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: "A Princess on Lothal" (Ep. 2.12)

-- In our position, you take what you can get, Kid.

Fuuuuuccck! When the Empire deploys AT-ATs, they just drop them! They DROP them! That explains the legs on them, I suppose.

My son couldn't buy it, though. Me, I was willing to give them that one. It was when Kanan -- see picture above, which is really cool -- went running at the AT-AT with a lightsaber THEN cut right through its legs (yes, two of them!) as if they were butter that they lost me. I mean, they had just dropped the AT-AT from a spaceship and the legs had supported the drop! But Kanan can just slice through them as he runs by? I don't think so. Go back to Phantom Menace and how long it took Qui-Gon to cut through one of those doors on the Trade Federation ship. Oh, wait! He wasn't able to do it in time. AT-AT legs have to be at least that tough.

Anyway...

This episode features a certain princess, and it's a pretty decent episode. You know, except for the bit mentioned above and that Leia seems to be unable to connect with people. Hmm... Actually, I suppose that's just Leia, so it makes sense when Kanan tells her that she should talk to Ezra because she understands what it's like to be young and have a lot of responsibility that she kind of just fails at that.

This is Leia before she's a senator. At least, that's what I'm assuming because her father is the senator from Alderaan. It's interesting to see her from this perspective, but it's more interesting to see the Empire's view of Alderaan. It gives a little insight on why Tarkin becomes so willing to blow it up.

"Wait, why does she get to give orders? I don't get to give orders."

The Last Jedi (a movie review?)

Yeah, the question mark up there is legit. I think this is going to be less a review about the movie and more about a review of Rian Johnson, who thinks he is way more clever than he actually is.
But there will still be spoilers.

But let's get the most obvious question out of the way: Did I enjoy the movie?
Well, yes, yes of course, I did. It was, after all, Star Wars, and it did, as Leia would say of Han, have its moments.

But it also had its moments.
Like why are all of the resistance ships running out of fuel at the exact same moment. That this is a question that I was having during my first viewing of the movie is wrong on so many levels. I mean, when did fuel become a thing? Luke hyperspaces all over the galaxy in his x-wing during The Empire Strikes Back, and there's never a mention or need for fuel, which is good since Dagobah would have been a lousy place to find a gas station. And Han flies the Falcon between star systems without a need for fuel. And I'm not even going to touch the idea that the fuel consumption rates on all of the Resistance ships would have had to have been basically the same no matter the size of the ship (WTF!) for them all to be needling empty at the same time.
Clearly this was a plot contrivance by Johnson, who seems to believe that stupid ideas are justified if they provide for "cool" moments. To be fair, this is also a problem Abrams has.

So was all the dumb of this "chase" scene worth the moment when Holdo hyperspaces the Resistance command ship into Snoke's star destroyer? I don't really know. That was a cool moment, but my thoughts leading up to it revolved around: This is so dumb. And it was kind of painful to watch all of that the second time. Not the hyperspace moment -- that was still cool -- but all of the chase leading up to it.

I also think it's a little weird how Poe is kind of constantly running up to people and greeting them with extreme enthusiasm, "Hey, Buddy!"

And I could go on, bit by bit, with the things that poke at me, but let's just not do that. I'll sum it up this way:
There are no moments like that whole fuel thing in the original trilogy. There's no point where I stop and think, "Wait a minute... That's kinda dumb." The thing most like that is the dianoga in the trash compactor, but there are legitimate explanations for that, so I have to shrug it off. You can't shrug off the fuel thing, not after eight other movies have failed to mention a need for fuel and, not just not mentioned it, demonstrated a distinct lack of that need.

That's just an example of the kind of thing Rian Johnson must feel is clever but really just isn't.

However, that's not the thing that bother me most. None of the logic problems that Johnson introduced are the things that bother me most. No, what bothers me most is Johnson's lack of respect for the story. Not the Star Wars story but story in general.
Here's the thing:

In the movie, Kylo "reveals" to Rey that she's a nobody. No one from nowhere. And that would be fine if... It would be fine if it was the truth. It would be fine if it was Kylo lying to Rey to get her to join him. It would be fine if Kylo was just wrong, that he read things the wrong way. It would be fine if there was a story reason for Kylo to tell Rey that. But... there's not.
And Rian Johnson doesn't have any say in the matter.

In a recent interview Johnson revealed that the only reason, the ONLY reason, he had Kylo say that is that he believed it was the thing that would most piss off the audience. He wanted to get a rise out of them. This puts him on par with George RR Martin in my book. "I want to piss off my audience because it's fun so I'm going to kill this character they all love." He further revealed that Abrams is the one who has final say in who Rey really is and nothing he wrote about it actually matters. Sure, maybe Abrams will decide to go with it, but Abrams isn't bound by anything that Johnson did. I suppose that includes the death of Snoke (another stupid moment, cool or not).

Which reveals the further problem of no one being in charge of these things. There's no controlling vision. You can say what you want about Lucas and the prequels or whatever, but, logically and plot-wise, all of his movies work together. He knew what he was doing and had a vision for getting there. The new movies, despite being completely entertaining, are beginning to feel piecemeal... because they are. This is something that Disney needs to get a grip on before the franchise begins to drift apart. They need to actually take a good look at what Marvel has done in keeping all of their movies moving forward within a unified vision.

I suppose I feel about the whole thing the way Mark Hamill put it when he said he didn't agree with any of the choices Johnson had Luke make but, after all, it's just a movie. That and, despite the enjoyment factor of Force Awakens and Last Jedi, I would much rather have seen what Lucas had intended to do with these than watch clashing egos slowly erode the franchise.

Kids' Clothes Were Never This Cool

Have you seen the clothes they make for kids these days? They're amazing. Kids' clothes were never this cool when I was a kid. It was all like tiny grownup clothes. I mean, they didn't even have Star Wars t-shirts! Well, okay, they did, but it was only every once in a while. And they were made with those big iron decals, basically, so, once you wore it about three times, the image was all cracked and peeling off. Well, not when you wore it; once it was washed a few times, it looked like it really came from a long time ago from a galaxy far, far away. Of course, the answer to that was to never wash it. Right?

One of my friends... Hold on; let me really emphasize that: ONE of my friends had a Star Wars shirt with R2 and C-3PO on it. He was the envy of every boy in our class. I was in my 20s before I had my own Star Wars t-shirt. Unless you count Underoos. Yeah, that was about as cool as it got when I was a kid. You could get underwear with stuff on it but not actual clothes. I had the Boba Fett Underoos

which were cool if you wanted to run around the house pretending to be Boba Fett (a Boba Fett with no pants), but you couldn't really wear the shirt out in public without every other person asking you what was on your shirt. Saying "a chest plate" really didn't help. Yes, I know.
I also had the Yoda Underoos

which were better, because you could wear that shirt out in public. Even if someone didn't know who he was, you could just say, "He's Yoda. He's from Star Wars."

When I was a kid, you couldn't even get band t-shirts (not that I wanted any) unless you actually went to the concert and bought them! It wasn't really until the late 80s and U2 that you could actually go to a store and buy a band t-shirt. Other than Spencer's, I mean. You could get that stuff in there, but I wasn't allowed in that place. Regular department stores and clothing stores had regular clothes, and that was it. Cool was not allowed.

All of that has changed now. Pop culture is everywhere. Any brand of cool you can think of, you can find. And you can find it virtually anywhere.

So, yeah, I've been back-to-school shopping with my kids, and it's always envy-making. Well, clothes shopping in general with my kids is envy-making. Even with my daughter. Not that I want all the pink, sparkly stuff she has, but they have cool Star Wars clothes for her, too! She's got the one shirt with... wait, I'll show you!

I love that shirt! And she even picked it out. I'm not sure what that says about how she thinks about me, but I don't think I really care. And clothes shopping with my daughter always makes my wife depressed. She's always, "I want one of those," or, "I want those colors," but they don't make that kind of stuff for adults.

I just have to say: These days, kids have it good.

And it's not just with clothes; it's with books, too. When I was in middle school, there were no books being written for kids my age. Or, well, there were, but they were all romances aimed at girls. The "YA" section (or whatever they called it then) didn't even get a full-sized bookcase. The entire section was located on one side of a bookcase that was only waist high. And it was all romance like Sweet Valley High, which had just come out. Things like The Chronicles of Narnia were stocked in the sci-fi/fantasy section because Harry Potter was still more than a decade away and the idea that you could actually write mature(ish) books aimed at teens and young teens was still a foreign concept.

I'm not even going to talk about Lego. Because, oh my gosh, THAT is just so unfair.

Anyway...
Kids have it good. And they don't appreciate it.
But, then, what kids ever do?

Vader's Offspring

My two younger kids got these books for Christmas. I have to say they're pretty awesome. Sure, they look like books for kids. Little kids. I'm sure it's because they're picture books. But they're those kinds of books that look like they're for kids when they're really for adults, like Animaniacs is a cartoon that's really for adults. Sure, kids like it, but kids don't get it; they just think it's funny when an anvil falls on someone's head. Which, I have to admit, can be freaking hilarious. Wait, I'm not making my point, am I?

You do know there was a Star Wars Animaniacs special, don't you? Totally awesome.

Wait! Wait! I'm talking about these books by Jeffrey Brown.
The books have brightly colored pictures that are easily appealing to kids. Funny things happen, like Luke hitting Lobot in the head with pasta sauce at dinner, which are also appealing to kids. However, it takes a certain knowledge of Star Wars and of being a parent for these books to really hit home.

I love Darth Vader and Son. It captures a moment when Luke is probably around six or so and is a great picture of what it's like to be a dad. As in the scene with the pasta sauce: Vader's hand is to his forehead in that great "I can't believe he just did that" pose. This, though, is one of my favorites:

It takes a classic situation and puts a great Star Wars spin on it. The whole book is like that.

Vader's little princess is good, too, but it doesn't quite live up to Vader and Son. Mostly, it's because he used all the great kid moments in the one about Luke. Because of that, the one with Leia is less focused and strays up into teenagerdom and young adulthood. I have to say, though, that some of the dating stuff with Han is pretty funny. Here's one of my favorites from Leia's book:

The books are a lot of fun if you're Star Wars fan and worth having around as conversation pieces, if nothing else. But, if you're not going to buy them, you should at least make a special trip to the bookstore to check them out. They don't take long to read, and it's totally worth it.