Just finished the Mandalorian this weekend, as my girlfriend and I have had our attention pulled from Disney+ by her DVDs of Boston Legal and by the first season of Project Blue Book. But we got on the Baby Yoda bandwagon fairly early, and I'd say we've enjoyed the show a lot - especially in light of what the movies have been serving up.
In fact, it's probably fair to say that the Mandalorian is the best Star Wars to come out since Rogue One, or possibly even since the original trilogy (since Rogue One, as much as I love it, suffers from some serious character problems).
I haven't devoted an entire blog to it, but I was quite disappointed by Episode 9. The first hour is a headache-inducing mass of set pieces, with plot points pulled out of nowhere to satisfy the filmmakers' need to move the plot along. I'm reminded of critiques I used to get on my own writing, where beta readers would accuse me of placing characters in certain situations because the plot demanded it, rather than it being organically driven by the characters themselves.
I've seen other instances of it since then, but this is potentially one of the worst - the Emperor Palpatine, who hasn't appeared in any of the sequel trilogy films until now, just announces his return to the galaxy. Off-screen.
Why? Because JJ Abrams needs him to.
The Last Jedi was also a bit frustrating for me, as it wastes a bunch of characters and has to be walked back by Rise of Skywalker, even if I could appreciate the swing for the fences.
And Solo was fine, though not necessarily ground-breaking. I also find it hard to forgive the filmmakers for how they came up with Han's last name.
So, you could say that the public's been waiting for a nice, enjoyable, non-divisive Star Wars movie or show or, well, anything. And we've got that in the shape of the Mandalorian.
If we accept that Star Wars has always been an exercise in remixing tropes and visuals from other movies and genres, then it's not such a large leap to suggesting that the most successful Star Wars movies are those that wear its influences most proudly. Episode 4 is a prime example, with kissing princesses (who are also pretty dab hands with a blaster), swinging across chasms and fighter battles lifted straight from World War II movies as its clearest "homages" to what's gone before.
Westerns, samurai movies and Dune are also heavily in the mix, as we see in that movie and in the next two films in the original trilogy. Rogue One also wears its influences pretty proudly, and the Mandalorian joins this tradition by clearly being a space western, just as clearly as Firefly was.
Like Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns, the main character swaggers onto the screen with barely a word, no hint of his name or face or background. We spend the first episode learning about what he does for a living, watching him move toward the moment where he has to decide whether to follow his principles or his quest for more beskar steel. Though let's be honest, it's easy to follow your principles when they involve saving an adorable Baby Yoda from being blasted by an assassin droid.
The next few episodes take the space western thing and run with it, as he fights off assassins trying to get his prize, goes running elsewhere and gets involved in Seven Samurai-style adventures to help a peaceful village fight off raiders. And at last he gathers the folks who've helped him up until now, to face down the Empire - featuring surprisingly affecting deaths of several characters on the way.
Thinking about the show this way, it feels like storytelling - or rather, just telling a good story - is at the heart of the Mandalorian the way it hasn't been for Star Wars for... well, decades. Part of what ruins the prequels is the fact that you know what's going to happen to the characters. Part of what ruins the sequels is the feeling that Rey's story, at the final reckoning, is inessential.
The thing that made Rogue One work for me was the way it fit into the tapestry of the earlier movies - it doesn't retcon anything (at least, not to a significant degree), but rather fills in some blanks and leads into Episode 4 in quite a satisfying way, while also showing you other aspects of the universe that still fit in with what we know of Star Wars.
The Mandalorian manages this at the other end of the original trilogy, taking place after the collapse of the Empire in Return of the Jedi, but showing how the galaxy has been thrown into chaos by the death of Palpatine and the formation of the New Republic. Imperial forces are still running around, but they're a little dustier and dirtier, more warlords than Imperial officers - which feels like a cool plot development.
The Mandalorian is also probably the most sympathetic main character Star Wars has had in a while. You have to appreciate the acting job that Pedro Pascal does in the lead role, since his face is covered the whole time and his voice is mostly muffled by his helmet, taking away the two most important tools in an actor's arsenal. Yet he still conveys a range of emotion through the helmet, for example when he's tenderly taking care of Baby Yoda.
The Child (to give him his official name) is also a great addition, since he fills that time-honored niche of cute sidekick that R2-D2 and BB8 have done such a good job with since 1977. He's a marvel of digital and practical effects, and his eyes and ears are so expressive that you can't take your eyes off him whenever he's on screen. You might scoff at a grown man fawning over a cute puppet, but that contrast between hardened killer and innocent child makes for great drama (while also being a nice callback to Lone Wolf and Cub).
Given what a nice job they did with the Mandalorian, one hopes that the creative team, and especially show runner Jon Favreau, gets hired to make the next few Star Wars movies. But then, what do you expect from the director whose vision brought us the first Iron Man movie, and with it the whole MCU?
Thursday, 30 January 2020
Sunday, 26 January 2020
Crisis on Infinite Earths: Endgame for DC Nerds
Took a while to start, and took a while to finish, but I finally managed to get through the CW's Arrowverse crossover for this season, Crisis on Infinite Earths. It's been teased heavily for a while, with some of the characters from last season's Elseworlds crossover hinting at it, and the Crisis has also been intended to serve as a sendoff for Arrow, the CW's first show in this shared universe.
Like all of the Arrowverse shows, there are a few easily anticipated negatives: the quality from show to show, and from episode to episode, can be variable (just like during the regular season; it's not always clear that the story requires being told across so many hours; and if you don't watch a specific show that participates, there can be a moment of adjusting to figuring out who all the new faces are (or, if you do watch the show, it can be jarring to go from normal one week, crossover the next and back again the week after that).
For this one I'd also add that the mix of characters sometimes struck me as weird, with the so-called Paragons facing off against armies of shadow demons who... burst into ash the minute you hit them? This is convenient for keeping the plot moving, but if you stop to think about why the guy tipped as the new Atom, Ryan Choi, can help the likes of Supergirl and the Flash, then it starts to fall apart.
But that's not why we're here!
They've hinted already in a number of previous seasons and episodes that basically any live-action DC-based show can be included as canon for the Arrowverse. Sometimes it was blatant, like pulling John Constantine from NBC's short-lived show for a pivotal part of Arrow Season 4, and other times it was more subtle, like bringing John Wesley Shipp back to play the same Flash that he played in the early 90s show (and kudos to the Flash team for also bringing in Mark Hamill to play the Trickster, the role he played in that early show, but also filtered through the version of the Joker that he voiced in the 90 Batman animated series).
This time, however, they went all out, and from a fan-service point of view it was all extremely satisfying. The first episode features cameos from none other than Robert Wuhl in his role from the 1989 Michael Keaton Batman (Earth-89) and Burt Ward giving his catchphrase from the 1960s Adam West Batman (Earth-66). Another episode has a cameo from the old Birds of Prey show, they even found time to bring back Tom Welling to reprise the version of Clark Kent he played on Smallville - I only watched a couple of seasons of that show but it warmed the cockles of this jaded old heart to see even him. And of course, they brought in none other than Kevin Conroy to play future Bruce Wayne, which I loved, at least at first.
They also pulled in some more contemporary cameos, for instance DC Universe's Titans, Doom Patrol and Swamp Thing, and the one that made me squeal with the most glee was seeing Lucifer pop up (on Earth-666, no less). I was less sure of Ezra Miller's Barry Allen appearing, because I don't like that version of the Justice League and I don't know if his movie's ever actually coming out, but from the perspective of showing that all DC shows are linked, it was nice to see.
In terms of story, it was entertaining enough - in the title I suggest this is the DC version of Marvel's Avengers: Endgame, which is accurate in terms of closing out one phase of the last few years' shows, but maybe less accurate in terms of plot cohesiveness, for the reasons I mentioned above. But for all the relatively cheap looking sets and effects, it's still nice seeing a classic story like the 1985 Crisis brought to life, pulling in loads of new and old characters and giving them some surprisingly resonant moments, like when the Old Flash remembers a scene from the 90s TV show before disappearing into the Speed Force.
And as far as a farewell for Arrow, it's a nice sendoff for Stephen Amell to kill him not once but twice, bringing him back as the Spectre and allowing some of his supporting cast the leeway to move on to their next shows, like Green Arrow and the Canaries. As mentioned above, the show has seen variable quality, with a good first season, great second, meh third and fourth, and similar ups and downs since.
From the very first season, the creators have thrown in Easter eggs for seasoned fans, both of Green Arrow lore and of DC in general. The current incarnation of Team Arrow has had some curiously D-list supporting players, like Wild Dog. But while some reviewers thought that a negative, I liked it because it was more in keeping with the incarnation of the character that has most influenced this show.
Mike Grell's version of Green Arrow, starting with the Longbow Hunters miniseries, was aimed more at adults and fit in with the Question, Wild Dog and Vigilante as a street-level corner of the DC Universe. Batman would appear from time to time, but so would the word "shit", and the more fantastical super powers were pretty rare. It came at about the same time as Neil Gaiman's Sandman, but while that book spawned the entire Vertigo line, Green Arrow and the Question carried on as their own weird little sub-universe for a few years and then were subsumed back into the main universe. The ironic thing is that if they'd kept on longer, they might have been able to survive within Vertigo once it grew past its horror/dark fantasy roots to include crime books like 100 Bullets.
The other funny thing about Arrow is that because they couldn't use Batman, Green Arrow effectively filled that niche for the Arrowverse, becoming the elder statesman and brooding human vigilante figure - so it's not too surprising how they've skipped past Batman to have a Batwoman show instead, all the while retconning Bruce Wayne and Gotham City into the universe.
It's a little sad to see Arrow draw to an end after all these years - it was one of the first shows I watched on Netflix when I moved back here to the US - but it has been pretty long in the tooth for a while. After season 5, a particular high, they were dragged down by the Ricardo Diaz storyline that went on through two seasons before fizzling out (pun intended, given that someone set him on fire). But it was still fun seeing Ollie and the gang fight the latest menace, and spotting the latest fan service reference (like, why did it take me so long to realize that his buddy Anatoly was the KGBeast from the comics?).
So I'll miss the show, because of the fun times I've had with it. Seeing Ollie go from violent vigilante to mayor to... well, the Spectre, has been entertaining at times and infuriating at others. I'll probably not keep on with the Canaries show, because his daughter Mia and the potential future setting don't grab me as much, though if it gets good reviews I'll probably revise that opinion. I don't know how long I'll keep on with the Flash either, as that's never again hit the heights of its first season, though it's always fun to see how the creators add some new wrinkle to their already convoluted mythology.
In any case, I mentioned several years ago how DC was killing it on TV, if not at the movies, and it's been nice to see that at least some of the attitudes and traditions that I love about DC Comics have made it to the Arrowverse. That may not continue, but in compensation DC looks to be finding its feet at the movies again, starting with Wonder Woman and going through Aquaman and Shazam, which were both surprisingly watchable. I'm just hoping they can manage a good new Superman movie, for once.
And if not... well, maybe Brandon Routh can be persuaded to don the black shield once more and do Kingdom Come? Because that was another fun Easter egg to see.
Like all of the Arrowverse shows, there are a few easily anticipated negatives: the quality from show to show, and from episode to episode, can be variable (just like during the regular season; it's not always clear that the story requires being told across so many hours; and if you don't watch a specific show that participates, there can be a moment of adjusting to figuring out who all the new faces are (or, if you do watch the show, it can be jarring to go from normal one week, crossover the next and back again the week after that).
For this one I'd also add that the mix of characters sometimes struck me as weird, with the so-called Paragons facing off against armies of shadow demons who... burst into ash the minute you hit them? This is convenient for keeping the plot moving, but if you stop to think about why the guy tipped as the new Atom, Ryan Choi, can help the likes of Supergirl and the Flash, then it starts to fall apart.
But that's not why we're here!
They've hinted already in a number of previous seasons and episodes that basically any live-action DC-based show can be included as canon for the Arrowverse. Sometimes it was blatant, like pulling John Constantine from NBC's short-lived show for a pivotal part of Arrow Season 4, and other times it was more subtle, like bringing John Wesley Shipp back to play the same Flash that he played in the early 90s show (and kudos to the Flash team for also bringing in Mark Hamill to play the Trickster, the role he played in that early show, but also filtered through the version of the Joker that he voiced in the 90 Batman animated series).
This time, however, they went all out, and from a fan-service point of view it was all extremely satisfying. The first episode features cameos from none other than Robert Wuhl in his role from the 1989 Michael Keaton Batman (Earth-89) and Burt Ward giving his catchphrase from the 1960s Adam West Batman (Earth-66). Another episode has a cameo from the old Birds of Prey show, they even found time to bring back Tom Welling to reprise the version of Clark Kent he played on Smallville - I only watched a couple of seasons of that show but it warmed the cockles of this jaded old heart to see even him. And of course, they brought in none other than Kevin Conroy to play future Bruce Wayne, which I loved, at least at first.
They also pulled in some more contemporary cameos, for instance DC Universe's Titans, Doom Patrol and Swamp Thing, and the one that made me squeal with the most glee was seeing Lucifer pop up (on Earth-666, no less). I was less sure of Ezra Miller's Barry Allen appearing, because I don't like that version of the Justice League and I don't know if his movie's ever actually coming out, but from the perspective of showing that all DC shows are linked, it was nice to see.
In terms of story, it was entertaining enough - in the title I suggest this is the DC version of Marvel's Avengers: Endgame, which is accurate in terms of closing out one phase of the last few years' shows, but maybe less accurate in terms of plot cohesiveness, for the reasons I mentioned above. But for all the relatively cheap looking sets and effects, it's still nice seeing a classic story like the 1985 Crisis brought to life, pulling in loads of new and old characters and giving them some surprisingly resonant moments, like when the Old Flash remembers a scene from the 90s TV show before disappearing into the Speed Force.
And as far as a farewell for Arrow, it's a nice sendoff for Stephen Amell to kill him not once but twice, bringing him back as the Spectre and allowing some of his supporting cast the leeway to move on to their next shows, like Green Arrow and the Canaries. As mentioned above, the show has seen variable quality, with a good first season, great second, meh third and fourth, and similar ups and downs since.
From the very first season, the creators have thrown in Easter eggs for seasoned fans, both of Green Arrow lore and of DC in general. The current incarnation of Team Arrow has had some curiously D-list supporting players, like Wild Dog. But while some reviewers thought that a negative, I liked it because it was more in keeping with the incarnation of the character that has most influenced this show.
Mike Grell's version of Green Arrow, starting with the Longbow Hunters miniseries, was aimed more at adults and fit in with the Question, Wild Dog and Vigilante as a street-level corner of the DC Universe. Batman would appear from time to time, but so would the word "shit", and the more fantastical super powers were pretty rare. It came at about the same time as Neil Gaiman's Sandman, but while that book spawned the entire Vertigo line, Green Arrow and the Question carried on as their own weird little sub-universe for a few years and then were subsumed back into the main universe. The ironic thing is that if they'd kept on longer, they might have been able to survive within Vertigo once it grew past its horror/dark fantasy roots to include crime books like 100 Bullets.
The other funny thing about Arrow is that because they couldn't use Batman, Green Arrow effectively filled that niche for the Arrowverse, becoming the elder statesman and brooding human vigilante figure - so it's not too surprising how they've skipped past Batman to have a Batwoman show instead, all the while retconning Bruce Wayne and Gotham City into the universe.
It's a little sad to see Arrow draw to an end after all these years - it was one of the first shows I watched on Netflix when I moved back here to the US - but it has been pretty long in the tooth for a while. After season 5, a particular high, they were dragged down by the Ricardo Diaz storyline that went on through two seasons before fizzling out (pun intended, given that someone set him on fire). But it was still fun seeing Ollie and the gang fight the latest menace, and spotting the latest fan service reference (like, why did it take me so long to realize that his buddy Anatoly was the KGBeast from the comics?).
So I'll miss the show, because of the fun times I've had with it. Seeing Ollie go from violent vigilante to mayor to... well, the Spectre, has been entertaining at times and infuriating at others. I'll probably not keep on with the Canaries show, because his daughter Mia and the potential future setting don't grab me as much, though if it gets good reviews I'll probably revise that opinion. I don't know how long I'll keep on with the Flash either, as that's never again hit the heights of its first season, though it's always fun to see how the creators add some new wrinkle to their already convoluted mythology.
In any case, I mentioned several years ago how DC was killing it on TV, if not at the movies, and it's been nice to see that at least some of the attitudes and traditions that I love about DC Comics have made it to the Arrowverse. That may not continue, but in compensation DC looks to be finding its feet at the movies again, starting with Wonder Woman and going through Aquaman and Shazam, which were both surprisingly watchable. I'm just hoping they can manage a good new Superman movie, for once.
And if not... well, maybe Brandon Routh can be persuaded to don the black shield once more and do Kingdom Come? Because that was another fun Easter egg to see.
Sunday, 12 January 2020
What Does 2020 Hold?
Think this is going to be another dark one - both this post and this year.
Not at a personal level, necessarily: unless political realities impinge on my personal life, I'm planning on having more fun times with my honey, and on writing more stories (although I hope I'll do better than last year's output), and on generally enjoying myself.
But I've got a sick feeling that in 2020, America (and by extension the rest of the Western world) is going to pause at the brink... and then plunge straight on down.
I'm basing this in part on the UK election result from last month, which I expect to be a canary in the coal mine the way the Brexit referendum was in 2016. There are numerous differences between the Labour Party and the Democrats, not least the fact that the Democrats haven't opted for the "left-wing" candidate over the "establishment" one (I'm slightly troubled by both epithets) the way Labour did.
The other difference is that Labour still hasn't recovered from the Blair years, and so any internal fights are still between groups representing Blair's wing of the party against those repudiating his policies. The Democrats, on the other hand, got over their Clinton hangover in a short eight years, by electing Obama; moreover, his election didn't bring electoral success at the cost of the party's long-held ideals, so his shadow doesn't loom quite so large over the party as Blair's does over Labour.
But on the other hand, there is an area where Obama maybe does wield an undue influence, which is likely to hurt the party in November. He represented a new, "hopey-changey" type of candidate, in the words of that dum-dum Sarah Palin, and it's hard to point to any of the remaining Democrats in this race who fill that same role. He was a break from the Clinton family's influence, but in failing to establish his own wing of the party, there's no obvious success to him, just as there wasn't in 2016.
To be clear, I think any of these candidates would do a better job than the incumbent (even the ones who've already dropped out, up to and including Marianne Williamson, worrying comments on mental health aside). But I don't feel that any of them represents the kind of groundswell that could help overcome Donald Trump's inbuilt advantages.
Those advantages are various, and were there in the last election. I've spent these past 3+ years noting that there wasn't one thing that put him in the White House - rather, a perfect shit storm came together all at the same time, in the form of Russian interference, social media manipulation, voter suppression, voter apathy and white rage. Plus a number of other factors which are probably too arcane for us non-wonks to get a handle on.
My point is that a lot of these factors are still present - in 2018 we saw voter suppression efforts in the state of Georgia, and there are others going on with the express aim of denying the vote to college students (such as in New Hampshire) as well as people of color. Facebook has disclaimed any responsibility for its role in 2016, and so is proudly trumpeting the fact that it's still allowing lies in political ads. Voter apathy continues apace, and white rage has gotten, if anything, worse since 2016 - we've even started having hate crimes against black churches here in Palo Alto (not that I'm claiming my hometown has always been a perfect model of diversity, but that racists are so emboldened to attack black churches here speaks volumes).
And then there's the inbuilt advantage for the GOP in the Electoral College, where there are more small states with undue influence than large, populous and urban states.
The other question is what will a second Trump administration mean for America? I've heard legal scholars and experts suggest that all the institutions that have been holding him back so far will be further gutted, meaning even less consumer protection and rule of law. Institutional corruption will be allowed to gather even more pace, and the transfer of wealth from the middle and working classes to the ultra-rich will also likely accelerate.
Recourse to the courts to block his agenda will be further limited as age takes its toll on the remaining Supreme Court justices (Breyer and Ginsburg) who were put forward by Bill Clinton in the 1990s - and if any of the Republican justices predating Trump's term have to leave the court, he'll have even more opportunities to nominate justices, and the Democrats won't have any recourse unless they retake the Senate.
The future isn't set in stone, of course, so we'll all need to be working toward electing the candidates who are best-placed to counter his agenda - and not just candidates to replace him in the White House. Especially in battleground states, it'll be important for voters to pay attention to the state and local races, especially judgeships, as that's the group that'll form the pool for Trump and future presidents (if there will be any) to select federal judges from.
I'll be looking for ways to do my bit, and I hope you will too, starting with one of the more venerable get-out-the-vote groups, Rock the Vote. One of the GOP's in-built advantages is that its base tends to vote more often, so Democrat-aligned groups have to do more to get people registered and voting. As I find more groups I'll try and post them here, either in the blog or elsewhere on the site.
Not at a personal level, necessarily: unless political realities impinge on my personal life, I'm planning on having more fun times with my honey, and on writing more stories (although I hope I'll do better than last year's output), and on generally enjoying myself.
But I've got a sick feeling that in 2020, America (and by extension the rest of the Western world) is going to pause at the brink... and then plunge straight on down.
I'm basing this in part on the UK election result from last month, which I expect to be a canary in the coal mine the way the Brexit referendum was in 2016. There are numerous differences between the Labour Party and the Democrats, not least the fact that the Democrats haven't opted for the "left-wing" candidate over the "establishment" one (I'm slightly troubled by both epithets) the way Labour did.
The other difference is that Labour still hasn't recovered from the Blair years, and so any internal fights are still between groups representing Blair's wing of the party against those repudiating his policies. The Democrats, on the other hand, got over their Clinton hangover in a short eight years, by electing Obama; moreover, his election didn't bring electoral success at the cost of the party's long-held ideals, so his shadow doesn't loom quite so large over the party as Blair's does over Labour.
But on the other hand, there is an area where Obama maybe does wield an undue influence, which is likely to hurt the party in November. He represented a new, "hopey-changey" type of candidate, in the words of that dum-dum Sarah Palin, and it's hard to point to any of the remaining Democrats in this race who fill that same role. He was a break from the Clinton family's influence, but in failing to establish his own wing of the party, there's no obvious success to him, just as there wasn't in 2016.
To be clear, I think any of these candidates would do a better job than the incumbent (even the ones who've already dropped out, up to and including Marianne Williamson, worrying comments on mental health aside). But I don't feel that any of them represents the kind of groundswell that could help overcome Donald Trump's inbuilt advantages.
Those advantages are various, and were there in the last election. I've spent these past 3+ years noting that there wasn't one thing that put him in the White House - rather, a perfect shit storm came together all at the same time, in the form of Russian interference, social media manipulation, voter suppression, voter apathy and white rage. Plus a number of other factors which are probably too arcane for us non-wonks to get a handle on.
My point is that a lot of these factors are still present - in 2018 we saw voter suppression efforts in the state of Georgia, and there are others going on with the express aim of denying the vote to college students (such as in New Hampshire) as well as people of color. Facebook has disclaimed any responsibility for its role in 2016, and so is proudly trumpeting the fact that it's still allowing lies in political ads. Voter apathy continues apace, and white rage has gotten, if anything, worse since 2016 - we've even started having hate crimes against black churches here in Palo Alto (not that I'm claiming my hometown has always been a perfect model of diversity, but that racists are so emboldened to attack black churches here speaks volumes).
And then there's the inbuilt advantage for the GOP in the Electoral College, where there are more small states with undue influence than large, populous and urban states.
The other question is what will a second Trump administration mean for America? I've heard legal scholars and experts suggest that all the institutions that have been holding him back so far will be further gutted, meaning even less consumer protection and rule of law. Institutional corruption will be allowed to gather even more pace, and the transfer of wealth from the middle and working classes to the ultra-rich will also likely accelerate.
Recourse to the courts to block his agenda will be further limited as age takes its toll on the remaining Supreme Court justices (Breyer and Ginsburg) who were put forward by Bill Clinton in the 1990s - and if any of the Republican justices predating Trump's term have to leave the court, he'll have even more opportunities to nominate justices, and the Democrats won't have any recourse unless they retake the Senate.
The future isn't set in stone, of course, so we'll all need to be working toward electing the candidates who are best-placed to counter his agenda - and not just candidates to replace him in the White House. Especially in battleground states, it'll be important for voters to pay attention to the state and local races, especially judgeships, as that's the group that'll form the pool for Trump and future presidents (if there will be any) to select federal judges from.
I'll be looking for ways to do my bit, and I hope you will too, starting with one of the more venerable get-out-the-vote groups, Rock the Vote. One of the GOP's in-built advantages is that its base tends to vote more often, so Democrat-aligned groups have to do more to get people registered and voting. As I find more groups I'll try and post them here, either in the blog or elsewhere on the site.
Tuesday, 7 January 2020
2019: The Decade Wrapped
I chose that title on the fly because I'm listening to the "decade playlist" that Spotify has auto-generated for me, but it also reflects what I wanted to chat about for this post, the first of this new year and decade (which should have been the last of the previous, but that's what happens when you're busy having fun).
I've seen a lot of people, both friends and media outlets, talking about the decade that began on 1 January 2010 and ended last week, but the more I thought about these past ten years, the more I had to expand my definition to include 2009, because in so many ways that's when a lot of the things I'm doing started.
The main one is dating - I'd asked women out before then, but until 2009 I hadn't been on a proper date, where both parties knew and accepted that it was intended to be such. I'd been on various dating websites before then, but what clicked was getting onto the Guardian's Soulmates service, and then taking great care to write a decent profile - the first woman I went out with started strong, leading to four dates and kisses (including a makeout session at Angel Tube Station a week before I turned 30), but I can't say I maintained that momentum for the next few years. There were a few more women I went on multiple dates with, but none so fun until I met my girlfriend in mid-2019 - and as she reads this blog sometimes, she'll be happy to hear that she was worth the wait.
[Awwwww]
2009 also marked the start of my travels, at least in their current form. I'd had some good trips in the years before then, when I had lived in Southend, but none of those had been very far afield, and as I grew more concerned about saving what little money I earned I found it harder to justify spending on train trips and hotel stays to increasingly marginal spots in Southeast England. So it took romantic rejection in 2009 to finally say, "Fuck it," and book a week away in Paris.
Reader, it was amazing. I know there are those who claim that Paris is overrated, but my experiences with the City of Light have been uniformly wonderful. I decamped there with my shoulder bag, a week's change of clothes, and four books - I spent that week traipsing around eating good food, reading obsessively and hitting as many sights as I could stand. I even managed a couple nights up in Normandy to see the D-Day Beaches and the Bayeux Tapestry.
That trip set the template for others that I took in the following years, notably Singapore, Portland, Buenos Aires and Tokyo: I would decamp alone (more or less), and spend my days exploring, eating and most of all, reading. By then I'd gotten a smartphone and encountered the delights of reading Kindle books on it, so I didn't have to repeat my feat from Paris of finishing my fourth book with a couple days to spare and needing to find a new one.
Now that I'm with someone, I'm looking forward to having a travel buddy, and eventually to taking any notional children on interesting adventures.
The other big thing that started in 2009 was my running, and generally my approach to fitness, though I think it only kicked into high gear a couple years later when I started working with my first trainer. But since then I've consistently been a member of a gym, and for a lot of the time I've also had a trainer to work with, usually preparing for a big run. I've eased off a little on the longer-distance runs, because I don't enjoy how they eat my life, but fitness remains something I crave (even if my diet doesn't quite show it).
There were a couple of big work transitions during the decade, starting in 2011 when I was made redundant from my job at the Regulatory Affairs Journals, where I'd been working (mostly unhappily) for five years, and landed instead at Informa Telecoms & Media. That marked a transition from healthcare, which had been the focus of my career from the start, and from journalism, which had been the focus almost as long. Instead I found myself working on tech, and as an analyst rather than a reporter, a transition that suited me down to the ground.
To put it another way, I hadn't understood how stimulating and rewarding a job could be, until I found one I was actually good at. Though it would have been nice if it had been more financially rewarding.
The other big work transition was in 2017, when I was abruptly made redundant from that telecoms and tech analysis job. I'd been unhappy in my team, and at the company, for about a year, so the change, while shocking at the time, was ultimately for the best. The aftermath let me go back to London for an extended period in early 2018, earning more than I had in my previous London jobs; it also let me experience the freelance life for a short period, and led to the current job that I have.
Speaking of money, despite being paid terribly at Informa, by 2011 I had managed to draw down my student loans and increase my savings enough to get back to a positive net worth, while still enjoying the odd international trip. By the time I was laid off from Ovum in 2017, I had more in the bank than I was earning per year, which felt quite clever.
And last, but not least, I think in the past decade I turned a corner with my writing. I started paying more attention to story structure, and craft in general, which I believe led to my first paying credit in 2013. I branched out from novels and short stories to screenwriting and novellas, and while I'm not quite there with getting stories accepted regularly (and frankly I could do with submitting them more), I'm proud of the stories I have written, especially in the last couple of years, so as long as I keep up that momentum, I think I'll find some success.
Coming into this new year, and decade, there are things to be optimistic about, even if the global geopolitical situation is getting more chaotic. That said, one doesn't need to wait for the start of a new decade, or new year, or even new week, to target their future - Chris Hardwick may have been tarnished for me by his own #MeToo moment, but he loomed quite large in the past decade because of his book, the Nerdist Way, and its key message was "Go out and do the thing you love."
So I'm going to plug away at all the things I love, whether or not I reach them, because life would be boring without them.
I've seen a lot of people, both friends and media outlets, talking about the decade that began on 1 January 2010 and ended last week, but the more I thought about these past ten years, the more I had to expand my definition to include 2009, because in so many ways that's when a lot of the things I'm doing started.
The main one is dating - I'd asked women out before then, but until 2009 I hadn't been on a proper date, where both parties knew and accepted that it was intended to be such. I'd been on various dating websites before then, but what clicked was getting onto the Guardian's Soulmates service, and then taking great care to write a decent profile - the first woman I went out with started strong, leading to four dates and kisses (including a makeout session at Angel Tube Station a week before I turned 30), but I can't say I maintained that momentum for the next few years. There were a few more women I went on multiple dates with, but none so fun until I met my girlfriend in mid-2019 - and as she reads this blog sometimes, she'll be happy to hear that she was worth the wait.
[Awwwww]
2009 also marked the start of my travels, at least in their current form. I'd had some good trips in the years before then, when I had lived in Southend, but none of those had been very far afield, and as I grew more concerned about saving what little money I earned I found it harder to justify spending on train trips and hotel stays to increasingly marginal spots in Southeast England. So it took romantic rejection in 2009 to finally say, "Fuck it," and book a week away in Paris.
Reader, it was amazing. I know there are those who claim that Paris is overrated, but my experiences with the City of Light have been uniformly wonderful. I decamped there with my shoulder bag, a week's change of clothes, and four books - I spent that week traipsing around eating good food, reading obsessively and hitting as many sights as I could stand. I even managed a couple nights up in Normandy to see the D-Day Beaches and the Bayeux Tapestry.
That trip set the template for others that I took in the following years, notably Singapore, Portland, Buenos Aires and Tokyo: I would decamp alone (more or less), and spend my days exploring, eating and most of all, reading. By then I'd gotten a smartphone and encountered the delights of reading Kindle books on it, so I didn't have to repeat my feat from Paris of finishing my fourth book with a couple days to spare and needing to find a new one.
Now that I'm with someone, I'm looking forward to having a travel buddy, and eventually to taking any notional children on interesting adventures.
The other big thing that started in 2009 was my running, and generally my approach to fitness, though I think it only kicked into high gear a couple years later when I started working with my first trainer. But since then I've consistently been a member of a gym, and for a lot of the time I've also had a trainer to work with, usually preparing for a big run. I've eased off a little on the longer-distance runs, because I don't enjoy how they eat my life, but fitness remains something I crave (even if my diet doesn't quite show it).
There were a couple of big work transitions during the decade, starting in 2011 when I was made redundant from my job at the Regulatory Affairs Journals, where I'd been working (mostly unhappily) for five years, and landed instead at Informa Telecoms & Media. That marked a transition from healthcare, which had been the focus of my career from the start, and from journalism, which had been the focus almost as long. Instead I found myself working on tech, and as an analyst rather than a reporter, a transition that suited me down to the ground.
To put it another way, I hadn't understood how stimulating and rewarding a job could be, until I found one I was actually good at. Though it would have been nice if it had been more financially rewarding.
The other big work transition was in 2017, when I was abruptly made redundant from that telecoms and tech analysis job. I'd been unhappy in my team, and at the company, for about a year, so the change, while shocking at the time, was ultimately for the best. The aftermath let me go back to London for an extended period in early 2018, earning more than I had in my previous London jobs; it also let me experience the freelance life for a short period, and led to the current job that I have.
Speaking of money, despite being paid terribly at Informa, by 2011 I had managed to draw down my student loans and increase my savings enough to get back to a positive net worth, while still enjoying the odd international trip. By the time I was laid off from Ovum in 2017, I had more in the bank than I was earning per year, which felt quite clever.
And last, but not least, I think in the past decade I turned a corner with my writing. I started paying more attention to story structure, and craft in general, which I believe led to my first paying credit in 2013. I branched out from novels and short stories to screenwriting and novellas, and while I'm not quite there with getting stories accepted regularly (and frankly I could do with submitting them more), I'm proud of the stories I have written, especially in the last couple of years, so as long as I keep up that momentum, I think I'll find some success.
Coming into this new year, and decade, there are things to be optimistic about, even if the global geopolitical situation is getting more chaotic. That said, one doesn't need to wait for the start of a new decade, or new year, or even new week, to target their future - Chris Hardwick may have been tarnished for me by his own #MeToo moment, but he loomed quite large in the past decade because of his book, the Nerdist Way, and its key message was "Go out and do the thing you love."
So I'm going to plug away at all the things I love, whether or not I reach them, because life would be boring without them.
Sunday, 15 December 2019
RIP the UK, Part II: Rhymes with Clucking Bell
I note that my post on Labour's broadband plans has reached a respectable 72 hits (not the largest for the year, but nor is it the smallest), so emboldened I guess I'll have a quick go at thoughts on Thursday's general election.
I may have given it away in the title of this post, but I'm not best pleased.
The Conservative party is in unassailable control of Parliament, to the point that it no longer needs its confidence and supply deal with Northern Ireland's DUP. The Liberal Democrats at their second-lowest level in their history, with their own leader, Jo Swinson, losing her seat in Scotland and being forced to resign. The Scottish National Party rules in most of Scotland, with Labour marginalized to a couple of constituencies but the Tories holding more seats in Scotland than them. And Labour is knocked out of a number of its heartlands in the industrial north and midlands by the Tories, as it looks for a new leader to replace the outgoing Jeremy Corbyn.
The SNP is talking about another independence referendum for Scotland, but in the meantime its presence in Westminster deprives Labour of a significant portion of its traditional power base - kind of like if California suddenly elected a whole bunch of third party candidates to its congressional delegation, knocking a hole in the national Democratic caucus.
For Labour the question remains of what to do next, and for starters, who to lead them in 2020. It may be reductive, but I see two major poles within the party: the Blairite wing that sees hewing rightward as the path to success, and the left Momentum wing that sprang up around Corbyn. Momentum will likely not tolerate a Blairite leader; the Blairites will be too scared of seeming leftwing to support a Momentum-approved leader. It's not unthinkable to imagine that the two split into separate parties and weaken Labour further.
(By the way, if I seem scathing of what I call the Blairite wing, it's because I am - he swept to power by being younger and hipper than John Major, admittedly not a difficult trick, but essentially moved the party rightward because he wasn't a natural Labourite, the same way JJ Abrams approached Star Trek as not a fan. He then led the country into an epochally unpopular war, did nothing to staunch the divisions between the Southeast and everywhere else, and his followers moved so far right that they let the Tories stake out ground on their own patch)
Without Scotland, though, the question of power remains academic. The SNP is a party of the left, and so, starting in 2015, they and Labour have duked it out for left voters there across three general elections and counting. But Labour comes second (presumably) because much of the Scottish electorate still hasn't forgiven them for siding with the Tories in the 2014 independence referendum.
As far as I can tell, the only way forward for the left in Britain is for the SNP to stand as a national party - but what relevance does its agenda have for voters in the Home Counties? Still, the UK could do worse than Nicola Sturgeon as PM.
I don't know if I'm qualified to talk about what went wrong with Labour's campaign, though I'll guess that it was a combination of undefined position on Brexit, personal animosity toward Corbyn (which is a shame as he always struck me as fundamentally honest and ethical - more so than Boris Johnson, though that's another quite low bar) and confusion over the party's platform. I addressed part of that in my post about the free broadband plan, but it does seem like the agenda wasn't very straightforward - you can bitch about modern elections being reduced to soundbites all you want but admittedly "Get Brexit done" is quite a bit snappier than Labour's "Time for Real Change".
Which itself isn't bad, but doesn't capture what was on basically everyone's mind.
The other question is, where does the UK go from here? If it leaves the EU as promised on 31 January, I'll need to see what happens to my relatives who live there, such as my sister and my cousin - will they be able to stay, or is the Home Office going to tell their respective employers to get all EU citizens off their books? It may seem fanciful, but this is exactly what happened to a Russian colleague in 2012-13, as companies were forced to reduce the number of non-EU workers they sponsored.
If they are allowed to stay, what services will they and my British friends have access to? Austerity seems to have lasted a lot longer in Britain than in the rest of Europe, presumably because the Tories since 2010 have been gutting public services and selling off as much as they could to business interests both inside and outside the country - this means more funding going toward London and the Southeast, and less to the rest of the country, thereby worsening the underlying condition that led to Brexit.
And as I put it back in August, kicking all the EU citizens out does nothing to lower house prices, because those (at least in the capital) are being driven up by rich Americans, Russians, Chinese, Middle Easterners and anyone else who has enough money that the government wants them. If this had been the case in 2001, when I first moved there and had maybe a couple thousand dollars to my name, they'd have shipped me back home at the first opportunity.
So I'm finding it hard to be sanguine about these results. We'll see more poverty, more homeless, more tragedies like Grenfell Tower, worse outcomes for the sick because of the dismantling of the NHS and increases in hate crimes and regular crimes. And who knows what terrorist plots will march on in the city thanks to the government's cuts in policing?
The UK will soldier on, as I've already said, but it'll be a smaller, meaner place.
I may have given it away in the title of this post, but I'm not best pleased.
The Conservative party is in unassailable control of Parliament, to the point that it no longer needs its confidence and supply deal with Northern Ireland's DUP. The Liberal Democrats at their second-lowest level in their history, with their own leader, Jo Swinson, losing her seat in Scotland and being forced to resign. The Scottish National Party rules in most of Scotland, with Labour marginalized to a couple of constituencies but the Tories holding more seats in Scotland than them. And Labour is knocked out of a number of its heartlands in the industrial north and midlands by the Tories, as it looks for a new leader to replace the outgoing Jeremy Corbyn.
The SNP is talking about another independence referendum for Scotland, but in the meantime its presence in Westminster deprives Labour of a significant portion of its traditional power base - kind of like if California suddenly elected a whole bunch of third party candidates to its congressional delegation, knocking a hole in the national Democratic caucus.
For Labour the question remains of what to do next, and for starters, who to lead them in 2020. It may be reductive, but I see two major poles within the party: the Blairite wing that sees hewing rightward as the path to success, and the left Momentum wing that sprang up around Corbyn. Momentum will likely not tolerate a Blairite leader; the Blairites will be too scared of seeming leftwing to support a Momentum-approved leader. It's not unthinkable to imagine that the two split into separate parties and weaken Labour further.
(By the way, if I seem scathing of what I call the Blairite wing, it's because I am - he swept to power by being younger and hipper than John Major, admittedly not a difficult trick, but essentially moved the party rightward because he wasn't a natural Labourite, the same way JJ Abrams approached Star Trek as not a fan. He then led the country into an epochally unpopular war, did nothing to staunch the divisions between the Southeast and everywhere else, and his followers moved so far right that they let the Tories stake out ground on their own patch)
Without Scotland, though, the question of power remains academic. The SNP is a party of the left, and so, starting in 2015, they and Labour have duked it out for left voters there across three general elections and counting. But Labour comes second (presumably) because much of the Scottish electorate still hasn't forgiven them for siding with the Tories in the 2014 independence referendum.
As far as I can tell, the only way forward for the left in Britain is for the SNP to stand as a national party - but what relevance does its agenda have for voters in the Home Counties? Still, the UK could do worse than Nicola Sturgeon as PM.
I don't know if I'm qualified to talk about what went wrong with Labour's campaign, though I'll guess that it was a combination of undefined position on Brexit, personal animosity toward Corbyn (which is a shame as he always struck me as fundamentally honest and ethical - more so than Boris Johnson, though that's another quite low bar) and confusion over the party's platform. I addressed part of that in my post about the free broadband plan, but it does seem like the agenda wasn't very straightforward - you can bitch about modern elections being reduced to soundbites all you want but admittedly "Get Brexit done" is quite a bit snappier than Labour's "Time for Real Change".
Which itself isn't bad, but doesn't capture what was on basically everyone's mind.
The other question is, where does the UK go from here? If it leaves the EU as promised on 31 January, I'll need to see what happens to my relatives who live there, such as my sister and my cousin - will they be able to stay, or is the Home Office going to tell their respective employers to get all EU citizens off their books? It may seem fanciful, but this is exactly what happened to a Russian colleague in 2012-13, as companies were forced to reduce the number of non-EU workers they sponsored.
If they are allowed to stay, what services will they and my British friends have access to? Austerity seems to have lasted a lot longer in Britain than in the rest of Europe, presumably because the Tories since 2010 have been gutting public services and selling off as much as they could to business interests both inside and outside the country - this means more funding going toward London and the Southeast, and less to the rest of the country, thereby worsening the underlying condition that led to Brexit.
And as I put it back in August, kicking all the EU citizens out does nothing to lower house prices, because those (at least in the capital) are being driven up by rich Americans, Russians, Chinese, Middle Easterners and anyone else who has enough money that the government wants them. If this had been the case in 2001, when I first moved there and had maybe a couple thousand dollars to my name, they'd have shipped me back home at the first opportunity.
So I'm finding it hard to be sanguine about these results. We'll see more poverty, more homeless, more tragedies like Grenfell Tower, worse outcomes for the sick because of the dismantling of the NHS and increases in hate crimes and regular crimes. And who knows what terrorist plots will march on in the city thanks to the government's cuts in policing?
The UK will soldier on, as I've already said, but it'll be a smaller, meaner place.
Sunday, 8 December 2019
RIP Rene Auberjonois
Just read that Rene Auberjonois passed away today, at the age of 79. Reading his wikipedia page now, I'm struck by the breadth and diversity of his work, in film, TV and stage, as well as voiceover work - there are a lot of roles I must have seen or heard him in, without knowing it was him, such as on the film version of MASH and on the animated Young Justice.
But of course I know him mainly for playing one of my favorite characters, Odo, on one of my favorite TV shows, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He had the most distinctive prosthetics on the show, a sort of smoothed-out, simplified version of a human face, and he was involved in some of the show's best moments, including playing a huge part in the final storyline of the show as it wrapped up the Dominion War.
On the show, Odo was the "outcast" character, in the tradition of Star Trek characters like Spock and Data, but even though the entire cast, in some form or other, consisted of outcasts, he was more noticeable. In part this was because of his portrayal as the stern security officer on the station, whose methods didn't always match up with those of Starfleet. But it was also because of the gentleness that Auberjonois brought to the character - in the season 2 episode Shadowplay, he gradually befriends the young girl on the planet he and Dax are investigating, showing how Odo wasn't as gruff and forbidding as he wanted to appear.
I lost sight of his career after DS9, but I was always excited to see his name among the credits of a show. I'm heartened to read that he was a regular in Boston Legal, a series that my girlfriend loves and that we're going to watch together at some point soon (and, let it not be forgotten, a show that also starred William Shatner). I'm also pleased to read, though I must have known this at some level, that he did the voice of the French chef in Disney's Little Mermaid - another well-known role from my childhood.
My condolences go out to his family, and I'm hoping to find someplace to watch the recent DS9 documentary, What We Left Behind, for some interviews with him (and with Aron Eisenberg, who played Nog and who also passed away suddenly, not long ago).
But of course I know him mainly for playing one of my favorite characters, Odo, on one of my favorite TV shows, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He had the most distinctive prosthetics on the show, a sort of smoothed-out, simplified version of a human face, and he was involved in some of the show's best moments, including playing a huge part in the final storyline of the show as it wrapped up the Dominion War.
On the show, Odo was the "outcast" character, in the tradition of Star Trek characters like Spock and Data, but even though the entire cast, in some form or other, consisted of outcasts, he was more noticeable. In part this was because of his portrayal as the stern security officer on the station, whose methods didn't always match up with those of Starfleet. But it was also because of the gentleness that Auberjonois brought to the character - in the season 2 episode Shadowplay, he gradually befriends the young girl on the planet he and Dax are investigating, showing how Odo wasn't as gruff and forbidding as he wanted to appear.
I lost sight of his career after DS9, but I was always excited to see his name among the credits of a show. I'm heartened to read that he was a regular in Boston Legal, a series that my girlfriend loves and that we're going to watch together at some point soon (and, let it not be forgotten, a show that also starred William Shatner). I'm also pleased to read, though I must have known this at some level, that he did the voice of the French chef in Disney's Little Mermaid - another well-known role from my childhood.
My condolences go out to his family, and I'm hoping to find someplace to watch the recent DS9 documentary, What We Left Behind, for some interviews with him (and with Aron Eisenberg, who played Nog and who also passed away suddenly, not long ago).
Monday, 2 December 2019
The Star Wars Prequels: As Bad as You Remember
Between episodes of the Mandalorian with my girlfriend, I've been taking advantage of access to Disney+ by watching stuff that I haven't seen in a long time, like the Simpsons (mostly the Treehouses of Horror), old Mickey Mouse shorts... and the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
I know: why would I do this to myself? I haven't watched the prequels in their entirety in over a decade - in the case of Episode II (2002) and Episode III (2005), not since I watched them in the theater during their original run. I don't even have any memory of the circumstances in which I watched Episode III - it must have been here in the US, because I didn't leave the country, but I'm not sure if it was here in Palo Alto or in New York, nor do I remember who I saw it with.
Episode II sticks in the mind a little more, but for all the wrong reasons: poorly acted, excessive CGI and scenes that are so truncated that they feel perfunctory, as if George Lucas is using them just to remind us that a specific subplot is happening. There are things approaching interesting storytelling - like when Count Dooku claims to be fighting against the Sith Lord who's taking over the Republic - but they get lost almost immediately and walked back.
I think the thing that got me interested in re-watching these movies is this rundown and ranking of the entire series from the AV Club, written before (just before) The Force Awakens came out and kicked off this latest era for the Star Wars saga. The author is quite generous to George Lucas, while still not giving him a pass for his worst excesses, and if I don't agree with ranking Revenge of the Sith ahead of Return of the Jedi, then I can at least appreciate that there's someone else out there who thought Episode II was even worse than Episode I.
The criticisms still hold up. Episode I: The Phantom Menace is too reliant on CGI and on corny, kid-friendly gags to be actually entertaining to watch. The opening crawl is laughable in its discussion of trade disputes and blockades and the middle section on Tatooine, with the pod race, is overly long and not germane to the story.
What struck me on this re-watch was, again, how bad the performances were, or at least the line-readings, and the fact that the scenes are frustratingly truncated just like in Episode II. One feels a little bad criticizing Jake Lloyd as Anakin, given his later struggles with mental illness, but it's undeniable that he needed fewer lines, and that Lucas needed an editor on his script. And where the characters aren't obnoxious, like Anakin or Jar-Jar, they're just wooden, like... well, like everyone else. Natalie Portman, Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor - all are respected and talented actors, but you wouldn't know it watching this movie.
And yet... I still have something of a soft spot for this one, flaws and all. It was the first new Star Wars in years, and I got to see it on opening day. Awkward as a lot of it is, it manages to instill that sense of wonder, of a wider universe, that was present in the original trilogy. It sometimes tries too hard, but it manages to look from the outset like it belongs in the same universe as the original films.
Episode II: Attack of the Clones was also much as I remembered it. Hayden Christensen wasn't much of an improvement over Jake Lloyd, and neither was the dynamic between him and Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan - master chastises student constantly, not because he's actually irresponsible but because the script demands that we show, in the most ham-handed way possible, the wedge driven between them. And the romance subplot between Christensen and Portman is still pretty unconvincing.
There are a couple of nice things to say about this one, though. Especially on the cloners' world of Camino, Lucas shows a gift for coming up with impressive settings for his alien worlds. The craggy, reddish tint to Geonosis doesn't strike me as much but I can't deny that it makes an impressive contrast.
As mentioned above, there's also the bit where Count Dooku (aka Saruman, aka Christopher Lee) captures Obi-Wan and claims that he's fighting against the Sith. It's undercut by the circumstances - Obi-Wan being held shackled by a forcefield in a prison cell - and walked back immediately, but I remember being so excited when I saw that scene, thinking that Lucas was about to throw us a curveball... but no.
But perhaps the best part of the movie is the depiction of how Palpatine maneuvers events to take power for himself. There's a vogue for seeing harbingers of Donald Trump in all media, but this sequence is genuinely impressive - and I'd actually forgotten it was here, given that Episode III is where the collapse of the Republic really takes off (and was accompanied at the time by right-wingers complaining that George Lucas was getting too political - some things never change, clearly).
Also, I can't deny that seeing Yoda leaping around and kicking ass gave me a thrill, both then and now. Maybe it's because so much of the rest of the film was lackluster, but it was great to see just how great a Jedi he was.
And then there's Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I remembered bits of the movie, from the final fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan, to the slaughter of the Jedi Order and the death of Padme, but little else. I'd forgotten that the opening harks back not to the previous movie but to a whole bunch of crap that happened between the episodes - I presume all that is in the Clone Wars movie and TV show, but I haven't seen those yet, so the transition is still jarring to me.
I haven't finished this re-watch, so I won't belabor the point too much, but it seems like the scenes breathe a little more than its two predecessors. However, the dynamic between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman remains as wooden as ever - they talk at cross-purposes, and not to reveal character but to reveal plot. There's less of the cutesy crap, because a whole bunch of good guys are going to die, badly, before the end, but it persists in the droid army and in C3PO and R2D2's time on screen.
It also looks great, the initial fight in space over Coruscant looking really impressive... but then, if anyone knows how to put together a gigantic set-piece it's George Lucas.
Now, to sum up, watching these movies again hasn't changed my mind about them. Some bits are worse than I remembered, others better, but the majority is still as I recall, for better or worse. They go way too far in forcing fan service, like showing C3PO and R2D2 or in calling forward to stuff from the original trilogy. And the storylines are just bad, or at least badly written.
Unlike the AV Club, I can't guess how these movies would have done if they'd been the first we'd ever seen of Star Wars. I take them in relation to a group of movies that I grew up loving, and they can't ever measure up to that - nor to the more recent movies, starting with Force Awakens and ending with Solo. But I can't deny that there are some pleasures to be had with them, even Episode II, my least favorite of the films (so far) and easily in my bottom 5 films ever.
So as I prepare for Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, I'm seeing where the saga "began", in the hopes of seeing if it connects to how it "ends". I might not even be too disappointed if they have Hayden Christensen as a Force ghost again, though if JJ Abrams resists that temptation I'll be quite happy.
I know: why would I do this to myself? I haven't watched the prequels in their entirety in over a decade - in the case of Episode II (2002) and Episode III (2005), not since I watched them in the theater during their original run. I don't even have any memory of the circumstances in which I watched Episode III - it must have been here in the US, because I didn't leave the country, but I'm not sure if it was here in Palo Alto or in New York, nor do I remember who I saw it with.
Episode II sticks in the mind a little more, but for all the wrong reasons: poorly acted, excessive CGI and scenes that are so truncated that they feel perfunctory, as if George Lucas is using them just to remind us that a specific subplot is happening. There are things approaching interesting storytelling - like when Count Dooku claims to be fighting against the Sith Lord who's taking over the Republic - but they get lost almost immediately and walked back.
I think the thing that got me interested in re-watching these movies is this rundown and ranking of the entire series from the AV Club, written before (just before) The Force Awakens came out and kicked off this latest era for the Star Wars saga. The author is quite generous to George Lucas, while still not giving him a pass for his worst excesses, and if I don't agree with ranking Revenge of the Sith ahead of Return of the Jedi, then I can at least appreciate that there's someone else out there who thought Episode II was even worse than Episode I.
The criticisms still hold up. Episode I: The Phantom Menace is too reliant on CGI and on corny, kid-friendly gags to be actually entertaining to watch. The opening crawl is laughable in its discussion of trade disputes and blockades and the middle section on Tatooine, with the pod race, is overly long and not germane to the story.
What struck me on this re-watch was, again, how bad the performances were, or at least the line-readings, and the fact that the scenes are frustratingly truncated just like in Episode II. One feels a little bad criticizing Jake Lloyd as Anakin, given his later struggles with mental illness, but it's undeniable that he needed fewer lines, and that Lucas needed an editor on his script. And where the characters aren't obnoxious, like Anakin or Jar-Jar, they're just wooden, like... well, like everyone else. Natalie Portman, Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor - all are respected and talented actors, but you wouldn't know it watching this movie.
And yet... I still have something of a soft spot for this one, flaws and all. It was the first new Star Wars in years, and I got to see it on opening day. Awkward as a lot of it is, it manages to instill that sense of wonder, of a wider universe, that was present in the original trilogy. It sometimes tries too hard, but it manages to look from the outset like it belongs in the same universe as the original films.
Episode II: Attack of the Clones was also much as I remembered it. Hayden Christensen wasn't much of an improvement over Jake Lloyd, and neither was the dynamic between him and Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan - master chastises student constantly, not because he's actually irresponsible but because the script demands that we show, in the most ham-handed way possible, the wedge driven between them. And the romance subplot between Christensen and Portman is still pretty unconvincing.
There are a couple of nice things to say about this one, though. Especially on the cloners' world of Camino, Lucas shows a gift for coming up with impressive settings for his alien worlds. The craggy, reddish tint to Geonosis doesn't strike me as much but I can't deny that it makes an impressive contrast.
As mentioned above, there's also the bit where Count Dooku (aka Saruman, aka Christopher Lee) captures Obi-Wan and claims that he's fighting against the Sith. It's undercut by the circumstances - Obi-Wan being held shackled by a forcefield in a prison cell - and walked back immediately, but I remember being so excited when I saw that scene, thinking that Lucas was about to throw us a curveball... but no.
But perhaps the best part of the movie is the depiction of how Palpatine maneuvers events to take power for himself. There's a vogue for seeing harbingers of Donald Trump in all media, but this sequence is genuinely impressive - and I'd actually forgotten it was here, given that Episode III is where the collapse of the Republic really takes off (and was accompanied at the time by right-wingers complaining that George Lucas was getting too political - some things never change, clearly).
Also, I can't deny that seeing Yoda leaping around and kicking ass gave me a thrill, both then and now. Maybe it's because so much of the rest of the film was lackluster, but it was great to see just how great a Jedi he was.
And then there's Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I remembered bits of the movie, from the final fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan, to the slaughter of the Jedi Order and the death of Padme, but little else. I'd forgotten that the opening harks back not to the previous movie but to a whole bunch of crap that happened between the episodes - I presume all that is in the Clone Wars movie and TV show, but I haven't seen those yet, so the transition is still jarring to me.
I haven't finished this re-watch, so I won't belabor the point too much, but it seems like the scenes breathe a little more than its two predecessors. However, the dynamic between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman remains as wooden as ever - they talk at cross-purposes, and not to reveal character but to reveal plot. There's less of the cutesy crap, because a whole bunch of good guys are going to die, badly, before the end, but it persists in the droid army and in C3PO and R2D2's time on screen.
It also looks great, the initial fight in space over Coruscant looking really impressive... but then, if anyone knows how to put together a gigantic set-piece it's George Lucas.
Now, to sum up, watching these movies again hasn't changed my mind about them. Some bits are worse than I remembered, others better, but the majority is still as I recall, for better or worse. They go way too far in forcing fan service, like showing C3PO and R2D2 or in calling forward to stuff from the original trilogy. And the storylines are just bad, or at least badly written.
Unlike the AV Club, I can't guess how these movies would have done if they'd been the first we'd ever seen of Star Wars. I take them in relation to a group of movies that I grew up loving, and they can't ever measure up to that - nor to the more recent movies, starting with Force Awakens and ending with Solo. But I can't deny that there are some pleasures to be had with them, even Episode II, my least favorite of the films (so far) and easily in my bottom 5 films ever.
So as I prepare for Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, I'm seeing where the saga "began", in the hopes of seeing if it connects to how it "ends". I might not even be too disappointed if they have Hayden Christensen as a Force ghost again, though if JJ Abrams resists that temptation I'll be quite happy.
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