Can you tell a Star Wars story with Force users at its core and ignore the Skywalkers and somehow avoid cancellation?

Emperor Palpatine (not pictured) using his "Force Lightning" to destroy an armada of
ships floating above his world in a nebula cloud thing that is in outer space.

I had an interesting discussion at Sunday brunch involving Star Wars. My friend Jessica asked, "Why did Rey have to be a Palpatine or a Skywalker in that last movie?" The movie that she was talking about was The Rise of Skywalker just for reference. Jessica's point was that, "it could have been perfectly fine for Rey to be a nobody...like, she didn't have to be a Skywalker or a Palpatine. I would have liked it even better in fact if they didn't make it so that she had to come from those bloodlines at all."

Here's what I said (more or less) to try to answer this question. I think that Star Wars has a "Skywalker" problem. Anytime they try to tell a story with a Force-user in it...if it is not linked to the Skywalkers, the fan base will reject it. And then I went on to explain to Jessica that they actually tried to do this. They tried to sever the ties with the Skywalker's in The Last Jedi, even going so far as to kill off Luke and to leave the ending of the story with some no name kid sweeping up and doing his chores and demonstrating some measure of "force ability." They could have gone in any direction after The Last Jedi. But the backlash this movie created was so huge, that Disney got scared. They fired that director, went back to JJ Abrams, and that's how we got horses riding on the outside of a star destroyer in a nebula/cloud in space, and how we got the emperor shooting lightning out of his fingers that was so powerful that it could hit every spaceship in the entire armada spread out through this nebula. Think about that for a moment. Why would the Emperor have ever needed a "Death Star" if he could just destroy everything with his own lightning bolts?

So, I said, "It was utterly ridiculous but JJ quieted down the fan base and gave us this ridiculous story that barely even made sense, and he paid fan service yet again to people who just weren't done with the Skywalkers." Then I said, "They also tried to do this a second time, and it also failed. The Acolyte was a show that Disney + put out that didn't have any Skywalkers in it at all. It dared to tell a story of "The Force" that was different and kind of refreshing. Well...that sure as shit got canceled. I think the only reason that the other series having a "force user" (called Ahsoka) is even remotely successful is that her character ties directly into the Skywalkers, and one of the reasons The Mandalorian is successful is that they reincarnated a young Luke Skywalker to teach Grogu some basics of the Force before he went on his way."

Now, I did point out that stories that don't have Force users in them can totally abandon the Skywalkers and be good. You see this in Andor. There are no Force users so there's no mention of the Skywalkers and suddenly the magic works again. You can have a good story that no one is angry about and that people will watch. But here was my point to Jessica: no one knows if it is possible to write a Star Wars story that people will like if you have force users that have no connection to the Skywalkers in any way. All that we do know is that people get upset and they review bomb the crap out of the projects that do try to break away from the Skywalkers and then everyone involved with the project gets blacklisted and/or loses their jobs.

Anyway, I'd like to know what y'all think about this theory of mine: is it possible to even tell a story in the Star Wars universe that has force-using people at its core and ignore the Skywalkers and still make money/not get canceled?

I never would have thought that shades of gray was a Star Wars thing until recent times.

When I was in college and playing the West End Games version of Star Wars (it was a lot of fun), I would explain to the uninitiated a few ingredients that are essential to any Star Wars tale. The first of these is that it is a story of good versus evil. I'd reiterate that there are "no shades of gray" in Star Wars. You are either just really good or you are the most evil thing that has ever existed. The second thing that I would tell people is that, in Star Wars, things like capital ships are enormous. Scale is exceptionally important. So you want things to be so big that when they are in orbit around a planet, they create an eclipse. That's just a "rule of thumb."

So here I am in 2024, and none of those things I used to tell players in my Star Wars games make any sense anymore. Star Wars now is about moral and ethical discussions. It's an infatuation with "the gray" in everything. On one hand, I think that it is good for Jedi characters to be fully realized people and not just cookie cutter good guys. It's also excellent for the Sith to have motivations for what leads them down that path or to point out things that they care about that drive their actions.

However, at the end of the day, I have a difficult time reconciling modern Star Wars with what I used to believe about it. I used to believe that Star Wars existed in a universe in which there is a Light Side of the Force and a Dark Side of the Force. The Dark Side was spoken of in terms of aggression, selfishness, hatred, a thirst for power, and general bad feelings. A fall to the Dark Side was considered a tragedy and a fallen Sith finding their way to the Light Side was called a "redemption arc."

But in 2024? Things are a lot different. In 2024, Jedi can be complete and utter assholes. A Dark Side user can be a hero because they are an assassin that gets rid of problematic Force users who profess outward virtue but did a lot of terrible things that they kept secret. There's lots of projection that the characters who are (by definition) good are actually very bad and do terrible things. And now we have a group of characters who are by definition bad (they are literally villains) who have really good points and are actually good?

Anyway, all of these complaints about the latest iteration of Star Wars, which is called The Acolyte, don't make me want to stop watching. It's a gorgeous show, and I think I just like watching Star Wars characters interact on screen. It's also interesting to see Jedi as galactic peacekeepers who are so overpowered relative to the average person that they rarely ever need to use their weapons. Instead they all seem to know kung-fu. Maybe this is a nod to the "style" over "blunt tools" that Obi-Wan once spoke about to Luke Skywalker regarding the elegance of the lightsaber. In any event, its entertaining. I just am continuously surprised by what I'm seeing and wonder how I could have gotten the "Star Wars formula" so wrong.

In the Acolyte it apparently isn't Palpatine who makes the Republic crumble this time around.

Yesterday, Disney+ dropped the trailer for "The Acolyte," which is their latest story that the Star Wars universe wants to give to us. Yes, it appears to take place in a crucial and unexplored period of Star Wars, mainly that the story is set 100 years after the High Republic's zenith and taking a look at how the Republic and the Jedi start to crumble. In other words, it's a story about how darkness rises in an age of light. However, I feel that I've trod down these paths before, and I'm not certain why no one else feels this way.

Let me say this another way: haven't we already seen the republic crumble? I mean...sure...it's a different era, but I think what I'm getting at is that democracy and a grand republic falling down doesn't feel like it is breaking any new territory. Admittedly, maybe no one including myself comes to Star Wars seeking anything other than lightsabers, Sith, and bad people doing isolated acts of destruction in an otherwise well-functioning system. Maybe the point of the series is for these bad actors to act freely until so much bad stuff has happened that it pulls down civilization itself.

Is that the only interesting story that there is to be mined from Star Wars? Maybe I should just be taking the title literally. It's telling us that there is a "war" in the "stars" so...I guess...everything must be about that war or more wars or different versions of a war. The war (in fact) may never end. If it does, it's time for another war. I guess that's the part that ruins my suspension of disbelief. But as a caveat, what do I know? Maybe war and conflict are the only stories worth showing, and all we need for the other bit is to say "there was a thousand years of peace," and then get back to the war.

Has anyone ever bothered to ask why the Republic in Star Wars is always crumbling? Is my age showing? Do I appear jaded? I'm still going to watch "The Acolyte." I guess I'm just complaining. Here's the trailer if you haven't seen it yet.

Ahsoka arrives in less than ten days :).

I don't like Rosario Dawson due to her politics in 2016. However, she does an amazing job as
Ahsoka Tano. I'm really pleased with the actress's professional work, so I do that 
"separate the artist from the art" thing in my head in order to enjoy her roles.

Ahsoka is coming soon (ten days and counting), and I'm really looking forward to it. One of the reasons is because of what happened in the Star Wars Rebels episode, The World Between Worlds. Before this episode, Ahsoka had been in hiding and hadn't seen Anakin/Darth Vader for a decade. When they fought each other in a Sith temple, Vader survived the fight and I "presumed" along with everyone else that Ahsoka was just dead. Then in the World Between Worlds episode coming very close to Rebels final run, Ezra saved Ahsoka through time travel using the power of the Force gods. It's one of my favorite episodes of Star Wars period (of all time). And then shortly after that Ezra road off into the Galactic sunset on space whales, which we saw shadows of in one of the Mandalorian hyperspace sequences.

The latest trailer that dropped for the show has a pretty long voiceover by Hayden Christensen/Anakin. It got me more excited than I thought I would be, because my brain started to imagine all of the possibilities with Anakin showing up as a Force ghost and interacting with the one other Jedi who meant a lot to him (the first obviously being Obi-Wan Kenobi). I'm also happy that Hayden Christensen is finally being embraced by the Star Wars fandom. When he played Darth Vader, he was young, inexperienced, and he had absolutely dog shit writing and directions. For example, the scenes between Anakin and Padme are just cringe worthy.

Talking just a bit more about The World Between Worlds, introducing a temple that could control space and time in Star Wars was a leap that I didn't think at the time that Star Wars was ever going to make. I mean...Trek does this kind of thing on a seasonal basis in practically every show, but nothing ever comes of it. In Trek it's usually just playing in the past, doing this and that, respecting the timeline. The one occasion where they did something huge was in Yesterday's Enterprise, which completely retconned Tasha Yar's death (who was killed in Skin of Evil) due to (I think) some real-life things she was doing that embarrassed the studio like posing nude (or something like that). Those are the rumors I heard back in the day.

But the fact that the Force is apparently capable of something as big as "time travel" with the potential to alter the future? That was a tool that opened up so many possible storylines for writers. I guess we'll have to see what goodies get unpacked by all of those creative minds once the strike has been settled (and once big studios honor artists and writers with the goods they are due). 

Star Wars Jedi Survivor is an impressive game that makes me think of the future of storytelling.

Star Wars: Jedi Survivor is an impressive game. I haven't played it, but my two new roommates play it all the time on the Playstation 5 that we have at the house. I like to sit and watch, sometimes for hours, because it is more than just a game but a cohesive story that moves on and on not unlike a movie. Furthermore, the graphics are so good that I have trouble believing it is a game and not a "made for tv" kind of series on Disney +. The main actor for the game is Cameron Monaghan, who I recognized (and liked very much) from his stint on Showtime's Shameless. Here, he plays Cal, a young man who has some pretty fantastical jedi powers. You see things all the time that are obviously built for the game, and would probably not show up in a television show or a movie, and there is always the "respawns" when you do something that ends up getting you killed. That kind of death and instantly coming back obviously doesn't work for a movie or a story well at all. But in a video game, it's a necessity. Watching the video game play out on the screen by my roommates has given me pause to consider how it is that we all structure stories, especially those with any kind of "hero's journey" built into them.

For example, once you get past the glitz and glamor of the look of this stunning video game, you do realize that there are walls that you can climb, and walls that you cannot climb. It's not a completely open world, so there are things that you see on the horizon that you just can't get to because there's an invisible wall there. Additionally, the things that you fight all have a mechanic that you need to figure out. Real things don't act like that, and you wouldn't want to write that into a real story that has a hero's journey. And finally, you would want a story to progress with more than just fighting and solving puzzles that mostly consist of how to get from X to Y. A lot of Jedi Survivor is exactly this. Allow me to explain.

A lot of the time, your character (Cal) ends up in a big room, a big canyon, or a big area. There can be tunnels and many levels of elevation to explore. But inevitably there is an area that you can't get to that has something shiny on it that you can see clearly. To get there, you have to figure out a puzzle. Sometimes you need to cut a wire so that it can hang limply in an area where you can hop to and force pull it and swing over like Tarzan to another area. Sometimes there are batteries you can seize with the Force that are hundreds of feet away, and then you can use your telekinesis to insert them into machines that are also out of reach to erect bridges that you can cross, which then gets you into a better position to achieve your goal. I could imagine trying to write all of that in a story, and how it would seem really boring to go through the minutiae of solving a puzzle like that. But for video games like Jedi: Survivor it is over half the game. The other half is fighting with lightsabers that (for some reason) hit things and don't just saw them in half. In a video game, tons of monsters you fight can take repeated whacks from a lightsaber and not just die. This obviously isn't how the weapon works in a show. But it is what it is.

But what the creators of this video game do get right are the stunning visuals, the motion capture of using a real actor as a Jedi, and the incredible design of not only the sets but the aliens you encounter. There is one alien named Greez that is Cal's friend on a world dripping with western-esque science fiction elements who has four arms and some really bushy eyebrows. I think this alien is a remarkable creation, really well-detailed, and has a great voice actor playing him. There are others (of course), and I do hope we get to run into a Sith that throws some force lightning (as I'd like to see that), but my roommates haven't come across anything like that yet.

Despite the shortcomings and huge differences between a game and a written story, I found myself daydreaming of how much fun it would be to have a story translated into a game that someone could play. It would be so incredibly different from an actual story. However, it would also be its own "kind" of story, in that it would be deeply satisfying in another way. People would get to interact with beloved characters in a way that simply isn't possible if you are just reading a story. But the interaction would most likely be in the form of combat mechanics that are predictable and problem solving. I wonder then what the next step in the evolution of games will be? Are we on a new horizon with the rise of artificial intelligence? Could A.I. break the old model of fight, solve puzzle, fight some more, and then rest to recover? That would be a fascinating step into a whole other world of being able to tell and participate in a story.

Anyone else out there have any commentary to add on the differences in storytelling regarding high quality games like Jedi Survivor and novels?

Okay the Obi-Wan Kenobi series is actually pretty great.

I'm going to talk about the Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney +, and there are spoilers ahead. This is your warning. 

I just finished up the Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney +. Despite my reservations earlier in the series (and Andrew calling me out on being a bit on the harsh side), this series did satisfy me a lot. The final battle between Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi was really good (as good as the Darth Maul fight in Phantom Menace). And I just gotta say...Vader is so powerful, but he's also a bitch. I loved seeing how destructive and impulsive a character he actually is. We didn't get to see a lot of that in the original trilogy, but now that I can see just how much of a whiny and angry kid Anakin was, Darth Vader makes even more sense to me as a villain.

All of us...the Star Wars nerds of this world...live in an incredible time when we can get treated to series like Obi-Wan Kenobi and (for lack of a better explanation) feel like a kid again. It still transports me back to that galaxy far, far away. Five minutes in and I'm in that place again, consuming an incredible blend of science fiction and fantasy. Ewan McGregor does an incredible job playing Obi-Wan. He's had this journey from a clean-shaven padawan to a tormented and broken protector to a Jedi that wields power every bit as powerful as that of Mace Windu and Yoda. The levitating boulders scene gave me chills. Darth Vader and Obi-Wan fighting is an epic clash of two powerful masters of the force that is rare to see in these shows.

And now, with the end of this series, I have questions. What is to become of Reva now? She's a former youngling turned into a killing machine for the empire, she was Grand Inquisitor for a while, Vader failed to see her dead, and now she's on some redemption arc? I'm intrigued by this new character, and I wonder if it will feed into the Ahsoka show that is supposed to be launching next year. Also, the fact that she survived being impaled by Vader's lightsaber and Qui-Gon somehow could not survive Darth Maul's is weird. I chalk it up to something said in the show about "revenge and hate keeping someone alive." Maybe Qui-Gon was just too at piece for him to be able to sustain his own lifeforce once his body had been impaled. The Force works in mysterious ways, but that's just nitpicking.

Another question? Where is Obi-Wan going? It didn't seem like (to me) that he was just moving a little farther away from where Luke was living to build his house. But maybe he was. There was a sense though that he might be off to help the Rebellion just a little bit more before he becomes the old man that leads Luke on his first adventure to the Death Star to save a Princess who just happens to be his sister. There probably isn't going to be a season two of this show, but I'd like it very much if there was. From the looks of things, they've got about six years or so before they catch up to "A New Hope." That leaves plenty of time for some good storytelling.

Anyone else finish watching this series and enjoy it overall?

In the new Obi-Wan Kenobi series the powerful jedi master we all knew is just a shell of his former self.

What can we say about Obi-Wan Kenobi? First, there is a spoiler warning, as I'm going to talk about Obi-Wan here in this blog and air some of my feelings about the show.

I really don't know what I expected from this series. It's more Star Wars which (in my opinion) is always good. But did I expect that Obi-Wan was going to be so weak? So unsure of himself? So...not the Jedi Master I remember. I watched Obi-Wan (just like legions of other fans) secure his place in Star Wars history by being a blazing lightsaber that never waned. He took down Anakin Skywalker, who had chosen to join the emperor...uncompromisingly so...and on his way there a thousand stories were told by Dave Filoni in Clone Wars. Obi-Wan was a badass. In every scene he was a titanic figure that meant business everytime he appeared.

So...why didn't I expect him to be broken the same as Luke Skywalker was broken in The Last Jedi? Why had I deluded myself that...yes...he would be on Tatooine watching Luke but that his entire outlook on life had left him with feebleness and uncertainty? He buried his lightsaber in the desert, he was working in a meat packing plant, and he was a lonely and obviously smelly hermit. It was obvious that he hadn't used the Force in years. He was so completely broken that he refused to help a force-sensitive Jedi to escape the Inquisition, gave that Jedi incredibly bad advice, and then he had to literally be dragged kicking and screaming to save Leia. This was not an Obi-Wan that could ever have protected Luke, which is what he had been tasked to do. So what was he even doing there? The Inquisitors could have run him over at any time...easy.

In this timeline running up to A New Hope, the 1977 release of Star Wars, I had previously thought that the most powerful "Jedi" left in the galaxy were Yoda and Obi-Wan. But that is completely untrue. The most powerful "Jedi" left were Yoda and Ahsoka Tano, even though Ahsoka walked away from an appointment within their ranks. She had the title, she just refused to take it (but that still counts in my book). Obi-Wan (at this time) was nothing but a broken foolish man who could maybe do some parlor tricks if he concentrated hard enough. When Vader appeared on the mining colony striding in at the peak of his deadly powers, Obi-Wan cowered in fear of him. All he wanted to do was run. And he could barely hold his lightsaber, because his hands were shaking so much. What the hell? Look...I get it. We're supposed to get from the Obi-Wan that killed Darth Maul in his youth to the old man who can barely do anything in A New Hope. That is the final destination for this train. However, I wasn't expecting Obi-Wan to fall off the horse quite so fast or with the lack of grace that (I guess) comes with the knowledge that you raised a psychopathic murderer and unleashed him on your entire civilization.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still watching the show. I know that there will never be another blazing lightsaber battle between a Sith Lord and Obi-Wan Kenobi that harkens to bygone days, where I'm like, "Yeah...that's the hero I remember." And that just makes me a little sad for this character, which is (I suppose) how all of us are supposed to feel. He failed in a huge way, and he's obviously never going to forgive himself. So, he's going to go down with the ship. It's a good thing that Dave Filoni has created some characters we can really sink our teeth into and cheer for as the old guard has its sun set upon it forever.

Anyone else out there watching Obi-Wan Kenobi? Am I being a bit harsh here? Let me know in the comments.

Why are there so many white people on Tatooine?

It's an honest question that deserves an answer. We all know that desert areas (and areas that are hot and get lots of light) have people with darker skin tones to make up for the sun's damage. But on Tatooine, when a human shows up, a lot of the time they have lighter skin. I've been watching the Book of Boba Fett, and this question popped into my head. But Boba Fett has been shown to use a bacta tank almost every day when he retires for the evening. So, I was thinking. Maybe the colonists and other folk undo the sun's damage by slathering themselves in bacta every night. It seems plausible, so I'm going with it (even if it is super silly).

Also...I'm really enjoying The Book of Boba Fett. Is anyone else watching? 

Star Wars: Visions poses the interesting idea that maybe Star Wars should have been anime all along.

Mark your calendars folk, because on September 22nd, Star Wars: Visions hits Disney+.  This show has style, and you can only see what I'm talking about by viewing the trailer. It looks like there will be nine episodes. The list, announced by Disney, is as follows:

• “The Duel” — Animated by Kamikaze Douga, who also made the Batman Ninja movie. The voice cast includes: Brian Tee (Ronin), Lucy Liu (Bandit Leader), Jaden Waldman (Village Chief).
• “Lop and Ochō” — Animated by Twin Engine’s Geno Studio. Voice cast: Anna Cathcart (Lop), Hiromi Dames (Ocho), Paul Nakauchi (Yasaburo), Kyle McCarley (Imperial Officer).
• “Tatooine Rhapsody” — Animated by Twin Engine’s Studio Colorido, who also did the movie adaptation of Burn the Witch. Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Jay), Bobby Moynihan (Geezer), Temuera Morrison (Boba Fett), Shelby Young (K-344), Marc Thompson (Lan).
• “The Twins” — Animated by TRIGGER, known for Tenga Toppen Gurren Laggen, Kill la Kill, Promare, and many other anime. The voice cast includes: Neil Patrick Harris (Karre), Alison Brie (Am), Jonathan Lipow (B-20N)
• “The Elder” — Also by TRIGGER! The voice cast: David Harbour (Tajin), Jordan Fisher (Dan), James Hong (The Elder)
• “The Village Bride” — Kinema Citrus. The voice cast includes: Karen Fukuhara (F), Nichole Sakura (Haru), Christopher Sean (Asu), Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Valco), Andrew Kishino (Izuma), Stephanie Sheh (Saku).
• “Akakiri” — Animated by Science Saru, who made the incredible Keep Your Hands of Eizouken! TV series. Voice cast: Henry Golding (Tsubaki), Jamie Chung (Misa), George Takei (Senshuu), Keone Young (Kamahachi), and Lorraine Toussaint (Masago).
• “T0-B1” — Also by Science Saru. The cast includes Jaden Waldman (T0-B1) and Kyle Chandler (Mitaka).
• “The Ninth Jedi” — By Production I.G, which has done Ghost in the Shell, Psycho Pass, Moriarty the Patriot, and so much more. The voice cast includes: Kimiko Glenn (Kara), Andrew Kishino (Juro), Simu Liu (Zhima), Masi Oka (Ethan), Greg Chun (Roden), Neil Kaplan (Narrator), Michael Sinterniklaas (Hen Jin).

It looks like (from the trailer) that Kylo Ren stopping a blaster bolt midair has been decided upon by the world and judged as "badass," so we are going to see a lot of that kind of thing. Additionally, it looks like someone stops a lightsaber thrust during a duel with the Force. If this is true, I'm surprised it doesn't happen all the time.

I haven't been this excited about Star Wars in some time. I think just maybe it's because it is so different. Of course, Anime is always way over the top on stuff. But why should we continue to pretend that the Force and the Jedi are not "way over the top?" Those powers and what they do are being portrayed exactly as intended, and that's all I've gotta say about that.

Star Wars: The Bad Batch is basically an enjoyable A-Team in space but it doesn't take many risks with its world-building.

Is anyone else watching the Star Wars series called The Bad Batch, which is on Disney +? I watched a few of the episodes this weekend, and I really like them. The story follows a group of clone troopers who have a bad microchip in them that made it possible for them to ignore Order 66 given by Emperor Palpatine, and to set off on their own in a galaxy that has gone full fascism to the max.

Thus far in the series, we have seen cameos from Bib Fortuna (Jaba the Hutt's MajorDomo), the Rancor that Luke killed (in adolescence it was playful and called "Moochie"), and the bounty hunter Fennec Shand (who is in the Mandalorian). In The Mandalorian Fennec is friends with Boba Fett and is played by Ming-Na Wen (who was also in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.).

I don't have many nitpicks with the series. The ones I do have are centered on the same complaints that I had with The Mandalorian. For example, the architecture of different areas of the galaxy more or less repeats itself. People (no matter what planet you happen to be on) still put the most important computer consoles out on these rickety things with no railing that are suspended over a huge drop. And the same old planets that you've seen before get to be set pieces yet again for another series. Tatooine is the worst of these. We can't ever seem to be able to get away from Tatooine. I suppose that we can chalk this up to world-building, and the fact that it is hard and complicated. Using characters and sites with which viewers are already familiar is much easier. However, they are taking small steps. We've seen a small village and another side of a Correllian city that we didn't get in the Solo movie. 

As for the subject matter of Star Wars, it seems spot on. Star Wars has always been pretty heavy and dark. In my opinion it started out as a commentary about American imperialism as pulp science fiction. The only thing that made it kid friendly was the tone. But the moral scales of the show has always kind of circled around killing Nazi-esque soldiers who are just following orders. And when you went one layer deeper, in many of these cases it was slaughtering genetic twins (which reminds us of some Concentration camp stuff). In The Bad Batch we have one clone in what I can only describe as "The A-Team in space" going 100% evil because the Kaminoans (who made him in a test tube) are amping up the malfunctioning genetic chip in his brain. We have yet to see where that goes, but I can hazard a guess that it won't be good.

Anyway, the series is obviously not done airing its first season. I took a much-needed break from other things I'm dealing with in my life to watch the show. I'd recommend it if you are a Star Wars fan, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on the show if you are watching it.

Let's compare notes on the Mandalorian which wrapped up its second season in December.

 So, I want to talk about The Mandalorian for a moment. It ended its second season last month, and when it ended my first thought was that, "It's not enough." I deeply miss longer seasons of television, but eight does work in a pinch. And then I had a flood of other thoughts. If you haven't watched it by now, you might want to stop reading as I'm going to spoil the whole thing for you in discussing these thoughts.

Ready?

Okay then, second thought: Why did they deepfake CGI a young Mark Hamill's face onto the body of an actor. There are two reasons for my frustration regarding this choice. The first is that within the Disney stable, they've already got an actor that looks a lot like young Mark Hamill. He's Sebastian Stan, and here's a pic comparing the two of them.

In my opinion, the resemblance of young Sebastian Stan to Mark Hamill is uncanny. Furthermore, Sebastian Stan said that he would play the part if it were offered to him. Like...he's already willing. He'd just have to juggle the new gig with his role in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

This seems like a big "missed opportunity" for Disney primarily because I know that the kind of "deep fake" stuff that Disney is doing to paste Mark Hamill's face onto the body of an actor is probably a thing that they don't want to do all that much. Why? It looks terrible. But... it also means that we probably aren't going to see Baby Grogu all that much anymore too. If he's off being trained by Luke Skywalker, it means that the supporting character of Baby Grogu is probably being written off, and I don't like that. I liked the kid. I thought the kid was an amazing character.

Third thought: Just like in politics, being extremely good at something and being passionate about something does not make a person the right one for the job. Specifically, I'm talking about J.J. Abrams. J.J. is brilliant. I like a lot of his stuff. But he wasn't the right person to hand the reigns to when it came to Star Wars. And look...to follow me down this rabbit hole...you have to ignore box office receipts. And yes, I know that box office receipts are all that matter. Okay...that being said...please ignore the billion plus dollar box office, so that I can make a point.

J.J. is king at the box office! All hail J.J. Let's just work that out of our system. Because...he's still the wrong person for Star Wars. The right people are Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni.

Now look...If you got J.J. in a room with Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, I know you wouldn't be able to tell them apart as far as Star Wars geeks go. J.J. would be right there rattling off his favorite moments along with the rest of them. He would pass every geek test. His track record is impeccable when producing money comes to bear. But he's still wrong. Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni just know how to tell a Star Wars story. They just do...and they tell it way better than J.J. They're doing such a fine job, that the excitement around Star Wars is essentially due to their efforts with the animated series and with The Mandalorian and their other projects. I can't tell you why they are better. They just are, and I'd rather watch and listen to stories where Favreau and Filoni are collaborators, than listen or watch one where J.J. is in charge.

My fourth thought is that the creators of The Mandalorian know how to build a story. I didn't even think that there was any reason to return to Tatooine. In my mind, this dusty planet had no tales left to tell. Boy, was I wrong. When I saw the krayt dragon early on in season two, I remembered wanting very much to know what a krayt dragon looked like (all the way back when I was a kid)! I'd just forgotten. And lo and behold...there it was. And then we got to find out that Boba Fett escaped the Sarlac pit. We also got to see Boba Fett take over the old palace that Jabba the Hutt used to call home. All of these events fit into one season of eight episodes. I went into this season of The Mandalorian with no idea what it was going to be about, and I came out of it deeply satisfied with that kind of fan service.

My final thought regarding this season is with regard to Ahsoka Tano. Rosario Dawson is perfectly cast, which irritates me just a little because Rosario Dawson kinda makes my eye twitch with her refusal to support Hillary ("but her emails") Clinton in 2016. Her and Susan Sarandon both make my eye twitch. Because of people like them, we got Trump, who has proven to be a traitor to our nation. Like most liberals, I'm willing to "let it go," but still...my eye twitches when I see them in a role. But that's it...I'm not angry at either woman....just disappointed that they made selfish choices in an era that probably felt safe to make selfish choices. After all, no one (except me) thought it would get this bad with the country 27 trillion in debt, that there'd be 350,000 people dead, where domestic terrorists storm the capitol, and where the world is on fire. Such is life. But yeah...eye twitch. However, I'm excited to see more Ahsoka, even if it is from an actress who gets on my nerves.

And those are my thoughts on The Mandalorian. Do you have any? Have you watched it?

Here are six thoughts about the Star Wars universe that I want to share with you.

In re-watching some Clone Wars episodes, and watching Dave Filoni talk about Star Wars, there are things I find interesting that I want to share with you.

1) The color of Mace Windu's lightsaber is purple. I never gave it much thought, but there are a lot of people online who have said that the reason it is purple is because Mace Windu knew how to properly channel the Dark Side of the Force to draw upon its strength, without being overcome by it. Hence, his purple lightsaber is a combination of red and blue. He channeled just enough Dark Side that it affected the kyber crystal that colored his own blade, turning it purple. I like that explanation.

2) The Duel of the Fates orchestral score by John Williams happens during the climax of The Phantom Menace. Dave Filoni says that this is because Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan battling Darth Maul is all about the fate of whom gets to be Anakin's dad. I guess that had Qui-Gon lived, Anakin would have turned out very differently, and that he never would have succumbed to the Dark Side like he did. That was exclusively Obi-Wan's fault.

3) The Nightsisters were a great invention. You don't see them in the movies, because (I think) the movies are afraid of doing anything new. It's always lightsaber battle...different looking lightsabers...spaceships...bounty hunters, and the same Force powers. But you don't get the wild and crazy "other" things that could exist in a universe as epic as the one in which Star Wars takes place. But the t.v. shows have a loser structure. They can experiment with ideas, and the Nightsisters are one such idea that I really like. In case you don't know, this was a group of witches that wielded actually magic. There's very little distinguishing them from Saruman the wizard in Lord of the Rings, only I'd say the Nightsisters were far more powerful, melodramatic, and impressive with their sorcery. Whenever they appear, the tone of the Star Wars episode definitely feels more in the realm of traditional fantasy. But honestly, I've felt that Star Wars had more in common with the Lord of the Rings than it ever did with Foundation by Isaac Asimov.

4) I like the Purrgil. These are a species of massive, whale-like creatures that lived in deep space, traveling from star system to star system. They have a natural ability to fly through hyperspace. Again, this may be another thing that the movies may shy away from because of its ridiculousness. But once you get past any objection you might have of whales flying in space, they are actually pretty darn cool, especially if you get to ride one like Ezra Bridger did.

5) As much as I didn't really care for The Rise of Skywalker, I did love that the Emperor never fought with a lightsaber. His mastery of the Force was above such petty weapons. I like that (at some point at least) there is acknowledgement by the show creators that Jedi eventually grow out of their old tool and onto other ways of doing combat that are much more effective than swinging a glowing blade. A wizard just doesn't look good optically when they are swinging things around. They should be "wizardly" instead.

6) The Darksaber is very cool. This is a special lightsaber wielded by Mandalorians that has made an appearance in the show Mandalorian. I like the idea of it: a black blade that defies the colors and shape of other kinds of lightsabers. It also, apparently, is perfectly fine being wielded by someone with no power over the Force. This thinking (which is outside the box) really freshens up the story quite a bit, and I look forward to seeing what becomes of it.

Let's talk for a moment about the fates of Jyn Erso and Ahsoka Tano in Star Wars

Many of you who count yourselves (like me) as a fan of Star Wars understand that Ahsoka Tano was Anakin Skywalker's padawan. She's also unique among force users and people who have all the powers and training of the Jedi (but do not have the title "Jedi") which is just a word after all. Ahsoka didn't even exist until after "Revenge of the Sith." So her fate (and story) had to be constrained by canon. It's a tragedy that she couldn't save the Republic, and that she saw the doom on the horizon yet (like Cassandra in the Trojan War) could do very little about what was transpiring. She is my favorite character in all of Star Wars, because of this.

Jyn Erso is a great character, and her story featured in Rogue One is one of the best told in the entire series.

With the Clone Wars having ended on Disney +, it makes me think of another tragic character named Jyn Erso, whom most of us watched in Rogue One, which is a powerful, moving, and well-told Star Wars movie. Jyn Erso's story was complicated and tragic, and she isn't seen or mentioned in the original trilogy, because 1) yes it doesn't fit within the events of the original trilogy, and 2) she didn't exist as a character until many years later. That's how things like this work.

A little research online also provides the following: Jyn wasn't killed off because she wasn't mentioned in the original trilogy. They (the makers of Rogue One) intended for her and Cassian to survive. It just worked better narratively if these characters didn't survive (writers know all about these kinds of choices), and since they were totally new characters they had the freedom to go with that decision.

Many people think that Ahsoka Tano only lived because she was Dave Filoni's character (the showrunner behind
much of the Star Wars stuff that graces our screens). I disagree. Ahsoka Tano who is every bit as strong and
complex as Jyn Erso does deserves to live, and Star Wars as a story is all the better for it.

In context, I think Ahsoka is different. Jyn was created as a way to tell a story about a single huge event within Star Wars canon, and she served that purpose extremely well. Ahsoka is a character who was featured in many stories over more than a decade. She grew, became an adult, went from one animated series to another, and she was shaped by the events of Anakin becoming Darth Vader, and by Senator Palpatine becoming the Emperor (who then murdered all of her friends by enacting Order 66). In all the ways I can think, it makes sense that Ahsoka is alive in the active Star Wars universe, and that Jyn Erso is not.

Ahsoka's great strength (I think) is that she chose a different path, walking away from the Jedi Order even as she was offered acceptance into its upper ranks. She's probably the first "Jedi" to walk the right road in a very long time. The Jedi Order (before the fall) was arrogant, drunk on power, and filled with hypocrisy. Think about how bad Mace Windu was. He was more than happy to be a warrior instead of a peacekeeper. And then there was Qui Gon. He was told directly that Anakin should not be accepted as a Jedi trainee, and then Obi Wan, his head filled with Qui Gon's idealism, pulled a move to train Anakin himself. The Jedi had become something they were never supposed to be...an evolution that took a long time. And while I'm at it, Luke was a horrible Jedi too. His training was just about weaponizing him to aim him at the Emperor and Vader, because Yoda didn't have the luxury of time. So, the more I ruminate on it, the more I realize that The Last Jedi was just pointing out what should have been obvious to me about Luke. I just wasn't prepared to hear it at the time, because my younger self had idolized him. But the story of Ahsoka Tano told to me through the years allows me to look on the events of the movies with clear eyes and a clear mind, and it all makes sense now.

Anyway, Ahosoka managed to see clearly enough what was happening, she took a stand, made a choice to remove herself from the cancer that was the Jedi Order, and she lived. By contrast, Jyn Erso died. Both stories, and the fates of their main characters make sense to me. I hope, in reading this, they make a little more sense to you.

The online reactions to the final The Rise of Skywalker trailer are all over the board.

Star Wars is a beloved franchise, which I suppose means that reactions to it are going to be all over the board. Some love it, some hate it, and many seem to post something akin to "I have very low expectations for this film." Is "the bar" looking pretty weathered at this point? Are people still complaining about The Last Jedi? Yes, yes they are. Here are a few of the reactions I read that struck me as interesting:

"The sequel trilogy has NOT worked for me, but I bleed Star Wars through and through, so I'll see the shit outta this on general principle. I just wish this story and these characters worked for me more."

"If Reylo does not happen I am done forever with Star Wars. I will never buy anything Star Wars or Disney. Why did they bother even setting it up in TLJ?"

"I have very low expectations of this trailer for the final episode...Mainly wanted more of the Mother of All Space Battles. Rey vs Kylo duel? Haven't we seen that a few times before? I'll be there on opening day, but I expect to be disappointed."

"I'm still incredibly miffed at the fact there's been zero in-film explanation of how we got from the end of Episode VI to VII. I have no idea where the First Order came from, or why the apparent victory at the end of Episode VI ended up in the way we are now."

"I, too, have low expectations for this film. I've also found that I'm fine with that. The movie will probably be mediocre, but there will be another Star Wars soon afterwards, and another one, until the heat death of the universe, so whatever really. I've either disconnected emotionally at some point, or discovered that I never really cared in the first place."

"And in the original trilogy you had no clue why Boba Fett was a badass bounty hunter. Or where the Emperor came from or how he rose to power. Or how the original Death Star was able to be rebuilt or partially destroyed when you saw it explode into dust with your own eyes. Or how Jabba was a big bad gangster with so much power. Or what the Kessel run even was, and so on and so forth. Sometimes just accept that everything doesn't need to be shown and explained to you in a tidy way. People don't want to watch movies and the stories they tell. People want to watch fan-fiction and have their subjective imaginations beats confirmed."

And last (but not least) here is what I have to say regarding the last trailer for the last of the "Star Wars Saga":

For what it's worth, this throne in the trailer looks really cool. I'm sure someone good actually sits in it; the thing doesn't look evil at all (snicker).

Any opinions out there regarding "The Rise of Skywalker?" Is it totally going to suck? Is it going to be amazing? Do you have Star Wars fatigue? Is Disney just beating a dead horse? Is there any story left to tell? What say you?

What is there for Obi-Wan Kenobi to do in his own series eight years after Revenge of the Sith?

There's a lot of people who think that the Disney + streaming service is going to save Star Wars. It seems like a bit of an overreaction given that there seems to be an insatiable appetite for all things Star Wars. I guess when movies like Solo and The Last Jedi fail to hit certain expectations, despite it still making buttloads of money, the general "overreaction" seems to be to panic and then claim that the whole thing is now destined to go straight down the toilet.

I (among many) am looking forward to the streaming service's launch in November, not just for original series like The Mandalorian and the Obi-Wan Kenobi series (starring Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan), but for the other Marvel series that have been announced. However, I've got to say that after my initial joy of hearing that Obi-Wan was getting his own television series post Revenge of the Sith, I started to wonder what that might look like. And given what I know of what happens, it's actually starting to sound a bit boring.

From what I know, Obi-Wan basically watches over Luke on Tattooine until he's an old man, occasionally going into Mos Eisley for supplies and a drink and to rough some people up, but he's essentially retired. I mean...there's some obvious drama that could happen between Uncle Owen and Obi-Wan...the comics have hinted at this much in panels like the one below:

But how could stuff like that fill a series? The above conflict would be a single episode that I'd watch. And we know what happened...Luke Skywalker by the time of A New Hope barely knew Ben Kenobi. So he spent zero time around him (his uncle having won the argument against Ben training him).

I'm also hoping that it's not a whole series of things like a young Luke bullseyeing a womprat in his T-16 while Obi-Wan watches from the bluffs, using the Force to freeze them in place before each shot. That would just be silly. I'm hoping there's more to Obi-Wan than just hanging out on Tattooine. But with Darth Vader on the loose and the Emperor hunting down all of the remaining Jedi, it seems to me that hiding in one place might be the only thing he does for sixteen years. So what do you think? What is there for Obi-Wan Kenobi to do in his own series eight years after Revenge of the Sith? Any ideas? I look forward to your comments.

Will Grand Admiral Thrawn appear in The Mandalorian?

Will Grand Admiral Thrawn appear in The Mandalorian? It's an interesting question. If you don't know who Thrawn is, he was first introduced in the book Heir to the Empire, which came out about the same time as I was attending college in 1990. It's written by the author, Timothy Zahn, and featured a cunning villain by the name of Thrawn, who studied art pieces produced by a civilization in order to develop strategies by which he could defeat them. In the course of the series, it seemed to work quite well, and I have my own personal theories that Thrawn was based upon Hannibal Lecter, and that Timothy Zahn was an admirer of Thomas Harris (the author of the Silence of the Lambs). Thrawn is a very Lecter-esque villain, minus the whole cannibalism thing, because Star Wars doesn't allow that kind of thing to be portrayed on screen.

Thrawn has appeared in the canonical animated series (like The Clone Wars for instance), so we do know that he is a character that exists within the framework of the Lucasfilm live action storyline. What I find interesting is that the showrunner for The Mandalorian, Jon Favreau (you may know him as Happy from the Marvel films), seems to hint rather heavily that Thrawn may make an appearance. It's an interesting and exciting thing to think that Disney is actually contemplating bringing the worlds of the television show and the movies together into a more cohesive package. There are astounding revelations that came from the animated series. Darth Maul is still alive is one of them, and it was confirmed when we all spotted him at the end of the movie, Solo. But if we meet Thrawn, then there's also a chance that we'll meet heroes like Ahsohka Tano, and that just gets me all kinds of excited. Ahsohka was an amazing character, and if we meet her, I think it may be enough to really energize the whole franchise.

Disney (in launching their streaming network in November) feels very much like it is breaking ground on storylines that sorely needed to find new directions in which to grow. Mining the expanded universe of Star Wars (for example) for gold nuggets seems like a great place to start. I wonder what all else may turn up as discussion points, and what we will actually see come November.

So what about you? If you are familiar with the character of Grand Admiral Thrawn, would you be excited to see him in the live-action t.v. series? I'll look for your comments

The trailer for The Mandalorian makes me think that Disney spent all the monies on this to ensure that its excellent.

The Mandalorian trailer dropped on the internet last week, and my first thoughts were around how good it looked, how identifiably Star Wars it actually was, and how it seemed steps away from expected tropes. All of these things got me excited to subscribe to Disney +. In fact, I wish it was out already so that I could hurl money at Disney faster, and start watching it. I wonder if the assassin droid in the trailer is IG-88? When I used to run the Star Wars RPG from West End Games in my college days, I sometimes talked about what a badass I thought IG-88 might be. For the record, I also posed that a live-action Star Wars series told from the perspective of a bounty hunter in the galaxy might be fun to watch. That was thirty years ago. Glad to see that someone else thought the same thing and made it happen and with a reported $100 million budget for ten episodes (source The New York Times).

So yeah...if you haven't seen the trailer yet, click on it below and let me know what you think in the comments.

Was Darth Vader supposed to wield god-like power or did power creep just make him that way?

You will need to watch the below embedded short (it's about a minute long) first before you understand what I'm talking about in this post. It's quite entertaining, and kind of re-imagines a portion of the Battle of Hoth sequence in animated form.

From a Generation X-er and a Baby Boomer standpoint, nostalgia can be a trippy drug, especially when it comes to Star Wars and bad guys like Darth Vader and the Emperor. For example, take Darth Vader. The tone of the original trilogy (if you try and control your nostalgic feelings of "this is totally how I see him through the lens of history") is that he was perfectly content to let the stormtroopers do the dirty work for him. This mildly suggests that if Vader were capable of spectacular displays of the Force (like blasting open a hangar door in the below short clip), Luke would never have escaped the Death Star the first time just because a measly door closed while Vader leisurely strolled over too late to get through safely.

Needless to say, if he could blow open giant metal doors, he ought to be able to just blow up smaller nearby ships with the Force too. But we never saw this happen. However, if we see Vader again in future movies, we just might see this happen because of Force and "power" creep.

To explain further, I bring all of this up because in the newest movies, the Force is portrayed as much more powerful. And it's getting more and more grandiose all of the time. What Daisy Ridley's character did in The Last Jedi by casually levitating tons of rocks might not have been a thing that even Yoda could have done in earlier movies because not enough time had passed for people to really simmer on these ideas they have regarding the power levels of characters. Simply put: as the decades roll on and on, the Force gets more and more powerful. A Yoda featured in another Star Wars movie filmed say, in 2020 or beyond, would easily be able to do what Daisy Ridley's character did in The Last Jedi, and maybe even more cool stuff.

This phenomenon of power creep is not new to fiction. It's happened to Superman too. The Superman of the 1930's could leap tall buildings. The Superman of today has all the powers of a god and is nigh unstoppable unless you have one of his very specific weaknesses: kryptonite and/or magic. It's all "power creep," and I see it happening in the Star Wars movies with each new release, animated short, and progression of stories through CGI-based animated series like The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels.

But don't get me wrong, it's all fun. It's just something I've noticed, and I attribute a lot of the power creep to feelings of nostalgia and fondness over characters and what they could possibly do to fit any given situation.

Star Wars Galaxy's Edge sounds incredibly cool and is probably the closest thing we'll ever get to an actual Westworld.

I saw on io9 today (link HERE) that some of their staffers got an early look at the huge renovation going on at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. In case you didn't know, Disney is building a Star Wars theme park there with a highly detailed Millennium Falcon that you can walk in and interact with as a group.

It looks and sounds incredibly cool, although I doubt I will ever go and visit it (but one never knows). Most of these things sound like you'd get the best enjoyment from them by having lots of kids around. You get to build lightsabers, go into shops that sell Star Wars themed items made to look like they are from around the galaxy, and pilot the Millennium Falcon with up to five others. It sounds incredible for a family of six (four kids and two adults). Not so much for a single guy like me who would get lumped in with a bunch of people I don't know. But yeah...in another lifetime...this sounds like tons of fun. Take a look at some of this concept art:

In order starting with the first pic you've got the ride "Rise of the Resistance," which will take you inside a First Order "capital class" ship where you see holograms of the major cast characters taking you through a ride where you race across the deck and past actual sized AT-AT's and Tie Fighters to escape. Then you have the Den of Antiquities where I think you'll be able to purchase all sorts of "rare" and "pricey" items from around the galaxy (and it will look like the picture). Then there's the "marketplace" and the "Smuggler's Run," which takes you on board the Millennium Falcon. And you can eat in the Mos Eisley Cantina as well. Those are the things that really stood out from looking at pages of the concept art on google image search.

It honestly sounds like a place you could lose a lot of time in...perhaps an entire week. Maybe at that pace, the grueling lines for it wouldn't be so bad. 

I think that the new direction Star Wars is headed will be a place where good and evil are just words and everything depends on a certain point of view.

I watched The Last Jedi again on Sunday night with my father. He hadn't seen it, but has been a fan of the Star Wars franchise for some time. Now that I've had some distance from my initial viewing of it in theaters, and have watched Solo: A Star Wars story and finished watching Star Wars: Rebels, I actually found that I liked The Last Jedi a lot more than I initially did. This was a kind of strange reaction as I think I was kind of immediately outraged that everything was so incredibly different than I expected.

It still isn't a movie that I would ever want to own, primarily because it's not a feel good movie. I also don't own a copy of Schindler's List for anyone that's been wondering about that. But The Last Jedi deserves more credit that the thrashing it has been given by fanboys online. For one, it's well put together. The script is coherent from beginning to end, the dialogue makes sense, and it wastes no time with confusing escapades or dealing with metaphors. Additionally, I'm more appreciative of the way in which Luke and others (Yoda) poke fun at the seriousness with which the Jedi have been treated for decades. The way he tosses the lightsaber over his shoulder, the way Yoda casually berates Luke for not picking up the "page turners" that were the Jedi histories, and the way Snoke berates Kylo Ren about his helmet. "Take that ridiculous thing off."

Favorite lines: Rey telling Luke, "I've seen your daily routine. You're not busy."

It's funny stuff. There's also more hope buried within its carefully constructed script than I originally gave it credit for having. It seemed like Disney just took a jackhammer and wrecking ball to everything. But there's all kinds of kernels hidden in the narrative that point to a new kind of story that can be told...one in which kids who are not a part of the Jedi order learn to use the Force because the Force "doesn't belong to anyone." I liked that line that seemed like it was a throwaway the first time I saw it (when Luke is teaching Rey who is sitting on rock). "The Force doesn't belong to anyone." It's an interesting concept and it pushes the idea that all this training and rules and discipline and everything else were just made up things meant to constrict people who should have felt free to access the Force and use it however they want (if they had the talent).

Even the code breaker says as much in his worldview. "Good guy, bad guy...those are just words." It's weird to think that Star Wars, the iconic franchise of good versus evil, is starting to embrace the idea that "good" and "evil" are just concepts. What is "good" and what is "evil" is entirely dependent on a certain point-of-view. At least, that's what I'm getting as The Last Jedi's most prevalent kernel that underlies the whole movie and story. It's probably the direction that they are going to go in the next movie, and it makes me wonder what it may look like.

George R.R. Martin is also a believer that "good" and "evil" are just words. Instead, it's motivations that matter (and the philosophies and actions that take place behind those motivations). Am I thinking that we may see a Star Wars that resembles something more like what we see in Game of Thrones, only in space? I'm not so sure. But it may end up resembling a universe in which countless stories can be told with they dynamics, say, somewhere between Star Wars and Game of Thrones. It'll be a place where good and evil are just words, and who you side with will depend on the framing provided by the script.

I will not be posting on Wednesday, but I will be back this Friday.