Star Wars Day 2025

In observance of May the 4th, this is my own personal recommended/definitive watch order of the Star Wars films if you're somehow still uninitiated or know someone who is. This is movies only, no TV shows, no videogames, no novels, just theatrical films so you can manage your watch time easier.

Revenge of the Sith
Rogue One
A New Hope
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
The Force Awakens
The Last Jedi

Honorable Mentions/Qualifiers:
Jury's still out on Rise of Skywalker. I like it a little better every time I see it, but not by very much, and I haven't forgiven it for how angry it made me the first time. I'll leave you to guess the moment when I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from yelling "Bullshit!" at the screen and ruin everyone else's theater outing. The Han Solo film is in a similar standing; The first time I saw it, I was not impressed, but upon a rewatch some time later, I enjoyed it a lot more. Overall, though, while it never made me angry like Rise, I find it a very uneven movie. Basically, all the scenes with Han and Chewie are great. The rest of the film is a rather bland and uninspired heist movie. I've always had mixed feelings about Ron Howard as a director. Visuals aren't his strong suit and I think he trusts his actors a little too much at times, not really pushing the best performances out of them. In the best scenarios, you get someone seasoned like Tom Hanks in front of his camera, and you're in for a good time. In the worst, you put him in charge of some relative unknowns who haven't found their voices, and it's clear he prefers a hands-off approach with little to fall back on. This leads to actors looking a tad lost on screen, which at least is on brand for a young, fish-out-of-water Han Solo.

As for the two prequel films I left off the order, I should point out I'm actually something of a Phantom Menace apologist. However, at this point in the franchise's lifespan and with everything else we've been given to spend our time with, I'm okay with saying you can skip that one. Before Rise, Attack of the Clones was the one Star Wars film I actively disliked. Even then, I once made a list of 5 things I liked about it. I don't quite remember what they are anymore (I don't even think I ended up posting it to Tumblr which I originally wrote it for). Also, fun fact about Attack of the Clones: this was the first Star Wars movie to not be filmed on traditional 35mm film. It was shot on high definition digital video... and unfortunately, you could tell. I still remember when I saw it in the theater the first time, there was a fairly dark scene with Obi-Wan and Anakin on opposite sides of the screen talking, and you could see compression artifacts in the dark space between them. It was practically a checkerboard pattern of deep purples and dark grays, with each square as big as the actors' heads. Roger Ebert made a similar observation in his review, so I know my experience was not unique. Fortunately, the technology behind the transition from analog film to digital video, especially in projection, has gotten a lot better. It was certainly no longer an issue by the time we got to Revenge of the Sith.

Speaking of clones, I'm also not bothering to include the animated Clone Wars film, as that was really more like a pilot for the TV series that just happened to get a theatrical run. Thanks to a modest budget of less than 10 million dollars, it was able to make a fair bit of money at the box office, though still stands as the lowest grossing Star Wars movie at just shy of 70 million. For comparison, Solo made a little under 400 million dollars against a budget of 330 million and that was considered enough of a failure to get the Obi-Wan movie scrapped and reworked into a miniseries on Disney+. As a rule, studios tend to take about half of the gross (and budgets don't include expenses like marketing and promotion), so, depending on who you ask, Solo is the first Star Wars movie to lose money. The Mandalorian & Grogu is set to release next year in theaters. It will be interesting to see how it fares.

While this has been primarily a watch order list, I'll touch briefly on ranking the Star Wars films, most favorite to least favorite. I'm not going to give the full rundown; as I've said, jury's out on a few of them and it's sometimes hard to qualify what's a "least liked" and what warrants an "actively disliked". In any case, it would be a tier list, rather than assigning each movie a unique ranking number. For example, I love Last Jedi and Rogue One. I love them equally, and it's for exact opposite reasons. One honors the past, the other looks towards the future, and I simply could never put one above or below the other. It wouldn't be fair. On a similar note, although A New Hope is not my favorite, I'd either have to leave it off the list entirely or put it right at the top purely on principle. Just as I respect Last Jedi for taking risks and Rogue One for sticking to what it knows, I respect A New Hope for taking that first step, walking so the rest could run. If I woke up tomorrow to find all the other Star Wars media apart from A New Hope had been erased from existence, I'd be very sad... for about twenty minutes, and then I'd sit and watch it for the umpteenth time and all would feel right with the world again.

May The Force be with you.

A Little Tipsy

Let me start by admitting that I am by no means an expert on aerospace engineering and could most certainly not land anything on the moon or Mars or anywhere else in our solar system. I don't think I ever even succeeded at that egg drop challenge everyone did in elementary school (not even sure I participated). The point is that my opinion on the Odysseus Lander is only that, one of 10,000 opinions by someone with no expertise on the subject. 

Remember that email chain letter from a few years ago about how the booster rockets on the space shuttle are based on the width of a horse's ass? It's got to do with train tracks being based on old wagon trails, which in turn owe their dimensions to Roman chariots, and you see where this is going. The credibility of the story is debatable, but the point is that for anything we construct, eventually some part of the process is going to be arbitrary or born of a necessity that's no longer a problem to overcome. 

I was thinking about this when I saw the Odysseus lander. I wondered if it had to be designed the way it is to properly fit in the payload space of the rocket, hence it effectively being taller than it is wide. 

From what I can find, the Falcon 9 rocket is about 3.66m (12 feet) wide. I don't know what that is in horse asses, but let's leave that rabbit hole be. I don't feel like researching what other landing craft it housed or exactly how much of that diameter is usable cargo space and not insulation or whatever else it takes to get that phone booth into space. All I want to know is why it was designed that way when so many other craft understand the importance of placing your center of gravity as low as possible. 

This is the Philae Lander, part of the Rosetta mission to Comet 67 P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko back in 2014 (launched in 2004, by the way). It had a rough landing of its own. One missed harpoon and a failed thruster caused it to bounce twice before finally landing and resuming its mission. You'll notice it only has 3 legs and is overall fairly low to the ground.

This is the Viking lander. It landed on Mars in 1976. It also only has 3 legs and is overall wider than it is tall. Are you noticing a pattern yet?

The Odysseus lander has six legs, but according to reports, one leg may have snapped, sending it on its side and possibly leaning against a rock. I don't want to diminish their accomplishment, but ignoring decades of sensible design doesn't endear me to their cause.

This is a tensegrity robot, designed by the Creative Machines Lab out of New York City. It uses tensioning rods to maintain its shape and can even roll by telescoping and expanding its legs in a sequence. Theoretically, a science payload could be suspended in the center of this "skeletal ball" and with no obvious up or down could land in any orientation and be able to correct itself. Also, depending on where we drop it, it may not even need a chute or booster to slow it down. As stated, though, this is all theoretical as only various field tests have been conducted to prove the concept of rolling as a viable means of locomotion on uneven terrain. 

It makes me wonder if Intuitive Machines, creators of the Odysseus lander, maybe had to answer to some higher-ups who weren't too keen on any unproven technologies, instead opting for something that at least resembled a more conventional design. 

The Sincerest Form of Preservation

On the off-chance you're new here, my site's name may baffle you. It is a reference to the H. P. Lovecraft story In The Walls of Eryx about a man trapped in an invisible maze in the jungles of Venus while searching for powerful crystals. It's not a particularly well-liked story by Lovecraft fans, namely for its pulpy sci-fi trappings and notable lack of cosmic horror. I don't share this opinion, though I won't call it my favorite. That seems to change with years. Many years ago, I would most certainly have called it my favorite. I even wrote fan fiction in the same setting. I suppose I'm more fascinated by it than anything, how different it is from his other works in terms of theme yet how distinctly "his" it is. There's a quote attributed to Lovecraft that goes something like this:

There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany pieces' —but alas — where are any Lovecraft pieces?

He's referring to his major influencers and how they seemingly compartmentalized his work accordingly. Stories like The Outsider are very much in the vein of Poe while his "dream cycle" including The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath are very much the kind of fantasy the Lord Dunsany dabbled in, among his many other achievements. As for those allegedly elusive Lovecraft works, the easy answer would be The Call of Cthulhu and all its tangents like The Color Out of Space. Meanwhile, In The Walls of Eryx or Imprisoned with the Pharaohs or Herbert West: Re-Animator don't necessarily fall into any of these categories, though it's not as if being in one of them would have helped his circulation back in the day. His work was rarely seen outside of Weird Tales, the most notable exception being At The Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time, published in Astounding Stories, a periodical known mostly for very traditional "super science"-styled sci-fi. Ironically, In The Walls of Eryx might have fit in quite nicely there. That is, the magazine wouldn't have gotten letters of complaint about whether or not it belongs, like what happened with Mountains. To Astounding's eternal credit, though maybe a result of prior commitments, this didn't stop them from publishing Shadow in subsequent months. Nonetheless, Lovecraft's most mainstream exposure being such a cold reception likely didn't help his deteriorating mental state at the time of publication. He died in 1937 of stomach cancer and very nearly took all his work with him, further being buried under the weight of World War II causing a change in tastes. Fortunately, a colleague named August Derleth bought up the late writer's catalog and has been more or less solely responsible for keeping his work available and in the public eye for the last 70+ years. His influence is incalculable; even Ghostbusters owes a few of its themes to Dreams in the Witch-House and a few tendrils of the Cthulhu Mythos. 

And then there was the time he showed up for real.

I suppose this is all a roundabout way of saying I chose the name Decay-Proof Record Scroll because one of the most obscure pieces from an almost-unknown author features an item that allows written words to be fully preserved in an otherwise hostile and all-consuming environment.

It also ties back to one of the first blogs I ever kept, the now long-defunct Yahoo! 360. I had just graduated college as a film major with a particular interest in silent films which have had no shortage of problems in terms of preservation. While I'm far from heartless to the loss, I also hold a somewhat complicated opinion to the notion of art preservation. I guess it's akin to Buddhism's philosophy of loving without attachment. Try to preserve the work, certainly, but not at the expense of something else. I didn't put it so diplomatically at the time. Rather, I called the Mona Lisa an overrated object of social manipulation, that if it didn't exist, something else would take its place as one of the most beloved, studied, and overall recognized paintings in the world. 

In my defense, the Mona Lisa went missing for about 2 or 3 years before anyone noticed it, and only after it was returned did it gain its iconic status. If I was waxing cynic before learning of that theft, I was full cynic afterwards. Actually, that story is half a lie; some people did notice the painting was gone the next day, and there was indeed a formal investigation, with suspects including Pablo Picasso and motives ranging from profit to misguided nationalism. It was some purple prose by Walter Pater being dug up from the late 1800's and quoted in newspapers of the time reporting on the theft that swayed the public perception from indifference to unbridled fervor. Suddenly, this painting most people outside of art criticism walked by without a second thought was now a national treasure. 

I'm not saying any of this to admonish anyone for their love or affection or otherwise deep, personal connection to the painting. If you like it, love it, or think it's just okay, I cannot take that away from you and I wouldn't take the chance were the means available to me at the push of a button and the promise of all I'd ever desire in return. Likewise, if you somehow have a deep disdain or severe loathing for it, I only wish it's not for the painting itself but rather for the wishy-washy "Ignored Until Stolen" public attitude surrounding its rise to stardom. To put that last point in perspective, I've never been to a drive-in movie theater. They were beyond passe' by the time I was born, with the majority being abandoned and the remaining few serving more as museums and novelties than anything else. I'd always hear stories of people missing them dearly, only to find many of them had never been to one either. On top of that, when I started perusing the more obscure and seedier sections of my local video stores and also many, many episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I discovered that drive-ins were more often than not a dumping ground for movies not fit for proper, sit-down venues. I wasn't expecting drive-ins to be arthouses or anything, but I wasn't expecting this nexus of frugality and camp in the form of parking lots converted into oversized living rooms. 

Of course, I absolutely adore the schlock and cheese and corn and trash-ure of drive-in fare, what's often collectively referred to as so-bad-it's-good. Many of those films face similar preservation hurdles, if only for having been produced very cheaply, very quickly, and often by production crews eager to move onto their next project rather than rest on their laurels. Much like early television or comic books, nobody was working under the paradigm of posterity. It's easy to forget that apart from audio recordings or maybe home movie cameras of the 8 and 16mm variety, there wasn't a good, reliable means of recording what we saw on television or bringing the theater experience home. The Olympics were first broadcast on television in 1936, but Sony wouldn't bring Betamax to our homes until 1975, and even that would remain a niche market until VHS a few years later. This created an odd social phenomenon in many up and coming filmmakers of the era. Since they couldn't simply rewatch the movie they just saw, barring a trip to the movie theater or hopefully seeing it on television, they had to resort to other means of recapturing those fragile, flickering memories. 

Stylistic influence is nothing new to art and entertainment, but this notable lack of accessibility started a game of creative telephone. George Lucas wasn't born when Flash Gordon was shown in theaters. Instead, he saw reruns of it on television. This is one of his many inspirations for Star Wars, an effort by him to recapture the feeling of watching those serials, but also improving on the formula with improved production values and an overall more unified aesthetic. Admittedly, the marriage of mystic science fantasy with a grungy industrial aesthetic is more than a little cumbersome, but all these years of reflection across all manner of home media haven't yet spoiled mine nor anyone else's fun. Similarly, Uncle George's foresight to merchandise his creation in the form of toys, books, and comics may look to all outside perspectives as a cynical cash grab (by someone who wanted to stick it to FOX for cutting his budget), but just like those filmmakers who had to resort to other methods to remember those films and shows of yore, it provided a toolkit for those who wished to follow the narrow path he meticulously carved out amid the hard-boiled concrete jungle of 1970's Hollywood. 

When a video is posted to YouTube, it is assigned a unique number to identify its place on the servers. Tom Scott has a fantastic video explaining this process and how YouTube will practically never run out of numbers for its videos. Because of this setup, among many other reasons, YouTube has what some consider a very draconian attitude about changing videos once they've been posted. Put simply, once it's there, you can only remove it via the nuclear option. That unique string of digits is now a corpse marker, and buried along with that video are all the comments and metrics that it brought in its lifetime. As such, if you make some glaring, factual error in your video, there's no slipping in an updated version into the same slot. That must be made a separate upload and the choice then is to either leave the old, erroneous version up, warts and all, or remove it and try to see if you can recapture what you once did before. As I said, some find this model frustrating, but more seasoned and therefore methodical content creators take it as an impetus to double, triple, umptuple their work before airing it in the global village's public square. 

I do have one major complaint about this approach that keeps me from going full apologist. When a video is removed from YouTube, there's at least a 50% chance I will have no idea if it's only that particular video that's been removed or if it's the entire channel that's been taken down, be it by the powers that be or by the content creator personally for one reason or another. 

There was a video in one of my playlists depicting an artist drawing some simplistic, but very stylized portraits on a large sketchpad using what looks like an ink mop (the kind used to fill in squares on a Bingo card), all while giving advice on how to build an art portfolio without a lot of practical experience. It's not actually the most informative video, more a meditation on the subject than practical advice, but it was nonetheless very well made. I wanted to link it to someone as an example of how to make a simple video look more polished. Unfortunately, this video was removed by a means I am not aware of. I am not aware of it because it is the only video from that particular channel I ever added to the playlist. I did not subscribe to the channel, and I do not recall watching any other videos from this particular content creator. When I go to that video's page, there is only a generic "Deleted Video" screen. I say "generic" because this is indistinguishable from any and every other deleted video's page. What I wish YouTube would do in this case is direct me to the channel that made the post, provided it's still available and active. They're more than willing to distinguish between a video that's been deleted altogether and a video that's been set to private to limit its viewing, but there's no means of directing me to the content creator if they're still active. 

Look at all the "not helpful" on display here.

This is important because, as discussed before, a video may be deleted because it's been updated and posted anew, with the old one deleted following a period of overlap to direct viewers to the new version (usually through a note in the video's description or among the comments). Besides that description of the video's content I just gave, the only other clue I have of this video's existence title of this video is a rough memory of its title: How to Build Your Portfolio Without Practical Experience. Once upon a time, it was easy enough to search for a video by its title. However, despite YouTube's policy of "now and forever" when it comes to uploads, virtually everything else about the video can be changed on a whim. In fact, there used to be an easily-exploited way of guaranteeing your video would show up in search results even if it had nothing to do with what people were searching for. All one had to do was look up what the trending search for that particular day was, which was often a video's title, and then change your title to match it in the hopes your unrelated video would show up alongside the Real McCoy in searches. Obviously, this is extremely underhanded and more likely to earn you the scorn and ire of total strangers who were already not interested in your video in the first place, and now had all the more reason to actively dislike it via its heavy-handed presentation. Luckily, it didn't take long for YouTube to resolve this issue and tweak its search engine to look for other factors besides matching words to a title, much to the frustration of people who used to rely on that to find videos they'd seen previously but forgot to add to a playlist.

This disappearance happened some time ago and despite my best efforts in searching, it doesn't appear the video was mirrored anywhere else like Vimeo. I've also not been able to work out the identity of the creator, much less what may have transpired before deleting the video. There was hardly anything objectionable or controversial in the video itself, so the deletion may simply be the result of its creator updating it and deleting the old, or it may be the result of the channel being banned from the platform for some egregious reason. I still think about it every now and again. It clearly left an impact on me, if only for its presentation rather than its content, and I've been trying to figure out how to channel that impact through the lens of that frustration of it being inaccessible. 

I don't remember exactly when I came up with the idea for what to do next, and I can't be bothered to search my notebooks to find out where I sketched up my game plan. Said game plan is to pay homage to the video in the purest sense possible by recreating it. This won't be a direct imitation, not only because I'd be working from memory, but because I'd use the opportunity to discuss the video's disappearance as much as to pass on its advice. 

My art style is drastically different from the artist of that old video, and it would feel more than a little cheap to try and replicate his style for the sake of a little nod in video form. My envisioned result would almost be closer to a parody than anything, as I'd likely use Sharpies on Post-It Notes to make the drawings while opining about the video it's paying respect to. That it would be deliberately hamfisted and lowbrow would be representative of the frustration at the source material's disappearance while the overall idea would hopefully redeem any perceived negativity, or at the very least make clear the frustration is with YouTube and ephemeral media in general rather than the content creator in question. By preserving its overall notions and tones, I'd be honoring its memory while adding my own little twist to it as well. 

Basically, this.

I thought of this idea again a few weeks ago when I remembered another video that appears to have gone missing. I don't truly know if this is the case as I haven't found any gray exclamation marks floating in blank space above a line of unhelpful text, but given the nature of its original posting, it may as well be. Once upon a time, YouTube encouraged social interaction on the platform along with getting more people to post content by allowing users to post videos as replies or direct responses to other people's videos. Essentially, when you watch someone's video, you could either opt to leave a comment below, or you could click another option available to create a video that embodies your response. This was usually a script to engage a webcam and allow you to upload a quick vlog right then and there. There were other options for reply videos, but they ultimately worked the same way. When you saw the original video, the right hand side of the screen of recommended videos would typically be populated with replies. This system didn't stick around mostly due to it being exploited by opportunistic parasites to inflate their own metrics, a la the title search loophole previously mentioned. Many of these videos still exist. It's only their spotlights that have been extinguished. 

The very first YouTube channel I ever subscribed to was The Momozone. The content of the channel varied, but it was largely focused on positivity and motivation. One of these videos encouraged a call to action by viewers. If memory serves, Momo was addressing concerns of YouTube changing its layout and/or possibly accepting a buyout offer from Hulu. At the end, he asked viewers to post a video in response voicing their own concerns over the changes and announcing their support of keeping things the way they were. It's one of these responses that will likely be next on the docket for preservation by recreation. The video in question is very brief, maybe less than 30 seconds, of a young man holding his camera at arm's length and pointed back at his own face, which is almost completely obscured by a towel wrapped around his head and secured by his other hand. One eye and maybe part of his nose are visible, as are much of his surroundings as he turns in place while also apparently moving from his bathroom to a hallway in his home. While this is going on, he very shakily and nervously expresses his desire for YouTube to not make any drastic changes to its platform as it may hurt smaller content creators in their effort to get noticed. He apologizes for his shakes and stumbles, explaining that he's not comfortable being on camera. 

Basically, this.

If it sounds like I'm making fun of this guy, I promise that I'm not. Why he didn't simply point the camera at something else while talking into the onboard microphone, I don't know, but asking that is not giving him any sort of grief. Rather, it's one of the most humbly human things I've ever seen. I'm watching someone overcome a shyness to make his voice heard. What's not to respect about that? Much like the art portfolio video, the reenactment/pastiche or whatever is a springboard to talk about a broader subject such as anonymity or the fallacy of free speech somehow needing to cross a threshold of arbitrary soft skills or proverbial chest-thumping in order to be regarded as valid. 

And I demand to be taken seriously!

I have no idea when I'll get to this, if I bother with them at all. I may end up waiting until I've got more of a catalog to work with than two videos. I've got a few others in the pipeline with a similarly elusive deadline, so these may be relegated to warm-ups for those. 

Trix Are For Kids

There's a scene in The Matrix: Reloaded where Neo is greeted by a wide-eyed, nervous kid who thanks him for saving his life. This was brought up in a review at the time as a point of criticism, complaining that albeit this is the first time he's appeared, everyone acts like they already know him. 

For background, between the first and second Matrix films, there was a collection of animated shorts produced, collectively called The Animatrix. One story centers around a teenage boy who is becoming disenchanted with his humdrum daily life, not unlike Neo himself in the first film. Short story made shorter, the kid is freed of The Matrix, thanks in no small part to Neo's team. 

The criticism about the kid's "sudden" appearance strikes me as odd and, were I more of a cynic, was more of a pointed statement about Warner Bros. marketing of the Matrix franchise
I don't recall if I saw Animatrix before Reloaded, but here's how I think I would have interpreted the scene had I not. Neo is The One, a prophesied messiah who will turn the tide in the war against the machines. Obviously, someone like this is going to have fans. This kid is just one of those fans. He approaches Neo, thanks him for saving his life, Neo graciously accepts the thanks and the kid goes on his merry way. Neo is visibly uncomfortable at the adoration, and Trinity comforts him by telling him he's given hope to many.
The point is the kid is a face in the crowd. Actually, he's more like the face OF the crowd, the crowd being all those people who look up to Neo. It doesn't matter who the kid is in the grand scheme of things. That he has a small and mostly self-contained backstory in no way should work against his role in the film proper. In fact, there are several new faces in Reloaded who did not appear in any of the Animatrix shorts, yet everyone in the story already knows who these people are. So, why was there so much scorn and ire for this superfan's 15 seconds?
It's one matter to say a book is better than its film adaptation, that's the nature of the mediums. There are things you can do in a book that don't necessarily work in a film, and vice versa. It's quite a different matter to say that if you don't like a film, find it lacking or otherwise unenjoyable, that reading the book will actually enhance your enjoyment because it will fill in all the gaps left by the mov---

No.

... Just... No.

They're called adaptations for a reason. They adapt a story to a different medium. If the book and film were supposed to be taken in tandem, then the film would be called a supplement. Sometimes I think that's why tie-in novels of movies are called novelizations. Hell, they're called "tie-ins" as well, that should tell you something.

Obviously, this is not to say once you read the book or see the movie, you've reaped all you can sow and never the twain shall meet. I love the film Under The Skin. I read the novel later. Which one I prefer is irrelevant as the film is an "adaptation" in the strongest sense, having virtually nothing in common with the book beyond the barest bones of the premise. 2001: A Space Odyssey has a similar standing with me. The book and the film are ultimately the same story, but told in very different ways. They are separate, but joined.

As I write this, there's one more episode in season 2 of The Mandalorian. It's been fun, but I worry about the longevity of the series. Season 1 played it safe in a good way, each episode essentially being a loving homage to a genre or trope, most notably "The Sanctuary" being 7 Samurai but in a galaxy far, far away. As a wise one once said, every author writes the same book, the craft being in how well you disguise that fact. 

Season 2 has by contrast taken more narrative risks, with a much bigger emphasis on the worldbuilding, calling back to not only the original trilogy, but more recent installments like the Clone Wars and Rebels animated series. While familiarity with these shows is not at all a requirement, it may begin to put holes in the "aesthetic before plot" philosophy that made Season 1 work so well. It's easy to upset that kind of balance. While shows are meant to grow over time, there's an old chestnut of wisdom from the late, great Stan Lee that comes to mind, "Every issue is someone's first."

In a way, Star Wars has had a similar history to the arcade industry. Once upon a time, the late 70's to early 80's, arcades were everywhere, and it seemed everyone loved them. A Pong machine was every bit as common a sight in a bar as a jukebox or a pool table. Nolan Bushnell insists he's met hundreds of couples who first met by playing Pong. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, the clock will inevitably strike midnight and the carriage turns into a pumpkin. A series of poor business decisions and an overall change in tastes led to the great gaming crash of 1982, which saw a number of arcades close down.

About 10 years later, two things happen: Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. Arcades were back in spotlight... for about a year. They drew in fans, no question, but the nature of fighting games (and more importantly their diehard fans) were largely unwelcoming to the two most important demographics from the pre-1982 heyday: women and casual gamers. Post-1993, the only arcade games that held any sort of broad appeal were either driving games or, at a stretch, gallery shooters.

Star Wars' trajectory went much the same way, right down to the timeline. Post-1983 the main series of films concludes with Return of the Jedi. It's well-received by critics and certainly brought in the fans like previous installments, but between George Lucas' interest in other projects along with a possible over saturation in the market of merchandise and spin-off media, it was clear the series had run its course. Fast forward to around 1991 and Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy kicks off with Heir to the Empire. Shortly thereafter, reissues of the action figures hit shelves, catching the attention of collectors. The Extended Universe as it's collectively known goes all the way back to Splinter of the Mind's Eye in 1978, but it's fair to say the early 90's is when it mushroomed into the massive... er, empire we know it as today. Much like the fighting game craze, this was a good thing... for about a year. The appeal was still there, but it was nowhere near as broad.

Interestingly enough, even Star Trek had the same problem. When the original series aired, science fiction had outgrown its reputation as appealing only to adolescent boys enamored with Sputnik and the start of the space program. This was in no small part thanks to Trek's noteworthy social commentary. That is, the sci-fi trappings were an aesthetic. The idyllic world of the Federation was a lens through which the goings-on in our troubled world could be put in perspective. By the time the Klingon Dictionary was published in 1993 (man, the 90's were really divisive times), it was more or less clear that the idea of the "casual" fan had become something of a dirty word. Sci-fi was now for sci-fi fans and anybody else who didn't want to sign up for the lifetime membership had to sit at the kids' table. That's mild hyperbole, but only mild.

This is not to say that having broad appeal to a casual market is inevitably a superior strategy for an intellectual property to take, only that it's different and, as a wise one once said, if you're going to eat tuna, expect bones. For comparison's sake, stand-up comedy has two main branches. There are those who punch up at the haves, and those who punch down at the have-nots. The former has many obvious examples, most with large audiences and whose very best enjoy a mainstream success. The latter is by no means taboo, but those few examples of making it work generally draw in smaller, but maybe more intimate crowds. There's an unspoken contract of sorts between the comedian and the audience that nobody is being put down before anybody else, that even the guy calling you stupid is speaking as much for himself as anybody. There's an overall feeling of, "We're all in this together." with both sides of the coin, but the proverbial "this" is what makes all the difference.

Disney has used The Mandalorian to push its new streaming platform, draw in that larger audience, the kind of larger audience that entails the kinds of returns on investment needed to put together a technically complex show like The Mandalorian. I don't doubt the "volume" or virtual set used for the series will see use by other properties (it'd be a shame if it didn't), but I think it's fair to say Disney may well be taking a loss on the show, probably a bigger one than it did on the Solo movie. The financial rituals of Hollywood are a curious case of byzantine bureaucracies and seedy shell games. I've even heard some factoid along the lines of, "No movie in the history of the industry has ever truly turned a profit because all the blockbusters are offset by the flops that outnumber them." I doubt it's that simple (complex?), but it is curious how a movie can absolutely fail to make any sort of impact, yet rarely hurt anyone involved, even directors, writers, and producers who bear the biggest burdens of all when it comes to the major creative decisions.

Even if the palace Uncle Walt built decides to drop the jet-setting bounty hunting samurai gunslinger with the bucket on his head and the slayer of frogs at his side, that will still leave us with 16 rock solid episodes of a show that will be enjoyed years later, whether it speaks only to the die-hards or pulls in the casuals.

Every episode is an entrance.

Fear is the Mind-Killer, Mediocrity the Brain Cell-Killer

Disclaimer: like all of my other trailer impressions (which I keep telling myself I'm not going to do anymore), they are only impressions. None of what I'm about to say comes from any sort of insider knowledge and certainly not any kind of advanced screening, much as I wish I carried that kind of clout. It's entirely possible the final film will differ from the trailer and alleviate the concerns I have about it. That said, one of the reasons I started doing more trailer analyses is because I like to work under the premise that a trailer is a movie's first impression, and like in any first impression, you should put your best foot forward. You can call my bluff without showing your hand. When a trailer gives an impression of a movie that turns out to be different than what's on screen come the debut, I feel it's valid grounds for criticism. It's a fine line between piquing my interest and lowering my expectations. 

The trailer for the new version of Dune dropped a few days ago. I've watched it, and my reaction is, "It looks fine." Were I to be pressed for additional adjectives, the most affirmatively I could answer is "Adequate" with alternatives and/or additions consisting of "Competent." I hate to use a term like "Unnecessary" because as Oscar Wilde taught us, all art is fundamentally useless and that's the point. Art should never have to be defended and it certainly should never have to defend its own right to exist. It looks like someone split the difference between the David Lynch take and the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries (from the before time, back when they could spell). Unfortunately, in splitting the difference, the whole seems to have become less than the sum of its parts. Gone is the wonderfully mesmerizing mastery of color and light from the miniseries, traded in for a dull array of grays and browns even in what looks like midday with a clear sky. The cast seems closer to the David Lynch film in terms of star power and potential to play it larger-than-life, but they are notably understated in delivery, almost tired. Also, raise your hand if you thought Jason Mamoa was playing Gurney instead of Duncan. 

It's all very minimalist, which is where Denis Villenueve shines, but just like Dune 2020 and its earlier iterations of 20 and (good grief) 36 years ago, he seems at odds with his own sensibilities. I've seen two of his movies, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. I adored Arrival and think it's one of the best thinking man's science fiction films since Under the Skin or The Europa Report. By contrast, I couldn't tell you a damn thing that happened in Blade Runner 2049 except some above average visuals that you can recreate at home. Simply watch the new Dune trailer, but hold up any and every piece of colored glass you can find, swapping them with every new scene. I've got a similar trick for James Cameron movies involving a strobe light and cobalt glass, but we're getting off-topic. 

Here's the complicated relationship I've had with the works of Frank Herbert: I never got into the books, and it's for the same reason I don't actually hold the past adaptations in higher regard beyond technical achievements. The WORLD of Dune, the setting, the lore, the cultures, and the history is all monumentally fascinating. The STORY of Dune, as in the one story that's now essentially been told 3 times (4 including the first book), is painfully dull. At its core, the story of the Atreides and the Harkonnen is a mafia revenge movie set in space and with gently messianic religiosity because that's how science fantasy/planetary romance rolls.

If I were in a more cynical mood, I could make an infographic drawing lines of comparison between Dune and Get Shorty since The Godfather is too obvious. Just pretend John Travolta is House Atreides and Dennis Farina is House Harkonnen, Hollywood is Arrakis, Gene Hackman is a Mentat, Danny DeVito and Rene Russo are Fremen... Okay, I'm not pretending it's without its stretches, but even this mental exercise isn't meant to knock it. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion, and my thoughts have acquired a lot of speed. Out, out, damn lip stains!

The best versions of any stories are the ones that make me not care about how many times or ways I've heard it before. It's not diminishing it to say it all comes down to the neat little package you doll up your plot with. That's how mythical worlds have worked from the cave painting we used to symbolize the word go. 

Excalibur is your father's lightsaber is my Gom Jabbar in a Weirding sort of Way that surrounds us, penetrates us, and in the darkness binds us.

There is no one story, and it is all the same story, 36 plots all asking, "Who am I?" It may all be tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury signifying nothing, but I can't stand the silence and I think all of you feel the same way. I'm not being any sort of iconoclast when I offer the following advice to those poor players who strut and fret their hour upon the stage. When you hold all that hostage for the sake of that one story, you're doing it wrong. You've gone from putting the cart before the horse to putting the cart on the horse's back and then kicking it impatiently when it can't get up because you put a damn cart on it. Also, the cart is full of vegetables and the horse is named Just Desserts because Ben & Jerry got out of the horse racing business after the Jolly Green Giant bought them out. 

Speaking of bad business dealings nobody wins from, let's talk about Spider-Man. 

• Bitten by a radioactive spider, 
• misused his powers at first resulting in the death of Uncle Ben, 
• now fights out of a renewed sense of personal responsibility. 

Even if you never picked up an issue of the series or watched any of the near-endless cartoon adaptations, we've had at least 3 cinematic versions of Peter Parker by 3 completely different actors, helmed by 3 completely different directors, and all under the supervision of 2-ish production companies that sort of get along except when they don't and Civil War has to be re-written at the last minute and he's not really Spider-Man more like Iron Man Jr. because marketing guys don't know asses from elbows, among other problems. Regardless of these rocky starts and repeated reboots/retoolings/reworkings/reanimations, by the time we got to Into the Spider-Verse, that initial setup, that origin story, was practically a running gag.

The shorter version of what I just described goes like this: We had to endure 5 garbage Transformers movies before we got Bumblebee. 

For as much as the two visual adaptations of Dune thus far differ and how closely they do or do not adhere to the source material, the overall beats of  

• Loverboy Meets Spice Girls, 
• Loverboy Loses Spice Girls, 
• Loverboy Gets Spice Girls Back by declaring war on an intergalactic empire while riding giant sandworms and blasting TOTO from a boombox over his head. 

are all still present and accounted for in this New Kid on the Block and it's all so NSync with itself I crave a Social Distortion. This should not be old hat by now. I should not be bored by Sand People upgrading their Banthas to steroid-infused Sarlaccs to take down Sandcrawlers and Jedi Masters who can Force-choke space itself. Look, I get this is all new for some people, that not everyone absorbs, dissects, and compartmentalizes operas of the outer space persuasion the way I do, but that's not my issue here. My issue is that we keep hitting the reset button and assuming it's a form of time travel had it been invented by Big Brother. Couple this with the fact Frank Herbert by his own admission wrote Dune to be Sci-Fi that was as light on the Sci-side of things as possible to make it more approachable and accessible, and you can see why I'm nowhere near as excited for a third adaptation as I probably should be.

I don't want The Dunefather for the 3rd time.
I want Rogue Dune... Atreidebee... Into the Foldverse... The Fremenorian... Okay, I'm done. 

I also want House Ordos. I couldn't begin to tell you who they are in Get Shorty. Might have to bring Be Cool into the mix. 

Betting On A Dark Horse (Venusian Radio)

The Star Wars Episode -- Way back when I first tried audiologs, I talked about the Star Wars films being released on Blu-Ray and the fan reaction to the new host of changes made to the source material, especially Vader's infamous "No!" shout being inserted into Return of the Jedi. While I might have been able to live with that (I've still got my DVDs), Disney's recent decisions regarding the franchise is going to affect the livelihoods of hard-working people in a rather cutthroat industry: Comic Books. 

Like a Villain

Here's an example of what a colossal asshole I can be. At least, that's probably what it looks like to this person whom we'll call Lando for no particular reason. 

I've been selling things on eBay lately in order to finance some hardware upgrades I'd like for a web production. The sales have all gone very well, to the point that I can be a bit more shrewd in my asking prices. In general, I try to be that salesman who would much rather make a sale than hold out for a price I may well be waiting the rest of my life for (Bird in the hand/two in the bush, you get the idea). I also have a background working in customer service for a cell carrier. What this means is that while I do genuinely love helping people, I also know when people are frankly just being entitled little shits who want a cookie for getting to class on time. 

Someday, boys and girls, I'll tell you all the full story of the car salesman who begged and begged me to set aside a Playstation 2 for him, even though there was no way for our store to set up, maintain, or honor any sort of waiting list, his firm and repeated belief that being "desperate" and saying so will generate big, blue, Sony-branded boxes out of the ether itself. I won't bother telling you the bribe he offered me or how many times he told me he was desperate before making me an offer. To be fair, though, it was a substantially better offer than the one I got from this eBayer. 

I get a message asking me about the item, prefaced by a little anecdote about how it's for his kids for Christmas, and followed by an offer to end the sale early for him. I expected someone would make an offer as my timing was admittedly not real conducive to eBay's tradewinds. Christmas is ten days away, and there's at least 4 days left on the auction, so of course you'd want it in a timely fashion. 

A few quick facts about this auction before moving forward: The item has a starting price and a Buy-It-Now option for more. Shipping is not included and it has (at the time of this writing) two watchers. Not exactly lighting up the charts, but it's exactly the minimum number of people needed to start a last-minute bidding war, a race to see who can place a bid closest to the end time in order to block everyone else without breaking the bank. Lando basically didn't want to bother with this tango, yet felt the Buy-It-Now price was a little out of his price range. This is totally fair, and like I said, I'm not above meeting someone halfway on a price to make a sale. 

The offer was for the starting price. 

Strike one: Not even close to halfway. In fact, it's not any distance from the start. I don't really get mad. It's an honest question, one to test the waters, size up the seller. Hell, the strike only sticks if the issue is pushed. Maybe he thinks he's doing me a favor. Who knows, maybe he meant to put something else down instead of the starting price. I err on the side of caution, answer his question, but ignore the offer. It seems the politest way to decline without making an issue of how really shortsighted the offer is. I mean, it's an auction, and you can see the other watchers (and not every watcher makes their presence known). 

Next message thanks me for the answer, but asks what I think of the offer. 

Strike two: pushing the issue. I mean, at least be sporting about this. Sure, there weren't any bids yet and I wouldn't really have been penalized for ending the auction early, but if you're going to try and play a stratagem, try and think of one that gives you an ADVANTAGE in the competition. This is not making me an offer. I get impatient, but I'm still giving the benefit of the doubt they mean well. I reply, explaining that this auction has two watchers and it wouldn't be fair to them if I ended it early, especially if it's only for the starting price, and that the Buy-It-Now option is the only way it's ending early. 

"I am one of the watchers." 

Strike three: Now, you're insulting me. At first, I'd started to write back, "But not both of them." followed by an explanation of how one is a very different number than two. However, I took a deep breath and responded with frank civility, "Nonetheless, it is unfair to any other prospective buyer to close the sale early as is with the offer being only the opening bid. You'll have to do better than that." Like I said, if you're going to try and make a backroom deal, don't bargain with an empty hand. This is entitlement, pure and simple. Moreover, it's condescending. Lando is working under the premise that 1) I'm desperate to make a sale (I'm not), and 2) he thinks so little of everyone else who may be interested that he doesn't put any effort into distinguishing himself. This is like a student getting up during a test and asking the teacher if he can see the answer sheet, expecting to receive it entirely on the power that he's the only one who had the gall to ask in the first place. If you want an exception made, you've got to prove yourself exceptional. I have no patience for people who don't get this. I'm not above charity or compassion, but in the words of a wise man, "God only helps those who help themselves." Call me a cold bastard if you like, but when I make exceptions for people, it's because I think they're worth it. 

So, what do I do? I go into the auction's page and raise the starting and buyout prices by five dollars. I get a message from Lando inside of ten minutes. 

"You raised the price?"

I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further. 

Oh, Not Funny When It's You

So, some time ago, Star Wars Kinect was released for the XBox360, and it was met with what could charitably be described as mixed feelings, with most of the negative feelings strangely centered on a rhythm and dance portion of the game wherein much-beloved characters dance in well-known locales to popular songs made into parodies by a slight tweaking of key lyrics. "Princess in a battle" instead of "genie in a bottle" is one example.
As to why this has many fans outraged, there's no official answer, but if one were to be culled from the general consensus of the gaming community, it's that Star Wars Kinect is an officially licensed Lucasfilm product. In other words, Star Wars fans can make fun of their beloved franchise to their heart's content, but heaven forbid the people behind it have a sense of humor as well.
I could get into the psycho-socio-cultural underpinnings of this phenomenon, but The Escapist's MovieBob already did, and in reading his analysis, I remembered something from my own childhood that perfectly exemplifies the situation.

It was really hard for me to make friends after I moved to New Mexico in 1991. There's a lot of reasons for this I won't go into, but probably the most important one was that my sense of humor didn't gel with everyone else's. I understand that friends take digs at each other, call each other names, and even play mean little tricks on each other. Really, I get it; it's part of the trust, it's something you can do because of the comfort zone. The thing is, where I saw it as being "part" of the whole "friendship" paradigm, some people saw it as "the whole" and that struck me as just downright conceited. I kid you not when I say that I actually lost a really good friend because I told him to stop calling me a certain name because it genuinely bothered me. For years afterward, I thought there was something wrong with me because I just couldn't take a joke, I couldn't separate "laughing with" from "laughing at." Years later, I got a second opinion. The good news is that there wasn't really anything wrong with me, that sometimes people were just jerks. The bad news is that the number of jerks turned out to be higher than I'd thought.
My 7th grade history class had some class clowns in it. Trouble was, it was a de facto role as they weren't very good at it, as most of their jokes relied on me to be their punchline, whether I wanted to be or not. How exactly they made fun of me or laughed at me or generally had fun at my expense varied and changed almost daily. For about two or three days, though, the fixation was on the fact that I was the only boy in the class who wore glasses. Right away, I thought, "they're really desperate for a laugh." Seriously, the last months 7th grade, a year between us and high school, and I felt like I was living out an uninspired episode of Full House.
Anyway, we were all doing some sort of art project that I don't remember any details of, except that we'd have to stop about five minutes before the bell so we could all go wash up in the bathrooms. So, here's the scenario: everyone walks a little faster than me so they can get there first. When I step in, everyone turns away from the sinks and starts flicking their hands at me so water beads on my glasses, carrying on until I literally can't see and have to take them off to wipe them clean, and the process repeats when I put them back on until I get out of the bathroom, my hair wet enough that I can slick it back.

This goes on for two days. I don't get angry. I don't lash out. I don't confront anybody about it. I don't say a word.  I just stand there and seethe quietly to myself, because it's the seventh bloody grade, we're in our early teens, and flicking water at my glasses to where I can't see is the funniest damn thing in the world to these guys. On the third day, I figure that maybe I'm taking this too seriously, that I'm not having fun with the whole thing. So, I decide to give this "laughing with you" idea a shot. Again, everyone walks a little faster than me to get to the bathroom first. Before I step in, though, I take my glasses off and put them in my pocket. I make sure not to squint, because that would just give them something to laugh about. I walk in, knowing what's going to happen next, and I'm smiling. It's not a toothy, ear-to-ear grin, it's more like a Mona Lisa, at the risk of sounding pretentious. The funny thing is, I'd never felt more confident in my life at that moment. The sad thing is, no one else found it funny, made apparent when they turned away from the sinks with hands at the ready.

Awkward silence.

I'd see some turn away from the sink and watch a smile disappear almost like someone flipped a switch. Instead of knowing nods, playful shrugs, or even indifference, I saw, despite the blur, frowns and eye rolls. I hadn't gotten in on the joke, I'd ruined it. I'd ruined it by not ignoring them or getting angry or annoyed or anything like that. I'd ruined it by wanting in on it and playing along. They weren't making fun of me to be friendly or chummy, they were making fun of me because they were that desperate for a laugh. How dare I, apparently.

Maybe I should have grabbed a fire extinguisher before going in instead.

"I'll Smack You Like A Little Girl!"

Gender politics have been in the news lately, from a little boy dressing as Scooby-Doo's Daphne to a Swedish preschool that refers to their students as hens to little Sasha Laxton to a kid standing up to his own father in a GameStop on his little brother's behalf, there's no shortage of challenges to heteronormative biases that most of us would otherwise have thought went the way of witch burnings and segregation.

As someone who grew up with the knowledge that Samus Aran was a woman (before Other M turned her into Bella Swan in power armor), Lady Jaye could crack wise about being a human sacrifice (and kick a few heads in while strung up), Zelda didn't need Link half as bad as she might have insisted, Marion Ravenwood could drink any man under the table, and Karana could manage island life all on her own despite her people's traditions, I like to think I've a fairly liberal view of gender roles, and frankly find the idea of a little boy dressing up as Daphne as funny as it is cute.

I bring all this up because today I overheard something while eating at my local Steak 'n' Shake with my roommate, before going to see Phantom Menace in 3D. Across from our booth, a little boy of maybe five or six was... well, doing what little kids do in public places, running around yelling like he was on fire and grinning ear to ear as only little kids can do when they're testing their parents' limits. When said limit was finally tested to the point of breaking, the boy's mother (emphasis: MOTHER) looked him dead in the eye and said that if he didn't knock it off:

"I'll smack you like a little girl!"

In light of those aforementioned stories and female archetypes from my childhood, I'd like to say to that mother:

"YOU'RE... NOT... HELPING!"

Special Acknowledgement: Thanks to Desi, a very talented artist, for posting about the Sasha Laxton story, and Vanessa Hahn, one of the strongest women I know, for mentioning the Gamestop story.

Video Review At Last

And the winner is... Gamespot, for video hosting that isn't impractical, annoying, or run by howler monkeys with severe head traumas and at least three missing limbs. This is the fourth take and a really pitiful attempt to get below ten minutes. I ended with time to spare, and while I left out a lot of jokes, I also left out a lot of more critical elements, so I'll probably end up writing a supplemental text review to go along with the video.