Tag: Star Wars

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Star Wars Nightmare Fuel at Black Lodge

Photo: Lyman Hansel Gerona on Unsplash

I’m not convinced the special wasn’t ultimately written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine. — Nathan Rabin
The worst two hours of televisions ever. —  David Hofsted

The reviews are in — and have been in since 1978 — for the Star Wars Holiday Special. It’s not good. “It’s absolutely insane,” says Chad Barton, co-owner of Black Lodge. “It is just a weird nightmare fuel.” No one in the cast seems to want to be there, Carrie Fisher admitted she was high on coke, the plot is bizarre, Bea Arthur randomly appears, the list goes on. 

And yet the Black Lodge is dedicating the entire evening tonight to the special. Naturally. And it’ll be in the vein of a Rocky Horror Picture Show viewing, complete with singing, shouting, and throwing things. Again, naturally. 

“I’m a huge Star Wars fan,” Barton says. “And I watched this a really long time ago and was super horrified by it, but also really intrigued by it because it’s very strange. And a lot of people don’t know about it. … It’s kind of a fun way for Star Wars fans to come together and enjoy something in a very kind of silly way. And I always thought that it was weird that there’s a lot of other things of a similar ilk that get kind of a sort of reverence and this doesn’t get that. Even George Lucas said that if he could, he would destroy every copy of this that ever existed. And we think, No, you shouldn’t destroy a copy of this because it happened and it’s insane that it actually happened. Yeah, we want to celebrate it.”

This will be the third time the Lodge screens the film. The first go-around drew about 100 people, and last year “did about the same or a little better.” “It’s a nice off-kilter holiday experience that you can have,” Barton says. “We have our own callbacks and prop bags.”

At one point in the film, the wookies take over the screen, except there are no subtitles. “You have no idea what they’re saying,” Barton says. “And so we went in and added subtitles for the wookies and kind of created a story for them, and it changes every year. So it’s not the same experience every time you come back from year to year.”

For the event, the Lodge will have Star Wars-themed dishes and cocktails. “It’s kind of a surprise. But we generally try to like work within the constraints of whatever the Star Wars universe has,” Barton says of the menu. “And then a couple of cocktails to go along with it. As we say, you’re going to need the cocktails to get through it because it’s pretty bad. You need to be drunk while you’re watching.”

The screening, which kicks off at 7 p.m., is free to attend, but donations to Lodge are welcome. Prop bags will be for sale for $5. 

The Lodge also has a slew of holiday-related screenings to get you in the spirit before the 25th, including Sunday’s All-Day Christmas Comedy Movie Brunch (A Charlie Brown Christmas, Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, The Santa Clause, Jingle All the Way, and Home Alone) and the Holiday Action Double Feature: Die Hard & Batman Returns. Keep up with Black Lodge’s upcoming events here.

3rd Annual Interactive Star Wars Holiday Special Screening, Friday, December 15, 7 p.m., free.

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Film/TV TV Features

Ahsoka

Rosario Dawson plays Star Wars fan favorite Ahsoka Tano.

Ahsoka Tano was the best new Star Wars character introduced during the prequel era of 1999-2013. She was introduced in The Clone Wars animated series as Anakin Skywalker’s padawan apprentice. Ashley Eckstein voiced the head-tailed Togruta hero as she grew up on-screen during the show’s seven seasons. As the war, the contradictory demands of the Jedi Council, his secret romance with Padmé, and the malign influence of Senator Palpatine slowly changed Anakin from gung ho Jedi to genocidal Sith Lord Darth Vader, it was his relationship with Ahsoka that kept him balanced. But Ahsoka could see what Anakin could not, and she became disillusioned with both the war and Jedi idealism. When she was falsely framed for war crimes in season 5, she became one of the few Jedi to ever resign from the order — as it turned out, just in time to avoid Order 66.

When The Clone Wars returned after cancellation in 2017, showrunner David Filoni spent most of his time wrapping up Ahsoka’s story. But then she returned, 20 years older and much wiser, as Fulcrum, the nascent Rebellion’s most valuable intelligence asset, in Rebels. The character makes her live action debut in the limited series Ahsoka, now portrayed by Rosario Dawson. Filoni, who has been integral to The Mandalorian and other Disney+ live action Star Wars series, returns to oversee the fate of his most beloved creation.

Ahsoka is set in the same era as The Mandalorian. The Empire has been defeated, and the New Republic is struggling to rebuild as much of the galaxy slips into warlordism. Ahsoka and her comrades Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) and Hera (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) survived the war. But nascent Jedi Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi) is missing, having apparently sacrificed himself in the final operation which sent Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) into exile in a galaxy far, far away. Sabine, who had previously been training with Ahsoka, feels heartbroken and betrayed in the aftermath of the war, while Hera, an ace pilot who fought with the Rebellion, is now a New Republic general. Ahsoka travels with Huyang (voiced by David Tennant), a thousand-year-old droid rescued from the ruins of the Jedi Temple, but her own attitude towards the Jedi remains ambivalent. But she does suspect that a group of defeated Imperials is trying to rescue Thrawn from exile, which is confirmed when Jedi-turned-mercenary Baylan Skoll (Ray Stevenson) rescues Nightsister Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto) from New Republic captivity. Meanwhile, Sabine is convinced that tracking the Force witch’s movements are the best way to get Ezra back, if he is still alive. Hera is unable to convince the war-weary New Republic to commit assets to the search, so she, Ahsoka, and Sabine set out alone to track down a star map to the distant space whale graveyard where they suspect Thrawn and Ezra have gone.

If all that sounds confusing (Space whales? Yes, they’re a thing.), then you’ve identified the first problem with Ahsoka. After 40 years of movies, comics, novels, and TV series, Star Wars is currently suffering from a bad case of Marvel-itis, where the needs of maintaining the increasingly convoluted continuity take up all available narrative time between the wham-bam space battles and lightsaber duels. Much of the charm of The Mandalorian was that it positioned itself as a monster-of-the-week series apart from the main story. In later seasons, when Luke Skywalker showed up, things went downhill fast.

Ahsoka and Thrawn are both genuinely great characters, but the series gets bogged down in Easter eggs and barely comprehensible lore. Dawson, a legend in her own right, gives an uncharacteristically reserved performance as Ahsoka. (In flashbacks, Ariana Greenblatt portrays young Ahsoka and nails the mischievous spirit Eckstein brought to the role.) Winstead is, as usual, the best thing on-screen, while Stevenson (in his last role before dying in May) understands the level of camp required of a serial villain.

But the biggest problem with Ahsoka is the direction. ILM’s special effects and production design are, as usual, absolutely top-notch, and with the level of acting firepower at his fingertips, Filoni should be able to craft some quality space opera. Yet the bread resolutely fails to rise. The patient, indie-film-inspired editing that works in the political thriller Andor sucks the life out of Ahsoka. The dialogue has been bad even by Star Wars standards. Things liven up when Thrawn arrives in episode 6, but with only two episodes left, it might be too little, too late. Maybe Ahsoka is right, and the Jedi are the problem.

Ahsoka is streaming on Disney+.

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Film Features Film/TV

Now Playing: Christmas Mayhem, Classics, and Kawaii

David Harbour as Santa Claus in Violent Night.

The biggest new release of the first weekend of December is a doozy. There are a lot of Christmas horror movies. Remember Krampus? Black Christmas? Silent Night, Deadly Night? The other Black Christmas? I’m not sure that’s exactly what Violent Night is. This is more like if Die Hard really leaned into its Christmas trappings. And if you’re not into watching Hooper from Stranger Things wisecrack while electrocuting bad guys with a tree topper, you probably need to seek professional help.

If you need something a little more serious, there’s The Inspection. Documentary director Elegance Bratton’s narrative feature debut stars Jeremy Pope as Ellis, a new Marine recruit going through boot camp on Parris Island. Ellis had to hide the fact that he is gay to get into the service in the first place, but his fellow fledgling soldiers figure it out, and he’s in for a world of hurt. Is it even worth it? He thinks so.

On the anime front, The Quintessential Quintuplets is a popular manga adapted for two seasons of television. The two-hour series finale was released theatrically in Japan, and cleaned up at the box office. This is teenage romance at its most kawaii.

The 2022 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Nanny finally hits wide release this weekend. Anna Diop (who is actually from Senegal) stars as a Senegalese immigrant taking care of the daughter of an affluent New York couple who begins to loose her grip on reality — or maybe she’s seeing a deeper reality.

On Sunday, Jim Henson’s masterpiece The Dark Crystal gets a 40th anniversary screening (at the Paradiso and Collierville Cinema). If you’re a fan of The Muppets or ’80s fantasy or just things that are good, this one is a must-see.

And finally, tonight at Black Lodge, what is shaping up to be an annual Sh!tfest tradition: The Star Wars Holiday Special. First aired in 1978, it’s so infamously bad George Lucas once tried to have all the copies destroyed. Fortunately, he failed. Or maybe that’s unfortunate. There’s no trailer for this infamous misfire, but it’s very telling that there are 13 minutes worth of “most disturbing moments” in one 98-minute show.

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Film Features Film/TV

Andor Season 1

Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) in Lucasfilm's ANDOR, exclusively on Disney+. ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

In 2016, Star Wars violated its own formula with Rogue One. Directed by Gareth Edwards and written by Tony Gilroy and Chris Weitz, it jettisoned the space wizards and coming-of-age stories in favor of more straightforward space thriller action, all spun off of two sentences in A New Hope’s famous opening crawl text from 1977.

Rogue One was to be the first of many anthology films, telling stories in the Star Wars universe outside of the increasingly played-out Skywalker family saga. But after Solo’s mediocre box office performance and the pandemic set Disney down a course toward streaming, those energies were directed toward creating live-action series. Coming three years after the debut of The Mandalorian, Andor is the best of the bunch.

Diego Luna stars as the rebel super spy Cassian Andor. When we first meet him, he’s far from the ideologically motivated utilitarian who sacrifices himself to give the Rebellion a fighting chance in Rogue One. His first brush with the Empire is with one of Palpatine’s subcontractors. He’s in a brothel searching for his missing sister. He hasn’t seen her since he was rescued from the dying planet Kenari by Maarva (Fiona Shaw), a kindly scavenger making a living from collecting discarded Imperial technology. Andor attracts unwelcome attention from a couple of security contractors looking for a quick shakedown, and when things get out of hand, he kills them and flees back to Maarva’s home on Ferrix. On the run, he decides to sell the most valuable piece of contraband he owns to buy passage offworld. His buyer turns out to be Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), one of the founders of the Rebellion against the Empire, who recruits him for an impossibly dangerous mission: stealing the Imperial payroll for an entire planet.

Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma

Meanwhile, a corporate security officer named Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) is trying to track down and arrest Andor for the murder of his two employees. His bungling attracts the attention of Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), an Imperial Security Bureau officer who believes Andor is the key to unraveling the galaxy-wide conspiracy that will become the Alliance to Restore the Republic.

Rogue One screenwriter Tony Gilroy has developed Andor into one of the most compelling characters on television. The 12-episode series starts slow, but the first episode is also the worst. It gains momentum as Andor’s perspective changes. At first, his only goal is survival. But when he tries to flee the politics of the fragmenting Empire, he finds that wherever you go, politics always finds you. Before he even understands what he’s fighting for, Andor is already making sacrifices and hard choices for the sake of the Rebellion.

Just as interesting as Andor’s commando missions and prison breakouts is the intrigue on Coruscant, where wealthy Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) plays cat and mouse with Imperial investigators as she tries to coordinate and arm the rebellion’s restless factions.

While there is the requisite cute robot (B2EMO, voiced by Dave Chapman), Andor’s tone is different than the space opera we’re used to from Star Wars. The action on the Imperial capital planet Coruscant resembles the Cold War tension of The Americans; I would watch an entire series that’s just scenes from Mon Mothma’s marriage to the clueless playboy Perrin (Alastair Mackenzie). I still don’t side with the people who say all of Star Wars should be gritty and “realistic” (whatever that means in a universe with space wizards), but it certainly works for Andor.

On Wednesday, November 23rd, the first two episodes of Andor will air on ABC, while the series finale will join the other 11 episodes streaming on Disney+.

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News News Blog

May the Force Be With Memphis

Brian Spiker and Terry Ryan of Lost Cantina Toy Store (Credit: Abigail Morici)

Thanks to Terry Ryan and Brian Spiker, Memphis now has its very own cantina, straight out of the Star Wars universe. If you aren’t familiar with cantinas, Wookieepedia (yes, Wookieepedia) defines cantinas as a sort of pub where drunk and disorderly galactic patrons could socialize and, of course, engage in some illicit, criminal activity. But unlike the cantinas in the Star Wars universe, Ryan and Spiker’s cantina — the Lost Cantina Toy Store — is far from being a hotbed of seedy pursuits. 

Inside, action figures, lightsabers, character helmets, Millennium Falcon replicas, and other Star Wars memorabilia adorn every shelf and wall, with no space left untouched — even the bathroom has Star Wars-themed wallpaper. Most of the items for sale are 25 years or older, and all of the items come from Ryan’s and Spiker’s personal collections. “We didn’t have to spend anything on inventory,” says Ryan.

“The bulk of what you see is my collection, starting from ’95,” Spiker adds. “I’d say this is about a third of it. My wife did not like it all in the house, and it found its way to several storage units that I was tired of paying rent on.”

A stormtrooper, BB-8, and Greedo (who totally did not shoot first) (Credit: Abigail Morici)

Spiker’s love of Star Wars began when he was around 8 years old, when the first movies came out. “As a child, there were always these toys I wanted, but my parents only bought me what they thought I needed,” he says. “But when I had a job of my own and my own income, I just started collecting the stuff I always dreamed about collecting as a child. Then it just got out of control.

“I had a route that I could take down through Mississippi,” Spiker continues, “and I could hit 12 Walmarts in one day. I’d start at about 4 a.m. when they would start putting the toys out when I knew that new-release stuff was coming out. I would get done by about 8 at night.”

To toy collectors, Ryan explains, the fun is in finding the items. “Big collectors call it hunting — you got out hunting for the day,” he says. “It’s a chance to be a kid at heart, I guess. Reliving childhood — reliving that feeling you get when you see Star Wars stuff.”

After meeting through work, Ryan and Spiker realized that they shared the same passion in Star Wars and collecting — their friendship was natural. Years later, after attending a convention in Nashville together, Ryan proposed the idea of the toy store to Spiker, and eventually, Spiker, as he says, “gave in.”

“At least here, I can look at [my collection] as opposed to storing it in a storage unit and never seeing it,” Spiker says. “We’ve been enjoying talking to other collectors in town about their collections and having them come in to buy some of the stuff that we have. … It’s a hobby store for us; we’re hoping to make some money, but that’s not our primary objective.”

A small selection of the collection at the Lost Cantina Toy Store (Credit: Abigail Morici)

Items can cost anywhere from $4 to $2500, so there’s something for every budget and for Star Wars enthusiasts of any age, not just collectors. “These toys are meant to be played with,” Ryan says. “I had a kid bring in two tupperware canisters full of toys, and lay them all out on the table just to show me his collection. Guys like Brian and I, we’ll save them in a box.” But that doesn’t mean they expect everyone to do the same — especially kids.

Even Spiker, a self-proclaimed “avid do-not-open-it toy collector,” has been indulging in opening some of the boxes. “I’m like, oh wait, I’ve never opened that one before, so it’s been fun for me to finally open some of these toys that I’ve had for 25 years — that I forgot I even had.”

The co-owners agree that being able to enjoy and share their passion with other collectors and Star Wars fans has been the most rewarding part of opening their store. “It’s a way for me to kind of escape into a mindset of a kid when reality is bearing down on you,” Ryan says.

“I think that appreciating the original movies and understanding the difference between the dark side and the light side, the Force, the good and evil of it,” Spiker says, “I think it gives you some grounding in your morals and values, that good can win over evil, that there is hope. … We need more of that in the world.”

Open Saturdays and Sundays at 9 a.m.-5 p.m., the Lost Cantina Toy Store is located at 620 S. Bellevue, on the corner of Bellevue and Harbert, across from the Checkers.

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Film/TV TV Features

Disposable Soldiers Watch Democracy Crumble in Star Wars: The Bad Batch

The Star Wars prequels have been getting something of a re-evaluation lately. Maybe it’s a case of first-wave Millennial nostalgia, as the grown-up children of the ’90s reconnect with the media they remember, like the Boomers watching Happy Days. There is certainly that element, but I think the prequels are aging well because George Lucas’ overarching story of the fall of the Old Republic looks increasingly prescient.

The latest Disney+ animated series, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, begins as the prequel trilogy is reaching its climax. Like its live-action cousin The Mandalorian, The Bad Batch spins stories outside of the suffocating shadow of the Skywalker family melodrama. World-building has always been the franchise’s strong suit, so there are plenty of implied side stories in the galaxy far, far away to mine for material.

To me, one of the most profound questions the universe poses is raised in one of its filmic low points. Attack of the Clones is emblematic of the prequels, in both its strengths and weaknesses. The visuals are ahead of their time — no one else in the special effects game could touch turn-of-the-century Industrial Light & Magic, and Lucas retained his sharp eye for design until he retired. But he also seemingly forgot how to delegate, and he badly needed a writer. But success is an insidious poison, and so we got one of the worst on-screen romances ever, and a jumbled presentation of what is actually a compelling story of politics and manipulation. In the early days of the War on Terror, the story was a reminder of the dangers of an out-of-control security state.

Omega (above), voiced by Michelle Ang, is a deviant clone in Dave Filoni’s Star Wars: The Bad Batch, a spin-off of the Clone Wars series.

Senator Palpatine, who is secretly the evil space wizard Darth Sidious, engineers a separatist threat to the Galactic Republic and uses the crisis to have himself declared chancellor, and as an excuse to build an army of clones. As the Clone Wars grind on, Palpatine grooms his vainglorious apprentice Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader, then orders his clone armies to ambush and kill their Jedi commanders.

That moment — known as “Order 66” — is the heart-rending climax of Revenge of the Sith; Obi Wan and Anakin’s fateful lightsaber duel pales in comparison. The clones, bred for the sole purpose of combat and forced by implanted chips to betray their comrades, become tragic figures in The Clone Wars animated series, which was finally given the ending it deserved by Disney+ last year. The Bad Batch is a group of elite clone commandos introduced in the final season. They are defective units rescued from disposal by Kamino’s clone master Nala Se (Gwendoline Yeo) for experimental upgrades. Their names are their purpose: Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, Crosshair, and Echo are all voiced by Dee Bradley Baker. The Bad Batch’s defects are their strengths, and when Order 66 comes in as they are backing Jedi master Depa Billaba (Archie Panjabi), they find that their controlling chips don’t work. Hunter, experiencing his first taste of free will in the midst of a galaxy-wide political upheaval, secretly lets Depa’s padawan escape.

The Order 66 sequence in the 70-minute pilot episode takes on unexpected relevance in the wake of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. As the assembled clones on Kamino listen to Palpatine announce the creation of the Empire, the Bad Batch realize it’s wrong but don’t quite know what to do about it. When Admiral Tarkin (Stephen Stanton, doing an uncanny Peter Cushing imitation) arrives to take command of the clones, he orders the commandos on a mission to mop up a group of separatist insurgents. When you’re a clone, nothing stops the Forever War. As they leave, a deviant female clone named Omega (Michelle Ang) begs them to take her. But the Separatists turn out to be a group of refugees from the Republic led by Saw Gerrera (Andrew Kishino), and the Bad Batch decide to desert, but not before returning to Kamino to retrieve Omega.

Led by Clone Wars and The Mandalorian writer/producer Dave Filoni, The Bad Batch expertly zeroes in on the questions of free will raised by the creation of semi-disposable, sentient clones. But more than an A.I. cautionary tale, the show’s themes could not be more relevant, such as, how much loyalty does an oppressed class owe a flawed democracy? The second episode reverts to a more conventional sci-fi escape story, but the background of a society losing its freedom and self-determination serves as a stark warning in these perilous times.

Star Wars: The Bad Batch is streaming on Disney+.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Bob Marley, The Beatles, and The Force Awakens This Weekend at the Drive-In

Bob Marley plays the December 1976 Smile Jamaica concert in the documentary Marley.

Five months into the pandemic, the Malco Summer Quartet Drive-In is one of the few places in America where you can see a movie with an audience. This weekend’s mixture of new releases and legacy titles looks to be the best crop of films at the drive-in since the beginning of the theater shutdowns in March.

Robert Nesta Marley would have been 75 last February, had he not died in 1981 at the age of 36. The Marley estate commissioned a new documentary series on the reggae artist’s impact for YouTube, and has re-released the 2012 documentary Marley to drive-ins this month. Marley is as close to a definitive biography of the artist as is possible to take in in one sitting. The portrait it paints of Marley is of an imperfect man elevated to the status of a world leader by the dint of his musical genius.

Marley’s crossover into the political realm births one of the most remarkable scenes in the documentary. In 1976, Marley became embroiled in a bitter presidential election in his native Jamaica. Two days before he was scheduled to play at the Smile Jamaica concert, a hit squad attempted to assassinate Marley in his home. His wife and manager were seriously wounded, and Marley was hit in the arm and chest. The day of the show, after Marley announced he had enough strength for one song, 80,000 people showed up in a park in Kingston. Marley came out, showed his wounds to the crowd, and played an incendiary, 90-minute set.

Bob Marley, The Beatles, and The Force Awakens This Weekend at the Drive-In (7)

Marley is paired in a double feature with a different kind of music film. Yellow Submarine is a landmark 1968 animated feature that set original compositions by The Beatles to some of the grooviest images psychedelia ever produced. In addition to the famous theme song, the soundtrack features some quality post-Pepper jams like George Harrison’s ethereal “All Too Much” and John Lennon’s stomper “Hey Bulldog.” It’s the most artistically important of the three films the Beatles starred in during their decade in the spotlight, and just plain fun to boot.

Bob Marley, The Beatles, and The Force Awakens This Weekend at the Drive-In (2)

Over on screen three, a double feature of recent blockbusters will scratch your itch for big summer movie fun. Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the first installment in the sequel trilogy. Beginning the saga of Rey, the novice Jedi, and ending the story of Han Solo, it’s also the best film J.J. Abrams ever made. The 2015 trailer is an all-time classic teaser that set the franchise reopener on track to gross over $2 billion.

Bob Marley, The Beatles, and The Force Awakens This Weekend at the Drive-In (3)

TFA is paired with Jumanji: The Next Level, the 2019 sequel to the surprisingly watchable Jack Black/Karen Gillian vehicle that also starred some guy named Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. I feel like that guy could go far.

Bob Marley, The Beatles, and The Force Awakens This Weekend at the Drive-In (4)

On screen four, the highest grossing movie of 2020, Bad Boys For Life, continues its improbable afterlife. As I said in my review from the long-ago days of January, “The thing you need to know about Bad Boys For Life is that Michael Bay didn’t direct it.”

Bob Marley, The Beatles, and The Force Awakens This Weekend at the Drive-In (6)

Paired with Will and Martin is the latest grindhouse horror revival from IFC, which has released a string of low-budget horror titles to what passes for success in the movie business this year. The Rental is billed as the first AirBnB horror film, and it looks like some sleazy fun.

Bob Marley, The Beatles, and The Force Awakens This Weekend at the Drive-In (5)

You can buy tickets to the Malco Summer Quartet Drive-In double feature specials on the Malco website. 

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News The Fly-By

MEMernet: Jedi on Sam Cooper, Wild Bill’s Juke Joint Goes Digital, and TP Signs

I am your father

A Jedi and a Sith battled it out on the pedestrian bridge over Sam Cooper on May 4th. Images of the two unidentified warriors popped up all over Memphis social media last week.

Posted to Facebook by Chase Yarwood-Gustafson

Wildin’ Out (at home)

Wild Bill’s Juke Joint has been (digitally) cranking up every weekend, bringing blues, soul, and more right to your browser.

Tips are accepted on Cash App and PayPal. Song requests can be made in the stream’s Facebook Live comments.

It’s a Sign

Reddit user Barangaria saw this sign in Tipton County and “had to share.” Thank you.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

John Boyega, Joonas Suotamo, Daisy Ridley, Anthony Daniels, and Oscar Isaac in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

So many thoughts. Where to begin? 

How about a sports metaphor: There’s playing to win, then there’s playing not to lose. There’s a subtle, but significant, difference between the two approaches. Playing to win means being fit, smart, and prepared, adopting an aggressive attitude, and taking chances. You can be fit, smart, and prepared when playing not to lose, but you don’t take chances. You play not to lose when you feel like you have something to lose. You’ve been successful, you think you’re in a good position, and you want to cruise to the end of the season. But playing not to lose is a good way to guarantee a loss. You abandon successful strategies because they suddenly feel too risky. You start to doubt yourself. You lose the plot.

In Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, director J. J. Abrams is playing not to lose.

Adam Driver as Kylo Ren

I’m an old-school Star Wars fan who had his life changed in a movie theater in 1977. I’ve been a fan of the franchise through good movies and bad. I had fun watching The Rise of Skywalker on opening night. But afterwards, during the traditional fan debates in the lobby, there were questions. As my wife said, “I have notes.”

First of all, I have held my tongue on this issue for fear of sounding too nerdy, but here it is: J.J. Abrams, hyperspace does not work that way.

Now you, being a rational human being who lives on planet Earth, might say “Wow, that’s what’s wrong with nitpicking Internet fandom these days!” But I would disagree. It’s a kind of like broken window theory: It’s a small sign of neglect that points to bigger problems.

But J.J’s gonna J.J., and in The Rise of Skywalker, his strengths and weaknesses get the kind of full expression that only $250 million can buy. His strengths are that he always leans into character. There are good performances here, led by Anthony Daniels as C-3PO. Daniels (who, incidentally, is one of the top-grossing actors in all of film history because he is the only actor to have appeared in all 9 films of the Skywalker family saga) has always been ace comic relief, especially given the fact that he’s played nine films in the most uncomfortable and inexpressive costume imaginable. His final film gives him moments of pathos, and Daniels delivers so beautifully it looks effortless, and is thus easily overlooked. Such is the lot of the robotic character actor.

Oscar Isaac, who is a fantastic actor, plays the best single scene of the film with Keri Russell Poe Dameron’s newly introduced ex-girlfriend, the spice smuggler Zorri Bliss. Daisy Ridley is comfortable in Rey’s skin, and her scenes largely play to her physicality. The young girl dressed as Rey at the Malco Powerhouse screening on opening night testifies to how deeply she has connected with the audience. Her frenemy relationship with Kylo Ren/Ben Solo (Adam Driver, excellent as always) provides the film’s emotional spine. When Isaac and Ridley go on a mission with John Boyega’s Finn in the Millennium Falcon, the film hums along for a while, powered by their chemistry. But just when the sequence should be reaching its climax, Abrams fails to stick the landing, and it fizzles.

Abrams’ weakness is that he’s only as good as the writer he’s paired with. The Force Awakens was the best film of his career, and he co-wrote it with the legendary Lawrence Kasdan. The Rise of Skywalker must tie up 42 years worth of loose plot ends. The final installment of the sequel trilogy was also handicapped by the untimely death of Carrie Fisher, whose General Leia was to have had a much wider role in the film. So maybe sticking the landing was always impossible. It would be tall order for anyone, but Chris Terrio, the guy who wrote Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, is not up to the task. It’s not like the prequels, which often had the air of immaculately crafted renderings of scripts that should have gone through a couple of more drafts. The Rise of Skywalker feels like a checklist movie, with superfluous scenes shoehorned in to fulfill perceived audience wishes. Unrelenting fan service is playing not to lose.

So I’m a true fan, with love forged on the elementary school playgrounds of 1978. Do I feel properly serviced? Like I said, I had a great time in the theater with my fellow geeks, I teared up at the appropriate times, and the mood was generally positive afterwards. Ultimately, The Rise of Skywalker is most comparable to Return of the Jedi. There are some great high points, but it lacks unity. There’s a parallel here to what happened with the last season of Game of Thrones. There was a decision to go with spectacle rather than doing the hard and risky work in the writers’ room. There’s no shortage of spectacle, but compared to what the franchise is capable of, it feels like a squandered opportunity.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

The Mandalorian

Under that fashionable armor is Pedro Pascal as The Mandalorian bounty hunter.

Star Wars has always worn its influences on its sleeve. Its most direct influence was, of course, the cheap Flash Gordon matinee serials of the 1940s. But George Lucas was a fan of all kinds of movies, like the samurai epics of Akira Kurosawa, such as The Hidden Fortress, which gave its plot to A New Hope; and World War II air combat films such as Twelve O’Clock High and The Dam Busters, which Lucas plundered for the Death Star trench run. In the prequels, he expanded his palette ever further, mounting Ben Hur’s chariot race with rocket pods in The Phantom Menace and a sword-and-sandals gladiator match in Attack of the Clones.

Hovering in the background, as it does in most American action movies, was the Western. The famous double sunset shot from A New Hope is a copy of a single-sunset shot in The Searchers. Put a hat on Han Solo’s vest and gunbelt combo and he becomes a cowboy. Now, with the premiere of the first ever live action Star Wars TV show, The Mandalorian, the Western aspects take the forefront.

The Mandalorian, created by Iron Man director Jon Favreau and a team which include The Clone Wars’ Dave Filoni, is set in Star Wars’ equivalent of the frontier, the Outer Rim. The title character comes from the same warrior culture as Boba Fett, who apparently prize armor couture above all else. Pedro Pascal’s titular Mandalorian With No Name has yet to even take his helmet off, but he’s already hit a few choice Western tropes, like breaking a wild horse (in this case, a toothy biped lizard-thing), a rowdy bar fight that turns deadly, and a gatling-gun enhanced town square shootout. The details, such as the hero’s pitchfork-shaped energy weapon, which references the original Boba Fett cartoon from the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, put it in sci fi drag, but at its core, the show is basically Bounty Law from Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

Werner Herzog as The Client.

The House of Mouse has a lot riding on this Lucasfilm production, which is the flagship show for its new Disney+ streaming channel. It’s clear from the cinematic sweep of the pilot that no expense has been spared. Pascal is appropriately stoic, and he’s surrounded by colorful characters. Chief among them is the legend Werner Hertzog, whose appearance as a former Imperial official who offers a big money job to the Mandalorian is used to establish the post-Return of the Jedi setting. Taika Waititi appears in the pilot as the amusingly literal bounty droid IG-11, and Carl Weathers is our anti-hero’s agent. So far, the show’s biggest problem is its lack of a decent female character, which is unfortunately consistent with the Western blueprint.

The pilot ends with the revelation of the biggest Western trope of all: the worldly gunfighter seemingly finding his humanity when forced to travel with and protect a young innocent. It has proven quickly that it can deliver on the thrills front, but the jury’s still out as to whether Favreau and company can deliver depth.

The Mandalorian