Category: STAR WARS

Funny…I always picked up that Luke and Biggs were "more than friends."

But maybe I was just projecting.

And my life was forever changed.

The Empire Strikes Back, 1980

Probably the most anticipated film of my young adult life. Like Star Wars before it, in Phoenix, Empire was showing exclusively at the Cine Capri. I remember rushing down right after work to get in the line that had already stretched around the building and well into the parking lot. I bonded with fellow movie-goers, and I remember some of us walked the mile or so to McDonalds at 16th & Camelback (when it was on the northeast corner of the intersection, not on the south side of Camelback where it is now) to bring back food while the rest of the group remained in line. This was of course long before you could order movie tickets ahead of time, so you had to physically wait in line and plunk down your $3.50 (yes, THREE DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS) at the window to get a ticket.

As I recall, we got in for the 7:30 or 8 pm show, so we hadn't waited nearly as long as had been the custom for STAR WARS. When the lights finally dimmed and those famous words flashed on the screen "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…" the theater erupted in screams of joy.

I didn't see Empire nearly as meany times as I'd seen STAR WARS, yet it remains probably my favorite of the original first trilogy.

What are your memories of Empire? I know my readers tend to skew "older," so how many of you actually saw it in a theater when it came out?

I wanted to love it. I really did. After forty two years, the venerable STAR WARS saga wrapped up with The Rise of Skywalker. And yet, last night as I walked out of the theater, I was left with an ill-defined disappointment.

I will, however, give it a solid 7 out of 10. Maybe 7.5. It answered some long-standing questions and paid homage to pretty much every franchise trope ever created, but I—someone who stood in 100 degree Arizona heat for hours to see the first three movies in the 70s and 80s—honestly found myself struggling to give a crap about much of anything that was happening on screen. I appreciate how they paid homage to the late, great Carrie Fisher and were able to integrate her into the film (which was originally intended to be "her" film after featuring Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill's characters in the previous two films) by utilizing existing footage shot for other films and not resorting to CGI, but not even that was able to reach in and grab the heartstrings the way those first three films did. Even seeing the opening crawl and hearing the familiar John Williams' score failed to move me the way they had in times past.

And some of the storyline decisions…

From Jezebel (spoilers ahead; highlight to read):

The Rise of Skywalker is a return to history, but a sloppy one at that. It's more fan service for the older movies than a fitting end for the characters introduced in The Force Awakens. Instead of propelling these characters forward, it yanks them back to the past in ways that truly do not make sense (How is Palpatine still alive and how did he have kids? How did young Leia have a vision that her son would be saved by someone else using her lightsaber in Skywalker, but then still be adamant about putting him through Jedi training in TLJ despite knowing he'd turn dark?). In addition to this baffling attempt to end storylines from ages ago—storylines believed to already have been ended—The Rise of Skywalker doesn't even stick to its own creative choices. There are moments where the stakes are raised, like when Rey kills Chewie, C3PO's memory is wiped, or when Hux is revealed to be the spy from the First Order, but then are immediately undone or resolved, with no lingering or greater thought. It's as if this movie is meant to please without putting anyone at risk. No death feels real. No sacrifice or victory feels earned.

Let's just leave it at that.

I am certainly not the same, naive nineteen year old I was in 1977. I've changed. The world has changed since those heady days. And that may be one of the reasons I was so emotionally unmoved by this last film.

I'm glad I lived to see it. To be honest, one of the things that played a big mental role in me beating cancer in 2003 was the thought that I couldn't die yet…there were still four more movies coming out!

And FYI, I'm definitely Team FinnPoe. There was just such an…energy…between those two, especially during the first fifteen minutes or so of the film, that pinged my little homoerotic heart.

Should you see it? Yes. For completion if nothing else. Will I see it again? Undoubtedly. (But probably not until It appears on Netflix.)

Why am I not excited about this? Why—after FORTY TWO YEARS of waiting for the final episode of the final trilogy—do I not care?

Is it because the first trilogy with JarJar and the midiclorians left such a bad taste in my mouth that I've dismissed out of hand everything after Return of the Jedi?

I honestly don't know.

Will I see it? Of course. For a saga that set the spiritual theme of my entire life, I cannot not see it. Will I see it more than once? That, my friends, is unlikely unless it somehow manages to recapture the magic of the original.

20th Century Fox released a little movie called Star Wars.

In some ways it seems like only yesterday; in others, like a different lifetime.

One of the movies we didn't get a chance to see when it came out last summer because of financial constraints was Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Based on the reviews I'd read, I took the fact that I missed seeing it when it was in the theaters as a blessing in disguise. When it appeared on BlueRay a few weeks ago I briefly considered purchasing a copy, but again lack of funds prevented me from doing so.

It appeared on Netflix a few nights ago.

I was not impressed. In my opinion it wasn't so much a bad movie as simply an unnecessary one in the Star Wars pantheon. Yeah it provided backstory of how Han and Chewbacca met, how he won the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian, and provided the expected stunning special effects and action sequences, but I came away thinking, "They went to a hell of a lot of trouble  making this film simply to explain away a stupid technical error—Han's bragging that he "made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs" (a parsec being a unit of distance, not time) in the original Star Wars film.

Maybe it's just the curmudgeon in me, but I'm starting to believe there can actually be too much Star Wars; that the magic is being diluted.