The New Star Wars Vomit

Disney has announced a slew of new Star Wars series. 9 new ones, plus The Mandalorian makes for 10 in total. There was a time in my life where this would have excited me, but now I honestly don’t care, because I have zero faith that any of these will take risks or have consequences. Let me go down the list.

EDIT: Disney has since added some detail about these series. I’ve kept my original comments, but added notes on what they will be about and whether I was right (spoiler: I wasn’t wrong)

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The Gold Standard of “So Bad It’s Good”

I just re-watched Dolemite Is My Name. It’s a wonderful film. I recommend it to everyone, whether you’re a fan of Rudy Ray Moore, or have never even heard of him. Eddie Murphy doesn’t do a Moore impersonation, instead he plays the man sincerely and lovingly, which was absolutely the best approach. because it never distracts you from the story being told.

The best I can hope for is white audiences watch it for Eddie Murphy and through it discover one of the greatest stars of the blaxploitation era.

Dolemite is probably the gold standard for “so bad it’s good” movies. It was made on a shoestring budget with an inexperienced crew, but made by a group of people who loved what they were doing. It fails on almost every single level except its sincerity. It never feels cynical, like so many exploitation movies of the era. It’s a group of people who had no idea what they were doing but they really wanted the audience to have a good time.

The Myth of the Worthless Imperial Fighters

When I recently re-watched Star Wars I wasn’t just keeping track of Stormtrooper deaths. I was curious if the stock Imperial fighter, the TIE Fighter, was also always a piece of disposable junk.

TL;DR: no, it was not, but please keep reading anyway!

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The Myth of the Worthless Imperial Troops

In The Mandalorian there are multiple references to how worthless Stormtroopers are. Bill Burr’s character, Mayfeld, is a former Imperial sharp shooter. Mando isn’t impressed. He retorts “Hey, I wasn’t a Stormtrooper!” Later we see two scout troopers who literally cannot hit a rock 2 meters away from them. In the third episode of the second season (I’ll be vague to avoid spoilers) a character says that Stormtroopers “couldn’t hit the side of a bantha”.

As that episode progresses we see a handful of characters kill easily forty or more Stormtroopers directly. Granted, these characters are implied to be elite mercenaries, but still the message is clear: Stormtroopers are worthless cannon fodder and of no real threat to our heroes.

Has this always been the case?

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WWII SO WHITE

I finally got around to watching the movie Overlord. I won’t spoil the whole movie, but it’s a sci-fi film set in WWII that starts with the 101st Airborne dropping into France. Our protagonist is a black dude. I wondered if the movie would explain why there was a black soldier in the 101st Airborne. It does not. He’s not alone. Their sergeant is a black dude as well (played by Black Hand Jack from Black Dynamite) and there’s another black guy that survives the initial drop (Grey Worm from Game of Thrones).

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TNG Re-Watch: S01E10 Haven

Summary

The Enterprise visits a planet called Haven, which legend has it has mystical healing powers. A strange message comes for Deanna Troi, she’s going to be married. Enter Lwaxana Troi and Deanna’s husband to be, Wyatt (and family). Shenanigans ensue. The Enterprise gets a message from the planet that some vessel is approaching and not communicating. Is it a threat? The vessel is Tarellian, a dangerous species believed to be extinct that carries a biological plague. Everywhere they go they infect the local populations and wipe out everyone. On board the Tarellian ship is a woman that Wyatt has been having visions of, and likewise she’s been having visions of him. Wyatt beams over to work to heal the Tarellians. Troi’s arranged marriage is called off and everyone lives happily ever after, except Wyatt who probably dies of a horrible plague.

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TNG Re-Watch: S01E09 Hide and Q

Summary

En route to help a colony that’s suffered a major catastrophe the Enterprise is stopped by Q and shenanigans ensue. Q gives Riker Q powers and tempts him to join them. He uses his powers to gift his crewmates, and they refuse. And so Riker refuses. And Q is taken up never to be seen again… until the next episode he’s in.

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Following Through on a Plan (Star Wars OT)

A common device in many narratives is the plan that goes sideways and the protagonists have to improvise to make it work. Maybe they have to cut the wire to the alarm to get into the diamond vault, but… there’s no wires. They’ve moved them, or replaced it with a new system! Now what?

Where this device falls apart is when the author doesn’t give any thought to how the plan would have gone if it went as originally intended. On a recent re-watch of Star Wars I got to thinking about this. How would each of the Star Wars Original Trilogy movies have played out if the plan went without a hitch?

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TNG Re-Watch: S01E08 The Battle

Summary

The Enterprise has agreed to a meeting with the Ferengi, possibly a cooling of relations between the two powers. After two days of orbiting along side a Ferengi vessel they agree to the meeting. They present the Enterprise with The Stargazer, Picard’s old ship, which was thought to be lost in battle. The Ferengi captain gives it at no price, much to his first officers chagrin. Picard has been experiencing headaches, which intensify into flashbacks of the final battle of the Stargazer. These are brought on by a device used by the Ferengi captain, who it turns out lost his son when Picard destroyed the “unknown vessel” before having to abandon the Stargazer. Onboard the Stargazer they find falsified logs that make it seem like Picard knew he attacked an unarmed ship, which conflicts with his official report. Finally Picard is totally driven mad by the Ferengi device and is prepared to attack the Enterprise with the Stargazer until Riker gets through to him and he destroys the mind control device. The Ferengi first officer relieves the Ferengi captain of command on the grounds that he lead them on an unprofitable mission.

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The Hobbit: The Tolkien Cut and the un-aching of my ass.

I’m taking a break from writing about Star Trek to bring you something not all all nerdy or geekish.

I watched The Hobbit: The Tolkien Cut. It’s a 4 hour and 28 minute fan edit of all three Hobbit movies that removes the majority of the fluff that wasn’t in the original book.

Just a reminder that the original three films run back to back to back clock in at 7 hours and 34 minutes if you truncate 10-ish minutes of credits from each of the first two movies. So this edit is only around 60% of the original released footage.

Despite being a fan edit it’s surprisingly well put together. There are maybe two “WTF just happened?” cuts that would baffle someone who had not seen the original edit of the films, but otherwise it’s very coherent and really clips along.

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