Avengers: Endgame (a movie review post)

 

MCU #22

My original Endgame review, in which I mostly don't talk about the movie but still manage to get in a dig at Edward Norton.

I'm just going to say it: Endgame is the greatest achievement in cinematic history. This is not an opinion on the quality of the movie. Even if it had been a terrible movie, it would still be the greatest achievement ever in movies: the culmination of one storyline carried through more than 20 movies over the span of more than a decade. It's rather mind-blowing when you think about it like that. It also happens to be a great movie.

Here is what I'm going to say about that: It is not a movie you can legitimately watch or appreciate unless you've seen, minimally, all of the Avengers movies, but you really need to have seen everything MCU to... feel the full gravity of it. Not all pieces of entertainment are designed to stand on their own, and that's okay. In fact, it's good. It allows for more complex and interesting stories. You can all thank Tolkien for this. Prior to the release of The Lord of the Rings, it was thought by publishers that "the audience" wouldn't be interested by anything long and complex. Even once the concept that some people really enjoyed long, complex stories was introduced into books, it took a long time for movies and television to catch up. And you can probably thank Lucas for that because, without Star Wars, who knows when that idea would have worked its way into movies.

I am not one to cry at movies, not much or often, but I had tears during Endgame. The scene where Happy is sitting with Morgan before Tony's funeral is so touching. Not to mention the moment Peter has with Tony as he dies. It's hard stuff to watch. And it's part of what has made the MCU great. Real moments that can't be taken back or undone. Actions with consequences that the heroes have to live and deal with. We've learned over the years that you can't depend on that in comic books; comic books revert, always, to status quo, no matter who dies or what happens. The MCU is not like that and, I think, it elevates the MCU above the comics. Tony Stark died. Deal with it.

Not that he was the only one; he's just the example.

Endgame hits hard from the opening scene. It's also terribly difficult to watch Clint lose his entire family. This movie is, more than anything, about loss and how we deal with it. How to deal with it. Steve Rogers runs a support group. Barton murders survivors whom he has decided didn't deserve to survive. Both extremes are understandable. Everyone is dealing with their loss in the best way they can.

But you know that the heroes somehow have to win...
I do like that when they "fixed" "the snap" that they didn't just put everything back to the way it was. This, again, is living and dealing with the consequences, stuff we're getting to see play out in the various Disney+ series. It's a much different way than in The Infinity Gauntlet, which returned things exactly to how they were.

Anyway...
Favorite moment, and this is my favorite moment from the entire MCU:
When Captain America, after having his shield broken to pieces by Thanos, picks up Mjolnir. It's powerful.
And Thor's reaction is pretty priceless as well.

Endgame may not be the MCU movie I would pull out to watch for fun on any given night -- it's not that kind of movie -- but I do think it's the best of the MCU. Every character has a moment. The heroes win but not without cost. It's powerful and heartbreaking. It's great.

[One thing to point out: It's great in a way that, say, Return of the Jedi is not but possibly could have been. Lucas originally planned for Calrissian to die in the Falcon in the destruction of the Death Star but, in the end, Lucas couldn't go through with it. He didn't want the movie to end on a bummer. Endgame doesn't shy away from it.]

The new rankings:

1. Avengers: Endgame

2. Captain America: Civil War

3. The Avengers
4. Captain America: The First Avenger

5. Avengers: Infinity War

6. Spider-Man: Homecoming
7. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
8. Iron Man

9. Captain Marvel

10. Black Panther

11. Doctor Strange

12. Ant-Man

13. Thor: Ragnarok
14. Thor: The Dark World
15. Thor

16. Guardians of the Galaxy

17. Ant-Man and the Wasp

18. Avengers: Age of Ultron

19. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
20. Iron Man 3
21. Iron Man 2
22. Incredible Hulk (Edward Norton's ego is so strong that it actually survived the snap despite being part of the 50% chosen.)

Rebels: "A Fool's Hope" (Ep. 4.14)

-- "That would be no problem for me."

Ezra sees a window to get Lothal out from under the thumb of the Empire; the problem is that rebel command has written Lothal off as a planet that can't be helped. Which is totally understandable considering the fact that they lost their entire attack fleet (mostly fighters) when they went after the TIE Defender program. Every last ship. The cost of Lothal is just too high.

But in many ways, Ezra is the last Jedi -- Sure, Ahsoka is out there, and so are Yoda and Obi-Wan, but they've all retreated into hiding, which only leaves Ezra out in the world. Alone. -- and he has a plan.

Most of this episode is battle sequences, including a duel between Ezra and Rukh. Exciting stuff.

The episode is also fairly typical, story-wise, which is fine. It's an exciting episode. However, there is, for me, a major flaw with the story, one which is too spoilery for me to talk about. I'll just say that it would have been a much more interesting story if they'd gone the other way with it rather than sticking to what is stereotypical for these kinds of things. Maybe there would have been too much involved in doing that in a series that's winding down; I don't know.

But the episode has Hondo, so I can't complain too much, even if they did have him throw himself all in with the rebels. I get it. They have to tie up all of the loose threads, and Hondo needs an honest-to-goodness happy ending, kind of like Han in Jedi.

"He talks a lot for a smuggler."

"For that boy, there is nothing I would not do." -- Hondo

"This is the risk you take when you are a pirate."

Rebels: "Heroes of Mandalore: Part Two" (Ep. 4.02)

-- "A Mandalorian with a jet pack is a weapon."

This is an episode that is a bit difficult for me to review.

On the one hand, it's a fine and good episode in the same vein as all of Rebels, all of Star Wars, in fact. It's exciting in all the ways Star Wars is exciting.

However, it fails in the same way much of Star Wars does in really making the characters have real stakes in the game. The most notable exception to this was Rogue One.

Maybe I've said this before, but Lucas' original idea for Jedi was that the Falcon wouldn't make it out of the Death Star explosion at the end of the movie, hence Han's "funny feeling" comment before they go off to Endor. But Lucas had a change of heart and decided that that would end the trilogy on too much of a down note, and he wanted it to be a full-on happy ending, so Lando and the Falcon come spewing out of the fiery explosion of the Death Star.

In much the same way, the tragedy at the end of part of of this two-part story is rolled back as we discover right away that Sabine's mother and brother did not die from the Empire's powerful new weapon. Just everyone else did. I feel it robs the story of its emotional impact. But I suppose it is a show that is supposed to be kid friendly, which is why so many of the stormtroopers throughout the series escape with their lives rather than being killed by the rebels. You can't have your heroes indiscriminately killing the bad guys.

Yeah, I'm in a bit of a mood after watching this one.

And I haven't talked about the deus ex machina ending.

I'm also not going to.

bah

"Mandalorian? I don't want to be a Mandalorian."

"It's time for you to prove your loyalty, not just to your family, but to all of Mandalore."

"It was a series of bad decisions, okay?"

"Don't move!"

"Oh, I'm movin'."

Rebels: "Secret Cargo" (Ep. 3.18)

-- "I've begun to see this fight cannot be won in the Senate."

One of the things I've enjoyed most about Rebels (and Clone Wars to some extent, though this has been much more prevalent in Rebels) is the introduction of characters that we have known from the movies and getting to see where they came from and how they ended up who they are, especially with the more background characters. It gives an interesting perspective on how things turn out and gives us the opportunity to get to know some characters that we never had a chance to get to know before they died. They've brought in quite a few characters from red and gold squadrons that die in the assault on the Death Star. Gold Leader is in this episode, for instance.

But what we're really getting to see is Mon Mothma coming into the rebellion and pulling all of the disassociated rebel cells together into what will become the Rebel Alliance. I'm going to admit here that I have never been a huge fan of Mothma. In Return of the Jedi, she's overly stoic and devoid of charisma, enough so that it made me wonder (even when I was 13) how it was that she got to be in charge. I always felt that Leia would have been a much better choice. This episode, though, gives us some insight into how Mothma got to be in charge, and it makes much more sense with this as background.

Plus there's a lot of fun as the Empire pursues Mothma in the hopes of capturing her alive.
Most importantly, there's what may be the best animation sequence in one of these shows that I've seen. I don't want to give anything away, but it has to do with igniting nebula gas as a weapon. Really, so cool.

And, as I said last review, things are getting serious. It's time for you to start watching.

Rebels: "The Antilles Extraction" (Ep. 3.04)

-- "We are unarmed. You have no right to fire on us!"

One of the things that has become kind of accepted lore about Star Wars is that the rebels have better pilots (and ships) than the Empire, just much fewer of them. What the Empire lacks in skill and shields, they make up for with numbers. Lots and lots of numbers.
The opening of this episode abuses that notion as a handful of TIE fighters lay waste to an entire rebel squadron of a-wings.
It was fairly spectacular.

But, you know, early days of the rebellion and all that.
It was clear the rebellion needed better pilots...

So they sent Sabine in to get some.

And we get to meet Wedge while he's still an Imperial cadet!
Which is pretty fucking cool.

I can't honestly say at what point I became a Wedge fan. I know that it feels to me that it was before Empire came out. I mean, he did fly his x-wing right through a TIE fighter. So cool. Of course, he also abandoned Luke during the trench run, so... there's that. I do know that I was very excited that he was Red Leader in Jedi. I suppose it doesn't really matter when, just that I am. Cool character. Glad to see his origin story, per se.

"We have to make the most of this chance; we might not get another."

"What's your plan?"
"I'll tell you when I figure it out."

"We were coming to rescue you."
"That's cute."

Rebels: "Wings of the Master" (Ep. 2.07)

"We lost the transport! We lost the transport!"

When I was a kid, I never had any of the starships from Star Wars. In fact, almost all I had was action figures. My mom didn't believe in supporting my Star Wars obsession, so I had to buy all my toys with my own money, and money isn't the easiest thing to come by when you're eight years old. So I would save up for one of the ships but, any time I had enough money for one, I would compare the one ship to all of the action figures I could get with the same money, and I would buy the action figures, the one exception being the Rebel transport from Empire, because it doubled as a storage case (and it was cheap).

All of that changed when the b-wing fighter was released. I thought b-wings were so cool after Jedi came out, and I loved the way the cockpit turned on its own as you rotated the ship. When that came out, I bought it. It was my first ship. Of course, I was 13 by then and had much better avenues for earning money.

You can imagine, then, my surprise and delight to discover that this episode was about the origin of the b-wing. It was very cool, and that's all I'm going to say about it. If you're curious, you should just watch it.

And, yes, I do still have my b-wing, and I still love it.

"I just hammered it together, young pilot; you made it soar."

Clone Wars -- "Slaves of the Republic" (Ep. 4.12)

-- Those who enslave others inevitably become slaves themselves.

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

Obi-Wan and Anakin need to track down the Togruta colony that have been taken as slaves by the Zygerrians. They decide to go undercover. There's no way anything can go wrong with this, right? Especially with Ahsoka posing as a slave. (Remember that I said that Ahsoka is Togruta?) Because she just has the perfect temperament for that, right?

With Anakin's baggage from being a slave and the fact that he's the one who is hotheaded and tends toward rushing in without a plan, you'd expect it would be Anakin's doing for things to go south. Right? But not this time. Nope. It's the levelheaded one that gets them into trouble.

There is a nice nod to Return of the Jedi in this episode, and a similar kind of arena scene from Attack of the Clones, but most of the episode is dedicated to things going from bad to worse for the heroes.

One interesting bit: Anakin has a conversation with the Zygerrian queen in which she accuses him of being a slave (no button pushing there!), but she quickly clarifies that to mean that he is a slave to his commitments and to the Jedi Order, a slave to the Republic. Of course, if he wanted to, he could join her and be truly free and rule the galaxy! Okay, she didn't really say that, but, clearly, that's the implication. Also, that freedom is getting to do whatever you want to whomever you want without any regard for anyone other than yourself.

Huh. That sounds kind of familiar.

Clone Wars -- "Altar of Mortis" (Ep. 3.16)

-- He who surrenders hope surrenders life.

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

"Is the Dark Side stronger?"
"No! Quicker, easier, more seductive."

In the context of the original trilogy of Star Wars movies, we tend to just accept that Yoda is right. Yoda is always right. And, at one point, he probably was right. Well, definitely, at one point, he was right. The Force was in balance, kept that way through the will of the Father. However, by the time Yoda is stating this to Luke, that the Dark Side is not stronger, the Force is out of balance, and the Dark Side is most definitely in ascendance. The Son has shifted the balance.

There's also what is probably very important stuff with Ahsoka. Definitely foreshadowing. I know that Ahsoka comes back in Rebels, though I'm not that far into it, yet, but I don't know if this has to do with what is going to happen there or if it has to do with anything that's going to happen in the new trilogy [There has been a lot of speculation and rumors about Ahsoka appearing in the episode eight or nine.] or if it's just a plot line that got left blowing in the wind due to Disney dropping Clone Wars. Whether it comes back or not is immaterial, I suppose, considering it's good stuff in this episode.

All of this is also a direct repercussion of Anakin turning down his role as the Chosen One. In the typical story of this nature, the "chosen one" character ends up being compelled in some way to take up the role, but, as we saw last episode, Anakin refused to be the guy to maintain the balance in the Force. Which begs the question, "Is he still the Chosen One?" Does what happens later in both Revenge of the Sith and Return of the Jedi come out of his status as Chosen One or is it because of his refusing to be that person?

I hope in some way Star Wars addresses what happens in this trilogy arc.

Clone Wars -- "Hunt for Ziro" (Ep. 3.9)

-- Love comes in all shapes and sizes.

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

I don't often wonder about the lifespans of the various races in Star Wars because, well, they're aliens. We know that Chewbacca is more than 200 years old and that Yoda is somewhere north of 900, but there's not a lot of revelation about the lifespans of any other of the races. However, we also know that Jabba the Hutt was already a power on Tatooine during The Phantom Menace and was, evidently, still in his prime when he was killed during Return of the Jedi. Along with Jabba, we have Sy Snootles; she was with Jabba in "Hunt for Ziro" and still with him during Jedi. How long does a Pa'lowick live? Because she still seemed pretty spry during her musical number in the movie.

So the action in "Hunt for Ziro" picks up right after the season one ending episode, "Hostage Crisis." We go back to find out why, exactly, Cad Bane rescued Ziro to begin with. We also find out that Ziro had a previous relationship with Snootles...
Um... No, I don't even want to think about that.
And it seems that Hutts really do have a thing for twi'leks. Or maybe it's just that everyone has a thing for twi'leks. They do seem to be every sentient beings favorite dancers.

But Cad Bane!

Oh, wait... We also get to meet Quinlan Vos, a Jedi that Obi-Wan, to put it nicely, doesn't seem to care for. This particular thing is interesting to me, because, really, we are almost always presented with Jedi who all get along with each other and have no real issues. Sure, they have disagreements, but they seem to all like each other just fine. However, Vos is a Jedi Obi-Wan seems to have a strong personal dislike for. He's too undisciplined. At least, that's how it seemed to me.

But, as any good Jedi should, Obi-Wan doesn't let his own feelings get in the way of what he needs to do, and Vos and Kenobi work with each other to track down Ziro.

And, of course, run afoul of Cad Bane. That's a good fight scene and shows just how capable Bane is. The episode is worth it for that scene alone.

Star Wars: A Discussion (Episode III)

No, we're not actually up to The Force Awakens, yet. Don't worry; we'll get there.
Eventually.

When my oldest son was not quite two, my wife gave me the boxed (VHS) set of Special Edition for Christmas. My son was not a TV watcher; I mean, we didn't even have TV (still don't). He wasn't (yet) a video watcher either. He wasn't even two and we didn't really have any videos for him to sit and watch. When I put A New Hope in to watch it, it didn't occur to either of us (my wife and me) that he would pay any attention to it. But he did.

He sat down and was mesmerized by it and, when it was over and he got up, he was someone different. He was Luke Skywalker. I'm being serious. He got up and immediately began running around the house as if he was Luke. It was, quite frankly, amazing. By the time we'd watched the full trilogy, the transformation was complete.

Amusing story time:
Those of you with kids will know that two-year-olds aren't the best talkers in the world. Well, ours started saying "fuck" to us. That, also, was amazing and a surprise, because we couldn't figure out where he'd heard it, since we didn't use that kind of language around him. But he'd run into the kitchen and yell "fuck!" and run out again and, really, just leave us bemused. So, one day, he and I were at Target together going through the toys (because I was still collecting Star Wars stuff at the time and, actually, the kid was starting his own collection, too). As we went down one of the aisles, he began yelling "fuck! fuck!" over and over again. People were looking and I was, frankly, embarrassed. I was trying to shush him and sped up to get off the aisle then, as we rounded the corner at the end, he started pointing, too, and stating "fuck!" even more emphatically. And, so, I looked to see what he was pointing at: an endcap display of Millennium Falcons. The "fuck!" That was all he could say of it. It was one of those "oh" moments and it all made sense.

Still incredibly embarrassing, though, because you can't go to everyone and explain to them that your two-year-old is not really swearing, as if they'd believe you anyway, right?


My oldest son was old enough to see The Phantom Menace in the theater when it came out, though he doesn't remember it -- he was only three, after all -- but my second son was released right in the middle of the trilogy. Oh, um, I mean, he was born during the midst of the prequels. He was a great baby, and we could take him to any movie with us, and he would sleep right through it. We couldn't take our oldest son to many movies, because all he wanted to do was get up and walk around. Star Wars was an exception. But, for the first year of his life, we took the second child to all of our movies with us, including Pearl Harbor, which we were sure was going to wake him up it was so loud, but he slept right through it. That lasted right up until May of 2002.

Don't get me wrong, Attack of the Clones was fine. He didn't sleep through it, but he also didn't fuss. What we didn't know was that our one year and change baby was watching the movie. How do we know? Well, sometime after the release of Clones, my wife and I had gone to see some movie that wasn't Star Wars. I don't remember what movie it was, but it was a date movie, and we took the younger boy with us because he had always been fine in movies. Not this time, though.

No, for that movie (whatever it was), he started crying and fussing almost as soon as the movie started. It was unprecedented.

So I did what any good person should do and I took my son out of the theater leaving my wife to watch our date movie alone. I wandered around the theater for a while holding him. When he finally calmed down, we tried going back to the theater but, almost as soon as I sat down next to my wife, he started back up again. After a couple of times of that, I gave up on going back in and had decided to just stand around in the hallway until the movie was over... except that Attack of the Clones was showing in the theater across the hall, so I decided to go just inside the door to see if I could watch a bit of that.

And this is where it gets interesting because my son, my son who was just over a year old, sat up to watch the movie. He almost instantly became totally engrossed in it. But it's hard to tell things with babies since they can't actually communicate with you, so I decided to experiment with him. Yes, I did an experiment with kid. I walked back to the movie I was supposed to be seeing where he immediately got upset again. Then, I went back to Clones where he started watching again. I went into every other movie in that hall, about half a dozen, and he got upset in every one of them. Attack of the Clones was the only movie he would watch. So, well, we sat down and finished the movie, and he sat quietly and watched the whole thing. By the time it was over, I only had to wait for my wife for about 10 minutes.

For the record, that was the last time we took him to the movies with us. Well, until Revenge of the Sith came out, at any rate.

I don't have any stories like that about my daughter, but she is as fully immersed as the boys at this point. She loves R2-D2, Wicket, and BB-8.
Incidentally, they are watching Return of the Jedi as I finish this up. My wife and I have been out, and they were watching it when we got home. That's the way our house is.

Next post, we'll start into The Force Awakens.

Star Wars: A Discussion (Episode I)

This is not a review; that will come later.

Those of you who know me at all or who have been following for a while probably know (ought to know) that I went to see The Force Awakens at the earliest possible showing. What that turned into was seeing it twice on "opening day," which was not, actually, opening day, because it was the day before opening day. Fortunately one of those showings was at 7:00 because the main thing I learned is that I am definitely getting too old for midnight shows, which the second viewing was. I also learned that my boys have nowhere near the stamina I did at their ages as both of them also struggled with the midnight viewing. Up until a few years ago, midnight shows where commonplace in my movie viewing repertoire.

All of which is, of course, beside the point other than the fact that when I said to my sons, "I'm getting too old for this sort of thing," as we were leaving the theater (at 2:30am!), they didn't get it. Yes, I was disappointed.
Anyway...

I want to provide some context for the upcoming review and the things I say about Force Awakens before I actually get to talking about that movie.

I have always said that Star Wars changed my life, and I mean that in a very literal sense. Even as a teenager looking back at my childhood, I could see the point where Star Wars came into my childhood and changed my path. Before Star Wars, everything was dinosaurs and cowboys and Indians. Everything changed when I seven. I was one person entering the theater and someone else when I came out. To again borrow the words of Ben Kenobi, I'd taken my first step into a larger world.

Star Wars never faded from my life, though it faded from the world around me. My Star Wars toys decorated my room all the way through the 80s, long after everyone had forgotten Return of the Jedi, and into the 90s just waiting for the resurgence that happened with the release of Zahn's Star Wars novels and the Dark Empire comic book series from Dark Horse in the early 90s. Needless to say, I was elated when Lucas announced the special edition versions of the movies.

And I remained elated after I saw them.

Let me be clear, I am not a part of the "Han shot first" crowd. I am from the "Han shot" era. That was it. Han shot. The whole argument over Han shooting first annoys me to no end. That being said, I have no issue with Lucas adding in the thing with Greedo shooting. It doesn't destroy my childhood or the movie or, even, damage them. I get it. Star Wars became a thing that's much bigger than Lucas ever imagined it would be and making Han a better role model for kids is something I can understand.

There was only one thing they added to the special editions that I didn't like, the scream by Luke as he dropped into the shaft in Cloud City after the duel with Vader, and they later took that back out.

And then there were the prequels...
Let's make that next post, shall we?

Clone Wars -- "Cloak of Darkness" (Ep. 1.9)

-- Ignore your instincts at your peril.

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

I'm going to lead on this one with the fact that James Marsters does a voice for this episode. That should have caught the eye of some of you pop culture/Joss Whedon people out there. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just move along. Move along.

Betrayal is one of the themes Star Wars returns to over and over again. Even from A New Hope, we have, "He betrayed and murdered your father," not to mention the betrayal by the clones against the Jedi in Revenge of the Sith and Vader's betrayal against the Emperor at the end of Return of the Jedi. We encounter betrayal frequently, too, during the Clone Wars, this not even being the first episode dealing with betrayal just nine episodes into the first season.

I don't know what to say about all the betrayal. It's just part of the fabric. Against the background of the Clone Wars, you can't trust anyone. Well, okay, you can trust R2-D2 and you can trust Obi-Wan and you can trust Yoda. You don't really want to go putting money down on anyone else, though. I think that's why we encounter it so frequently, though, so that we understand that you can't trust anyone. And it doesn't matter how innocuous the "person" seems.

Another thing the Clone Wars series does well is to let us get to know Jedi we've only previously had glimpses of. This episode is a closer look at Luminara Unduli. Again (as with Plo Koon in the Malevolence episodes), we get our look at the Jedi through the eyes of Ahsoka. Luminara is less good at listening to Ahsoka than I think Ahsoka is used to and gives Ahsoka some orders that Ahsoka doesn't really agree with. There's not an inconsiderable amount of angst while Ahsoka tries to figure out whether to follow them.

And there's a great good cop/bad cop bit when Luminara and Ahsoka are interrogating a prisoner. Luminara, being the good cop, is trying to logic the prisoner into talking when Ahsoka goes all, "I'm gonna gut you like a fish" on the guy. Luminara, though, thinks Ahsoka is being serious and goes all teach-y on Ahsoka about proper Jedi ways. It's an interesting exchange.

All of that and Ventress makes an appearance. Things always get interesting when she's around.

It's a good, solid episode that fits well into the story flow and can probably even be watched without having seen other episodes. Probably.

The Clone Wars is coming...

I see some of you out there shaking your heads and thinking, "You're a little late to the party," but just give me a moment. I don't mean The Clone Wars is coming to TV; I mean The Clone Wars is coming to my blog! Sounds awesome, yes? Yes! Of course, it does.

In conjunction with The Armchair Squid, we'll be going through each episode on a weekly basis and evaluating and reviewing them. That means that for... well, like, a couple of years, I guess, there will be a weekly Clone Wars post. If you haven't watched this show and you like Star Wars at all, you really should watch it, and this is a great excuse to do it. This is easily one of the best animated shows ever on TV and, actually, one of the best sci-fi shows, animated or not. Trust me; I've been known to watch some bad sci-fi, and this is not that. If you've already seen it, well, you know you should get in on this. If you want to sign up, just follow the link over to Squid's blog and get signed up!

Now, a few words... which is difficult, because I want to say a lot of words about a lot of different things, but, then, that's a lot of different things, and I don't want this post to go on all season. So let's talk canon. Hey! Pay attention! I said "canon," not "cannon." We are not shooting explosives at people. Here, we use more elegant words from a... okay, well, not so civilized age. Anyway...

Last year, when Disney took over Star Wars, one of the first things they did was to "do away" with the Star Wars Expanded Universe. I have found this whole thing amusing, but the statement they were making had to be made. But let's back up a moment.

Prior to 1991, the only Star Wars canon was the original trilogy. Sure, there were a handful of books in existence (Splinter of the Mind's Eye, some Han Solo books, a Lando book or three), but no one took those as real, especially since some things like Luke cutting Vader's arm off certainly didn't happen within the movie time line. Those books were just fun things on the side. But all of that changed in 1991 due to a couple of events:
1. The publication of Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn.
2. Dark Horse comics' release of Dark Empire #1.

Both of these series take place after Return of the Jedi and are responsible for bringing Star Wars back into the American consciousness. One way or the other, you can probably thank Timothy Zahn for the fact that the prequels exist. It was his Thrawn trilogy (and everything that happened after because of it) that showed Lucas that there was still an interest in Star Wars.

Interesting fact:
Zahn originally wanted to write a trilogy set during the Clone Wars. Lucas said "no" because he knew that if he did ever make the prequels (because at that point he had no plans to do that), they would invalidate the books Zahn wanted to write. So Zahn reformed his clone story and set it after Jedi.

Now, here's the thing:
Lucas always said that anything done outside of the movies could be invalidated at any time (see Splinter of the Mind's Eye) and was never considered canon, hence the Expanded Universe. That's what it was: non-canonical material. But, over time, as there became more and more of it and people became more and more invested in it, even people at Lucasfilm, people began to view the EU as being pretty much as valid as anything Lucas himself did. People had come to view the EU as canonical even though they had been told again and again that it wasn't.

When Disney came in with their plans to officially expand the Star Wars universe, to provide a vast tapestry of new canon, they had to make a hard statement so that people would understand that they weren't going to accommodate the EU into their plans. So "the EU doesn't exist anymore" was a clear way of stating that.

The Clone Wars, though, having come from Lucas, is official Star Wars canon. This is the story. I think it's a good one. I hope you come along for the ride.

"If you decide not to make things..." (an IWSG post)

"If you decide not to make things, all you've done is deprive the world of all the stuff you could have brought to it."
--Neil Gaiman

This is a great quote by Neil and not something that I haven't said before, but I've never said it like that, and I love the way he put it: "...all you've done is deprive the world..." That's just fantastic.

Often, people will feel great conflict over creating. It can be debilitating.
"Is it good enough?"
"Am I good enough?"
"What if it's no good?"
"Am I just wasting my time?"
Oh, it goes on and on and on, and, if you visit enough blogs of pre-published writers or, even, some post-published writers, you will run into all of it and more.

I think, maybe, we're asking ourselves the wrong question. Oh, I get it. "Is it good enough?" is an important question if you're trying to get traditionally published and all of that, despite the evidence that plenty of stuff that isn't really "good enough" gets traditionally published all the time. Some of that stuff that isn't "good enough" even becomes incredibly popular. But that question, that question about being good enough, isn't so important in a digital age of self-publishing. If it was ever important at all.

I think the better question to be asking is, "Is it me enough?" Is it the story that you want to tell? Is it the story that only you can tell? Are you bringing to the world that thing that only you can bring to it?

Of course, that circles back around to "am I good enough?" and "what if no one likes me?" Questions, really, about self worth and esteem, and those can be... well, those can be hard to ignore. But we need to ignore them. We need to ignore them so that we can focus on that story that can only come from us.

So... some examples:

George Lucas made a short film while he was in college called "THX-1138" which is supposed to be brilliant. When he graduated, he wanted to make a movie called American Graffiti, but he couldn't get anyone to be interested in that. What he found was people that wanted him to make a full length feature out of THX. He said THX wasn't a full length kind of thing, but that's what they wanted, so that ended up being his first movie. It didn't do as well as everyone else thought it would. Once he was able to make Graffiti, which he did for almost no money because THX had flopped, it became the most successful film ever made up to that point and held that title for something like 30 years.

Lucas was under contract with Universal for two movies, and the next movie he wanted to make was this thing called Star Wars which Universal wouldn't back. They wanted a sequel to Graffiti. Lucas said that story was finished and didn't want to make a sequel. Eventually, he got 20th Century Fox to take Star Wars, and Universal got American Graffiti 2. How many of you knew there was a sequel?

Tolkien wrote this whole history of this place called Middle Earth, but he couldn't get anyone interested in what he called The Silmarillion. He ended up getting an unrelated novel, The Hobbit, published. The publisher wanted a sequel, but Tolkien didn't have a sequel in mind for it nor did he want to write one. They insisted. He did try, but what came out of that attempt was more Middle Earth, The Lord of the Rings, which the publisher didn't want. They ended up taking it anyway, probably realizing they just weren't going to get what they wanted out of Tolkien. And, in the end, The Hobbit became part of Middle Earth.

Heck, even Twilight was something that came straight out of Stephanie Meyer, because, before that book, if you had asked anyone if they would have thought that sparkly vampires would be a good idea, I don't think you would have found a single person that would have said "yes."

I could go on and on with these examples and go one to debate the success or lack there of when artists strayed from what the story that was coming from them into other areas. For instance, the thing most criticized about Return of the Jedi is the ewoks, a thing which Lucas did not envision but fell back on because he didn't feel like he could realize his vision of an epic battle of wookies against the Empire. There's Kevin Smith and his decline in success as he tried to move toward making movies he thought people wanted rather than making the movies he wanted to make. And more and more and more.

The thing is, though, when you try to make what you think people want, everyone is disappointed, because you can't meet the expectations of everyone and, then, you haven't even made something you're happy with, so no one is happy. Make the thing that only you can make -- the book, the movie, the painting -- and don't worry about the rest. Don't deprive the world of that thing that only you can bring to it.

I'll leave you with this:


[This post has been brought to you by the Insecure Writer's Support Group.]

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: the Holographic Interface

Holography may be one of the few scientific developments that we see no real glimpse of in fiction before it happened. I think it's easy to understand why that is. Maybe not. At any rate, holography was introduced to the world in the early 70s when Dennis Gabor won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of the holographic method. The techniques involved in this go all the way back to the 1940s, but it wasn't until the invention of the laser, in the 60s, that what we know of as holograms were developed.

Writers may not have seen the hologram coming, but they certainly saw where it could go well before science did. I don't know about you, but I remember the little hologram trinket craze of the late 70s and early 80s. At the time, that seemed to be all we were going to get from holographic technology. Things like

which are pretty cool but don't really do anything.

However, in 1983, we were introduced to

and the ideas of what holography could do began to change. Okay, it probably wasn't just Return of the Jedi that did that, but it certainly sparked the imagination of a lot of kids that would grow up and advance the field.

Of course, we also had Quantum Leap in the late 80s with its holographic sidekick played by Dean Stockwell. And there was the lesser known (because of not being very successful) show Automan in 1983

with the first holographic super hero. Not to mention Red Dwarf with its hard light hologram character.

But all of that is beside the point, because I want to get to something real. This:

That's an image from Minority Report. At the time, that thing that Tom Cruise is doing with that holographic screen was purely fictional. Here's another image:

And it was purely fictional in the sense that no one had thought of it before. At least, not like this. Spielberg did something interesting, though. He wanted a movie that looked and felt real, so, instead of just making a bunch of stuff up, in 1999, he invited... well, he invited some experts to help him devise a plausible future reality. The holographic interface he used in the movie was one of the ideas they came up with, and it has since become a reality. Well, maybe not quite to the extent that it's used in the movie, but it's on its way.

In fact, when Microsoft was developing this technology for the Xbox 360, they hired engineers to "create Minority Report inspired user interfaces." I don't know how you can get a more direct link from fiction to reality than that. It's really one of those "Hey, that's cool! Let's make one of those for real!" kind of things.