It’s been a while, but I’m still here!<\/p>\n
Recently, I mentioned to some friends and acquaintances that I really liked The Last Jedi.\u00a0 I received some light abrasions for my unpopular opinion, but that led me to the realization that I have a lot to say about a handful of recent movies.\u00a0 Tonight, I’m taking a break from my working on my current novel to talk in depth about The Last Jedi, Ready Player One, and Avengers: Infinity War.\u00a0 I’m going to get into spoilers for all three movies, so if you haven’t seen them and you don’t want anything spoiled, this is your warning.<\/p>\n
Last chance.\u00a0 Beyond this point, there will be spoilers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Last Jedi<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s been long enough that I don’t believe I have much new to contribute to the conversation about this controversial movie, other than my own experiences.\u00a0 I’m a long term Star Wars fan.\u00a0 One of my oldest memories involves laying in the back of a car at the drive-in while the original Star Wars played.\u00a0 I was young enough that the only thing I can remember from that viewing was that the stormtroopers were scary.<\/p>\n I saw The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi in the theater.\u00a0 I remember those movies.\u00a0 They were bigger than life!\u00a0 They captured my imagination and expanded what I thought was possible.\u00a0 The original trilogy became a permanent part of my life, just as they became a permanent part of our culture.<\/p>\n Based on that, it would be easy to assume that as a Star Wars fan, I have an unlimited amount of forgiveness for the movies that came after the original trilogy.\u00a0 The prequels proved that assumption wrong.\u00a0 Certainly at first, I looked for ways to justify The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.\u00a0 I wanted those movies to be great.\u00a0 But they weren’t.<\/p>\n Star Wars movies are flawed.\u00a0 All of them are.\u00a0 I expect a certain level of campiness, and maybe a few plot holes large enough to fly an X-Wing through.\u00a0 That’s part of the experience.\u00a0 The prequels weren’t that.<\/p>\n Rather than bash on the prequels, let me spell out as succinctly as I can what a Star Wars movie should be.\u00a0 A Star Wars movie should be a larger than life adventure that touches both the technological and the mystical while centering around a band of heroes that care for each other.<\/p>\n Using that idea as my guide, when I look at the original trilogy, I see Han, Luke, Leia, Lando, Artoo, and Threepio as people that I care for, and that care for each other.\u00a0 The Force is mystical and mysterious and supernatural.\u00a0 I care most about the original trilogy because I have a strong emotional connection with the characters, above and beyond the spectacle of the special effects.<\/p>\n The prequels don’t do so well under that kind of scrutiny.\u00a0 There is little chemistry between the main characters, and many of them are not only unlikable, they’re unrelatable.\u00a0 The prequels attempted to make The Force quantifiable, measured in microscopic organisms.\u00a0 Here’s a question: if midichlorians exist in the blood and give a person Force ability, wouldn’t Anakin get less powerful as he becomes more and more machine?\u00a0 Shouldn’t Darth Vader be weak once he becomes more machine than man, twisted and evil?<\/p>\n I think I’ve said enough about my background with Star Wars and what I expect from a Star Wars movie.\u00a0 Allow me to look briefly at The Force Awakens before talking about what you’ve probably been waiting for, The Last Jedi.<\/p>\n From the beginning of The Force Awakens, I believed that Poe and Finn were friends.\u00a0 I didn’t go so far as to put them together romantically as many have, but in the first three minutes of their relationship, I believe that there was a bond between them that I didn’t ever see between Anakin and Obiwan.\u00a0 As the story progressed, I believed Finn and Rey cared for each other, too.\u00a0 And that BB-8 cared.\u00a0 And that Han and Rey had a connection.\u00a0 The Force Awakens established some new characters along with the old, moved the story forward, and gave me a reason to care about all of the characters involved.\u00a0 At the same time, it made the Force mysterious again.<\/p>\n Finally, let’s talk about The Last Jedi.<\/p>\n The Last Jedi expanded on what The Force Awakens established.\u00a0 The Last Jedi continued to lean on the relationships established in The Force Awakens.\u00a0 And all of the characters involved grew.\u00a0 Finn came to embrace The Rebellion, and not just look at it as a way to run away from an enemy he thought too large to face.\u00a0 Poe learned to get past his ego and to not take for granted the lives of those that have volunteered to serve and die.\u00a0 And Rey.\u00a0 While learning the lessons of a binary view of The Force, she was forced to look at the world beyond simple black and white.\u00a0 I think that’s going to inform her decisions going forward, not just with The Resistance, but with the way she deals with The Force.<\/p>\n The Last Jedi delivered what I wanted from a Star Wars movie.\u00a0 Beyond that, it advanced the story.\u00a0 It upset expectations.\u00a0 It expanded the depth of Kylo Ren, a Star Wars villain more complex and with more depth than any other Star Wars villain we’ve ever seen.\u00a0 That’s a hill I’ll die on, by the way.\u00a0 As much as I want to overlay Anakin\/Darth Vader on top of a Macbeth story structure, I know that Kylo Ren is a deeper, more complex character, and I sympathize more with Kylo more than I ever did Anakin or Vader.<\/p>\n Honesty time.\u00a0 When I first walked out of the theater, I didn’t think I’d liked The Last Jedi.\u00a0 On second viewing, I still wasn’t completely sure.\u00a0 It took me three viewings before I could appreciate the story, and it all had to do with grief.<\/p>\n Luke Skywalker, my childhood hero, died.\u00a0 I could not get over my feelings of grief the first two times I watched the movie.\u00a0 I understood him fleeing the pressure of living as a legend.\u00a0 All the things that Luke did or didn’t do, I understood.\u00a0 I just had trouble letting him go, because I wanted to be him.<\/p>\n The Last Jedi humanized Luke Skywalker at the same time remaining true to previous stories.\u00a0 He followed in the footsteps of the only Jedi masters he knew.\u00a0 Obiwan exiled in the deserts of Tatooine, Yoda exiled to the swamps of Dagobah.\u00a0 Of course Luke would exile himself, especially after his blunder with Kylo Ren.\u00a0 He had touched the dark side, and as Yoda had warned, it dominated his destiny.<\/p>\n Once I was emotionally able to deal with the death of Luke Skywalker, I was able to appreciate The Last Jedi.\u00a0 The movie works for me.\u00a0 It’s a Star Wars movie.\u00a0 It had its flaws, its campiness.\u00a0 I could probably nitpick some of the details around the long chase with the ships, or Finn’s trip to the casino planet.\u00a0 But I could nitpick any Star Wars movie in the exact same way.\u00a0 It’s okay.\u00a0 It’s a Star Wars movie, and I loved it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ready Player One<\/strong><\/p>\n Compared to The Last Jedi, I only have a few things to say about this movie.<\/p>\n It was… fine.<\/p>\n Ready Player One could have been great.\u00a0 It should have been great.\u00a0 But it wasn’t.\u00a0 It was just fine.\u00a0 Popcorn fluff with heavy pop culture references.\u00a0 Kind of forgettable after just a couple of months.<\/p>\n It should have been more than that.\u00a0 I listened to Wil Wheaton read the book to me, and I know how good the movie should have been.<\/p>\n The problem is that the people that made the movie didn’t understand why the book was so good.\u00a0 It wasn’t the pop culture references that plumbed the depths of nostalgia like an army of dwarves descending on a rich mine.\u00a0 What made the book so great was the emotional punch delivered with each event Wade endured.<\/p>\n When The Stacks were destroyed in the book, we felt for Wade.\u00a0 He lost his home.\u00a0 When he met Aech, Wade took us through a whirlwind of emotions.\u00a0 Relief, betrayal, confusion.\u00a0 Very human emotions, and understandable.\u00a0 All of the events of the book further connected us to this character that was flawed in all of the most human ways.\u00a0 The pop culture references were just icing on a cake made from the ingredients that go into good storytelling.<\/p>\n Maybe I’m just taking the long way to say that the book is better than the movie, but I don’t think that’s it.\u00a0 Spielberg has told powerful stories in his movies.\u00a0 Movies with emotional impact.\u00a0 He should have been able to do that with Ready Player One, because the material was there.\u00a0 Instead, we got a movie that was just… fine.\u00a0 Forgettable.\u00a0 A little bit empty.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Avengers: Infinity War<\/strong><\/p>\n The latest Marvel movie delivered on everything I just described in the previous movies.\u00a0 Like The Last Jedi, Infinity War is part of a larger franchise, full of characters that feel real, with human emotion and motivations that are understandable, if not relatable.<\/p>\n Infinity War is not forgettable.\u00a0 It advanced the story in unexpected directions, with real consequences.\u00a0 I went in thinking that Captain America or Ironman might die.\u00a0 Instead, bunches of other characters I thought somewhat safe turned to dust.<\/p>\n The Russo brothers took chances with this film.\u00a0 In fact, it took the same kind of chances that The Last Jedi took.\u00a0 So far, I’m not seeing Infinity War receive the same kind of backlash that The Last Jedi did, and I wonder why.<\/p>\n Every new Star Wars movie is compared to The Empire Strikes back.\u00a0 Empire is held in high regard now, but when it first came out, it didn’t receive the same level of praise.\u00a0 We didn’t live in a social media feeding frenzy back then, which helped to reduce the level of backlash.\u00a0 But it did interesting things.\u00a0 It fundamentally changed the story.\u00a0 It effectively killed Han.\u00a0 The good guys lost.\u00a0 It ended on a down note, much the way The Last Jedi ended.\u00a0 Much the way Infinity War ended.<\/p>\n I’ve talked to a few people about this.\u00a0 Infinity War gave me an Empire Strikes Back moment.\u00a0 Where are things going to go from here?\u00a0 I’m excited to see the next movie.\u00a0 So many characters I care about appeared to be destroyed.\u00a0 How will they be brought back?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A good story should involve the consumer emotionally.\u00a0 Spectacle can entertain for the short term, but a story that survives the test of time does so by\u00a0grabbing the hearts and imaginations of the people receiving it.\u00a0 Once it has you, refuses to let go.\u00a0 It’s the lesson that I’m trying to take away from all of the movies I’ve talked about tonight.<\/p>\n I hope the stories I’m writing succeed in reaching people.\u00a0 More than anything else, that’s what I want to accomplish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s been a while, but I’m still here! 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