In all that time, though, there is at least one thing about Star Wars I have not noted, perhaps because it is a trifling observation that may not even be worthy of transcription. But it's my blog, so you will not stop me. Take another look at the picture at the top of this page. This is the table read for The Force Awakens, the first time the cast members for that 2015 movie read through the J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan script for the first Star Wars movie since 2005, and the first to move the story forward since 1983. This was, if I recall correctly, the first production image for the movie. We had no idea what to expect of it then. What a heady time it was!
We know a bit more now. And one thing we know specifically about The Force Awakens is that Mark Hamill, who portrays original trilogy hero Luke Skywalker...does not actually have any lines in that first new movie. He appears at the very end, wordlessly staring at the lightsaber presented to him by new trilogy hero Rey. And then...the movie ends. Given that he was actually present for the entire table read of the new movie, I have begun to wonder: How bored was he, just sitting there, waiting, as everyone else said lines? Who knows. But that's it. Now that that's out of the way, I've nothing left to say about Star Wars...
...I'm kidding. Of course I do. Everyone does. Nowadays, it's just one of those things you're expected to have an opinion about. How Star Wars reached this status, I'm not exactly sure. You could call it a consequence of the conquest of pop culture by nerds, or by nostalgia, by both, or a variety of other things. But in no way can I pretend to be immune. I grew up watching the prequel trilogy, the true extent of whose badness I did not fathom until after my childhood. Before them, I saw the original trilogy, though I think for some reason that the first one I saw was Return of the Jedi. And if anything, my fandom was cemented by many hours wasted playing Star Wars: Battlefront on PS2 both in my basement and the basements of many friends. I was successfully propagandized into Star Wars fandom years ago, and was, as a result, one of many people who eagerly bought tickets for The Force Awakens in 2015.
My ticket to The Force Awakens
But the place of Star Wars in popular culture has become a complicated thing since then, adding a new wrinkle to a fandom that hasn't really been completely happy since 1980. The Force Awakens, though one of the most popular movies of all time, quickly came under criticism for being derivative, which I thought was a bit unfair; I became a defender of the movie. And in 2017, The Last Jedi became one of the most controversial movies in recent memory. Why exactly this was, I'm not sure; I more or less enjoyed it, despite not being a huge fan, and after not knowing exactly what to make of it after my first viewing. If I had to guess why The Last Jedi has been so divisive, I'd say it's that the movie's decision to attack or alter some fundamental aspects of Star Wars, such as they are, made people more open to seeing the flaws that had been present in every movie.
And so The Rise of Skywalker, the concluding entry in this new trilogy, enters theaters under a cloud of skepticism. Star Wars fans once again feel like they can't trust the people making their movies, which is an oddly familiar feeling for a supposedly venerable franchise. I will be seeing it tomorrow, and I genuinely have no idea what to expect. But before I do, I want to attempt to make sense of this new trilogy's reception, and of Star Wars more generally and its place in popular culture.
In certain ways, the first Star Wars movie, now known as A New Hope, was truly groundbreaking in 1977. Its popularity changed the movie industry, maybe forever. And many people who saw it then, as well as subsequent generations of people who saw it as children later, wrapped up their youthful conception of the movie inextricably with childhood itself. Some people of my generation have come to regard The Phantom Menace and the prequel trilogy similarly, though this is a bit more dubious. (Don't let anyone tell you those movies are good. They're not. Nor are they somehow more worthwhile because they attempted to do something new; they didn't.) Either way, though, Star Wars has come to mean a great deal to many people.
A long time ago, all the way back in 1977...
It was many of these people, the ones who were children when the original movies first came out, who have reacted most strongly against this new trilogy. Some part of their inner self holds these movies to an impossibly high standard, and rebels against the very idea that anything could possibly be as good as what they knew when they were younger. For these and other people, this new trilogy probably never would have been good enough. Make the movie too familiar, and they'd decry its lack of originality; make it too unusual, and they'd say their childhoods had been ruined. This specific sense of ownership of Star Wars by its fans likely accounts at least partly for why many have "criticized" the new movies by supplying the fan fiction they would have rather seen filmed instead (something you could accuse me of doing, but I wrote mine before the movie came out, and did my best to judge what was ultimately released on its own terms). For now that someone other than the original creators is working on the movies, they don't see the need to respect what is on screen, and perhaps imagine that they could do a better job "playing with the toys" than some Hollywood rando. This is not to say the new trilogy has been perfect, or to excuse its faults. But I question the possibility that it could have ever truly satisfied everyone's idea of what Star Wars should be.
This is in part because I have come to believe that Star Wars has never really been great. At its best, the movies have themselves been derivative, of things like Flash Gordon, the World War II bomber movie The Dam Busters (from which the much-ballyhooed climax of the first Star Wars movie steals much of its dialogue word-for-word), of Akira Kurosawa and David Lean, of Frank Herbert's Dune, and much more. Indeed, before the original trilogy was even over, it was already being derivative of itself, what with another Death Star, returns to Tatooine and Dagobah, etc. This is to say nothing of Star Wars' creator George Lucas' insistence that his prequel trilogy "rhymes" with the original trilogy, or the extent to which the original movie itself would have been a mess if not for studio-enforced discipline and editing. Hence I question how much one can really say that Star Wars ever really was great.
I also question how much scope for truly interesting things there actually is in this universe. So far, virtually the entirety of Star Wars has dealt with a roughly 60-year period in a civilization thousands of years old. And even in the now-decanonized expanded universe stuff, the things that happen both before and after this narrow sliver of Star Wars history ultimately recur in a cyclical pattern that just keeps resetting. The good guys rule. Then the bad guys come in, mess everything up. Then the good guys come back against long odds and win again. Then then good guys rule. Then the bad guys come in, mess everything up. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Until Darth Jar Jar comes along, that is.
Things may never change in Star Wars.But they have in my life. Since 2015, when The Force Awakens came out, I have done, watched, and read many things. But the two most relevant for this discussion are two book series I have read, one for the first time in a while, and one for the first time ever. In the fall of 2018, I reread The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time since 2003 (I was a nerdy kid, I'll admit it). Doing so, I noticed again all of its wonderful world-building detail, and reminded myself that, for a few years, I was much more of a Lord of the Rings nerd than a Star Wars nerd. And I was also reminded how much more depth there was to that series, both in book and movie form (though the two are more distinct than I remembered). I think this has made Lord of the Rings return to primacy in my inner hierarchy of fandoms.
But if it's not Lord of the Rings, then Frank Herbert's Dune and its first three sequels now reign supreme for me. I had known about Dune for a while, but only in the summer of 2016 did I actually get around to reading it. I was immediately plunged into an immersive, mystical world, featuring a millennia-old quasi-religious sect attempting to manipulating events to its end on a grand cosmic scale, sandworms, a desert planet, a tribe inhabiting it, and a young hero who goes on an epic quest, learning great powers along the way, and ultimately defeating a great evil. Further books introduce elements such as a pair of twins with psychic powers, a worm with a human face, an evil organization attempting to manipulate events to its end on a grand cosmic scale, and...okay, all right, surely you get the picture by now. Dune came out in 1965. Star Wars came out in 1977. I can't accuse George Lucas of outright plagiarism, but...come on. Even better, Dune is immensely more complex than Star Wars, despite attempts by some to make Star Wars more intellectually sophisticated than any legitimate reading of its universe can sustain. All of this is to say that next December, when a new adaptation of Dune comes out, I will be insufferable, and ready to forget Star Wars completely.
Pictured: Better than Star Wars.
In the meantime, I will still see The Rise of Skywalker. I may like it, or I may not. But I will not be angry if it is a bad movie. Nor am I closed to the possibility that it may be a good one. These are just movies, in the end. They not need be psychologically-charged affairs, whose perceived failure is some great affront to people's childhoods, or a sign that society is decadent, or any number of things that too many adults have read into movies ultimately made for children. Star Wars has never really been anything more than a Dune ripoff monomyth story with some good cinematography. And the reaction to the movies that have come out in the past few years, more than the movies themselves, have made me tired of these movies, and of anyone believing they ought to be more than they are. Disney, one of the world's biggest corporations, doesn't need me to defend Star Wars. But I will also not be dragged into the world of Internet hyperbole in attacking them. If this means I am a hypocrite for abandoning what some could sensibly perceive as a recent Star Wars obsession, or one with a greater vintage, then so be it. Because people who are waiting for a Star Wars movie, of all things, to make them happy will be waiting for Skywalker for a long time.
In closing, I think again of what Alec Guinness reportedly thought of Star Wars fans after his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi made his later years quite comfortable. They are words that are worth recalling as yet another generation produces its takes on Star Wars:
In the final volume of the book A Positively Final Appearance (1997), Guinness recounts grudgingly giving an autograph to a young fan who claimed to have watched Star Wars over 100 times, on the condition that the boy promise to stop watching the film, because, as Guinness told him, "this is going to be an ill effect on your life." The fan was stunned at first, but later thanked him (though some sources say it went differently). Guinness is quoted as saying: "'Well,' I said, 'do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?' He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. 'What a dreadful thing to say to a child!' she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities."
When Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens came out in 2015, it brought a perhaps unprecedented level of hype and subsequent critical and commercial attention. There hadn't been a Star Wars movie in 10 years, and the last time there was one, it was the concluding chapter of the largely-loathed prequel trilogy, which also did not move forward the story last updated in 1983's Return of the Jedi.
The Force Awakens was also the first Star Wars movie to be released in what I call the "take economy," that large sector of the Internet (and other places, I guess, but mostly the Internet) powered by fans and obsessed with dissecting, reviewing, critiquing, and theorizing about pop culture. As a result, The Force Awakens generated a heretofore-unseen level of takes (some of them on this very blog). A large portion of these takes seemed critical of the movie, which I thought was mostly misguided, for reasons explained here.
The one criticism I granted some merit was that The Force Awakens seemed a bit...familiar. This critique deserves many, many qualifications. But the most important of them was that it would be impossible to judge The Force Awakens on its own merits, in isolation from the new trilogy of which it would be a part. As the first installment, it reacquainted us with the universe while also establishing the possibility for significant creativity and novelty in future installments. It would only be possible to judge The Force Awakens, then, and the new trilogy as a whole, upon its completion; too many critics were trying to judge aspects of its narrative best seen in conjunction in isolation, and in comparison with a trilogy already completed in 1983. This seemed unfair.
You may remember this movie
But with the release of Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi, we have a better sense of how to judge this new trilogy. The Last Jedi has many of the trappings of a Star Wars film: there are lightsabers, wars in stars, Force powers, etc. But in many other ways, The Last Jedi actively subverts what we've come to expect from Star Wars, introducing new characters, new themes, and new scenarios and setpieces, and taking the story in surprising new directions. It is not entirely successful at all of this, largely due to a somewhat unfocused, flabby narrative (at 2 hrs and 30 minutes long, The Last Jedi is the longest Star Wars movie), and some creative risks that do not pay off. Yet the successes in this regard definitely outweigh the failures of what ultimately remains thoroughly a Star Wars movie.
The Last Jedi begins with its first subversion: It seems to take place immediately after the end of The Force Awakens (whereas all previous Star Wars movies have at least some gap between them), with the Resistance (the reduced successor to the original trilogy's Rebellion) on the run from the First Order (the not-much-reduced successor to the original trilogy's Empire). Meanwhile, Rey (Daisy Ridley) has arrived at the hideaway of Jedi Master Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), seeking his wisdom and his aid in the fight.
This setup seems at least somewhat redolent of The Empire Strikes Back, The Last Jedi's original trilogy equivalent. But The Last Jedi quickly takes this framework and moves it in strikingly different places. On the Resistance-First Order side of things, the Resistance, led by Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher) is in more dire straits than the Rebellion ever was, with a tiny fleet, led by brave but reckless pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), and hounded by the First Order's relentless ships. And Rey finds, in seeking the counsel of Luke, that he has essentially given up on the Jedi (whom he considers failures), the Force (from which he has cut himself off), and the Resistance (which he thinks no one can help). And Rey, the seemingly eager pupil, finds herself mysteriously connected and drawn to the tormented villain Kylo Ren, a.k.a. Ben Solo (Adam Driver), who is likewise drawn to her.
They have a history
To reveal where The Last Jedi goes with all of this would be to ruin a movie you should definitely see for yourself (and perhaps more than once; it took me two viewings to appreciate fully). But it is not a spoiler for me to reveal that the movie takes the raw materials of its plot in unexpected and subversive directions. And perhaps the most impressive direction is a narrative theme that is more mature and complex than any previous Star Wars movie: failure. Virtually every character in the movie confronts failure in some way. Their reactions to their failures determine the directions of their characters: some learn from them, others take the wrong lessons from them, and still others fail to grow at all from them, to their own detriment and folly.
It would also not be a spoiler for me to reveal that the movie does new things with the trappings of Star Wars that keep its universe interesting in a fashion I no longer considered possible. You'd think there are only so many things to do with the Force, with lightsabers, with space battles, and with the basic dynamic of good-vs-evil. But The Last Jedi does fresh things with each of these archetypes, a testament to its creative risks.
Not all of The Last Jedi's creative risks pay off, however. It is too long and somewhat disorganized, a noticeable contrast to the clean, clear, three-act structure of The Force Awakens. It is somewhat too packed with ideas, many, if not most, of which are intriguing but not all of which get full exploration. Many of its deliberate subversions of fan expectations served to keep the story surprising, but some of them seemed a bit unfair, and deserve at least some addressing in Episode IX - The Spark of Hope (or whatever it's called). The Last Jedi also does not seem to know really what to do with Finn (John Boyega), who gets a bit lost in the sprawl of its narrative.
But these flaws do not add up to a movie that deserves the hatred many seem to have given it. It is absurd to claim it is worse than any of the prequels, or that any character in it is worse than Jar Jar Binks, but many have claimed precisely this. If these and other critics, in overabundant supply in the take economy, are angry at The Last Jedi for straying from their expectations of what should have happened, or deviating from their own fan fiction or fan theories (something to which I could have related, having written some fan speculation of my own), then they are misguided. If Star Wars only conforms to preestablished expectations, then it will stop being interesting very soon, in a galaxy very, very close to us. There are criticisms to be made of the The Last Jedi, but a failure to be interesting is certainly not one of them.
This is a big week for popular culture anniversaries. Today, May 25th, is the 40th anniversary of the release of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, known during its original 1977 release simply as Star Wars. And this Thursday, June 2nd, is the 50th anniversary of the 1967 release of The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts ClubBand.
Star Wars and Sgt. Pepper's indeliblyaltered the pop culture in which they emerged. Star Wars created both the modern blockbuster, becoming one of the most successful movies of all time, and the modern blockbuster era, while also beginning a media empire that is still going strong 40 years later (with a prequel out last year, and a sequel out later this year). Sgt. Pepper's was The Beatles' crowning achievement, the best-selling album of the 1960s, a masterpiece of sonic innovation and psychedelia. While Sgt. Pepper's may not have officially kicked off the "summer of love" or initiated the incredible creative output of 1967, it did define and reinforce the psychedelic aura of that year. Notwithstanding their medium-defining impacts, however, and the fact that they probably had many mutual fans, these two monumental products of popular culture had very little common.
Until now.
Our culture, and especially our popular culture, is, in many respects, caught in a nostalgia loop. What was cool decades ago is still cool, so long as the Baby Boomers maintain their vicelike grip on the commanding heights of our popular culture. There are many weird things about this trend (were kids in 1967 nostalgic for...1917?), and many bad things about it as well (at some point, the Baby Boomer grip has to break, otherwise our culture will stagnate). But, in the meantime, our cultural nostalgia loop, and a "remix" culture that likes to put two seemingly disparate things together, will produce some great things. And we have now officially seen the greatest remix of them all: a "mash-up" of Star Wars and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
What exactly does it mean to "mash up" an album and a movie? It's not like The Dark Side of the Rainbow, the famous urban legend about watching The Wizard of Oz with Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon as the soundtrack (or similar legends about Pink Floyd's song "Echoes" and the final part of 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Dark Side of the Moon and Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens). What the YouTube channel Palette-Swap Ninja has done, instead, is change the lyrics but not the music of Sgt. Pepper's to make it a concept album describing the plot of A New Hope, with cleverly cut scenes from the movie itself accompanying the appropriate songs as "music videos." There's no reason something this complex, a merging of two works of art so artistically singular and unique in such a fashion, should work. And it's not perfect; some of the lyrics scan awkwardly, and some of the songs don't really match the parts of the movie they're supposed to describe. But, on the whole, Princess Leia's Stolen Death Star Plans works way better than it should. It works so well, in fact, that I'm going to comment on each track of the album.
1/2) "Princess Leia's Stolen Death Star Plans/With Illicit Help From Your Friends" ("Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"/"With A Little Help From My Friends")
The original Sgt. Pepper's album opens with an emcee of sorts introducing the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," the band The Beatles pretended to be as part of the concept album. And so, fittingly, Princess Leia's begins with an "introduction" that is also separate from the main body of the work, in the form of an altered Star Wars opening crawl musically identical to the Sgt. Pepper's original:
The only downside of this track is that "Empire" doesn't scan as the lyricists want it to. Naturally, the first syllable of "Empire" is stressed, and the second is unstressed; here, it is reversed, an awkwardness that persists on every subsequent usage. The rest of the "album" does this here and there; again, it is one of the work's few defects. But it is forgivable.
After the intro, "Princess Leia's" makes one of its few alterations of the actual music of Sgt. Pepper's. Where Sgt. Pepper's followed its intro with a horn intro and some crowd laughter, Princess Leia's splices in a segment of John Williams' Star Wars score--again, an appropriate change. The 2-minute song also introduce "Princess Leia's Stolen Death Star Plans" as the "theme" of the concept album, which works, not only because it scans, but because that's what the movie is also about. And, as we shall see later, the structure of Sgt. Pepper's allows Princess Leia's to return brilliantly to its "theme" at the end.
In the original Sgt. Pepper's, the first song of the album ends with the "introducer" bringing along a new "performer," "the only and only Billy Shears" (Ringo Starr). Princess Leia's ends its first track also by introducing a new "performer" (who makes his entry in the accompanying video at the same time) in Darth Vader (with "Vader's here" replacing "Billy Shears"). And while Billy Shears' playful melody remains, Princess Leia's juxtaposes that airy music with the dark threats of Lord Vader: "you're gonna die along with all of your friends." Billy Shears' song has a call-and-response format, which "With Illicit Help From Your Friends" keeps, turning it into the back-and-forth between Vader and Leia and Vader and his underlings. Whereas Billy Shears claims just "to want someone to love," Vader intones that he "wants those plans in my glove."
3) "Luke is in the Desert" ("Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds")
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," the next song on "Sgt. Pepper's," combines a relatively simple structure with layers of psychedelic instrumentation and evocative lyrics to create a soaring vision through a crystalline world. "Luke is in the Desert," again, keeps the same music, and introduces a new world, but changes the lyrics to make it mostly about someone (Luke) complaining about how boring his life is. To extent there is a "Lucy" figure guiding him through this world, it's the mysterious Leia, "a hologram woman/now there's a surprise." But, for the most part, we have another instance of smart contrast: Lucy and her world were magical (eliciting an "ahhh" in the refrain); Luke's world is boring, and he's whining (hence the "whaaaa").
4) "Never Better" ("Getting Better")
On Sgt. Pepper's, "Getting Better" is a budding optimist's acceptance of the possibility of life's improvement. On Princess Leia's, the first half of "Never Better" continues Luke's whining from the "Luke is in the Desert." As a result, the entire first half of the song is negative, unlike the dawning optimism (with sardonic stoicism supplied by Lennon's "it can't get no worse") of "Getting Better." "Never Better" keeps the sitar-heavy mid-section that launches "Getting Better" into its final stretch, and smartly makes this the transition point for Luke's frame of mind (even keeping the spirit, if not the letter, of Lennon's sardonic refrain by remarking that "it only took one verse" for Luke to start feeling better about his situation). I would argue that "Never Better" even slightly improves on "Getting Better" by setting our first lyrics hinting about the mysticism of the Force over the Eastern, mystical tones supplied by the sitar.
5) "Imperial Holes" ("Fixing a Hole")
This is the first song on Princess Leia's in which the title does not appear. It's more a description of te state in which the upper-level Imperial bureaucracy finds itself: struggling on what to do next, now that the rebels have the Death Star plans, and the Senate is collapsing. Its analogue on Sgt. Pepper's is "Fixing A Hole," which I've always interpreted as being about someone who is tired of listening to doubters and critics and has finally decided to "fix" the holes in himself. If my interpretation is correct, then "Imperial Holes" is a great analogue, as it describes the Empire's attempt to deal with "holes" of its own. The guitar break also quotes the "Imperial March," which is a bit anachronistic (that theme does not appear until The Empire Strikes Back), but clever enough to forgive. My only complaint: I wish the title were better, and appeared as the song's refrain, as "Fixing A Hole" does on Sgt. Pepper's.
6) "He's Leaving Home" ("She's Leaving Home")
I shouldn't even have to explain that "He's Leaving Home" is Princess Leia's version of "She's Leaving Home." It's a very straightforward change, enabled by a similarity in narrative. "She's Leaving Home" is the story of a girl who runs away from a household headed by two well-meaning parents who don't understand why she would do such a thing. "He's Leaving Home," similarly, tells the story of Luke, finally leaving home, as he always wanted, but only because of the tragedy of his parents' murder. "She's Leaving Home" is told from the perspective of an omniscient, third-person narrator and of Luke's parents; "He's Leaving Home" is told from an omniscient perspective but almost exclusively follows Luke. The parents, in this case, are the main object of the tragedy, getting a flashback, earning ruminations on their simple, honest life. Forgiving another instance of awkward scanning ("Jawa sandcrawler") makes "He's Leaving Home," if anything, superior to "She's Leaving Home," at least in lyrical content and narrative purpose. It may be my favorite song on this "album."
7) "Being From the Spaceport of Mos Eisley" ("Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite")
This is yet another example of near perfect symmetry. John Lennon's inspiration for "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" was a Victorian-era circus poster he found at an antique store; the song's lyrics come from it almost verbatim, describing a veritable menagerie of bizarre and entertaining acts. And so Princess Leia's fills this same space of the album with "Being From the Spaceport of Mos Eisley," a recounting of the bizarre creatures and fraught perils contained within the Mos Eisley Cantina. The best symmetry: "And of course/my power source/comes from the Force" replacing "And of course/Henry the Horse/dances the waltz." There's also some clever musical alterations, most notably replacing the musique concretetape loop of "Mr. Kite" with a snippet from the Mos Eisley cantina band. Chewbacca's roar also replaces Ringo's mid-song drum break, and Han, shooting first, ends the song with the noise of his blaster. Another great effort.
8) "The Force Within You" ("Within You Without You")
'Within You Without You," the song from Sgt. Pepper's on which this track from Princess Leia's is based, has always been one of my favorite tracks on that album. Other bands of the time had dabbled in Eastern musical styles; The Beatles themselves had done so as early as 1965 with Rubber Soul's "Norwegian Wood," and again with "Tomorrow Never Knows" on Revolver. And The Rolling Stones, for their part, had "Paint It Black." But "Within You Without You" embraced the sitar, Indian tones, and Hindu spirituality and mysticism more than any piece of popular Western music up to that time. Setting A New Hope's main interstitial ship-based sequence (the sort that appear in every Star Wars movie; with a method of faster-than-light travel that gets you anywhere, such trips only take as long as the plot demands them to) to this song works for at least two reasons. First, the effect of going into hyperspace, as Star Wars portrays it, has itself long had psychedelic implications (as humorously demonstrated in Spaceballs), and "Within You Without You" is one of the most psychedelic songs on Sgt. Pepper's. And second, the content of this scene matches well with the content of the original song as well. "The Force Within You" swaps out the Hindu mysticism of the original for the first major exposition on the Force from Obi-Wan that we receive in A New Hope (the training ball et al.), and it works perfectly. Bonus points for seemingly making Chewbacca's voice into a sitar, replacing the mid-song instrumental interlude with R2-D2 beeps, and having the last words we hear in the video be Han saying "this is ridiculous," a clear parallel to the laughter that closes "Within You Without You." This song and "He's Leaving Home" go back and forth in my mind for the best/closest musical analogues.
9) "AA Twenty-Three" ("When I'm Sixty-Four")
The most impressive aspects of "AA-23," the replacement for "When I'm Sixty-Four," come in its syncing to footage from A New Hope: At the beginning, when the stormtroopers march and stop in sync to the song, and at the end, when the last note plays exactly as Han, Luke, Leia, and Chewie land in the dumpster. The playful melody of "When I'm Sixty-Four" also reinforces how downright funny the action sequence of Luke, Han, and Chewie rescuing Leia is. Other than that, though, there's no real compelling reason, other than an admittedly clever structuring of the song around the location of Leia's prison cell as the refrain, that this song had to be where it was. And "trooper" doesn't really scan how they want it to. Still an acceptable track, however.
10) "Dianoga ("Lovely Rita")
The main thing that "Dianoga" has going for it is that it's about someone (or, rather, something). But unlike "Lovely Rita," its counterpart, "Dianoga" is about fear, not love. In that sense, it has the same sort of juxtapositional irony that "With Illicit Help From Your Friends" also displayed. Aside from that, the best parts of this song come, again, from clever syncing to the movie: the piano interlude comes as Luke struggles to escape the dumpster creature; and where "Lovely Rita" ended with the breathing and scatting of its singer, "Dianoga" ends with snippets of desperate dialogue from the movie while the music still plays. But "ricochet" does not scan like the writers want, and the song is otherwise not that special. At least I learned from this song that the dumpster creature in "A New Hope" actually has a name.
11) "Keep Moving Keep Moving" ("Good Morning Good Morning")
"Good Morning Good Morning" has always been my least favorite song on Sgt. Pepper's. Likewise, "Keep Moving Keep Moving" is my least favorite song on Princess Leia's. I've never understood what "Good Morning Good Morning" was supposed to be about (Lennon said a box of cereal inspired it). And so, in this sense, "Keep Moving Keep Moving" actually improves on it somewhat. It describes how Han, Luke, Leia, and Chewie escape the Death Star using an admittedly clever and concise scheme of self-contained rhyming verses. The action is largely transitional, which is always how "Good Morning Good Morning" felt to me: the prelude to something better. But "Keep Moving Keep Moving" pulls the movie splice trick to great effect, swapping out the animal noises of "Good Morning Good Morning" for some of the most famous dialogue and sounds from A New Hope. Other than that, though...it's just okay. Though, to be fair, it could never be much better than the song on which it is based, which I've always considered the weakest song on Sgt. Pepper's.
12/13) "Princess Leia's Stolen Death Star Plans (Reprise)"/"A Day in the Life of Red Five" ("Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [reprise]/"A Day in the Life")
Remember when I said that "Good Morning Good Morning" has always felt like a prelude to me, and that "Keep Moving Keep Moving" took on some of that character? Well, both Sgt. Pepper's and Princess Leia's sure know how to end. The cleverness of Princess Leia's final track begins with its countdown: What was "1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4" on "Sgt. Pepper's (reprise) becomes "1, 2, Yavin IV" on "Princess Leia's (reprise)," helpfully informing us where in the galaxy we are. "Sgt. Pepper's (reprise)" is meant to convey the impression that it is being performed live; "Princess Leia's" mimics that by describing the meeting before the Death Star trench run, in which the Rebel high command gives attack instructions to the fleet. But the most impressive thing about this track is something over which this album's "creators" had no control, but perhaps inspired them to make it in the first place: in both the original Sgt. Pepper's and A New Hope, there is a "reprise" of sorts. The first act of A New Hope focuses on the stolen Death Star plans, and they retreat to the background for most of the movie until the final act. Likewise, Sgt. Pepper's merely provides a bookend to create the concept album of its titular band performing the album. Combining these two is the masterstroke of the album, highlighting the bookending nature of both the album and the movie.
"A Day in the Life of Red Five" is impressive, though not quite as much as this. There isn't much of a reason for the tonal shifts that we see in "A Day in the Life," or the abiding sadness of its first and third parts. "Obi-Wan spoke and I went into a dream," however, is brilliant, as is replacing the famous final note of "A Day in the Life" with the explosion of the Death Star. If these guys were really clever, though, they would have done something short with the secret message at the very end of Sgt. Pepper's, though I am impressed enough with this project as it is.
I can't emphasize enough how much of a creative wonder this is. I myself am fond of rewriting lyrics for different purposes (see, e.g., my rewriting of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" to make it about the 2016 election), but this outdoes anything I've ever attempted. I'm not exactly sure why this had to be done, or how anyone thought to do it, but boy am I glad someone did. It's a fitting way to honor the 40th anniversary of one of the most important movies ever released, and the 50th anniversary of one of the most important albums ever released. They both changed our popular culture forever, and this video is proof that their legacies, now intertwined by this project, live on.
I don't want to know anything more about this movie than what this poster tells me.
Earlier this week, I had a dream that it was the day of the premiere of Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi. I spent the whole of the dream frantically running around, trying to avoid the spoilers that were coming at me from seemingly every direction. Nowhere was safe. Eventually, I simply hid in the theater where I would eventually see the movie and waited for the premiere. (Incidentally, this dream strongly resembles what I did in advance of The Force Awakens.) And last night, I mentioned this dream to a friend. In the resultant discussion, we both decided that we would avoid not only spoilers for The Last Jedi, but even the trailers. We would go into the movie completely fresh, and every frame, every word of dialogue would surprise us.
Lo and behold, the very day after this conversation, and only two days after my dream (and this tweet), a trailer for The Last Jedi has come out. I will leave others to speculate what this says about my ability either to predict events or to bend reality to my will (or both?). But because I spend too much time on the Internet (and follow movie news very closely), it was impossible for me to avoid the news of this trailer's release. And because the Internet today functions as a shallow, impoverished, and conformist form of mass culture (albeit one of the few forms of mass culture we have left), it was even harder for me to resist the temptation to watch the trailer. All it would take is a click, I thought. And how much would it really reveal (the overly-revelatory nature of many modern trailers notwithstanding)? Nevertheless, I resisted. And here are the three reasons why.
First, as mentioned above, I genuinely do wish to experience this movie with as little advance information, and as much surprise, as possible. Thanks in large part to the Internet, movies today are so thoroughly reported on, pre-sold, pre-advertised, pre-marketed, discussed, speculated on, cross-promoted, overexposed...in short, it's hard to avoid learning almost everything about a movie before its release. Spoilers leap out at you uncontrollably, in clickbait headlines, in ostensibly unrelated comments, in the social media feeds of friends and family, and from people who want to ruin things for everyone else. On the other hand, if you want to spoil a movie for yourself in advance, it's never been easier. We are long removed from the days when blockbusters consistently, truly surprised people. The original Star Wars might have been one of the last such movies, although its success simultaneously destroyed that template forever. We had gone so long without even knowing the name of Episode VIII, and, until today, even a trailer, that I had begun to hope that Disney/Lucasfilm had planned to give us no official information about the movie other than its title and the date of its release. It would have been a fascinating experiment in brand power, a revealing study of consumer behavior, and, above all, a refreshingly retro return to an era when blockbusters could surprise you. Alas, it was not t to be. But I am still going to do my best to simulate the experience for myself.
Imagine if this had remained all we knew about the movie.
Second, I wish to protest the conformist, in my own small and surely insignificant way, the mass culture of the Internet. You might think that I created this blog, in part, to comment on things that become things on the Internet. And yes, looking at this blog's history, you would be partially correct. Yet lately, the oppressiveness of the Internet's social apparatus has begun to weigh more heavily on me. From nowhere, in unpredictable intervals and with unpredictable durations, there emerges a sudden, compelling necessity to have an opinion on whatever happens to be "trending." Why? Why does one of our only remaining forms of mass culture have to be simultaneously so arbitrary and so demanding? I'm not sure. It's not that I'm opposed to having an opinion per se. I'm sure I'll review The Last Jedi on this blog eventually, despite my growing loathing of Star Wars-based takes (of which I, of course, have produced plenty). I suppose it's simply that I dislike the idea of having a view of something simply because one is expected to have a view of it. I bristle and chafe at such an obligatory culture. And if not watching the trailer for The Last Jedi can postpone my inevitable participation in this culture's rituals, well, I think that's a good thing.
Finally, I'm not going to watch the trailer because I already made every prediction I wish to make about The Last Jedi in a September 2016 blogpost titled "My prediction for 'Star Wars Episode VIII': Rey turns to the Dark Side." You should read it. If you don't feel like reading it, here's a quick summary: Rey turns to the Dark Side, Snoke abandons Ren and takes up Rey as his new pupil, and Ren storms off on his own in a tantrum as a result. I have no idea if I'll be right, or even if the new trailer possibly refutes my speculation. But I am content to say nothing about The Last Jedi until after I've seen it regardless.
For these reasons, then, I shall avoid all manner of spoilers for The Last Jedi, even trailers. It will be hard; I expect to fail in some way(s), even if it isn't my fault (such as being stuck with a trailer before a theatrical movie I see before The Last Jedi). But I would rather fail in trying to adhere to this standard than let the potential magic of this movie all but disappear before I sit down to watch it in theaters.
"You know I'm the best thing about these movies anyway."
If you've seen Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (as I have; read my [positive] review here), then you know that probably the best part of the movie comes at almost the very end. The part I have in mind is when freaking Darth Vader shows up and massacres a bunch of rebel scum who first try vainly to fight him and then try desperately to escape him. His scenes are framed to make him seem like a horror movie monster, and he moves through the rebels like a Terminator. This scene lasts for no more than five minutes, but it felt, on my first watch-through, like it was only 30 seconds, such did it shock me.
This scene may have surprised some people, even though Vader does have a brief scene earlier in the movie before showing up the second time. And while this second scene's quality did stun me, I wasn't surprised that it happened: I predicted it! Here's what I wrote four days before the movie came out:
Here's how I imagine the movie going, in rough form: Along the way, a few of the motley crew die in their efforts to get the Death Star plans. But, near the end, it seems that they are about to succeed. All is merry. Then, out of nowhere, Darth Vader shows up. Since, to my knowledge, none of the characters in this movie have any kind of Force powers, Vader will be treated on-screen, essentially, as a horror villain. He will pop out of dark corners, float down from high places, block blasters with his hands, Force choke, dismember, decapitate, and utterly ruin whomever remains of Rogue Squadron by the end of the movie, and there's nothing anyone there can do about it. This, remember, is Darth Vader at his prime, when he was choking pilots and boarding enemy ships effortlessly. The main female protagonist in the movie, in classic final girl style, will barely escape Vader's grasp; as she flies away, she sees Vader staring at her, menacingly. That would be an incredible final act.
With some minor alterations, this is almost exactly what happened. But I'm not just mentioning this to pat myself on the back (though I am doing that, too). The consensus emerging about Rogue One is that it's a good movie, but the Vader sequence is by far the best part. I agree with this, with one exception: I think it was too short.
The end of Rogue One proved Darth Vader's potential as a horror villain. He is dark, unstoppable, and generates atmospheric dread simply by his presence. Framed by darkness, he can hide, and then burst out surprisingly. He can also float, hurt or kill you from a distance, stop your bullets, and brutally maim you--and there's nothing you can do about it. But you'd still have to build a plot around this potential to make it interesting for an entire movie.
So what's the best way to do that? The way I see it, these are the two best options. Both of them involve Jedi. The first would have Darth Vader learn that a group of Jedi somehow survived Order 66--a purge that killed all the Jedi, depicted in Revenge of the Sith--by fleeing to a remote planet. Vader then travels to that planet and hunts down these very overmatched Jedi (perhaps they are younger, padawans, or even younglings). The creative personnel behind this film would intentionally chose/design it to heighten the atmospheric dread as much as possible; make it dark, swampy (Dagobah?), full of ruins, shadows, etc. Maximize the horror potential of Vader's silent breathing, coming from somewhere, but with none of the victims-to-be able to see him until too late. Tensions would rise within the group, horror movie cliches would be demonstrated and subverted in a Star Wars setting. It could be scary as Hell. It would actually be something like this from the Clone Wars cartoon directed by Samurai Jack's Genndy Tartakovsky, except without the (relatively) happy ending, and with Vader instead of Grievous:
The other possibility is just a reversal of the above situation. Instead of Vader coming to the Jedi, a group of Order 66-surviving Jedi learn where Vader's headquarters are: a lava-surrounded, very Mordor-esque castle seen and heavily implied in Rogue One to be on Mustafar, where Obi-Wan Kenobi defeated Vader and severed his limbs. Thinking they have a chance to defeat Vader, they sneak onto the planet and into Vader's castle. And though they outnumber Vader, he, in a native--tight-quarters, frightening--environment, quickly turns the tables on them. In short, it would be a Star Wars version of Don't Breathe, a horror movie released earlier this year in which a group of home invaders attempt to rob the home of a blind man, only to find that he is much prepared for them than they could have realized. Much the same as above, Vader uses the element of surprise and his overwhelming powers to hunt them all down.
Actually, though, in both stories, I think the best way to end it is for Vader not to kill everyone. I think one person should escape, either by his or her own luck/skill, or because Vader decides to let that Jedi escape. Either way, the end result is that Jedi's becoming a messenger to other surviving Jedi, and to the rest of the galaxy, that it is foolish to take on Vader. (If Vader intentionally lets this Jedi survive, then he will explicitly state this to that Jedi as his motive: "I will let you live, but only so you can serve as a messenger: Tell the galaxy how foolish it is to face me.) It will be a classic "I alone escaped to tell thee" trope. And it would work extremely well, I think. Now that I think about it, they don't even have to be Jedi in either case (maybe just one Jedi in each group or something like that), but if they all were, that would certainly underscore the extent of Vader's power. The basic ideas work regardless, as long as Vader wins.
Oh, one more thing: If we ever do see this Star Wars movie, it should be released not in December, as the last two Star Wars movies have been, or in May, as all previous ones have, but in October, aka, Halloween season. If the way to keep Star Wars interesting is to tell different stories within its broad universe, then Hush: A Star Wars Story should fully embrace its status as a horror movie by settling in the Halloween season. And maybe even make it rated R, to maximize the brutality and the horror. We'll probably never see this movie, though. But if we do, it won't be the first time I'll have been right about Star Wars.
A friend of mine once forever changed the way I think about Star Wars movies. He suggested to me that the best way to understand them is to replace every instance of "The Force" in dialogue with "the plot." He believed that the Force, whatever its pseudo-/quasi-mystical qualities, was also always a way to ensure that whatever needed to happen in the story happened, and that people and events important in the narrative got the attention their writers and creators thought they needed. Thus, to say one character is "strong with the Force" is to say that he or she is "strong with the plot." When Ben Kenobi, in A New Hope, says that "the Force is what gives a Jedi his power," he actually means that "the plot is what gives Jedi his power." When Yoda, in Empire Strikes Back, says that "my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is," he's really saying "my ally is the plot. And a powerful ally it is." And so on.*
I bring this up not to cast fundamental doubts on the soundness or enjoyability of Star Wars movies; the fact that I have an entire category dedicated to them on this blog suggests that I do, in fact, like and enjoy them. I mention it because the circumstances that have given us Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the most recent Star Wars movie, have put me in mind of this sense of compulsion and willed obligation. For, as I wrote last week, Rogue One is the first Star Wars spin-off of the property's new era under the ownership of Disney. It is a prequel, but one that does not focus on the Skywalker family,* or directly advance the story continued most recently with last year's The Force Awakens. The entire purpose of Rogue One is, in fact, to make money--oh, and also, to explain in film length the following lines from A New Hope's opening crawl:
It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Rogue One, then, is not only a property willed into existence mostly by the profit motive, based on a few throwaway lines from a nearly 40-year-old movie, but also a movie with a known outcome. We know how Rogue One has to end: the Rebels will get the Death Star plans. Rogue One's very existence constrains its storytelling possibilities, as much, if not more so, than the fact that it has to make a bunch of money. From all this, you might think that Rogue One is a remarkably cynical enterprise, doomed to mediocrity for lack of risk-taking but destined for success because of its brand. Well, the latter may be true (though the prequels indicate that creative success, at least, is not guaranteed for the Star Wars brand), but, remarkably, the former is not. For Rogue One's creative constraints paradoxically free it to become one of the best entries in the Star Wars canon to date.
Despite stiff competition.
It does not do this, however, by creating compelling characters on par with Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, or Kylo Ren. The main cast of Rogue One consists of a Dirty Dozen/Great Escape-style ragtag ensemble; most of its members, aside from one or two distinguishing traits, are forgettable (with the standouts being Donnie Yenn's Chirrut Îmwe, a blind, plot--I mean, Force-believing mystic, and K2 [Alan Tudyk], a sassy robot). Even Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), the leader of this motley crew, is hardly compelling, with her character alternating unconvincingly between apathetic thief and idealistic rebel, albeit undergirded by an admittedly pathos-laden relationship with her father, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen, fresh off a villainous role in Doctor Strange in November). No, the Rogue Squadron itself is mostly forgettable. As is Director Krennic (Ben Mendelssohn), the striving, not-really-all-that-evil, mid-level Imperial bureaucrat who serves as their primary antagonist**.
The movie also succeeds in spite of a story and some action scenes within that bite off a bit more than third-time director Gareth Edwards (of 2014's Godzilla reboot, on which I had some fond words here), is quite ready to chew. The narrative is relatively straightforward, and moves quickly--so quickly, in fact, that we sometimes don't realize why some things happen, or why certain characters are doing what they're doing, except that the Force and the plot demand it. And sometimes, there is simply so much going on in front of us that we can't quite follow it, though we know we're still supposed to be impressed by the ambition thereof.
Yet the genius of Rogue One is to be good enough in its execution and overall atmosphere to render these complaints minor quibbles. For while the action can at times be confusing, when it is not, it is easily the most brutal and visceral of anything we've seen in a Star Wars movie. We've never had as full an immersion in realistic, extensive, ground-based infantry combat in this universe before (though it has happened in bits and pieces). Rogue One promised to deliver on this front, and, at its best, it does exactly that (despite my concerns), even breathing new life into the classic aerial dogfights with some fresh visual and strategic approaches and innovations. And it creates, as a backdrop to that gritty combat, an appropriately nuanced view of the struggle between the Rebellion and the Empire. The Empire doesn't definitively win, and the lines are still clearly drawn, but there is a lot more violence, death, and setbacks, and there are a lot more gray areas. Rogue One proved that a Star Wars movie can still make its action and drama interesting, even if nobody has a lightsaber***.
"Excuse me, I believe you're forgetting someone..."
The most impressive feat of Rogue One is its simultaneous fitting into and distinguishing itself from the larger Star Wars universe. Though it links itself to the movies we all already know and love many times***,it brings enough novelty into its tone, its action, its settings, and its approach to story and characters to be appreciated on its own. Where some might have seen only constraints and limitations imposed by everything it had to accomplish, and all that it could not do, the creative personnel of Rogue One saw an opportunity to create something new out of something familiar, and they seized it. While it may not rise, as a whole, to the heights of the best Star Wars, it contains plenty of individual moments, images, and general merit to earn a proper place in the franchise family. And, more important, it has proven that the Star Wars universe, now approaching its 40th anniversary, is not old and creaking, but young, vibrant, full of possibility, and may only be just beginning to be explored. May the Force--and the plot--be with us as we see where else we go in this galaxy far, far away.
*Even The Force Awakens works: It becomes The Plot Awakens, which makes perfect sense. It was the first live-action Star Wars movie of any kind in 10 years, and the first to move that universe's narrative forward in 35.
**You could also argue that Grand Moff Tarkin, played by a CGI-resurrected Peter Cushing, is also a main antagonist. But the most interesting thing about his character is that the actor who portrays him has been dead for 22 years, and Rogue One was able to return him to life in mostly convincing fashion, which means that we now have the ability to resurrect long-dead actors (I want to know how many people who didn't know he was dead thought something was off about him; I knew, and I still impressed, though it wasn't perfect). Ponder the possibilities and the ethics of this.
***Actually, somebody does have a lightsaber. It's Darth Vader. And, just as I predicted last week, he shows up and absolutely brutalizes people in terrifying fashion. It's awesome, in both senses of the word.
****Rogue One has many Easter Eggs, and ends up being almost a direct prequel to A New Hope.
Well, four years later, we may not be getting a Death Star, but we are getting a movie about the Death Star: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. If you somehow haven't heard about it (if so, Donald Trump won the election, FYI), Rogue One will somehow spin a whole movie out of these lines from the opening crawl of the first Star Wars movie:
It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Major missed opportunity on your part, Disney. Audiences will never forgive you for it.
Fans and non-fans alike might be wondering whether this movie has any justification to exist other than the profit motive (a perfectly defensible justification, might I add!). The people behind the movie, of course, say yes. Their goal with the movie, they say, is to tell a story about the dark, gritty corners of the Star Wars universe, away from Jedi, Skywalkers, and the Force, and closer to the ground of the brutal struggle between the Empire and the Rebellion. That's what they say, anyway. Last summer, when unexpected re-shoots for the movie were announced, I worried that Disney execs saw an initial cut of the movie, found it too dark for popular consumption, and demanded it be "lightened up" so that kids would watch, toys could be bought, etc.
I could be wrong. Reviews suggest I might be. I haven't seen the movie yet, obviously (I'll probably see it this Sunday, and review it here when I do). It's a prequel, and so bound to tell a story we already know (which is why I'm not taking the "AVOID ALL SPOILERS" approach I took to The Force Awakens with Rogue One). Creativity and novelty could still emerge from these limiting parameters, but I still doubt that Rogue One will do the truly bold thing: Let the Empire win.
There are two ways it could do this. One is incredibly unlikely, and would be one of the most unexpected and riskiest creative moves a modern franchise could make: Literally have the Empire win, like how Inglorious Basterds unexpectedly created an alternative timeline in which Allied forces successfully assassinate Hitler and kill most of the German high command well before his real-world bunker suicide in April 1945. Having the Rebels in this movie secure the Death Star plans and then suddenly get wiped out by Vader would be a greater pop culture twist than perhaps anything before it, and represent one of the biggest risks ever taken by a franchise. It would also create an alternate Star Wars timeline, confusing the general audiences already having trouble understanding that this movie is not a sequel to The Force Awakens even more. There's no way it will happen, but if somehow it does, you heard it here first.
There's another way, though, that Rogue One could let the Empire win, and it seems much more likely. Here's how I imagine the movie going, in rough form: Along the way, a few of the motley crew die in their efforts to get the Death Star plans. But, near the end, it seems that they are about to succeed. All is merry. Then, out of nowhere, Darth Vader shows up. Since, to my knowledge, none of the characters in this movie have any kind of Force powers, Vader will be treated on-screen, essentially, as a horror villain. He will pop out of dark corners, float down from high places, block blasters with his hands, Force choke, dismember, decapitate, and utterly ruin whomever remains of Rogue Squadron by the end of the movie, and there's nothing anyone there can do about it. This, remember, is Darth Vader at his prime, when he was choking pilots and boarding enemy ships effortlessly. The main female protagonist in the movie, in classic final girl style, will barely escape Vader's grasp; as she flies away, she sees Vader staring at her, menacingly. That would be an incredible final act.
Having Vader be the sci-fi horror movie villain would let this guy take a break.
Again, I don't know if it will happen. But turning Vader into a horror movie villain would make sense. In the Original Trilogy, he was a fearsome force even for people with use of the Force. Imagine how terrifying it would be to confront him if you were just an infantryman in this war? What could you even do? Anyway, this is just idle speculation, mostly transcribed in advance just to see if I'm right about what will happen and prove it if I am. As with my predicted plot of Star Wars Episode VIII, I both hope I am (for vindication) and hope I'm not (so that I'm still surprised by what happens). Either way, though, until we get a real Death Star, Rogue One will have to suffice.
"If you think I look good now, imagine how much better I will look when I'm evil."
I have written a lot about Star Wars for this blog (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here...). That was not necessarily my intention when I started it; I don't think Star Wars is even my biggest nerd passion. But hey, it's fun, it gets the clicks, and it's current, so why not?
Filming for Star Wars Episode VIII is currently underway. What will happen? No one outside of the cast and crew knows. And frankly, I don't want to know. I deliberately - and with much difficulty - went into Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens with as little knowledge of it as possible, and my first viewing was one of my best cinematic experiences ever as a result.Therefore, I won't trawl the Internet for rumors, leaked scripts, drone footage, etc of Episode VIII. When the trailers come out, I'll probably watch those, but that's it. As of the writing of this post, I know nothing about Episode VIII, not even the title.
But I did accidentally encounter a headline somewhere on social media recently that asked a simple question: What if Rey turned to the Dark Side? Well, this got my imagination firing. And it made me realize that Rey turning evil might be the best thing that could happen to this new trilogy.
I've defended the character of Rey from what I think are unfair accusations of her being a Mary Sue (a Mary Sue is a, basically, a perfect character who does nothing wrong, impresses everyone with her skills, and is even perhaps wish fulfillment for her creator). But much of my opinion of the new trilogy will still depend on what it does with her. She has to have at least some major failing to have a full arc. The safe way to do this is either to have Luke train Rey and have them both go take on Snoke (and, presumably, lose, in Episode VIII at least, because otherwise how can there be an Episode IX, unless Ren is somehow the only villain, or some other villain[s] pop up); or have Rey foolishly go take on Snoke herself without Luke and have her defeated soundly, only rescued from certain death at the last minute by a timely intervention by Luke or somebody else. But neither of these is very interesting, and would be difficult to stretch for a whole movie. What if, instead, Rey becomes evil? This, to me, is the most interesting scenario, and so I decided to sketch out how it might happen.
The Force Awakens ended with Rey tentatively handing Luke's old lightsaber back to him, having finally found the old master. What if VIII begins with Rey, at first in awe of Luke, starting to lose respect for him as she asks him what has been on all of our minds: Where have you been? Do you know that Han is dead because of you? Do you know that the Hosnian system is destroyed because of you? Let's assume, based on Han's remark in TFA that Luke has gone to the site of the first Jedi temple, that Luke, now a mature Jedi master, had fled there to try to discover the secret of defeating Snoke, whom he learned was an ancient, powerful, once-defeated but now-resurgent evil out of the far-distant past of the Jedi-Sith conflict. Not knowing how to defeat him in the present, he returned to the site of the first Jedi temple to seek the ancient wisdom necessary to defeat the equally ancient evil of Snoke. Had he stayed and fought without this secret knowledge, he knew he would have been defeated, and with him would have died the only hope of defeating Snoke. His long yet necessary time in exile has been full of investigation, excavation, study, meditation, and preparation for taking on Snoke, in stark contrast to his brash actions in The Empire Strikes Back. There is also an element of hopelessness and futility in his exile, though he doesn't want to admit it; to a small extent, he is simply tired of the effort required to keep the galaxy safe, a la Mr. Incredible:
Meanwhile, Rey, confident and a bit arrogant from defeating Ren, can't believe that, as she sees it, Luke is just sitting on his hands while Snoke and Ren threaten her friends and the galaxy as a whole. She trains with Luke for a bit, but Luke sees his old, rash self in her--too much of it, perhaps. She is impatient, reckless, and, at times, angry. If she could, she would march into Snoke's lair and take him on herself. After a frustrating time with Luke, who constantly demands patience from her (as Yoda asked of him), she upbraids him, thinks he is weak, and leaves him behind, despite his warnings.
Meanwhile, during all of this, we see Ren trying to complete his training under Snoke, as was said at the end of TFA. But he is having trouble doing so (this creates an interesting comparison/parallel between Rey and Ren as
they both struggle with their training under their respective masters; you could even cut back and forth between the two of them regularly during this part of the movie, at parallel points in their training, to further the connection).
Killing his father has not given him the closure he had sought (a stage direction for the official script of The Force Awakensreads "Kylo Ren is somehow WEAKENED by this wicked act"). It has,
instead, added to his inner turmoil, which he cannot seem to control and
channel in the manner of the truly powerful Sith. Flashbacks
during/as part of this training period give insight into why Ren turned,
who the Knights of Ren are, and how they with Snoke forced Luke into
exile. They also perhaps hint at Snoke's origin without outright
revealing it; the physical person of Snoke himself, moreover, is not
seen. Only his disembodied voice and the massive hologram are visible to
us (perhaps with some enticing, Vader-esque exceptions here and there).
Something like this, to parallel Empire.
We also see some hints, perhaps, of ancient creatures that always seem
to be around Snoke, much as Voldemort was always flanked by Nagini;
perhaps Snoke makes Ren face one of them (they will be this movie's main "creature feature," as every Star Wars movie has at least one bizarre creature). Frustrated by his inability to
complete his training, Ren becomes convinced that the only thing that
will give him the closure he needs now is killing Luke--and maybe Leia as well.
Back at the Resistance base (which can either be the same location as in TFA, or a new location, much as the Rebellion moved to Hoth in Empire), Rey convinces Finn and a small coterie of willing Resistance members to join her in a secret effort to take on Snoke in his own lair, the location of which Luke has revealed to her but on which he won't act, adding to Rey's frustrations. Notably, she tries but fails to convince Chewbacca to come with her; in a typically-humorous Han Solo-style conversation, Chewbacca says it seems like a bad idea (Chewy: "Rawwr!" Rey: "What do you mean it's a bad idea?"). They steal some Resistance ships, since they don't think they would get Resistance approval for this mission (or it is explicitly denied them), perhaps because its fleet, much reduced by the carnage of The Force Awakens, is stretched thin fighting to a standstill against the also-reduced forces of the First Order. Then, with the Millennium Falcon leading, they sneak onto Snoke-world (which should be really unique among planets thus far encountered, but I'm not sure exactly how...ideas welcome). They do this undetected, because they have a small fleet, and thanks to covert means, the exact nature of which I haven't determined but should at least be mentioned somehow (the hyperspeed trick from TFA?).
From here, I can see two potential paths. I can imagine Rey, Finn, and her team finding Snoke's lair, making their way past the First Order troops guarding it (as well as some of Snoke's ancient creatures?), and then confronting Ren (and his Knights?), with all but Rey and Finn slaughtered along the way, and those two disarmed. I can also imagine a scenario in which Rey, unknowingly tapping into her Dark Side urges, takes on those same forces (including Ren) and defeats Ren once again. In the first scenario, Ren and his Knights would bring the two of them to Snoke himself against their will. In the second scenario, which I think I like better, Rey (and to a lesser extent Finn) defeats Ren again and make their way into Snoke's inner sanctum (maybe here, instead of earlier, Snoke unleashes his ancient creatures, which act similarly not only to Nagini but also to Flotsam and Jetsam in service of Ursula in The Little Mermaid).
There's just no way Snoke ends up being this fabulous.
The movie then cuts to Luke, who is now bearing the weight of the guilt of all the deaths his inaction has let happen. In a self-deprecating monologue with R2--whom Rey had left with Luke--that hearkens back to the Original Trilogy (interspersed with beeps and whatnot), we see his thoughts and his guilt add up, until he finally decides to return to the Resistance base (whose location Rey has revealed to him, if he didn't know it already), even though he is not sure yet that he can defeat Snoke. He finds his old X-wing, says "I hope this old thing still works," jokingly asks R2 if R2 (and he himself) still knows how to fly, and, with R2 in the cockpit, flies back to the Resistance base. Here he has a powerful reunion with Leia (Luke wanting to see Leia, and gather a force to take on Snoke, are my responses to the objection of why he doesn't just go straight to Snoke if he already knows where Snoke is).
He also briefly mourns Han, confirms what Rey has done, and gathers another team to rescue her--this time with Leia's approval--including Poe and Chewy. In a scene reminiscent of this one from Return of the Jedi, we learn that Leia wants to go, but Luke, being overbearing and over-protective of his sister, forbids it. Leia protests, asking Luke to think of all they have done together, and reminding him that she has more than held her own in the past, even saving him on at least one occasion. But Luke stresses that the Resistance--which is still fighting pitched battles against the First Order all over the galaxy--needs her, that he is the one Ren and Snoke want, and that he can't let any more deaths happen because of him--or let any more deaths weigh on his conscience. Leia, though annoyed, agrees.
Now we cut back to Rey and Finn, who are in Snoke's inner sanctum, which seems very old and is covered in undecipherable symbols, hinting at Snoke's ancient origins. Rey and Fin armed and ready to take him on (assuming the second scenario in which they go in having defeated the First Order and the Knights to get in). As they approach, there is a man behind the curtain-style revealing that the real Snoke is, contrary to his massive holograms, a tiny, seemingly-decrepit ancient figure, much resembling the old woman from the "Chocolate" episode of SpongeBob, in fact. This is a parallel to the reveal of Yoda in Empire, although this time the figure is evil instead of good (so basically a misdirection on par with what Darth Jar Jar would have been, if Lucas had actually intended it, and actually gone through with it).
Pictured: What I think Snoke will actually look like. Idea credit: Rooney Columbus.
Rey and Finn, seeing this, go to attack Snoke, but are immediately flung backward by a powerful Force push (or attacked and restrained by Snoke's serpentine servants, Laocoon-style; if so, Finn and Rey should ask "what the hell are those!?" before they are attacked), knocking out Finn (even though this already happened in The Force Awakens). Rey tries to get up, but she is immobilized. She then finds herself floating, still immobilized, toward the tiny but powerful Snoke himself. "You have come to defeat me, I see? How very brave. And how very stupid," Snoke says. "You have no idea who I am. I hold an ancient power, beyond your reckoning." Rey struggles, then looks back at Finn. "Ah, your friend? I have no use for him. I care not for him. You, on the other hand..." Snoke, without lifting a finger, spins Rey around like she's a model at an exhibition. "You have great power in you. And I shouldn't be surprised, given who you are." Rey is shocked. Snoke notices. "Oh, he didn't tell you? I should have figured. He is the one who abandoned you in the first place [note from Jack: This is assuming that I have correctly inferred from The Force Awakens that Luke trained Rey as a child but then abandoned her on Jakku when he fled into exile. It doesn't have to be; this is a somewhat dispensable element of my plot. I could see Rey being mad enough at Luke without this being the case]. "I'm sure he didn't tell you that either." Snoke then reveals to Rey that she is:
a) Obi-Wan's granddaughter
b) a Palpatine clone of some kind
c) the child of Luke or Han
d) Somehow an offspring of Snoke himself (I hope not this; a bit too Empire Strikes Back).
e) Something else that explains her strong innate Force abilities in a satisfying yet also surprising manner (this being the key necessary element of her identity and the reveal, in my mind)
Rey refuses to believe it, of course, but Snoke proves it to her with a vision of the sort that she had in TFA when she touches Luke's lightsaber. It functions as a kind of flashback, revealing Rey's origins. Rey is distraught, and her anger at Luke increases. "Yes, you are angry. You should be." But then Rey remembers where she is, and in whose clutches she finds herself. "That doesn't matter. You are evil. You have killed millions. I don't care what Luke did. I hope he comes here and kills you himself." But Snoke, confident as ever, gives an evil smile and begins a classic villainous monologue. "He won't do it. He's too weak. Just like all the Jedi. Including his father" (this is a reference to a deleted scene from TFA, one that appears in the novelization,in which Snoke explains that Darth Vader was weak because he never fully embraced the Dark Side).
Pictured: A Jedi kills a Sith.
Snoke goes on to explain that the Jedi are incompetent, weak, spineless, and incapable of keeping peace and order in the galaxy (much as Jonathan V. Last of the Weekly Standard has argued). "Only the Sith have brought order to the galaxy. Look at your history, child. Again and again, the Jedi have let this galaxy fall into chaos. Only under the guidance of the Sith has it maintained order." Snoke could even say that the Empire was a force for good and order (again, as Jonathan Last has argued), which would help explain the First Order's desire to recapture the Empire's glory (and its obsession with giant space weapons). Rey is still angrily denying it, but when she begins to think about what Luke has (and hasn't) done, a small portion of the idea begins to penetrate her mind. If Ren is in the room at this point, he begins to wonder what is going on.
We then cut to Luke, Poe, and their Resistance band, who have to go through an aerial battle before they land on Snoke-world (their fleet is larger, and they don't use whatever technique allowed Rey and her group to get there undetected). This allows Luke to show off some of his rusty but still extant piloting skills, though perhaps he is outshone somewhat by Poe's youthful dexterity (maybe leading to some "I'm too old for this shit"-style self-deprecation from Luke, expressed, again, in an Original Trilogy-style "conversation" with R2). On the ground, they have to fight through whatever remaining First Order troops (and Snoke creatures; when Luke and his group see them, one of them remarks something like "I though all of these things were extinct!," further reinforcing the ancientness of Snoke) stand between them and Snoke. Snoke, Ren, and Rey, meanwhile, all sense the presence of Luke. Snoke tells Ren/his Knights to confront them and to leave him alone with Rey. Ren, chomping at the bit to get the closure he so desperately seeks, barely needs to be told. Ren comes out to confront Luke, lightsaber blazing, in the midst of a temper tantrum (if Ren's Knights are with him, perhaps he tells them to leave Luke to him). The now mature, wise, confident, and patient Luke puts up a defense in a style suiting his new self. Call it Jedi rope-a-dope. It hearkens back to Obi-Wan's calm, confident parrying of Anakin in Revenge of the Sith. But Luke and Ren are still evenly-matched.
Yes, I do think some callbacks to the prequels would be OK in this new trilogy.
As they fight, we cut back to Rey's mental struggle with Snoke. Remarkably yet believably, she begins to accept some of his premises. He shows her Luke struggling with Ren, whom she has managed to defeat already (either once or twice, depending on which scenario above you go with). "You see? He is a weak old man. This is the man who is supposed to be save the galaxy? He can't even save himself. The galaxy is not safe with him. It is safe with me." Snoke then begins to elaborate on his relationship with Ren. "In truth, he is not the best pupil. There is an inner turmoil in him that will forever keep him from greatness. But I sense no such turmoil in you. There is a purity in you, one that you now foolishly direct toward that which you think is good, but which, under my teaching, can act in service of the greatest good of all: order."
This is all a development of Snoke's interest in Rey in The Force Awakens; recall that, before Ren and Rey battle, Snoke asks Ren to bring Snoke to her. Rey starts thinking, then, stunningly yet credibly, says yes, she'll join Snoke. Snoke lets her go. For a moment after Snoke releases her, Rey looks at her lightsaber, and Snoke, his back to her, is almost tempting her to cut him down at his most vulnerable. But, entirely of her own free will, she demurs, and joins Snoke in a vessel to escape their current hideaway (Snoke, playing it close to the chest, is secretly a bit concerned that Luke actually has found out how to defeat him and wants to make sure an evil, all-powerful Rey is standing between the two of them before Luke finds him again). At this point, Finn awakes and calls after Rey. She briefly stops, looks back, and then either simply turns forward again and ignores him, or uses the Force in some cruel way to knock him out (Force lightning would be the least believable but also the most cool-looking and provocative; a simple Force push across the room would do fine).
We cut back to Luke and Ren, still fighting. They are also in a war of words. Something like this:
Ren: "Han Solo was a weak old man! Just like you. So easy to kill."
Luke: "He was a great man, he was my friend, and he was your father, however much you want to deny it. There is still good in you."
I could also see them arguing over who is the proper inheritor of the legacy of Darth Vader, with Ren zeroing in on Darth Vader's evil, and Luke focusing on his redeeming good in his final acts.
Luke: "You think my father was an evil man. But you didn't see what he did for me in his final moments. He saved my life. Without him, I wouldn't be here."
Ren: "And that was his only mistake!"
But as they continue to fight, they both turn to see a vessel blast off from Snoke's inner sanctum; being Force-sensitive, they both know that Snoke has left with Rey. For Luke, this is saddening (and distracting), another failure. But for Ren, this is infuriating; he has been abandoned by his master for a superior pupil. How will he get his closure now? In a reinvigorated tantrum, he fights Luke furiously, much as Luke himself once used his anger to defeat Darth Vader. Through a combination of lightsaber fury and Force rage, Ren defeats but does not kill Luke (maybe Luke loses another hand? Or maybe he does kill Luke, though I think that would be too much).
He then summons the remaining First Order soldiers/Knights of Ren and leaves on his own vessel in a furious exile of his own, a parallel of sorts to the one Luke has just left. Luke, meanwhile, battered and bruised, retrieves Finn, who confirms for him what has happened. Together, they gather up the remaining Resistance soldiers, and, defeated, return to the Resistance base, where they tell Leia the bad news (which she may already have sensed). The movie ends with Luke and Leia embracing in front of a makeshift grave for Han Solo, with Finn, Poe, Chewy, R2, and C-3PO alongside them. They are sad but, at the very least, happy to be together once more, a complicated set of emotions communicated in smiles that somehow force in through their pain. Cue credits music.
How's that for dark? I want the sequel to The Force Awakens to be dark, and I think this definitely fits the bill, without being an outright copy of The Empire Strikes Back, as many people think The Force Awakens was of A New Hope(notably, though Rey in my version of VIII goes on a similar quest to Luke's in Empire, she fails the test Luke passed in that film, and her quest was much more selfish in the first place anyway). There's also plenty of interesting character arcs: Rey goes from good to evil; Ren goes from evil to pissed but neutral; and Luke goes from hesitant exile to returning warrior. Not as well developed in my imagined sequel is what exactly is happening with the First Order and the Resistance (basically they're just still fighting, both in reduced states from the previous movie, as they both suffered major setbacks. But, to be fair, the First Order/Resistance conflict wasn't well-developed in TFA, which is fine, because it's not the most important thing anyway). An Episode VIII that goes like this could shoot off in all sorts of directions for Episode IX.
Understandably, my Episode IX is a bit less thought-out than my Episode VIII, but I can see a few things, with the first act being clearest. The first act of Episode IX would have Luke, Poe, Finn, Chewy, etc. mounting a mission together to try to confront and persuade the now-neutral (and very angry) Ren to join them, since he is one of the only remaining powerful Force-sensitives in the galaxy now that Rey has turned to the Dark Side. This would be a parallel to Luke, Leia, and Lando's mission in Return of the Jedi to rescue Han (since Ren is, after all, Han's son). In this first act of IX, the mission has to slay some more weird creatures (because of course) on the remote planet where their intel has determined Ren is hiding out, defeat the First Order and Knights of Ren soldiers still loyal to him, and, finally, confront Ren himself.
They get to Ren, and then, after Luke fails to convince Ren to join them, Luke and Ren begin to fight again. As they duel, Ren, in his anger, perhaps ends up getting the better of Luke again (or not). Leia, whether Ren is winning or she simply is tired of the fighting, arrives and whips out her secret weapon: motherly love. She convinces Ren what Luke could not: That he'll never get the closure he seeks or end the inner turmoil that torments him by acting in this way. He'll only get that by helping them. By being the son she knows he still is. As she approaches him, unarmed, risking her life, as Han did, and offering many chances for him to kill her, this time, he drops his lightsaber to the ground and embraces his mother, while a tired Luke looks on (from the ground, if Ren had gotten the better of him).
Meanwhile, Snoke is training Rey, who is dressed much differently (and darker) from how we last saw her, and who is just oozing power, making Snoke proud at every step; she and Snoke preside over a reinvigorated First Order that is close to recapturing the Empire's glory. At some point in Episode IX, we would get a full reveal of who Snoke is; as I've hinted at above, I think he should be some ancient evil out of the distant past of the Jedi-Sith conflict, thought defeated long ago but now resurgent/reawakened (maybe how he got to be reawakened could be detailed, as part of Luke's continuing investigation into how to defeat him). I wouldn't mind if he's Darth Plagueis, Darth Sidious' master, as long as they go with the idea--expressed in Revenge of the Sith--that Plagueis was himself accessing some kind of ancient, long-forgotten power (again, not all prequel callbacks are inherently bad). Abrams and Andy Serkis, Snoke's motion-capture actor, have both denied this, but Abrams lied about Khan being in Star Trek Into Darkness too, so who knows.
Pictured: Darth Plagueis, and, as some theorize, Snoke.
You could maybe toy with the idea that Rey pulled some epic, Snape-as-Voldemort's-lieutenant-but-actually-Dumbledore's-mole switcheroo, waiting for the right time to turn on Snoke, (much as Luke, though tempted to the Dark Side in Return of the Jedi, wearing black when he confronts Vader and the Emperor, and indulging in anger at the Emperor's urging to defeat Vader, resists the temptation, and is revealed to have been wearing a white shirt beneath his black overclothes all along). But I would prefer Rey's evil to be played straight. Maybe she only backs away from it when she confronts Finn and finds herself unable to torture him (Snoke does it anyway)? I don't know. Again, I haven't thought this through as thoroughly, and while it's hard to speculate about something that hasn't happened yet, it's even harder to speculate based on your own speculations.
Will I be right about any of this? I have no idea. It would be pretty risky to make Rey go dark, but I think the reward in terms of creative payoff would be immense. I will say this, however: I have been a J.J. Abrams obsessivefor some time. I am pretty confident that I understand roughly how his creative brain works, enough such that I am often able to predict or anticipate what he does with certain material (this was especially the case with Fringe, which he created and executive-produced; in a Newton-and-Leibniz-both-create-calculus-independently scenario, I actually sketched out many of the ideas for the show Fringe before I ever watched it or even knew what it was). All I know is that, if I am right, I apologize for ruining the next two Star Wars movies for myself and for everyone who has read this post (so, fortunately, not many people). Again, for future reference--whether I'm right or wrong--I wrote all of this with no knowledge of Episode VIII, not even its title (which, if I were to choose, should be something like "The Ancient Fear," a rumored title of The Force Awakens, or "The Gods of the Past," both in reference to Snoke's primeval nature and the threat he poses). If I am right, I would certainly enjoy the next two movies; aside from being eerily vindicated, I think I would also enjoy the story. And since I am in the habit of giving suggestions to Disney/Lucasfilm, here's another: You are welcome to use any of this material; I wouldn't even mind not getting credit. At any rate, what do you think of my theories? Am I 100 percent right or full of crap? What do you think will happen in Star Wars: Episode VIII? Let me know in the comments below.
