Clone Wars -- "Deal No Deal" (Ep. 7.06)

-- Mistakes are valuable lessons often learned too late.

Ahsoka and her new friends get mixed up in some spice trading. This seems to be a not good thing. I think I would like to talk more about spice but, honestly, I don't really understand "spice" so have no coherent thoughts on it. It's pretty clear that the idea of "spice" started out as a drug reference or something pretty close to that. It's also pretty clear that Lucas "borrowed" the term from Dune. The fact that you mine spice, though, seems to have complicated everything about it as the Star Wars universe evolved. What is clear, though, is that there are two sides to the spice trade: the legit side... and the other one. Ahsoka and friends end up on the other one.

And I'm not going to go into that other than to say that Ahsoka is still trying to hide her Jedi-ness.

Kessel is more interesting and also seems to have suffered from the same issues that spice did during the evolution of the Star Wars universe. The spice mines, according to C-3PO, are a horrible place that no droid wants to be sent to. I have vague memories of the depiction of Kessel in one of the Han Solo novels I read when I was a kid, and my memories are not much like how the spice mines are depicted in Solo. But Clone Wars chooses to give us a broader view of the planet and reveals that the planet isn't all spice mine.

What's my takeaway from all of this? I can't really tell you.
Kessel has become something not quite as foreboding as how I thought of it as a kid. Or as foreboding as that book made it out to be (Where I think there were monsters that lived in the rocks? I don't really remember, but it seems like there was some monster thing that came out of the physical walls of the mine and tried to get Han. Look, it's been 40 years since I read that; I have other things in my brain now). Which is the problem, of course, with going back and giving any mystery an origin. [Like Marvel should never have gone back and given Wolverine a concrete origin. Biggest mistake Marvel ever made.]

Mostly, I'm not really getting into this arc. I appreciate the focus on Ahsoka, but I feel like they should have offered a more meaningful story. Or maybe it will turn out to be more meaningful; there's at least one more episode to go. At the moment, though, I would put this in the "throwaway story" bucket. The arc is giving us some interesting glimpses of things in the wider SWU, but the story itself is a little lacking.

"You got any skills?"

"You ever thought you might be the trouble she needs to stay away from?"

Rebels: "Twilight of the Apprentice -- Part One" (Ep. 2.21)

-- "There's always a bit of truth in legends."

And now for the moment I've all been waiting for...!

It's Chopper versus an inquisitor, and Chopper...

Oh, wait, no. That's not what I've been waiting for.

I may have indicated in my review of Solo that I was quite excited by the reintroduction of Darth Maul into the movies. Not that I was ever one of those huge Darth Maul fans after The Phantom Menace. In fact, I wasn't all that impressed with Darth Maul. But, the truth is, he was never supposed to be dead dead. Lucas always intended to bring him back and the only reason he didn't come back in Attack of the Clones was because Ray Park opened his mouth about it within a few weeks of the opening of Phantom, so Lucas brought in Darth Tyranus instead. Still, I can understand people not being thrilled about him being brought back. Being cut in half is pretty final...

Unless you take into account that General Grievous was a heart and a brain and eyes in a robot body. I'm assuming that's all they were able to salvage of his organics. Compared to that, Maul was a veritable treasure trove!

All of that aside, I've found Maul to be a much more interesting character since they brought him back in Clone Wars. Not right at first, but, as they've gone along, they have deepened his character and complicated his motivations. I very much want to see what they have in store for him, and I am going to be sorely aggravated if we don't get the rest of the Solo trilogy, not for Solo but for Maul.

His first appearance here in Rebels is intriguing, which is about all I'm going to say about it until I get a chance to watch part two. I guess you'll just have to come back for that.
Or go watch it yourself.

"You don't exactly outrank me anymore."

"In my book, experience outranks everything."

"Then I definitely outrank you."

Rebels: "The Forgotten Druid" (Ep. 2.19)

-- Chopper, we're not here to shop.

One thing seeing Solo has done for me is renewed my interest in Rebels, not that my interest had waned, I just haven't had a lot of extra time, lately, for watching anything. But, after the reveal at the end of the movie, I was reminded I needed to get back on this show. And, then, one of the first things my son said to me as we left the theater was, "Dad, we need to start watching Rebels again." Apparently, I couldn't agree more.

Historically, episodes centered around droids have not been my favorites, which is unfortunate since I really love R2 and 3PO. They just never seem to stand up to the spotlight being directly on them. Such was not the case with Chopper. Not this time, anyway. And it seems the writers wanted to give us a bit about Chopper's backstory.

The stuff dealing with droids and their societal condition is pretty interesting, all things considered, and this episode was a good one to go along with the recentness of Solo because of it. Chopper becomes... acquainted... with an Imperial protocol droid, and it's immediately clear that there is a marked difference between the condition of the droids on the rebel side -- or, at least, Chopper (and R2 and 3PO) -- and the droids on the Imperial side:

Free will sounds nice. I admire your fortitude.

It's good to be reminded that the droids are sentient beings and that their restraining bolts serve as nothing more than slave collars.

And, sure, the droids are manufactured beings, but is it okay to enslave a sentient being even if it's a being you built? It's an interesting question and one I'm sure we're soon going to be dealing with on a practical level and not just a hypothetical one.

"The entire rebel fleet is betting on Chopper."

"Yeah, try not to think about it."

Issues in Story Telling: Marked by a Lack of Tragedy

Those of you who keep up with this sort of thing probably already know that Solo has been under performing as a Star Wars movie and is looking to come in as the lowest grossing Star Wars film ever. Considering the subject matter, everyone's favorite smuggler, this is rather surprising. And alarming. It's caused some pondering on my part.

I thought it was a fine movie. Enjoyable. But I didn't love it. "Fine" is not a great recommendation for a Star Wars film, not from me, at any rate. Of course, the problem is that it's not getting a lot of love from... anywhere. The big question, then, is why.

I think I know the answer. Which is not the answer that everyone else is giving; all of those answers have to do with the problems on set, the firing of the original directing duo, and the fact that something like 70% of the movie had to be re-shot. The actual answer is much simpler: The movie is marked by a lack of tragedy.

It's not that every movie needs to have some kind of tragedy, but, I think, Star Wars movies do. They, at least, need to have that feel that there's something that could be lost, and that's true for most all stories. The risk of loss is what provides the tension in a story. Even when you know everything's going to turn out all right in the end, there needs to be that feeling of risk involved. That just doesn't exist in Solo.

Really, the whole movie can be summed up by that first game of sabaac. Han enters the game with nothing. He can't even get into it without someone else fronting him the money to get a seat at the table, which she does because... I don't know. As a business venture, it wasn't wise, because the only thing she has to go on is Han's word, "I can take him." (Or something to that effect.) So Han's in the game with absolutely nothing to lose. It doesn't matter that he wins enough to have a stack of money in front of him; if he loses, he's no worse off than he started.

And he does lose. But, you know, big deal. And Lando doesn't seem to care, either, that he doesn't have the ship he claimed to have which he'd put up against the Falcon in their final hand. It just doesn't come up again.

At any rate, you can't feel bad for Han's loss because he had nothing to lose, nor can you be upset at Lando for cheating, because Han was cheating, too, even if not so directly as having a card up his sleeve.

And you can't feel too badly for the loss of Han's "friends," either, since those relationships were about as real as the ship Han lost to Lando during their game of sabaacc. They're not friends just because you declare them so, no matter how much the writers wanted us to believe it. Tobias just doesn't become a Qui-Gon and there's no sense of loss when he dies; it doesn't matter that Han pulled the trigger. In fact, it's probably because Han pulls the trigger that, as the audience, we're so easily able to shrug it off.

I just wish it didn't make the movie so easy to shrug off, which I think it is. That's disappointing to me from a Star Wars movie. The franchise seems to have lost its way without Lucas at its head to give it an overall vision. Which isn't to say that it has to be Lucas doing that, but someone needs to do it. This "let each director do what he wants" shit isn't working out. Someone needs to bring balance back to the Force before its the loss of Star Wars itself that is the tragedy.

Solo (a movie review post)

I'm going to be honest; I was more than a little dubious going into this movie. I read many of the Han Solo novels when I was a kid and had a pretty good grasp of his backstory in my mind. Or at least my impressions of that backstory; it has been a long time since I read any of those books. The movie trailers didn't lead me to believe that Disney was going to do more than pay token respect to that backstory, much in the same way they have only paid token respect to what Lucas had planned for the future of the series. But here's the thing: Disney was upfront when they bought the Star Wars franchise: They said, then, that the vast majority of pre-existing material other than the movies would be viewed as non-canon material and they would be free to paint over it however they wanted to, which, actually, was not any different than what Lucas had already said. At any rate, there was not a lot of canon material about Han's past for Disney to have to cling to, so I suppose I'm glad they worked in as much of the previous Han lore as they did.

That said, I really enjoyed the movie, much more than I expected to, as I kind of expected to outright not like it. Seriously, the trailers were some of the worst ever and not very representative of the movie. I really have only one complaint, a rather philosophical one that I'll get to in a moment. First, the good:

Alden Ehrenreich: He's great. I already liked him a lot from his role in Hail, Caesar! He's fantastic in that, and that one role really shows off his versatility. He does a great job of stepping into Harrison Ford's shoes, and I never didn't believe him as Han.

Donald Glover: The first thing I ever saw him in was The Martian and, for such a small part, he may have been my favorite thing about that movie. He's a good fit for Lando, though I think all the people saying that he was channeling Billy Dee Williams are only saying that because they're not very familiar with Glover as an actor. He seemed very Glover to me, but being Donald Glover is very Lando, evidently. I hope we get to see more of him in this role.

The introduction into the movies of so much material that has never previously been in the movies: It was awesome to have the introduction of the Teras Kasi into the Star Wars canon, see the Pikes onscreen for the first time, deal with the Crimson Dawn... So much stuff! The two animated series (and I'm not talking Droids and Ewoks) have suddenly become much more important.

In fact, I can't even say how important, because that would involve a major spoiler. Major. And it was so good and cool. I mean, I don't have a lot of OMG! moments in movies, but I had one over this. And maybe shouldn't have, knowing the backstory from Clone Wars the way I do, but, really, I just didn't expect them to draw it into the movies. And, now, I'm really excited for the next Han Solo movie. You did know there was going to be another one, right? Another two, actually. Anyway, this is kind of on the scale of, "Luke, I am your father."

There's other good stuff, but these are the highlights. At least until I've seen it again. Maybe other things will strike me at that point.

But here's my philosophical issue:
Why is that every hero has to have some kind of tragic backstory? Like Luke (or Harry Potter) growing up an orphan? Or Han growing up on the streets of Corellia, also an orphan? And, maybe, that wouldn't be an issue if his backstory had started him out that way.

See, here's how it was:
Han was pretty much a normal kid. Not a rich kid, but his parents were well-off enough to send him to the Imperial Academy where he became a hotshot pilot. He was pretty self-absorbed. Why not? It's a big deal to be the best pilot at the Academy. Which is all why it's an even bigger deal when, one day, Han sees an Imperial officer beating a wookie slave and steps in to save the wookie. this is a kid who has never thought about anyone other than himself whose eyes are suddenly opened to this cruelty that is happening right in front of him and, rather than walking away as everyone else is doing, he interposes himself in the situation, saves the wookie, but has to go on the run.

The lesson he learned? Don't get involved. It only has bad results. Han had everything going for him, and he lost it all in one moment of compassion. Sure, he got a wookie with a life-debt to him out of the bargain, but who's to say if he would do it that way again if he had the chance to do it over? He lost all of his fame and glory in that one act.

That's a story I find compelling.

Much more so than the way he and Chewbacca become companions in the movie, which was more about saving himself than about saving a wookie. And there's no mention of a life debt in the movie; why would there be? It's a mutual life-saving.

Which is not to deride the movie. The movie is good. But it also stays squarely within convention. I get that Disney knows what people like and play to that masterfully, but I think they missed out on opportunity to make Han a much more nuanced character than he now is. Which is to say that they made him less nuanced than he was because they fell back on making him merely a stereotype, the male version of the "whore with a heart of gold." As Qi'ra says to him, "I know who you really are. You're the good guy." Or something like that.