#wait should i spoiler tag. this game is over a decade old

[doodlebeeberry]

does this game not do the time travel thing?

[hughiecampbelle]

Being Part of the Red Room and Befriending Bucky and Sam Would Include Pt. 1: (Part #2) (Part #3)

((BLACK WIDOW SPOILERS))

A/N: There was no way I could make the title any shorter :P I love the anon who sent in this idea! All the credit goes to you, my love! Please let me know if you'd like to be tagged! Thank you for this!!!! I went a little overboard, but I just couldn't help myself! Part two should be posted and linked asap!!!! :D 💕

Like Natasha and Yelena, you were wanted for your genetic potential

You never met your biological family, but you'd always wondered about them, even if you didn't want to admit it

You were the middle child of the "family", more aware of what was going on than your little sister, but you hadn't yet been through program like Natasha

You had no idea what would be waiting for you

Your childhood before that though had been ordinary, some of the best years of your life, often the only thing that kept you going

Being the only one who calls your sisters Tasha and Lena

All of you shared that special whistle, looking up to Melina and Alexei, even falling for the act yourself

Playing with the neighborhood kids, going to school, it all seemed pretty normal

Still, you were often reminded that your family was different, even if you couldn't really understand how or why

Natasha kept you on your toes, insisting you be ready for anything

Having secret conversations in Russian

Your father often coming home from work muttering to himself about "how long will this assignment will last?"

Wanting to be with your mother in the kitchen always

Helping Natasha dye her hair blue, and getting it all over the bathroom/yourself

Listening to all of Yelena's stories

Making blnket forts, coming up with your own games, watching movies every night before bed

Despite it all, they were your sisters and you loved them

Then that night came, and it changed everything

Your perspective changed towards your parents in an instant

You hated them

Natasha tried to keep the three of you together, to cling to the both of you, but in the end you were separated

Getting a ripped piece of the photo booth picture

You still had it, even after all these years

You wouldn't see your sisters for decades

Like Yelena, you weren't just controlled psychologically, but chemically too

Losing all of your best friends one by one

Dreykov would call them weak and unwanted, but they were the strongest people you'd ever known

From then on, they became your family

You didn't even know if your sisters had survived their time in the program, there was no one to ask or go to

Most of your time there is hazy, almost dream-like

A lot of it you can't remember, as if you were watching from outside yourself

The pain is real, though

Not just the hours of daily training, the fighting, the missions that took a toll on your body, but the emotional pain as well

Having to witness the people you grew up with, the only ones you ever know, succumb to Dreykov and his technology after they're injured during a mission would later leave you waking up screaming

Time passed, people were killed, and you had no control over yourself

You find scars, old and new, unaware of how you got them, where they came from, and it makes you want to

You had no idea what you were doing, nor did you know eventually Natasha found her way out

No one could do that, but your sister did

If you had been in your right mind you would have called it a miracle

Dreykov only got stricter, crueler, more careless and disposable with his agents

You and Yelena paid the price

You're still under control when they come together to finally take down the Red Room

No one knew anything of you, not even Melina like Yelena and Natasha had hoped

Dreykov hinted that you had died years ago, that unlike your sisters you weren't strong enough to survive the program

Melina had no choice but to believe him

She had a framed picture of you as a child on the bookshelf, one from the photo album

When Natasha questioned Dreykov about what happened to her mother, she also asked about you, what he did with your body

All he did was laugh

At her, at Melina, all of you, pulling up live footage of you with the others, moving as one with your weapons drawn

You were alive after all

Natasha immediately tells Yelena and Melina, and while they're happy, there's an immense guilt they hadn't gotten to you sooner

As the Red Room starts to fall from the sky, you're given orders to stop your sister by Dreykov

Of course, you follow orders

Natasha tries to break the chemical hold, she tries the whistle, the nickname, all of it, but nothing works

After Yelena throws the antidote "grenade" everyone comes to

"Tasha? Lena?"

There's no time to explain, though

You break off from the crowd, wanting to stay with your sisters and finally kill Dreykov

You have your own way of following your sisters off the falling jet, clawing and falling with what weapons you have, not believing your own eyes

His escape ended in flames

There wouldn't be a body to recover

He was finally gone

Reconnecting with your family for a short while, just before you hear the sirens

You just got them back, and now they're leaving

Natasha promises she'll see you again

Until then, you go with Yelena, your parents, and the other agents

It's there that they catch you up on all the things you've missed, that you're able to make your own decisions/choices, that you can really be you

(Assuming this movie took place in the year 2016) You have almost two years of "normalcy" with your family

Yelena has the file and the antidote, which your mother does her best to copy

You try to free as many agents as possible, even if it feels like an impossible job

Alexei still gives you these big, long emotional rants

He quotes your favorite movie as a child

Despite all his faults, he knows his children

Melina in't as outright with her proclamations of love, but you find the framed photo, and that tells you all you have to know

And then The Blip happens

You are part of the half that does not survive. . . .

[themonkeycabal]

Wandavision Ep 7 Spoilers

Spoilers below

Good morning. There's a guy power washing the sidewalks at 12:30 a.m., and the drone from the generator is drilling into my brain. So I will watch WandaVision instead of doing something I might regret.

Previously on: Wanda was getting sick of Pietro's shit. Vision knows/thinks his wife is behind all the creepy shenanigans, and he tried to escape the Hex, only to fly to pieces in the real world. I can relate.

Outside, Monica, Jimmy, and Darcy were banished from the SWORD circus by Acting Director Dick, because of course. They snuck back in, also because of course. Darcy hacked AD Dick's files and found out he's Up to Something. Then she ran to try and help Vision and got herself arrested and handcuffed to a jeep. Which is where the brave SWORD agents left her when they ran away as Wanda, attempting to save Vision, expanded the Hex, swallowing Darcy and the SWORD compound, turning it all into a sitcom circus. Well deserved. Well, not Darcy, but anyway.

AD Dick escaped. Unfortunately. But, so did Jimmy and Monica who were off to her mystery aerospace engineer friend to find a way into the Hex.

Also, Tommy and Billy have powers.  

The episode 7 summary is a delight: "Two super-powered beings living ideal suburban lives suspect that everything is not as it seems." You don't say, Disney+.

Wanda wakes, regrets everything, and hides under the covers.  Understandable. Cut away to her addressing the camera The Office style "Look, we've all been there. Letting our fear and anger get the best of us; intentionally expanding the boarders of the false world we created". (cut to screaming running SWORD minions lol).

The boys come to get her, their game is freaking out. The video game controllers can't decide what decade they're in and are glitching it up.

Billy says his head feels weird and noisy. Wanda isn't terribly responsive. Mommy needs some her time.

"As punishment for my reckless evening, I plan on taking a quarantine-style staycation. A whole day. Just to myself. That'll show me." lol

Wanda eventually rouses herself, goes downstairs in her robe and sweats, ignores the boys fighting over a video game controller, and goes for the sugariest cereal. The milk container keeps glitching, she tries very very hard to ignore that.

Interesting Office-style opening credits, where it's just her name on everything. Vision is only added at the end, with the tag "Created by Wanda Maximoff".

Out in the real world, what is the point of SWORD? Like how do they have jurisdiction? Where is SHIELD. Director Mack, wtf, dude?

Anyway, now that part of their camp has been swallowed by the hex, they're further out, staring at the angry glowing force-field. AD Dick is a dick. He wants to know what's happening with the broadcast. His little minion says the signal's gone. Ominously he says "we launch today". Mmmm, what delightfully heavy-handed dipshittery will we have to endure?

Back inside. Vision wakes in the field at the edge of town that is now a circus. And lots and lots of clowns. He gets yelled at by a strongman who seems to think Vision is the new clown and tells him he's late for rehearsal with the escape artist. Who is Darcy. lol

"I put in for the bearded lady. But this alabaster complexion wasn't fooling anyone."

Darcy is chained to a ye olde fire engine or tractor or something. Vision walks up to her making a weird face and kind of waving his hand back and forth between them.

"You don't remember me from last night? We locked eyes, there was an unspoken understanding." Darcy tells him "um, hard pass." lol She busts out of her chains and walks away, Vision chases after.

Back at home, Wanda wants to know if the boys have seen dad, they haven't, but Billy wants to know about that whole thing Uncle Pietro said about dad being dead again. Wanda says Pietro is not their uncle. The boys don't understand, and Wanda has a little rambling breakdown about how she has no answers and maybe there's no meaning to anything ha ha don't worry boys mommy's just having a little depression.

Agnes knocks and then, you know, strolls in, when Wanda magics the door open.

"Hi Agnes. I'd get up but I just don't, ahahahah, want to." If I was Billy or Tommy I'd mount a search for dad. Stat.

Agnes: "I think I got there in the nick of time, 'cause she was one split-end away from cutting her own bangs."

(It's 1 a.m. and I swear to God, that man is still power-washing the sidewalks.)

Agnes suggests the boys go with her and give mommy that 'me time' she so desperately needs. The boys are reluctant but Wanda is ecstatic.

Once alone with her certainly soggy cereal, Wanda settles back to watch crappy daytime TV. But, damn it, the furniture is glitching through the eras.

"I'm fine! I'm fine hahahah. *sigh* I'm fine. i'm fine. … I'm fine."

In the real world. Jimmy and Monica are still on the move. The file on project whatever it was from last episode (Cataract), that Darcy forwarded to Jimmy's email, has finally found its way to him. It's R&D reports.

Oh, that asshole, AD Dick was trying to bring Vision back online. Monica puts the pieces together "Heyward wants his sentient weapon back."

Jimmy says somebody has to tell Wanda.

Good thing they arrive at the other side of the Hex, I guess? Where Monica has another team waiting. An Agent Goodner. They brought her like some sort of big Mars rover thingy.

Vision is still trying to talk to Darcy. "You tried to help me." "Doubtful. I'm notoriously self-involved."

lol, some amusing back and forth. Darcy is an f'ing delight and I don't just say that because I am obviously hideously biased.

Vision distracts her with a mime and takes the opportunity to do his brain mojo on her, waking her up. "Part of me secretly wanted a guest spot on this show, but seriously that sucked."

"Dr. Lewis. I have questions." "I have answers."

And then they steal the funnel cake truck.

"Dr. Lewis, my questions. Are my children safe?" "That I don't know." "And who was that Pietro?" "Beats me."

Wanda is still working on her bowl of cereal. Give it up, sister. The house redecorates itself around her.

Uh-oh, in her talking head segment, about how she doesn't understand whats going on, the person behind the camera speaks, and asks if maybe it's what she deserves. "You're not supposed to talk."

Commercial time. For a depression medication. "Nexus, a unique antidepressant that works to anchor you back to your reality. Or the reality of your choice."

Back in Westview. The boys are hanging at Agnes's. Billy has a rabbit. As happens at your crazy neighbor's house. But, he says he likes it there, because it's quiet. "You're quiet, Agnes. On the inside." J'ACCUSE, AGNES!  

Back at Monica's backup camp, she's getting suited up in her SWORD astronaut suit. Jimmy's sad because Darcy's missing the fun. But, Monica will rescue her. SWORD is worse than SHIELD for slapping their name all over everything.

Monica and the little rover zoom off to the hex. Should she really go that fast? Maybe this is something to take cautiously? Oh, and look, she hit it hard and she's stuck. The Hex doesn't want to let her in, but she keeps trying. And now the Hex is eating into the rover — sorry, *re-writing* it. Well that was a dumb plan. Sorry guys, but come on.

Monica escapes, but the hex eats the rover and then spits it out, the front half transformed into a truck. Monica is shocked, Jimmy calls for a medic, and as they run forward, Jimmy, who has known Monica for like two days, recognizes she's got 'I'm a heroic dummy' face on and he's all "noooooo!". She runs for the hex and pushes her way in.

This is a really long sequence of her going through the hex. Like … too long. Sorry, but it is. There's a whole thing where she's hearing voices from moments in her life, and she hears Carol tell her how she's a tough kid, and now Monica is Filled With Resolve and breaks through the Hex, still in her Astronaut outfit, so like she resisted the sitcom wardrobe department.

I enjoy this show, but there are moments of hokeyness that I find very trying.

The hex rewrites you at a basic level as you pass through it. So, third time through and Monica's eyes are glowy blue and she can, like, see electrical currents, or electromagnetic fields (it looks like). Trippy. She can see power along the power lines, fields around streetlights. Closing her eyes and shaking her head makes it all go away. Of course.

Meanwhile, Darcy and Vision are on their slow-speed getaway in the Funnel Cake truck. She's trying to catch him up on what's happened since he's been dead. They keep hitting red lights and obstacles. Vision thinks Wanda's doing it to keep him from getting home. "I'm not amused," he tells the camera with a very not amused face on. lol

Vision is trying to understand what he is now. It's not going well. "My corporeal form was born from Ultron's plan for global genocide?" "Correct-o." Darcy might not be the best person to be explaining this to him.

"What am I now?" Poor Vision.

Darcy takes a deep breath. In fairness, she looks like maybe she'd rather not be the one doing the explaining, either. "Honestly, I'm a STEM type of lady, so I thought she just flipped a switch on your head and brought you back to life. What I don't get is why you can't leave the hex."

Vision is having an existential crisis. But, Darcy assures him that based on her week-long experience as a fan of WandaVision, he and Wanda do really love each other. So, there's that. "You belong together," says the shameless shipper.

Meanwhile, Monica has arrived at the Maximoff residence and busts into the house, breathlessly trying to tell Wanda it's all Heyward being a dick, but Wanda's stunned by the sudden entry and then too pissed to really listen. "The drones, the missiles, Pietro." "No, Pietro wasn't us." "All you do is lie." She's tossing Monica around with her powers.

Monica, friend, buddy, pal, was that really your plan? To barge right in and just … what? Talk fast and hope she didn't yeet your ass again? Okay, she didn't have a lot of time, I get that, but surely she could have come up with something. Like, she should have found Darcy and Vision first, and then the three of them could approach Wanda. But, no. Jimmy Woo would have a plan, Monica.

Well, fortunately for Monica she's been rewritten into Electricity Lass. She hits the ground with a staticky crackle and her eyes glow blue again. Wanda's all "bu-whu?"

"The only lies I've told are the ones you put in my mouth," Monica says all angry like. Mmmkay, I thought you were trying to help? Wanda does not care for this response. Because, no offense Monica, but the last time she heard your voice, she had a missile launched at her head.

Monica challenges her. "Do it then, take me out." Not an approach I’d go for, but it seems to work, and Wanda hesitates and Monica tries to warn her again, that unlike Wanda who isn’t actually violent and evil, Heyward will burn down Westview to get what he wants. "Don't let him make you the villain."

"Maybe I already am."

Next door, Agnes is looking out the window, watching them, with a considering look on her face. BECAUSE SHE IS IN ON WHATEVER THIS IS.

Monica is still trying to talk down Wanda. Agnes interrupts. Creepily. And shepherds Wanda away.

Vision and Darcy are thwarted in their journey again. "Oh come on! Kids? What's next? Puppies?"

Vision takes the faster way and intangibles himself out of the van and flies off, leaving Darcy at the endless intersection. "Go on! I'll just meet you there then?"

Back at Agnes's shack of creepy ladies who are freaking up to something. Where are the boys? Oh, Wanda notices the half-eaten PB&Js and the nightmarish kids' show on the telly. Behind her the bunny is in its cage. No sign of the boys. Agnes says they're probably playing in the basement.

Wanda wanders off to find them. But, there are no boys, only horror show creepiness. The basement turns into some weird sort of domed cavern with arches all around and in the middle a weird glowing rectangle.

Agnes comes up behind her. "You didn't think you were the only magical girl in town, did you?" I was wise to you, Agnes. Which, given she was a featured co-star, was probably no great insight on my part. BUT STILL!

"The name's Agatha Harkness. Lovely to finally meet you, dear." OH! LOLOLOL! OH, I didn't see that one coming. Wow, you got me, show. It never occurred to me for a second that it was Agatha Harkness.

And now a fantastic montage of Agatha doing tricksy things as Agnes through the series, with the best theme song ever "Who's been messing up everything? It's been Agatha, all along! Who's been pulling every evil string? It's been Agatha, all along. She's insidious. HA HA! So perfidious." Oh man, this is great. "And I killed Sparky, too."

LOL. Great ending.

Hey, an unexpected mid-credits scene of Monica trying to get into the house. Maybe Agnes's? Oh, yeah, she finds a storm cellar and opens the doors, to see a stone stairway with vines or roots growing all around it and zippy electrical sparks and such. Pietro appears behind her. "Snoopers gonna snoop."

Credits!

Well then.

I KNEW IT! I didn't know what I knew, but I knew I knew a thing!

[buzzdixonwriter]

The Rise Of Skywalker Review [SPOILERICIOUS]

=0=

I’m going to post all the SPOILER stuff way below in section 3, so as not to ruin anything for anybody who hasn’t seen the movie yet.

You’ll get plenty of warnings.

=1=

In my old age I’m starting to divide creative works into three groups:  Good, bad, and not-so-good.

A good creative work is any where the strengths overwhelmingly outweigh the weaknesses; a bad one is the obverse.

A not-so-good work is one where the strengths and weaknesses balance each other out.

It’s the kind of a work that will doubtless please those audience members who really enjoy the strengths in it, and equally irritate those annoyed by the weaknesses.

In my estimation, a not-so-good work is one done with straight forward intent and as often as not, a fair degree of technical and aesthetic competency, but fails to jell as a cohesive whole.  

No one need feel ashamed for enjoying a not-so-good work, and no one involved in the making of a not-so-good work should feel bad about their contribution (unless, of course, their contribution turns out to be one of the weaknesses that should have been avoided).

Theodore Sturgeon famously observed “90% of everything is crap.”

I think that’s a little harsh.

I agree with him that only 10% of anything is good, but think only 40% falls into the crap bin.

Most stuff falls in the 50% I call not-so-good.

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise Of Skywalker is in that 50%.

. . .

The good stuff is really good.

Elsewhere I’ve posted my enthusiasm for Star Wars Episode VII:  The Force Awakens and Star Wars Episode VIII:  The Last Jedi hinge in no small part on just how emo Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) could get, and holy cow, does he ever deliver in The Rise Of Skywalker.

Easily my favorite parts of the picture.

Doesn’t really mesh with anything else in the movie but, hey, ya can’t have everything, right?  (I’ll discuss his performance in a little more detail in section =3=.)

Other performances range from adequate to doing-the-best-they-can-with-the-material to okay-smartass-you-try-recreating-a-dead-actress-via-CGI.

The dialog in The Rise Of Skywalker is the worst of any film in the series, with the possible exception Star Wars Episode III:  The Revenge Of The Sith, which I haven’t seen and have no intention of seeing (but more on that below…).

It’s not an attempt to depict characters talking, it’s a series of shouted declarative sentences.

Elsewhere I’ve referred to The Rise Of Skywalker as the best Jason Of Star Command episode ever made.

For those who don’t get the reference, Jason Of Star Command was a low budget albeit imaginative Saturday morning kid-vid Star Wars rip off by Filmation Studios.

To make sure the youngest kids in the audience understood what was going on, they tended to hammer home plot points repeatedly.

  DRAGOS Jason!  In just sixteen hours my space fleet will destroy Star Command!

  STAR COMMAND Jason!  Dragos is going to destroy us with his space fleet in just sixteen hours!

  JASON Don’t worry, Star Command!  I’ll stop Dragos from destroying you with his space fleet in sixteen hours.

  NARRATOR (i.e., Norm Prescott) Jason has only sixteen hours to stop Dragos from destroying Star Command with his space fleet!

  There is far too much of that in The Rise Of Skywalker.

Ten minutes into the movie, and there was already far too much of that…

The opening credit crawl reveals an off camera plot development that literally deserved an entire film of its own to fully explore.

There is no sustained coherent plot to The Rise Of Skywalker:  

Well, we gotta do this,

now we gotta do that,

first we gotta find this thing,

then we gotta find that thing,

now I’m feeling blue,

now I’m gonna get encouraged,

etc., etc., and of course, etc.

Everything feel frenetic, not fast paced.

There are far too many scenes that exist just to sell action figures and toy vehicles.

There was a desire to tie off loose ends and say good-bye to favorite characters and that was a mistake.

It undercuts the urgency of the story (or rather, the desired urgency; the fact the film is called The Rise Of Skywalker means everybody in the freakin’ audience ALREADY KNOWS HOW THE DAMN THING IS GONNA END!

(This is not a problem unique to Star Wars.  Gene Siskell famously upbraided Roger Ebert for spoiling the ending to the third Star Trek movie, to which Ebert retorted, “Oh, come on!  They’re going to call a forty million dollar movie The Search For Spock and not find him?!?!?”)

There is one nice little breather scene (“little” only in screen time; visually it’s pretty big and impressive):  The Festival of the Ancestors on the desert world Pasaana that gives a nice touch of exotic space opera flavor to the proceedings.

All of the Star Wars movies offer really great art direction and visual design, and The Rise Of Skywalker certainly delivers in that category.

Which makes the occasional mediocre special effects shots all the more obvious.

The Rise Of Skywalker has a few painfully obvious matte shots, a few shots obviously composed in post-production, and a few shots where the audience becomes aware the actors are performing in front of a greenscreen. 

You can get away with mediocre visuals so long as there is consistency in their mediocrity.  

If everything else consistently looks great, a so-so shot spoils the illusion; if everything consistently looks so-so, it’s simply part of the work’s look.

Indeed, you’re better off with consistently mediocre work highlighted by a few great shots than consistently great stuff undercut by a few mediocre ones.

Best thing about the movie is the complete lack of Jar Jar Binks.

=2=

Before diving deeper in The Rise Of Skywalker, let’s look at the series as a whole (just the numbered theatrical episodes, not standalone films, TV series, video games, comics, novels, etc.).

I’ve said the original Star Wars was the movie an entire generation had been waiting all their lives to see.

George Lucas wanted to do Flash Gordon but when Universal turned him down, created his own space opera.

Lucas, it needs be noted, is not a good writer.

Whatever visual talents he has, they don’t extend to telling a good story.

One can easily find early drafts of Star Wars online, and while they all share certain elements, they’re all pretty bad.

The development of Star Wars the movie grew organically with storyboard and production art, characters and incidents changing and evolving along the way.

It’s long been rumored that a more skilled writer than Lucas came in to do the final draft; one thing’s for sure, the shooting script is head and shoulders above the earlier drafts.

Star Wars the original Han-shoots-first-dammit theatrical release is very much a product of the 1970s.

20th Century Fox thought they had a good enough kiddee matinee movie for summer release; they expected their big sci-fi blockbuster of the year to be Damnation Alley.

Instead, they hit a nerve and found themselves with a blockbuster on their hands.

Lucas did show one great example of foresight:  He trademarked all the names / characters / vehicles and held the licenses on them, not 20th Century Fox.

This gave him the war chest he needed to build the Lucasfilm empire.

And let’s give Lucas and his crew their due:  They added immeasurably to the technical art of film making, as well as making several entertaining films.

What Lucas did not fully envision was how to mold his Star Wars material into a coherent and thematically cohesive saga.

He started out with grandiose plans -- four trilogies with a standalone film connecting each for a total of 15 movies -- but that gradually got whittled down to 12, then 9.

After Star Wars Episode VI:  The Return Of The Jedi, Lucas put the Star Wars movie series on hold, waiting for film making technology to develop to the point where he could tell the stories the way he wanted to tell them.

Okay, fair enough.

But the problem is that while the film making technology improved, the technology of the Star Wars universe didn’t.

As I said, the original Star Wars is very much a 70s movie in taste / tone / style / sensibility.

While the designs look sufficiently sci-fi, they reflect robots and spacecraft designs of the 1970s -- in fact, even earlier in many cases.

That fit in with Lucas’ “used universe” look and the tag line “A long ago in a galaxy far, far away...”

But compare the original Star Wars with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Kubrick spent a lot of time researching where technology was heading.

Long before visual displays and vector graphics became commonplace in real world aircraft, he showed them being used in the future.

The first example of what we refer to today as a computer tablet appeared in 2001 as a throwaway background detail.

Kubrick’s next film was A Clockwork Orange and he successfully predicted punk culture a decade ahead of reality (his only mistake being the assumption white, not black, would be the base color).

Star Wars Eps I - III take place a generation before the original Star Wars movie.

Star Wars Eps VII - IX take place a generation after.

Name a two generation span since the start of the industrial age that is not marked by radical technological change that produces an ensuing change in the social order.

Now I grant you, the Star Wars universe isn’t trying to tell that kind of story, but the story it is telling is static.

Characters in The Rise Of Skywalker talk about cloning as if it were A Really Big Deal.

Cloning today is cutting edge bio-tech, to be sure, but it’s already common place.

It’s as if the Star Wars characters were getting worked up over steam engines.

One can intercut scenes from the movies and, unless one is a familiar with each movie, it’s impossible to tell one film from another.

Lucas’ financial success enabled him to issue edicts re Star Wars (and other Lucasfilm projects) that undercut the strengths of his projects.

Lucas is a technological guru and a savvy businessman, but he really struggles to tell a story.

Frankly, I think he would have been a better film maker if he’d spent a decade or so making American Graffiti scale movies, not space operas and epic fantasies and adventure movies.

His decision to make the original Star Wars the fourth episode in his saga and going back to start his story with his villain was fatally flawed.

I grant following the Skywalker saga from Anakin to Luke to Rey could work if it started with Anakin.

But what he did was the equivalent of the James Bond movies jumping back in time to follow the pre-Bond career of Ernst Stavo Blofeld.

(And the Bond movies, at least up until the Daniel Craig era, are all standalone films insofar as one does not have to see any of the previous films to understand and enjoy the one being watched, not does the sequence they’re viewed in matter.  And the Craig films were conceived from the beginning as having a coherent overall arc, so in that case they are the exception to the rule.)

The joyous whiz-bang space opera of the original Star Wars got bogged down in a lot of meaningless politics and talks of trade treaties, none of which explained why anyone would want to conquer the universe in order to rule it as a decrepit, diseased dictator in a dark hole.

Look at Hitler and Stalin and Castro and Mao and the Kim family in North Korea.

These guys enjoyed themselves (well, Hitler did until things went south for him).  They loved the attention and went around preening themselves in public.

The off screen Empire (and implied Emperor) of the original Star Wars served that film well:  It was a story about a tactical conflict, not a treatise on the philosophy of governance.

Lucas’ universe does not make sense even in its own context.

And because of that, it becomes harder and harder to fully engage with it.

A sci-fi movie doesn’t have to explain everything, but it has to at least imply there is an underlying order that links up.

Lucas began subverting his own universe almost immediately.

The Force was originally presented as a spiritual discipline that any sufficiently dedicated intelligent being could gain access to.  (Robots seem to be specifically excluded from The Force, implying it needs a biological connection.  But that would seem to exclude intelligences that may not be organic in the commonly accepted sense of the word, which means such beings cannot appear in the Star Wars universe, which means…well, I digress…)

That was a big hunk of the original Star Wars’ appeal, the thought that literally anybody could become a Jedi if they so desired.

It speaks to a religious bent in audiences from many different cultures around the world, and it offers up an egalitarian hope that allows everyone access to the Star Wars fantasy (“fantasy” in this context meaning the shared ideal).

But already in Star Wars Episode V:  The Empire Strikes Back Lucas began betraying his original concept, sowing the seeds for self-serving deception and innate superiority as endemic in The Force.

By the time he got around to Star Wars Episode I:  The Phantom Menace, Lucas abandoned the hope established in the original Star Wars movie.

Now one has to be a special somebody, not just dedicated.

Mind you, that sort of story has its adherents, too.

Way back in the 1940s sci-fi fans were saying “Fans are slans” in order to claim superiority over “mundanes”.  Today many Harry Potter fans like to think of themselves as inherently superior to “Muggles”. 

It’s a very appealing idea, so appealing that the United States of America is based on it, the assumption being that white people are endowed with more blessings -- and therefore more rights -- than non-white people (add force multipliers such as “rich” / “male” / “Christian” / “straight” and you get to lord it over everybody).

Lucas with his stupid midichlorians robbed audiences of their healthy egalitarian fantasy and replaced it with a far more toxic elitism.

It appeals to the narcissistic stain in the human soul, and encourages dominance and bullying and cruelty and harm as a result.

It’s an elitism that requires a technologically and sociologically stagnant society, one where clones and robots and slaves can all co-exist and nobody points out they are all essentially the same thing.

A progressive society -- and here I use “progressive” strictly in a scientific and technological sense (though as stated above, advances in scientific fields invariably lead to changes elsewhere) -- does not let such conditions exist unchanged for generations.

As technology changes and improves, the culture/s around it change (and hopefully improve, too).

As I mentioned above, I’ve never seen Star Wars Episode III:  Revenge Of The Sith.

My reason for not seeing it?  Star Wars Episode II:  Attack Of The Clones.

Little Anakin Skywalker and his mom are slaves in The Phantom Menace.

He saves the Jedis and Princess Padame’s collective asses in that movie.

Okay, you’d think at the end of the movie that Padame would hand Qui-gon her ATM card and say, “Here, go back to Tatooine and bail the kid’s mom out.  He did a solid for us, it’s the least we can do for him.”

No, they leave her there because there is no desire to change the underlying social order of their universe.

There can be no changes in Lucas’ bleak, barren moral universe.

There can be no help, no hope, no improvement.

When an edict is issue -- be it Jedi council or Emperor (or president of Lucasfilm) -- it is to be obeyed without question or pause.

Daring to say one can change their status -- change their destiny -- results in tragedy (and ironically, proof that is their destiny).

It’s dismaying enough that a large number of people enjoy cosplaying Star Wars villains, especially storm troopers, as that seems to indicate they’re missing the whole point of why the rebels were striving against the Empire in the first place.

Originally that could be written off as (at best) just enjoying the cool costumes and props or (at worst) finding an excuse for bad behavior (i.e., “I vuz only followink orders”).

But Lucas’ tacitly endorsing a sense of innate superiority pretty much destroys everything about The Force that the original Star Wars audience found enlightening and ennobling.

The Star Wars universe has become at its core a very ugly thing, and The Rise Of Skywalker doesn’t really clean it up.

SPOILERS ahead.

=3= 

Seriously, SPOILERS follow.

Holy crap, The Rise Of Skywalker is a damn mess.

Nice eye candy, but a mess.

It pretty much undoes everything good in the previous two episodes.

I’m glad it’s the “official” end of the original saga because now I never need to see another Star Wars movie ever again.

(Oh, I’ll keep my DVD of the original Star Wars and if I find Solo in a bargain bin somewhere I might pick that up, but as far as the rest of Star Wars goes, I am D.O.N.E.)

The series stopped making sense long ago, so I’m really in no mood to analyze why nothing links up or really works.

It’s full of absurd, stupid ideas, such as space barbarians galloping across the deck of a star destroyed on their space horsies.

The whole back and forth between among Palpatine / Kylo / Rey goes on for two long.  If hating somebody is bad because it sucks you over to the Dark Side, then why doesn’t somebody start building Terminators that can track down beings with midichlorians and kill them?  (They’ve got the technology to detect midichlorians, that’s canon.)

It’s not anywhere near a good movie.  It’s not as bad as George Lucas’ Star Wars Episodes I - III, but it’s clearly the worst of the last trilogy.

The scene where Rey gets off camera encouragement from all the dead Jedi?  It seemed awfully familiar to me, as if the writers consciously or unconsciously remembered the John Wilkes Booth / Lee Harvey Oswald scene in Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins where all the presidential assassins and would-be assassins past and future encourage him to plug Kennedy.

Not what I want in a Star Wars movie.

I think we may be seeing the end of Star Wars.  It’s been crammed down our throats for too long.  I’m aware of The Mandalorian series and how insanely popular it is, but y’know, sooner or later every pop culture craze dies out.

Star Wars has nowhere to go.  Star Trek is hemmed in, too, but nowhere nearly as bad as Star Wars.

We’re about to enter a generational shift in America, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a badly dated 1970s sci-fi concept fails to make the cut.

It ends on a frustrating note, taking much too long to come to a close, far too much self-congratulatory bullshit, and the deliberate planting of clues for a future set of sequels should the Mouse start jonesin’ for that sweet, sweet Star Wars franchise money fix.

It’s a really bad script, and dragging Carrie Fisher’s digitally reanimated corpse into it and then killing her off by suicide is a damned stupid / offensive idea.

Mark Hamill’s ghost walking out of the flames of Jedi hell (thank you for that analogy, David Brin)?  Wow, who didn’t see that one marching down the avenue?

Harrison Ford coming back as a memory / hallucination to tell Kylo to do the right thing?  Skrue dat noiz.

(Though I have to say Kylo Ren is the best thing about the movie and his character turn parallels both Luke’s and Vader’s in The Return Of The Jedi only his is much more believable and poignant so dammit, Disney, you could have done a much better job with this movie than you did.)

The plot and pacing is straight out of a video game.  First do this, then do that, now ya gotta do another thing -- feh!

And unless I misheard the dialog, this whole film supposedly takes place over a span of sixteen hours!!! 

They visit a half dozen worlds, crash and repair spaceships, go undercover, get captured and escape, fight duels to the deal -- all in sixteen hours?!?!?

Yeesh.

And I’ll say this, the last line is wrong wrong WRONG.

If the Star Wars saga has taught us anything, it’s that Force users are a threat to everything.

They should be eliminated for the good of the universe.

Rey shouldn’t have buried the Skywalker lightsabers.

She should have destroyed them -- and the one she made, and any others she found lying around.

And when she’s asked at the very end what her name is, the answer should have been:  “Rey…just Rey.”

I know I put The Rise Of Skywalker in the not-so-good bin, but truth be told, that’s the nostalgia talking; it’s only a eyelash away from being bad.

The whole epic saga is a failure as far as I’m concerned.  One and done is the way to go; the moment it started making money as a toy franchise it went south.

  © Buzz Dixon