S: TAS’s Lois Lane, X-Men’s Storm/Ororo Munroe, Xena, Widow Tweed, Maleficient, Andrea Beaumont, The Brave Little Toaster’s Toaster, Lisa Simpson, Daria, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’s April O’Neil, and The Powerpuff Girls left a bigger impact on me. Bear in mind I think my feminist, equality for all, diversity, and embracing individuality stances confuse or vex my family the majority of the the time: no one’s officially said this, probably there under the surface though.

Then DCAU’s Justice League premiered and Wonder Woman got some spotlight as the other two members of the Trinity did a decade ago. Alas the time limit structure and sharing the limelight wasn’t enough for Wonder Woman tales most of the time. A fish out of water warrior learning about the world of men that wouldn’t put up with crap while practicing compassion/love (even to her enemies)? YES! This compassion is a double edged sword, serving as both a strength and a weakness for the Amazon from Themyscira. The established core of her character lends itself to some daring storytelling. Justice League and its sequel show Unlimited gave us some great moments with Wonder Woman. Naturally, adoring what the character stood for prompted me to locate comics of her past adventures at my local libraries. Stories by William Moulton Marston, Gail Simone, Jodi Picoult, Greg Rucka, Kurt Busiek, Joe Kelly, Trina Robbins, Darwyn Cooke, Meredith Finch, Nicola Scott, Aaron Loprestri, Phil Jimenez, and George Perez, made my fondness and appreciation towards the character grew. 

While Brian Azzarello did the opposite towards the character and Amazons in general. *GLARES*

Ever since the 90s which gave us animated shows for both Batman and Superman yet shafted Wonder Woman from the same treatment, I've wanted this movie. Sure, she was in the DCAU Justice League and Unlimited series alongside her first full-length feature in 2009's Wonder Woman followed by little screentime in Young Justice (when juxtaposed against Batman’s position) and a Lego Movie cameo role: still that's not quite the same is it?

Wonder Woman’s 2009 standalone DCAU movie remains one of my most beloved since the DCAU was initially formed and was the directorial debut (by herself, no co-director credit like with Superman: Doomsday) of animation director and storyboard artist Lauren Eve Montgomery best known for her storyboard on work on Avatar: The Last Airbender and Justice League Unlimited. It was penned by comic book legend Gail Simone and Michael Jelenic. In celebration of Jenkins’ Wonder Woman, a commemorative edition of 2009’s Wonder Woman with a cover that unfortunately has antagonist Ares on it was recently released with many special features and I’m tempted to re-pick it up (which is something I don’t normally do for any DVD/Bluray I already possess). Wonder Woman got a cameo role in 2014′s The Lego Movie, it was minuscule and added little though, siiiiigh. 

The lasting ramifications of a positively reviewed and liked Wonder Woman by critics and audiences alike are potentially revolutionary. Wonder Woman, is the first superhero female lead motion picture since 2005’s Elektra (it has taken 12 years) with a budget over $100 million under the hand of a female director. 1995’s Tank Girl starring Lori Petty was directed by a woman (Rachel Talalay) except it had a significantly less money to work with comparatively: I did a whole critique/analysis of it before on here. The last superhero motion picture directed by a woman was in fact 2008’s Punisher: War Zone, courtesy of equal pay in Tinseltown advocate Lexi Alexander, that was originally a box office bomb like Tank Girl that has also gained a cult movie status. Meaning, the track record of female-led superhero flicks hasn’t been good and studios (Marvel! Argh…) keep circling back to this to justify Doctor Strange, Black Panther, another Thor sequel, plus another Guardians of the Galaxy before 2019’s Captain Marvel and the in development hell/non-existent (?) Black Widow hit theatres someday.

In this regard, DC Comics, Warner Bros., Zack Snyder, and Geoff Johns, believing in Wonder Woman is unusual and refreshing. How well it does could craft a new future for superhero franchises! A planned Harley Quinn spin-off, a character actor Margot Robbie played close to on fleek in Suicide Squad, that has a writer attached which may or may not have the Birds of Prey/Batgirl in it is equally encouraging. The Hollywood superhero landscape might mirror what I’ve always longed for after the overall reception to 1999’s Blade, 2001’s X-Men, and 2002’s Spider-Man placed comic book adaptations in a mainstay pop culture position: a mixture of female, male, and LGBT heroes getting their chance to shine from a sundry of backgrounds, cultures, religions, and more. Essentially, an exceedingly more balanced reflection of the world we live in that’s been severely lacking forever, ugh.

May Wonder Woman demolish the longstanding myth that female superhero leads don’t sell thanks to its advertising campaigns, writing, acting, editing, visuals, and directing this weekend. That’s my wish. I’ll be checking it out on either Thursday or Friday with one of my nieces. I promised a year and half ago that I’d see it with her. I distinctly remember sitting through previews before the last Hunger Games and her transfixed reaction to that Wonder Woman teaser appearing onscreen. She was psyched. I was psyched! My vow will be fulfilled in the coming days. Of course I want to share this experience with her. It could be wholly transformative. The trailers bring merry tears to my eyes, so, what will the entire thing do to me? To her? Something wondrous (...Sorry) I am hoping. ;’) 

Link to Tank Girl: http://thechurchillreview.tumblr.com/post/154552289293/52filmsbywomen-rachel-talalay-just-saw-tank-girl