Star Wars

Dec272021

Five Years On

Carrie Fisher died five years ago today. I still mourn for her, still get teary-eyed when this day rolls around and I read her daughter Billie’s annual tributes, and on some level, I know it’s crazy because I didn’t really know her. I met her once and spoke with her for about 90 seconds. I had a boyhood crush that became a middle-aged-manhood crush when she flashed those deep brown eyes at me across a book-signing table. But… it feels like I knew her. It feels like we all did. And how could we not? We grew up with her. Princess Leia was our big sister, our first crush, our hero. General Leia was our mom… and our hero… and maybe our continuing crush, too. And figuring out where Leia stopped and Carrie began was very, very difficult, even for Carrie. Maybe especially for Carrie.

I’ve written a lot of dead-celebrity posts on this blog over the years. Some of them have been quite good, if I say so myself. And they’ve all been from the heart; I always feel genuine emotion about the loss of the people whose work matters to me. But not like Carrie. Not like her. I’m not ashamed to say that when Carrie Fisher died, a big part of me went with her. A part that came from childhood and from adolescence, from my imagination since I was seven years old, and from the reality of the woman I once met and wished I could’ve spent more time with and really gotten to know as a friend. I don’t know how I could’ve loved her any more if I’d actually known her.

Here’s a photo of her that I particularly like.

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Dec142021

The Original Trilogy Gets Preserved… Kind of…

Every year, the Library of Congress selects 25 films to add to its National Film Registry, acknowledging those movies that are of “cultural, historic or aesthetic importance.” In other words, these are the movies that are deemed worthy of saving for posterity. As a lover of old movies, film preservation has been an interest of mine for a long time, and I always look forward to seeing which titles get selected every year. Naturally, it’s especially pleasing when those selections are films I happen to like. This year’s batch, which was announced today, includes quite a few of those:

  • Strangers on a Train, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 thriller
  • What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the batshit-insane pairing of real-world rivals Bette David and Joan Crawford
  • Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, still one of the funniest comedy concert films ever, in my opinion
  • Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, a GenX horror classic
  • The Talking Heads’ concert film Stop Making Sense, which I fondly remember dancing along to one night at the University of Utah’s student union
  • Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring
  • And Wall-E, an animated delight that plays like a silent romance for something like half of its runtime

But of course the one I’m most enthused about making the cut is Return of the Jedi.

With Jedi‘s selection, all three parts of the “Holy Trilogy” are now present on the Registry — Star Wars was inducted in 1989 as part of the Registry’s “first class,” and The Empire Strikes Back in 2010 — and that means that Mrs Davis, my third-grade teacher who once snarled so nastily at me that Star Wars was a trashy waste of time has been overruled by our nation’s arbiters of culture. And yes, I do feel vindicated by that, thank you for asking!

It’s just too bad that Lucasfilm isn’t cooperating with the Registry’s mission.

You see, the Library of Congress archives a 35mm print of each inductee for future preservation efforts, and the last I heard, Lucasfilm has refused to provide the Library with prints of the original original trilogy, the unaltered pre-1997 editions that we grew up with, which are of course the versions that made the actual impact on our culture.

Long-time readers of this blog just rolled their eyes, I’m sure. “Oh no, he’s on about this again.” Well, yeah, I am. And no, I will never stop tilting at this particular windmill. Because it’s one thing to withhold the pre-97 editions from home video release or even to block them from public screenings — that’s aggravating, but there are workarounds, as most hardcore fans now know — but to deny the Library of Congress access to the specific version of a work that has been deemed significant… well, it’s a slap in the face of the very concept of the Registry, isn’t it? A Registry that exists in part, ironically, because of George Lucas’ passionate lobbying for it back in the 1980s. But of course, if you look closely at what he said back then, he was concerned with saving films from corporate tampering and neglect, not from his own. George has stubbornly maintained since the mid 1990s that the versions we grew up on were really only rough drafts that ought to be forgotten, and that the Special Editions (or whatever the latest home-video releases with subsequent tinkering are called) are the “real” trilogy.

When Disney acquired the franchise a few years back, I hoped that they would see the value of doing a modern restoration and transfer of the originals. I envisioned them releasing a box set containing all the versions of these films in modern-quality presentations so that the consumer could ultimately decide which version they preferred to watch. There is precedent for this: The Godfather trilogy, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Apocalypse Now, and most notably — because it’s the most comprehensive — Blade Runner have all been handled in this way. But evidently George made it a condition of his deal with the Mouse that his preferred version was going to be the only version. Either that, or Disney doesn’t think the originals would sell, which I’m convinced is untrue.

Ultimately, it’s no longer that big a deal for resourceful fans. In the past 20 years, an underground culture has developed that’s dedicated to preserving and distributing the versions of these films that we old farts remember. As a result, there is now a bewildering array of bootlegs floating around out there, including a couple that were sourced and scanned from actual film prints that are in private hands (which puts the lie to George’s insistence that these films “no longer exist” and could never be reconstituted). The so-called “Despecialized Editions” are probably the best-known of the boots, and it seems like everyone has a copy of those. I’d still prefer to have an officially sanctioned restoration and release — what can I say, I crave validation of my tastes — but in the meantime, there are options for home viewing, and I’m glad of that.

This situation with the Film Registry, though… that’s a whole other outrage, on a whole other order of magnitude. It’s not right that all Lucasfilm is willing to provide them is the 1997 edition. It’s just not right. Until and unless someone gets a 35mm print of the original, historically important, real Star Wars films to the Library of Congress, placing the trilogy on the Registry is little more than lip service. I may have won my remembered beef with Mrs. Davis, but in light of the details where the devil dwells, it feels like something of a Pyrrhic victory.

 

 

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Nov192020

In Foster’s Own Words…

As promised last night, I am continuing to follow that story about Disney refusing to pay Alan Dean Foster the royalties he is contractually owed for several novelizations of popular films, including Star Wars. Here is the text of the letter that Foster wrote to the corporate overlords (addressed with tongue in cheek to “Mickey” — as in Mickey Mouse — because he’s been unable to even learn the name of someone he could speak with):

Dear Mickey,

We have a lot in common, you and I. We share a birthday: November 18. My dad’s nickname was Mickey. There’s more.

When you purchased Lucasfilm, you acquired the rights to some books I wrote. STAR WARS, the novelization of the very first film. SPLINTER OF THE MIND’S EYE, the first sequel novel. You owe me royalties on these books. You stopped paying them.

When you purchased 20th Century Fox, you eventually acquired the rights to other books I had written. The novelizations of ALIEN, ALIENS, and ALIEN 3. You’ve never paid royalties on any of these, or even issued royalty statements for them.

All these books are all still very much in print. They still earn money. For you. When one company buys another, they acquire its liabilities as well as its assets. You’re certainly reaping the benefits of the assets. I’d very much like my minuscule (though it’s not small to me) share.

You want me to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) before even talking. I’ve signed a lot of NDAs in my 50-year career. Never once did anyone ever ask me to sign one prior to negotiations. For the obvious reason that once you sign, you can no longer talk about the matter at hand. Every one of my representatives in this matter, with many, many decades of experience in such business, echo my bewilderment.

You continue to ignore requests from my agents. You continue to ignore queries from SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. You continue to ignore my legal representatives. I know this is what gargantuan corporations often do. Ignore requests and inquiries hoping the petitioner will simply go away. Or possibly die. But I’m still here, and I am still entitled to what you owe me. Including not to be ignored, just because I’m only one lone writer. How many other writers and artists out there are you similarly ignoring?

My wife has serious medical issues and, in 2016, I was diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer. We could use the money. Not charity: just what I’m owed. I’ve always loved Disney. The films, the parks, growing up with the Disneyland TV show. I don’t think Unca Walt would approve of how you are currently treating me. Maybe someone in the right position just hasn’t received the word, though after all these months of ignored requests and queries, that’s hard to countenance. Or as a guy named Bob Iger said….

“The way you do anything is the way you do everything.”

I’m not feeling it.

Alan Dean Foster

Prescott, AZ

Disney is evidently hoping to outlast him and anyone else who has a complaint. They have nearly infinite resources to pay for lawyers, whereas a working writer or artist… does not. So they figure they can just stonewall until the plaintiff runs out of cash, loses interest… or in Foster’s case, quite possibly, dies. It’s the same tactic Donald Trump has historically employed to screw over honest contractors who were dumb enough to take jobs for him. It’s appalling, it’s immoral, it’s sleazy… let’s be frank, it’s evil.

And Mary Robinette Kowal, the president of SFWA, has pointed out that there’s a much larger concern here beyond one artist getting screwed:

If we let this stand, it could set precedent to fundamentally alter the way copyright and contracts operate in the United States. All a publisher would have to do to break a contract would be to sell it to a sibling company.

There does seem to be a growing outcry over this, from Star Wars fans and other authors alike, including heavyweights like Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi. Will it be enough to sway the evil Mouse empire? Who knows… but this is not a good look for them.

You know, I’ve had a lot of long dark nights of the soul over how my life turned out… my failure to make my dream of becoming a novelist come true. There are a lot of reasons why it didn’t happen, some within my control, some without. The biggest one is that I just… got busy. As lame and unsatisfying as that sounds, it’s true. Life happened. And I have flagellated myself endlessly over it, just certain that my failure was the result of a character flaw… that I was too lazy, too easily distracted, too… I don’t know… too weak to put my nose to the grindstone. I have imagined that there’s an alternate-universe me who somehow got it right and lives that fabulous life I’ve always dreamed of, who writes and does book tours for six or eight months of the year and then travels the rest of the time. (Something like I’ve always imagined Alan Dean Foster, a well-known world traveler, does.) I still long to live that life, or at least to write a single book, just to say I did it.

Except… in recent years, as the relentless march of digital technology has gutted traditional publishing and I’ve gotten to know some real writers and seen just how damn hard it really is… I don’t know anymore that I want to write as a career. The writing part, the actual work of putting words to paper, is the easy bit. The rest is marketing, and the industry around that is cutthroat and only getting worse, and the odds of any actually making a living as a writer are getting smaller all the time. Maybe I’m only telling myself that to console myself; maybe it’s a classic case of sour grapes. But I don’t think so. I do still hope to write that novel, at least one novel, some day. But an industry that functions like publishing apparently does today, where a massive conglomerate like Disney that has more money than god can nevertheless contrive to pinch pennies owed to a man with 50 years of success under his belt, pennies that they wouldn’t even freaking miss… do I really want to be part of that? Why would anybody want to be part of that?

Source for the quotations above.

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Nov182020

The Mouse Is Evil

I doubt my Loyal Readers will be surprised to learn that the first “grown-up” book I ever read was Star Wars, the novelization of the movie that was ostensibly written by George Lucas, but actually was ghost written by a dude named Alan Dean Foster.

The second grown-up book I ever read was Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, a sequel to Star Wars written by that same Alan Dean Foster, and the first of what has now become known as the “Star Wars Expanded Universe” of tie-in novels, comics and games… an empire that rivals Palpatine’s in its reach and wealth.

I think it’s fair to say that Foster was my favorite author when I was a kid, both for his original works and for his novelizations of popular films. He was the king of them during the ’70s and ’80s, adapting everything from the aforementioned Star Wars to  Clash of the Titans. I read all of them over and over again because for me, especially in the pre-home-video era, they were the best way to recapture the experience of those beloved movies. In fact, at one point, I probably read more novelizations — and in particular the novelizations of Alan Dean Foster, because he was the best in this category — than anything else.

So when I heard earlier today that Foster would be delivering a virtual press conference along with the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America about something important, my antenna went up. The virtual conference was livestreamed on Facebook and is still there on SFWA’s page, if you want watch it, but the short version is this: When Disney acquired Lucasfilm, it also acquired Foster’s Star Wars books. And when Disney acquired Fox, it acquired his novelizations of Alien, Aliens and Alien 3. All of these books are still in print and still making money for their owner, which is now, of course, Disney.

And Disney has stopped paying Foster the royalties he’s owed.

Moreover, they refuse to even speak with Foster, his agents, or SFWA about the matter, apparently believing that they acquired the rights to those contracts but not the obligations thereof.

As a fan of Foster, a fan of Star Wars and Alien, as a would-be novelist myself who once thought the coolest thing in the world would be to have Foster’s job, I am infuriated. This is absolute bullshit, the apotheosis of corporate evil and of unfair, 800-pound-gorilla behavior. And here’s the thing: If the Mouse is screwing over Alan Dean Freaking Foster, a hugely successful novelist with a 50-year track record, what are they doing to other writers who don’t have his name or professional savvy?

I’ll be following this story…

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Jan082020

Star Wars: My Worst to Best

Some years ago, my friend Doctor Robert asked me how I would rank the various Star Wars movies. At the time, I begged off with a rueful grin and another slug of scotch. It was an impossible question for me, like being asked to choose which of the children is my favorite, or perhaps more accurately — since I was at that time trying my damnedest to believe all the individual films comprised a single unified story — like trying to pick the best chapter of a favorite novel. It was also, I feared, an unintentionally loaded question that could only stir up more rancor over the still-controversial prequel trilogy, a sore spot I was dearly sick of poking.

That was then, though. Now… well, now things are different. Let’s just say that my feelings about this series have become far more clear in recent years. And so, for anyone who cares about one grumpy old man’s highly opinionated takes on some silly movies about space wizards and their lazer swords…

(Incidentally, I know I wrote in my last post that I’ve grown weary of talking about Star Wars, and I have. But now that the “mainline saga” has supposedly come to an end with the release of Episode IX, it feels like this is the time for an overview like this. Besides… it’s less stressful to think about this than current events.)

Counting backwards from my least favorite:

11. The Force Awakens

I can hear the gasps of surprise and outrage from all the way over here. Sorry. I know many people truly enjoyed this one, and I routinely see claims that it’s as good as any of the original trilogy (OT), but… no. Not for me. Besides my usual complaints about JJ Abrams’ shortcomings as a storyteller, this film struck me as incredibly cynical in the way that it played on my generation’s nostalgia for the originals while simultaneously slapping us in the face with its depiction of our OT heroes. I’m not exaggerating when I say that TFA — as well as finding myself once again the outlier against popular opinion when it came to Star Wars — contributed to me falling into a months-long depression.

10. The Rise of Skywalker

Better than TFA, and I’ll confess that I generally enjoyed it. It even had several moments that moved me to tears (mostly involving the OT heroes, no surprise). But it’s still a JJ Abrams film with all the problems that entails, and it still revolves around the idea that the OT heroes’ struggles and victories didn’t amount to a damn thing. I didn’t like it when Palpatine was resurrected in the old Dark Empire comic-book series back in the ’90s, and I like it even less in a movie trilogy of quasi-remakes built on deconstructing the original films and recasting the old heroes as broken losers.

9. The Last Jedi

While public opinion seems to have crystallized around the notion that TLJ is the worst of the sequel trilogy, I personally think writer-director Rian Johnson did an amazing job of trying to build something interesting on the very shaky foundation left to him by TFA. I like how he redeemed and elevated Luke Skywalker in the end, as well as how he tried to redemocratize the Force and get away from the “chosen one” elitism that settled into the story with the prequels (one of George Lucas’ biggest missteps, in my opinion). Even so, I can’t say that I unreservedly liked any of the films in the sequel trilogy, and I think that all goes back to the creative decisions made before a single frame of film was shot about where the OT characters ended up following the end of their trilogy. It was just plain shitty to do that to longtime fans.

8. Attack of the Clones

Next up is the shakiest entry in the much-maligned prequel trilogy. I never have been able to untangle the mystery plot of this one, and there are moments in it that make me cringe (curiously, Threepio’s head getting grafted onto a battle droid body and changing his personality — “Die, Jedi scum!” — bothers me far more than Anakin’s thoughts on sand). But there are also many elements that I love: the ground battle between the clone army and all the crazy-ass Separatist machines, Slave-1‘s “electric guitar” bombs, the launch of the Republic fleet to the sounds of the Imperial March, the image of dozens of lightsabers powering up all across the arena on Geonosis, and even the greasy-spoon diner on Coruscant. Especially that greasy-spoon… because it just plain amuses me that there is such a place there and that Obi-Wan apparently frequents it.

7. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

A nicely done war movie that I nevertheless rank fairly low because (a) it’s built around a plot point that nobody ever wondered about, (b) the tone is a little too grim-n-gritty for my tastes (i.e., everybody dies), (c) the fan service at the end is a little too blatant (heart-poundingly cool though it was), and (d) I can’t get past the deeply illogical conceit that Leia’s ship was hiding inside a big cruiser during the Battle of Scarif. (Leia was both royalty and a member of the Senate, and her ship was well-known as a diplomatic courier. In short, she and the Tantive IV were extremely valuable undercover assets — “You weren’t on any mercy mission this time…” — and I can’t believe the Alliance would risk either her life or her cover. In my opinion, the old NPR radio drama of Star Wars had a much more satisfying account of how she acquired the Death Star plans, and it bothers me that Rogue One retcons that version away.)

Also — and I admit that this is a meta issue and unfair to the movie itself — I learned about Carrie Fisher’s collapse that led to her death literally moments after seeing this movie with its weirdly plastic-looking simulacrum of her, when I checked my phone during the closing credits, and the association of those two events and the remembered emotions of that experience are… difficult. If not for that, perhaps I’d rank Rogue One more highly.

6. The Phantom Menace

Oh, hush. Just hear me out. If the meta experience of what happened around the time I saw Rogue One can lower that film’s rating, than surely the same thing can elevate this one’s, right? The excitement of the months and weeks leading up to TPM, the experience of standing in line to get in (no longer an issue with online ticket ordering), the uproar in the theater as the titles came up and various characters appeared… I cherish the memories of all that and those memories inform the film itself when I see it now. And in addition, I posit that the film honestly isn’t that bad, as unpopular — even heretical — as that position may be. It tells a straightforward story, it introduces us to wondrous new places (one thing about the recent sequel trilogy: I never once felt any sense of wonder with the worlds it visits; not once), and it contains two of the most thrilling scenes in the entire 11-movie series: the pod race and the final lightsaber fight between Darth Maul, Obi Wan, and Qui Gon Jinn. Plus, Liam Neeson is just cool. I’ve always wished we could’ve seen more of him.

5. Solo: A Star Wars Story

Easily my favorite of the Disney era so far, Solo is also the one with the least baggage hanging over it and the most purely fun entry in the series since 1983. The fate of the galaxy isn’t at stake, there’s no big metaphysical battle between good and evil, it’s just a swashbuckling heist picture with a coming-of-age tale overlaid on it. I was very disappointed that it didn’t do better, as I would’ve loved to have seen where it went next (I strongly suspect there was at least one sequel, if not a full trilogy, planned). Perhaps now that Disney+ appears to be the future for the franchise, a streaming series will pick up the dangling threads.

4. Revenge of the Sith

I always feel like I need to qualify or apologize for my reactions to the prequel trilogy, but with this one it’s really as simple as this: I spent the last 40 minutes or so of ROTS weeping. And George finally gave me the lava-pit fight I’d been imagining since I was eight years old.

3. Return of the Jedi

The weakest entry of the original trilogy is still above everything that’s not part of the original trilogy. Because… original trilogy. Plus, speeder bikes, the Millennium Falcon zigzagging through the rebel fleet, the Emperor taunting Luke, the space battle and flight through Death Star II (the very limit of what FX technology was capable of at that time), “I know,” and Leia going for the deck gun on Jabba’s barge. All things that just make me happy.

2. The Empire Strikes Back

Most people rank Empire as the best of the series, and I can’t disagree on objective, technical terms. It looks the best, it has the most mature story and best performances, and the whole universe seen on-screen just feels more… solid than it did before or since. I adore Empire. But when you get right down to it, there’s one I adore still more…

1. Star Wars

Always my number one. Always. The original 1977 Star Wars was the one that captured my imagination and dominated my childhood dreams, the one that kicked off the phenomenon and inspired all the variety-show sketches and low-budget rip-offs, the one that made the biggest dent on the collective American consciousness. People who’ve never seen a Star Wars movie likely know the names “Darth Vader” and “Death Star,” and this movie is the reason why. It is also the one film of the entire series that works best as a standalone story, in my opinion. All of the others are, to one degree or another, dependent on this one. Certainly they are all derivative of it. But if no other Star Wars film had ever been made, this one would still work on its own terms. And it is still the one I’m most likely to reach for when I’m in the mood to visit the galaxy far, far away…

And there you have it. Probably not many surprises here, at least not for people who’ve listened to me ramble about this stuff over a glass of whisky. Although I don’t foresee my own opinions changing much, it’s going to be interesting to see how the general wisdom on these films evolves in the coming years. I suspect that the prequels and George Lucas in general will be reevaluated against the sequel trilogy and their reputations redeemed somewhat; in fact, I’ve already seen signs of that happening. Along those lines, I also predict that fans will someday talk about all this much the way James Bond fans talk about that franchise; people will have their favorite eras and will debate the merits of each, i.e., it will come down to Lucas Era vs Disney Era, and preferences will likely depend in part on one’s age. Again, there’s already some of that going on, as the generation that grew up on the prequels displays a far different perspective on them than we older original-trilogy kids.

For me personally, I can no longer view the whole thing as one big happy story. I now realize after all these years of trying to embrace everything that I’m really primarily a fan of the original trilogy, and in particular of all the stuff that came out in the years between SW and TESB. Everything else — everything! — is, in my view, derivative of the OT and has to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Which means that, for me, Star Wars will mostly be an exercise in nostalgia going forward. In other words, I’ve arrived at pretty much the same place with this that I’ve been at with Star Trek for many years now. And isn’t it interesting that I reached that point with both franchises as a result of films made by JJ Abrams? He is become Death, the Destroyer of Franchises. If I hear he’s been assigned to do the long-rumored Highlander remake next, I think it’ll be time for me to go live on a mountaintop somewhere…

One final thought: I think Star Wars might be finished as a movie series. There is still talk of a new trilogy in development that’s unrelated to the Skywalker Saga, but after all the truly vicious fan response to the recent films — and even going back to the prequels — I’ll believe it when I see it. Instead, I think Disney is going to take the safer route of producing SW television shows for its streaming platform, Disney+. I think The Mouse will find it less risky, as well as easier to satisfy all the splintered segments of fandom, to produce a number of limited-run, relatively cheap TV shows than to bet everything on occasional, very expensive feature films. And you know, I think that might be better for the content, too… a wider possible range of subject matter and tone, and maybe even the possibility of more inventiveness and originality, instead of stories always constrained by the need to fit the formula of “a Star Wars movie.” We’ll see, I guess. The Mandalorian has been a success, but the next one might not be.

In the meantime, we’ll always have the original trilogy…

 

 

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Apr092019

“She May Not Look Like Much, But She’s Got It Where It Counts…”

We’re about to go deep into the nerdy weeds here, kids, so consider yourself warned.

Still with me? Okay then. You must be my kinda people.

So, anyhow, earlier tonight I was reading a Star Wars comic book, one of the new series that began in 2015 when Marvel reacquired the license for the first time since the 1980s. The story was all right, building pretty organically from the end of the original movie and featuring decent artwork, imaginative set-pieces, good banter between Han and Leia, and some spooky Darth Vader action. (Let’s just say things don’t go well for the stormtrooper who accidentally sees the Dark Lord without his helmet!). But there was something bugging me throughout the story, which was this: the Millennium Falcon is disabled and Leia keeps making little jibes about the ship being unreliable.

But Bennion, you’re saying, that’s the Falcon. That’s the running gag in Star Wars, right, that the Falcon is a piece of junk? Um, no, actually, it’s not. The gag is that she looks like a pile of junk but isn’t really. “She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid.” That’s how Han Solo responds when Luke Skywalker first lays eyes on the ship that made the Kessel Run. And for a change, he’s not boasting. She performs flawlessly throughout the film. In the six movies in which the Falcon prominently appears, she’s only majorly on the fritz in one, The Empire Strikes Back, and that’s only because Han and Chewie were in the middle of an overhaul and had to throw her back together in about an hour instead of being able to take their time.

Even in The Force Awakens, when she’s been parked in the Jakku scrapyard for who knows how long, there’s nothing seriously wrong with her that a quick rewiring on the fly doesn’t solve. (I have major issues with that scene, by the way, but that’s a rant for another time; you know, like the tale of how Anakin Skywalker’s old lightsaber, which should have been in about a million pieces at the bottom of Cloud City, instead ended up in a weird old lady’s steamer trunk on a completely different planet. Friggin’ JJ Abrams.)

It’s not even a running gag among the characters. In the entire saga, I can think of only four times — four — when people put down the Millennium Falcon: Luke calls her a piece of junk when he first lays eyes on her; Leia says, “You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought!”; and Rey calls her “garbage” in a deliberate callback to Luke’s first reaction. In all three of those cases, they’re proven wrong almost immediately. The fourth example is Lando calling her “the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy,” and that’s obviously an affectionate comment from someone who knows what she’s really capable of.

And yet, it’s become a trope, a cliche even, that the Falcon is always breaking down or threatening to. It was a constant thing in the Expanded Universe novels and comics that Disney has now reclassified as apocryphal “Legends,” and it always drove me crazy because it just wasn’t accurate to what we actually see in the movies.

See, here’s the thing: The Millennium Falcon is the equivalent of what car enthusiasts call a “rat rod.” That’s a hot rod that’s specifically built to look like it was cobbled together out of random bits of found machinery. The creativity in their physical appearances can be truly inspiring, especially in the ones that look the worst, if that makes sense. They’re usually painted in drab colors or left with a natural patina of rust. Dents and even bullet holes are part of the look. But if you get one built by someone who knows what they’re doing, they’re ungodly powerful racers. Sound familiar? I wish more Star Wars writers understood the Falcon in those terms…

It’s just a peeve of mine. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

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Aug032018

Nice Bit of Writing

Nothing much to say here, I just liked something I read during my morning commute. One of the most common scenes in any Star Wars-related novel is, of course, an enemy fighter getting pasted by the Millennium Falcon‘s mighty quad-mounted laser turrets. I’ve read countless variations on that theme over the years, and I imagine it’s an immense challenge for a writer to find some way of making it fresh and interesting. But I thought this particular instance was done with a lot of panache:

The enemy wriggled off the hook once more, but this one made an error, too: he got sore. Veering in a wide, angry, predictable loop, he came back to have his vengeance. Instead, he got four parallel pulsed beams of raw fusion-reactor output straight in the helmet visor.

And exploded, showering space with incandescent atoms.

That’s from Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon by L. Neil Smith… kudos, sir!

 

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Jul272018

Ow, Quit It…

My recent joyful reaction to the movie Solo: A Star Wars Story not only reinvigorated my attitude about the whole damn Star Wars franchise, it also inspired me to revisit the original early adventures of Han and Lando: the Han Solo novels by Brian Daley, and the Lando Calrissian adventures by L. Neil Smith.

The Daley books are old favorites of mine, as I’ve surely mentioned before. I’ve read them many, many times, especially the first two — Han Solo at Star’s End and Han Solo’s Revenge. The Lando books, on the other hand… I’m not sure I even got around to reading all three of them back in the day. I want to say I only got through the first two in the trilogy, and I’m certain I’ve never gone back to them in all the decades since. And looking back now, I can’t really say why. I have a vague memory of thinking they didn’t feel very much like Star Wars to me, as if they were pre-existing works that the author had simply retrofitted with new character names. But I think it’s far more likely that it was simply bad timing. They were published the same summer that Return of the Jedi was first released in theaters, 1983, and it really felt back then as if the whole thing was just… over. Factor in my age at the time — I was thirteen going on fourteen — and I think there’s  a good chance I was simply ready to turn my attention to, shall we say, other things. (I’m talking about girls, if that’s not obvious.)

It’s a bit of a shame, really, as I find I’m enjoying the Lando books perfectly well this time around. They’re as “Star Wars-y” as any of the other tie-in novels I’ve read, and I can easily visualize Donald Glover — the young Lando we see in the Solo movie — having these adventures a couple years prior to the events of that film. (It probably helps that Glover’s Lando explicitly references a couple things from these books during the movie, a deliberate Easter egg for old-school fans like myself.) There is, however, one aspect of these books that’s bringing me down a bit, and that’s L. Neil Smith’s tendency to insert really awful jokes based on 20th century Earthly consumer goods. In the first volume, Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu, there’s a throwaway line about “Lyme’s rose juice,” which would’ve gone right over my head when I was 13 but now instantly clicks as a play on the Rose’s lime juice I use to make cocktails with. I know, right? As bad as that is, though, Smith tops it in the second book, Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon.

The Flamewind is a natural phenomenon in the star system Lando is visiting in this book, an effect caused by the local solar wind interacting with magnetic fields to fill the space between the system’s worlds with brilliant colors, something like the aurora borealis here on Earth. Neat idea… but tell me this doesn’t make you want to groan:

Outside, a braid of raspberry red, lemon yellow, and orange orange twisted through the heavens, across a constellation locals called the Silly Rabbit.

Now, maybe that doesn’t mean anything to Millennials and Gen-Zs, but for we Xers who grew up on Saturday morning cartoons and all the junk food that was advertised in between them…

Silly Rabbit indeed. Sigh.

 

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Mar232018

This Makes Me Smile…

Okay, this will take a bit of setup, so bear with me for a moment, please.

As part of its all-out exploitation, um, that is, expansion of the Star Wars brand, Disney has recently begun producing animated shorts set in the SW universe and released through the Disney YouTube channel. These shorts, collectively known as Star Wars Forces of Destiny, are each two to three minutes long and focus on the female characters of Star Wars (there is, however, at least one centered on Luke Skywalker). I’ve seen a few of them and they’re… nice. They’re obviously aimed at a very young audience, and they’re too short for any deep storytelling — mostly they’re little vignettes that fill in plot details you never knew you were curious about — but they’re cute, upbeat, well drawn and animated, and — I especially like this — they include familiar voice talents from both the SW feature films (Daisy Ridley, Felicity Jones, John Boyega, Lupita Nyong’o, and even Mark Hamill) and other animated SW series (Ashley Eckstein from Clone Wars and Rebels, Vanessa Marshall and Tiya Sircar from Rebels).

As if all that weren’t gratifying enough, though, I just spotted something in one of the latest ones, “Bounty Hunted,” that really made me smile. See if you can catch it, too, about 14 seconds in:

Did you see it? Did you? Eh, probably not. The moment passes quickly, and you’d have to be an old super-nerd like me to even know what you’re looking at.

At 0:14, there are a couple shadowy figures in the foreground who, on closer inspection, appear to be Jaxxon, the six-foot-tall green humanoid rabbit from the original Marvel Comics series of the late 1970s, and Skorr, a cyborg bounty hunter seen in the Star Wars newspaper comics of the same period, which were drawn by the legendary Al Williamson. (Skorr was meant to be “that bounty hunter [they] ran into on Ord Mantell.”)

It’s funny that this would cross my radar this morning, as I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the early days of the Star Wars phenomenon, in particular that short-lived period between the release of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back when there really weren’t any rules or conventions yet. Today, the franchise labors to breathe under decades of backstory, questions of what is or is not “canon,” and, most significantly, the weight of expectations, both from the property owners and the fans themselves. But back in the day, 1977-1980, well… it seemed like anything was possible then, and the only thing anyone really cared about was that there should be more. My friend Kelly recently called that period “the gonzo years,” and it’s an entirely appropriate title. The stories being published by Marvel and in the very earliest tie-in novels by Brian Daley and Alan Dead Foster were colorful, freewheeling, frequently weird, sometimes awe-inspiring, and most of all, they were fun. (I think part of the reason I responded so positively to the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie is because I saw in it the same pleasingly anarchic sensibilities as the early era of Star Wars.)

It makes me happy that somebody at Disney remembers “the gonzo years” and was able to honor them even in a small way.

And it makes me even happier that Jaxxon is now officially canon…

However, on a slightly grumpier note, I thought the last line of this short, the one about telling Han that Leia is a keeper, was a real heartbreaker considering what we learn about them in The Force Awakens. Han and Leia not being together, or at least not getting back together, was one of the many reasons I didn’t like that movie, and one of the many fundamental decisions underpinning the sequel trilogy that I disagree with. But that’s another entry…

 

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