Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

When The Last Jedi came out two years ago, I observed of its theme (but for whatever reason did not say so in my review) that it seemed to be the story of “looking for hope in Alderaan places.” The film had been a tale of failures, of misplaced hope and crushing defeats, but it also ended up reaffirming that the Resistance’s true hope lay in the princess of Alderaan and her brother in exile, and the legacy they were building for the next generation. In the follow-up, The Rise of Skywalker, that legacy comes to bear in unexpected ways, crowd-pleasing and recontextualizing for an emotionally successful finale to this Sequel Trilogy and the Skywalker Saga writ large.

(As ever, there won’t be spoilers here; even the major reveal, divulged in the film’s opening crawl, is a sacred mystery in this review.)

After narrowly escaping The Last Jedi with their lives, agents of the Resistance are on the run from the First Order, gathering what few allies they can find in a galaxy that’s given up. While Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) marshals the forces of the First Order, Rey, Finn, and Poe (Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Oscar Isaac) head into the unknown in search of a way to prevent the complete obliteration of the Resistance, meeting new friends and old while Rey decides, once and for all, what her destiny will be.

So much exhausting ink is being spilled about whether or not The Rise of Skywalker “betrays” The Last Jedi by walking back or diminishing certain aspects of the film, whether or not this film “ruins” Star Wars or if returning director J.J. Abrams hates predecessor Rian Johnson. All of this is to say that no one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans, especially that vexing vocal minority monopolizing internet chatter. In the case of The Rise of Skywalker, I found myself strongly reminded of Return of the Jedi, itself a capper to a trilogy and an ostensible end to a story. Both films play it a little safer than their edgier forebearers, but both make up for that decrease in originality by dialing up the emotional resonance. Where Return of the Jedi reunited its heroic trinity for one last mission, Rise of Skywalker gives us Rey, Finn, and Poe properly together for the first time, having kept them apart for much of the preceding two films. It’s a real joy to see these three side by side, and their interactions carry the weight of all the adventures we didn’t get to see between films.

Critics have lamented the way the film is perhaps overfilled with setpieces, characters, and side quests, to which I have to say, I hope they enjoyed their first Star Wars film – because this is a franchise that has always been overfull of bits, fodder for imagination and tie-in media alike. True, Rise of Skywalker begins with its foot on the gas and never quite lets up, but as the third film in a trilogy there’s not a lot of time for much else, especially when the stakes are as dire as they are here. In fact, however, there’s a beat near the end of the second act where the plot does slow down, and it’s one of the most emotionally resonant corners of the film.

I was disappointed to find my audience so quiet during the film because there are a number of moments where you want to pump your fists and cheer. (The biggest laugh seemed to be who gets the line, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”) Perhaps audiences have been down this road so many times since 2015 – where, recall, the Milennium Falcon’s appearance got a big cheer – but suffice it to say I was charmed and cheered by more than a few sequences, including, and this is not a spoiler, a silent cameo from the Maestro himself, John Williams. Speaking of Williams, it’s his grand finale, too, and there are only so many ways to praise a man with more than 50 Academy Award nominations; he’s got an impressive body of work on which to draw, and he does so in ways that are breathtaking. I sense, however, that J.J. Abrams is still less comfortable with an orchestral score than Rian Johnson was, so I’m eager to see the film again after getting more familiar with the score (which remains, incidentally, my favorite component of any Star Wars material, period).

In the way that Return of the Jedi was an ending that gestured at a beginning, Rise of Skywalker is the final act in a nine-piece story, with plenty of space for what happens next, but it’s also acutely aware that there are things it needs to resolve. Leavened with the usual amount of space nonsense – which I love – the film cobbles macguffins together to get us to a sequence that orbits around Chekhov’s gun while wrapping up one of the Sequel Trilogy’s most potent emotional questions, and my only complaint is that it does so in a way that makes me want a whole movie or two of just thatcomponent. But taken as part three of three (and I feel I must be terribly vague here) the impossibility of continuation is perhaps for the best, as it needs first to resolve an entire arc, not establish a new one. That’s what the toys are for, folks.

As with nearly any film, there are moments I would have done differently. I’d have liked to see a few returning faces have a few more scenes, but there isn’t really anything to trim to make room for that. (In a post-Endgame world, though, I’d have been up for a three-hour space opera!) But in a world where toxic fandom demands that a piece of art conform to every single expectation, where the villains of the story are the ones who insist on rewriting history to accede to their vision for the galaxy, I find it’s much healthier to review the film we actually got instead of the one I might have made. And the Rise of Skywalker before us is pretty swell.

Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker is rated PG-13 for “sci-fi violence and action.” Directed by J.J. Abrams. Written by Chris Terrio, J.J. Abrams, Derek Connolly, and Colin Trevorrow. Starring Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, and Anthony Daniels. (And a few more!)

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

It’s always a strange place to be, writing a review after learning that the movie hasn’t resonated with audiences in a big way. Solo: A Star Wars Story proves that you can in fact recast an iconic figure like Harrison Ford with a high degree of success, but it would seem also to prove that audiences aren’t terribly interested in that. I do wonder in what universe an $80-some million opener isn’t a smash (sounds like a lot of dough to me!), but I do feel a twinge of sorrow at the notion that the narrative of Solo might end up being not one of a scrappy against-all-odds winner but one of a misfired also-ran.

Alden Ehrenreich stars as Han Solo, desperate to escape the harsh streets of Corellia with his partner (in every sense of the word) Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). This being a prequel to Star Wars, you know at some point he’s bound to encounter the mammoth Wookiee Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) and the roguish gambler Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), though getting there is half the fun – the other half being Han’s introduction to smuggling, courtesy of heist man Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and gangster Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany).

Prequels can be tricky territory – heaven knows George Lucas learned that one the hard way – but Solo manages to navigate that terrain as deftly as its titular flyboy might, finding an appealing balance between fan service and genuine surprise. In the case of the former, there is a certain thrill to be had when we sense that Chewbacca is just around the corner or that Han’s about to see the Millennium Falcon for the first time; on the other hand, Solo manages to hold a few tricks up its sleeve, narrative about-faces that feel about as surprising as Vader’s “I am your father” must have seemed in 1980. Despite Beckett’s insistence that “people are predictable,” there are at least two or three genuine shocks in Solo that ought to excite anyone with a modicum of investment in the storytelling of the Star Wars universe, which bodes well for a prequel that may as well spin-off its own spin-offs.

Perhaps the greatest surprise of all is that Solo actually hangs together as a film. We’ve all heard the troubled production history of the film, with director Ron Howard replacing original filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller at as close to the eleventh hour as humanly possible. And having just seen a case of how aft agley these things can gang with last year’s Justice League, where the seams on the reshoots were as transparent as Wonder Woman’s invisible jet, Solo feels like a singular film with a singular vision, a consistent way of looking at the seedy underbelly of Star Wars. Whether we get another Solo movie is almost less important to me than whether Ron Howard gets another shot at the sandbox, with all the Western pioneer grit that gives Star Wars that lived-in feeling. Put another way, it’s a short putt from here to Tatooine in a way that never feels as reiterative as Jakku did, instead feeling much more of a piece with the danger and the dust that made Luke Skywalker so wistful for anything but.

As far as the cast goes, I’ll wager that anything I say here, you’ve probably already heard elsewhere – for one, Ehrenreich acquits himself quite well once you get past the fact that he’s not Harrison Ford. He’snot, true, but neither was Roger Moore entirely Sean Connery as James Bond, though no one raised such a fuss on general principle. We’ve seen recasting before, and Ehrenreich does find the core of Han Solo – clever, hapless, and a sucker for a good cause – to the point where even the most stubborn among us should find him an acceptable substitute for the otherwise unavailable late-70s Ford. Clarke is a welcome new kind of protagonist in a galaxy populated by princesses and queens, while Glover does a masterful riff on Billy Dee Williams as the smoothest operator in the galaxy. Harrelson and Bettany, meanwhile, are just fantastic, with the latter especially giving a performance that just exudes casual menace with every gleeful bite of the scenery. 

If the original Star Wars was The Hidden Fortress by way of Alphaville, I think there’s a conversation to be had about which visual languages Solo reappropriates. I don’t want to say too much by way of spoilers, so I’ll just note that the film begins as a Star Wars-ian riff on the outdoor sections of Blade Runner (with what appears to be a Blade Runner take on a Star Wars crawl) before moving into a heist film courtesy of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, detouring through the light tunnel sequences from 2001: A Space Odyssey (as scored not by Strauss but by the greatest hits of John Williams), before ultimately cycling back around to the interiors of Blade Runner. Spoiler-phobes can rest easy while the rest of us try to draw points of connection, which I raise not to accuse Howard of any sort of plagiarism – indeed, this may just be my own filmic apophenia – but to note with some curiosity how he may have taken a trick from George Lucas’s own playbook and made a Star Wars film out of a cinematic bricolage.

Ultimately, I think Solo will end up being something of a litmus test for Star Wars fans, telling us more about the moviegoer than the movie itself. For the xenophobes boycotting the film until producer Kathleen Kennedy is fired for the crime of daring to include just a whiff of diversity (both cultural and narrative in The Last Jedi), Solo is a staging ground for protest. For those of us living on planet earth, however, Solo is either a lackluster cash-grab or a fine diversion through a side street in Star Wars. It’s not a game-changer for the saga (though it may contain one, in the very last place you may be expecting it), but I’m of the opinion that these Anthology films – subtitled A Star Wars Story, as Rogue One was – need only be engaging standalones that just so happen to take place in that galaxy far, far away. While we wait for Episode IX to reveal the final fate (for now, at least) of the Skywalker bloodline, Solo is the kind of side-trip that reminds us why we fell in love with Star Wars in the first place.

Solo: A Star Wars Story is rated PG-13 for “sequences of sci-fi action/violence.” Directed by Ron Howard. Written by Jonathan Kasdan and Lawrence Kasdan. Starring Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joonas Suotamo, and Paul Bettany.

The Last Jedi (2017) [Score-Only]

Anyone who has known me long enough has heard me say some version of the following: so much of what works in Star Wars is due to the music of John Williams. I said over and over when I reviewed the prequels four years ago that if anything in those films works, it’s because John Williams crafted scores that, quite frankly, the films neither deserved nor lived up to. I even claimed, “Put the dialogue on mute, and the score alone could carry the plot better than the acting.”

With the home video release of The Last Jedi, I finally have the opportunity to put my money where my mouth is, because the digital copy of the film includes a score-only version – that’s the visuals, the John Williams score, and nothing else; no sound effects, no dialogue, not even subtitles to walk you through the film. It’s just you and the maestro. I won’t say that it’s the definitive version of the film, and I won’t say that the score-only version will necessarily work for everyone; my sense is that it might work better with a few listens to the score under your belt, because it’ll be easier to notice how the score is playing off the visuals when you have a sense of where the score is going. But I will say that it’s a special treat to watch The Last Jedi with Williams alone in your ears, particularly for those who haven’t been impressed with the Sequel Trilogy’s score work thus far. John Williams is still doing grand work, if only we had ears to hear it.

(I’m going to loosen the spoiler reins a bit, and by dint of talking about the score I can’t help but spoil a few things, particularly character interactions. I’ll keep it to a minimum, but please do watch The Last Jedi; it rises in my estimations each time I see it.)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

No one, it seems, hates Star Wars as much as Star Wars fans. To be fair, we’ve been wronged by the franchise we profess to love – the much-maligned Prequel Trilogies are cumbersome and inelegant, and the less said about the “Holiday Special” the better – but I think by and large the fanbase has been spoiled by a profusion of content and thus has developed a very narrow view of what Star Wars ought to be. The Last Jedi, the eighth episode in a franchise that now also includes “Anthology Films,” flies in the face of that narrow vision of Star Wars and does something truly unique with the franchise while remaining (to borrow a phrase from its composer, John Williams) quintessentially Star Wars-ian.

(As ever, you can trust me to give you the spoiler-free treatment. Believe me when I tell you that the plot summary below is only half of the first act, but if you haven’t seen it and want to go in totally unspoiled, skip down to the last paragraph, and don’t listen to the soundtrack, because Williams is not shy about quoting identifiable cues.)

The Force having awakened in the previous film, The Last Jedi picks up moments later, as Rey (Daisy Ridley) encounters Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) in his self-imposed, grimly pessimistic exile. While Rey implores Luke to rejoin the galaxy and teach her the ways of the Force, Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) leads the Resistance in evacuating their D’Qar base; Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) butts heads with Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern); and defector Finn (John Boyega) joins up with mechanic Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) to seek out a way to keep the First Order off their tail. And speaking of the film’s villains, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is dispatched by the Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) to snuff out the Resistance, the Jedi Order, and his own demons.

The Last Jedi covers a lot of ground, and it’s been rightly compared to The Empire Strikes Back for its divergent plot structure. Where The Force Awakens was relentlessly linear and unilaterally focused on a tight narrative, The Last Jedi sprawls out on this galactic tapestry and gives us no shortage of plots to follow. Like in Empire, the plots splinter off and converge in unexpected ways, and the audience is never quite sure what’s going to happen. I’ve seen a lot of outlets that report the film doesn’t “play it safe” and “takes risks” with the franchise – there is a moment, about halfway through the film, at which point I realized I had no idea what was going to happen because something I’d taken for granted had changed completely. After that, I found myself trying to keep up with the film as it heroically outpaced my expectations. As we galloped into the third act, I found myself quite literally gasping for air; I’d forgotten to breathe, and it took an unexpected shock to jar me back to life.

There’s not a bad performance in the bunch, and to say more might encroach on the territory of spoilers. Daisy Ridley gives a fantastically driven performance as a woman who is finally running toward her destiny, while Adam Driver is magnetic as he wrestles with the legacies he’s being forced to inherit. Far and away, the film belongs to Mark Hamill, who’s given a meaty character arc once Rey holds out that lightsaber on the island of Ahch-To, but Carrie Fisher gives a hell of a swan song as General Leia, who looms over the film like the regal war hero we know her to be. Then there’s the trio of new faces, of whom Kelly Marie Tran is the most engaging and likely a new fan favorite as she presents a giddy new look at what it means to be a hero of the Resistance from the vantage point of the mechanic Rose Tico; Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro turn in compelling performances, too, and all three of them are examples of what Star Wars has done best – introduce us to slices of a character’s life and invite us to study further into that galaxy far, far away. For The Last Jedi is, like all of the Star Wars universe, a story about the personal stakes of good and evil, about a series of individual choices that add up to galactic mythology because every life is precious, every moment sacred, every interaction blessed by significance because each life exists in its own expanded universe of stories. (Rose has her own tie-in book; Holdo appears in an earlier novel about Leia; and del Toro’s DJ has his own comic book coming soon – crass consumerism it may be, but sign me up for the lot of it.)

By way of critique, I’ll say that there are a few moments in the movie that don’t quite feel like Star Wars to me – new abilities we see on display, new technologies, even incidental characters who feel as if they’ve been imported from another franchise. Where some have taken this with resentment, #NotMyStarWars, I’m in the camp where those plot devices feel like fresh angles on a franchise that had already recapped its greatest hits with The Force Awakens and, to an extent, Rogue One. The tone of the film does, however, occasionally flirt with the line between deflating comedy and moments of high drama; where Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 tripped headlong over its own shoes into a pratfall in its best effort to prevent us from engaging with an emotion beyond laughter, The Last Jedi uses these moments to show us that a person is never only one thing. Someone mired in the deepest depression can find an opportunity for levity; life-or-death stakes end up blinking when they stare us down and we shrug our shoulders as if to say, “Do your worst.”

Surprisingly, I didn’t cry at this one. I still get a little choked up at the reunion of Han and Leia in The Force Awakens – kudos to John Williams, who did nonpareil work there and who continues to live up to his own legend. (Thank goodness, by the way, the “Canto Bight” theme is on the soundtrack!) I did, however, feel a swell of admiration at a film that managed to defy my expectations and yet make a perfect amount of sense. There may have been a few things I would have done ever so slightly differently, but of what movie isn’t that true? At film’s end, I felt thrilled, breathless, captivated. Though it’s the longest entry in the franchise, I could have easily done another hour. We’ve got two years until the as-yet-untitled Episode IX, but director Rian Johnson has given us a lot to pore over, and I can’t wait to see it again. Moreover, my excitement for the future of the franchise is stratospheric, because this all could have gone horribly wrong. The galaxy is in good hands, and there’s room for hope.

The Last Jedi is rated PG-13 for “sequences of sci-fi action and violence.” Written and directed by Rian Johnson. Starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Gwendoline Christie, Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern, and Benicio del Toro.

Memories of Princess Leia

I had just come out of a screening of La La Land (full review coming January 2) when I got the news that Carrie Fisher had passed away at the age of 60. It was like a kick in the guts, which unclenched when I realized it was the headline we’d been dreading for days after reading she had taken ill.

There was never any doubt in my mind that we’d see her at press junkets and red carpet events for the as-yet-untitled Episode VIII, laughing about what had happened with some wry morsel of self-deprecation and bracing honesty. Moreover, she’d be back because we needed her to be, because Star Wars seems unfathomable without our Princess Leia; lest we forget, she’s on screen a full twenty minutes before the ostensible hero Luke Skywalker. And honestly, after seeing the heist of the Death Star plans in Rogue One, it’s a little impossible to watch the original Star Wars without thinking of Leia as the heir to Jyn Erso’s mantle; who’s the real “new hope” here, the whiny farmboy whose chores stand in the way of his power couplings, or the regal politician turned rebel icon who stares down Darth Vader and lies to his face without breaking a sweat?

In a way, La La Land was a fitting bracer for the latest bit of bad news to come out of 2016. It’s a film that’s very concerned with memory, particularly visual/cinematic memory, and the ways that our filmic minds may be more powerful than reality, more romantically potent, even above and against the objective truth of reality. For most of us, all we have left of Carrie Fisher are her images, and as much of a force (no pun intended) as she was in Hollywood, I suspect that for very many of us she’ll always be Princess – or General – Leia. We might remember her as the M16-toting fiancé of Jake Blues in The Blues Brothers, the flower-child group therapist from Austin Powers, or as her own larger-than-life self as seen in Wishful Drinking.

However, even Carrie Fisher embraced the role that some said typecast her for life. “I got to be the only girl in an all-boy fantasy, and it’s a great role for women,” she told CBC in September. "She’s a very proactive character and gets the job done. So if you’re going to get typecast as something, that might as well be it for me.” To that end, with our filmic memories waxing nostalgic, we present five definitive Princess Leia moments. You might be expecting a Top 10 (and perhaps someday you’ll see it), but for now the occasion demands something special, a little bit unique. So put on the John Williams score and let’s remember the Princess as best we know how.

1. “Only you could be so bold.” I mentioned this moment at the top because it’s a hell of an introduction to Leia, and it tells us everything we need to know about the character. She’s fiercely loyal to her people (both those of Alderaan and those of the Rebel Alliance), and she’s far from cowed by the looming presence of Darth Vader, the scariest force of evil in the galaxy. But Leia, coded as vulnerable by her height and her all-white gown, refuses to bow; instead, she rips off one-liners of her own, later jeering at Grand Moff Tarkin’s “foul stench,” and she refuses to break, even under literal torture.

2. “This is some rescue!” The second act of Star Wars revolves around the effort to rescue Leia from the bowels of the Death Star, but it’s a beautiful treat that the rescue mission completely falls apart until Leia takes charge. Luke, Han, and Chewbacca storm the prison block, but it all goes awry, to which Leia’s reaction is the sly and often-quoted “Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?” She’s facing execution – Tarkin has said as much – but she refuses to be so much as impressed. Then, as the prison break collapses into a firefight, it’s Leia who rescues the rescue, sending them into the garbage chute and toward the Millennium Falcon.

3. “I love you.” “I know.” Leia spends much of The Empire Strikes Back on the run, but she’s always in control of the situation. She rightly assesses the moment to evacuate, she senses something is wrong about the asteroid “cave” in which they land, and she detects Lando’s misdeeds before Han has reason to doubt his old friend. But the one thing Leia misses is her own emotional range; throughout the movie, she’s telling Han Solo one thing while the audience realizes something else altogether – these two crazy kids are in love. Finally, just before it’s too late, she opens up, and while Han gets the iconic rebuttal, Leia flips the script in Return of the Jedi. This time, she’s caught up. She knows.

4. Huttslayer. I suspect a generation or two of Star Wars fans remember this moment for a different reason altogether. Carrie Fisher probably sent scores of moviegoers into puberty by donning the metal bikini, but a princess has to have an extensive wardrobe, right? What’s fascinating to me here is that it’s another way Leia flips the script. She steadfastly refuses to be a damsel in distress – recall that it’s all part of the plan – and her looks of disgust and occasional boredom prevent her from serving as eye candy. As ever, Carrie Fisher had the perfect response to the outfit: “Tell them that a giant slug captured me and forced me to wear that stupid outfit, and then I killed him because I didn’t like it. And then I took it off. Backstage.” The Expanded Universe materials have made much of Leia’s reputation as “the Huttslayer” – apparently, it’s a big deal to strangle a reptilian crime slug with the leash with which he would subjugate you. Now that’s a royally badass moment.

5. “Same jacket.” The original script for The Force Awakens called for us to see General Leia fairly early on and throughout the first act of the film. Wisely, though, J.J. Abrams kept her in reserve until we can see her through Han’s eyes for the first time. And boy, does it pack a wallop when she arrives; it’s a moment that always leaves me a little misty-eyed, but as ever Leia deflates the moment by skeptically remarking of Han’s attire, “Same jacket.” Thirty years may have passed, but she’s still the same Leia we left in 1983. The fact that she’s been promoted to general tells us only that the rest of the galaxy has finally caught up with her.

For now, she’s one with the Force, and the Force is with us. We’ll see her again in Episode VIII next December, and the Expanded Universe guarantees Princess Leia will never be too far away; she’s already appeared on Rebels, and she’s the star of the monthly Marvel comic Star Wars (to say nothing of her own miniseries, penned by Mark Waid). What’s your favorite Princess Leia moment? Sound off below.

Rogue One (2016)

It’s Disney’s galaxy, folks; we just live in it. But as I’ve said over and over, now is the best time to be alive. We’ve got comic book superheroes on film and television, engaging as ever, and we’ve got a new Star Wars film coming out every year. And if they continue to be as good as Rogue One is, that’s reason enough to hold onto the planet for another rotation around the sun.

As the Empire nears completion of its mammoth Death Star weapon just before the events of the original Star Wars film, a band of Rebels led by Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and his droid co-pilot K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk) seeks out Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), the daughter of the weapon’s chief engineer. While the Death Star’s military director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) grapples for power by proving the strength of his facility, Jyn bristles at the notion of joining the Rebellion but finds herself drawn into the struggle as she searches for her father.

If you’ve been around this long, you know I’m something of a shill when it comes to the genres I love. It’s not that these movies can do no wrong – I took Suicide Squad to task for biting off more than it could chew and for being “more than a little strangely crafted” – but maybe I’m a little more forgiving just because these are “my” genres, movies that feel made for me. But Rogue One is, I think, a great Star Wars movie that does everything a Star Wars movie ought to do. Since buying Lucasfilm lock, stock, and Greedo-shot-first barrel, Disney has been quite enamored of the Original Trilogy era, setting its television shows, comic books, novels, and now spin-off films in that period. But they’ve been equally keen on butting up against our sense of what Star Wars can be – that is, led by someone who isn’t a whiny blond dude, with next-to-no lightsaber combat.

Rogue One is both of those things, and more, depicting the run-up to A New Hope in a way that will forever color the way we look at the original film (answering in the process a question fans have had for about forty years in the process). But it does so in a way that deepens our understanding of the Star Wars mythos – at least, the post-Disney purge canon. Rogue One unites disparate elements from the Prequels, the Original Trilogy, Clone Wars and Rebels, from tie-in books like James Luceno’s Catalyst to what I’m pretty sure are a few weapons from the Lego Star Wars video games. We even, finally, get references to the mysterious Whills, referenced in early drafts of the screenplay and novelization to Star Wars. All of this, thankfully, is never beholden to an audience’s preexisting knowledge, serving instead like bonus frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum for those of us who have eyes trained to see them.

Because at its core, Rogue One is a film about a girl, her father, and the galaxy that finds itself depending quite unexpectedly on them. If you always thought the galaxy revolved around the Skywalkers, Rogue One asks you to look again; there’s only one Skywalker here, but as I predicted last week he’s treated like an ominous specter at the periphery of this story, the armor-plated embodiment of fury waiting for an excuse to unleash his hate. By and large, though, Rogue One is more interested in its scrappy band of Rebels, new characters all, some of whom are bound to become new fan favorites. K-2SO’s deadpan cynicism recalls a kind of killer Baymax, while the warrior duo of Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen, my personal fave) and Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen) shed light on the Force from the vantage point of someone who isn’t a Jedi.

Amid all the fresh new characters who I’d gladly follow into spin-offs of their own, though, Rogue One is thoroughly Felicity Jones’s show. Although some have drawn superficial lines between Jyn Erso and Daisy Ridley’s Rey, Jones does a fabulous job differentiating her character from the one found in The Force Awakens. There’s an unexpected emotional depth to Jyn, which Jones lets us see Jyn has repressed for so very long. She lets it burble over every so often, to great effect, and we never have a hard time believing that the tough persona she puts on in front of the other Rebels is just a defensive mechanism.

On the subject of the film’s villains, I will say that my first impression of Orson Krennic is that he’s a little undercooked. I have the disadvantage of having read the prequel novel before the film, so I know him a little better than most filmgoers, but his motivations and rank in the Empire might have been made clearer. Mendelsohn does a good job turning Krennic into a snarling power-hungry Imperial middleman, but as it is, Krennic takes a backseat to the Empire at large. Here the Empire is a giant and well-oiled machine, whose hold over the galaxy is more intimidating than any one figure could be. Then again, how daunting can an Imperial be in a film with Darth Vader? As the trailers have hinted, Krennic has a very memorable scene with Vader which puts Krennic in perspective relative to the Imperial machine he serves. Still, there’s a more personal story to be told, considering Krennic’s long history with the Erso family.

It wouldn’t be a Cinema King review without a wild comparison or two, and so I offer that Rogue One is very much akin to Captain America: The First Avenger. We knew where both films would end up – Darth Vader tells us as much in Star Wars, while we knew Cap was going to end up on ice, only to be thawed out in time for The Avengers. But just because the ending is a foregone conclusion, an accidental spoiler forty years in the making, that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun along the way, in a movie that feels more heartfelt than you might expect, given that at least a few of our heroes might have a tragic fate bearing down on them. There’s room for a few surprises along the way, but more importantly Rogue One clicks up with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in its personification of the quintessentially human emotion of hope. Both films, even as things look quite grim, find room for optimism, for persistence in the face of adversity because “men are still good” and “rebellions are built on hope.” It’s always darkest before the dawn, we recall from an earlier Batman film, but the dawn – or in this case, the new hope – is coming.

And for moviegoers, it isn’t all that essential to hope that the Star Wars franchise continues to thrive under the gloved thumb of the Mouse. Mickey’s two-for-two. The Force is truly with us.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is rated PG-13 for extended sequences of sci-fi violence and action. Directed by Gareth Edwards. Written by Chris Weitz & Tony Gilroy and John Knoll & Gary Whitta. Starring Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Alan Tudyk, Donnie Yen, Wen Jiang, Forest Whitaker, Riz Ahmed, Mads Mikkelsen, and James Earl Jones.

The Top 10 Things I’m Looking Forward to in Rogue One

2016 has been a pretty good year so far for us moviegoers, and it’s about to go out with a bang. We still have a few flicks that yours truly is looking forward to seeing: Martin Scorsese’s long-awaited Silence, classic Hollywood romance La La Land, Passengers, Assassins Creed, and Denzel Washington’s adaptation of Fences.

But Disney has seen to it that we won’t get to the end of the calendar year without talking about Star Wars. This Friday sees the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a mid-pre-sequel situated some time after Revenge of the Sith but just before A New Hope, in which the construction of the Death Star nears completion as a band of Rebels seek to steal the plans and look for a vulnerability.

Episode VIII, it’s not, but as much as I’m dying to return to that hilltop to see what Rey and Luke will say to each other, there’s plenty about which to be excited for Rogue One. And so, in the tradition of last year’s post to a similar point, here’s my “Top 10 Things I’m Looking Forward to in Rogue One.”

10. Politics in a galaxy far, far away. As much as we’re all wearied by the proceedings of Election 2016 and any number of high-stakes electoral proceedings this year, Lucasfilm’s Creative Executive Pablo Hidalgo pointed to the above scene aboard the Death Star in A New Hope as key to Rogue One. As rich as the clip is in terms of Star Wars lore, one major plot point is that the Emperor has only just gotten around to disbanding the Senate, meaning it’s open season in Rogue One. Will this film’s events be the ones that push Palpatine to finally erase the last pretenses of democracy in his Empire?

9. And speaking of politicians... You won’t see Donald and Hillary in Rogue One (thank the maker), but you’ll see a few familiar faces from the Prequel Trilogy – Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) and Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly). The Force Awakens largely steered clear of the still-radioactive prequels, but Rogue One seems to be embracing the parts that worked, namely the good casting in Revenge of the Sith. And with Bail Organa in tow, can a certain cinnamon-bunned princess or her prissy goldenrod protocol droid be far behind...?

8. Ground combat. The Force Awakens delivered on its aerial dogfights (and how) with hotshot pilot Poe Dameron leading Resistance forces, but we haven’t really seen sustained fighting on the ground in the Star Wars universe since The Empire Strikes Back – and we all remember how well that worked out for the Rebels. (And no, the Ewok ambushes don’t quite count.) With Rogue One said to inhabit a kind of WWII vibe, seeing ground assault troops and the AT-ATs glimpsed in the movie’s trailers, this could get ugly in a very beautiful kind of way.

7. Snarky droid. K-2SO looks to be a mean and sassy droid, comfortable with deadpan assertions of impending doom and honest appraisals of nihilistic futility. He’s voiced by Alan Tudyk, who (if you only know him as Wash from Firefly) has quietly become one of Disney’s premier voiceover artists with memorable turns in Wreck-it Ralph, Frozen, Zootopia, and even as the demented chicken Heihei in Moana. If all goes well, Tudyk could turn K-2SO into a wry reflection of C-3PO.

6. Inside baseball. Even though Rogue One is something of a standalone film, it’s almost a guarantee that the filmmakers will draw connections both forward and back. There’s the return of the Prequel faces (see #9) and at least one major character from the Original Trilogy (read on...), but with storytelling being a unified venture at Lucasfilm across film, television, and publishing, I wonder what other familiar faces we might see. Does the appearance of Saw Gerrera from The Clone Wars suggest we’ll touch base with something from Star Wars Rebels, which is set in roughly the same time period and also deals indirectly with the construction of the Death Star? Will we foreshadow some famous faces, the longest shot being Alden Ehrenreich’s young Han Solo? Or will Rogue One stake out its own territory, leaving these toys in the box for appearances in future comics, novels, and films?

5. Director Krennic. Now, I haven’t finished reading the prequel novel Catalyst just yet, but from what I’ve read Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) is going to be a compelling new kind of Imperial. Less a believer in the Emperor’s endgame and more a relentless opportunist with a disdain for his fellow Imperials, Krennic promises to be vastly different from the cold and calculating Tarkin (who’s rumored to appear, as well). How precisely he fits in – or doesn’t – with Imperial hierarchy ought to be fascinating stuff. And let’s face it, this is a guy who looks ready-made to be Force-choked for his failures. (Remember, he’s not at the table in A New Hope.)

4. I have a bad feeling about this... With the persistent refrain that this film ends about ten minutes before A New Hope, we can’t help but wonder how many of these characters are going to make it out alive. It’s a big galaxy, and there’s plenty of room for them to hide out to explain their absence in the Original Trilogy, but I can’t believe that the Imperials make it all the way to the Tantive IV without making sure that the plans could only be in Leia’s hands: all of which doesn’t bode well for our scrappy band of rebels.

3. One “Rogue” in particular. We’re getting a real motley crew for Rogue One, but the standout role looks to be that of protagonist Jyn Erso. She’s going to be a different breed of Star Wars heroine, more cynical a Rebel than Princess Leia, tougher than Rey, and with more family baggage than Padmé Amidala. Plus we have an Oscar nominee in Felicity Jones, so the character is in good hands, ready for a journey of galactic proportions.

2. Michael Giacchino’s score. The Clone Wars and The Holiday Special don’t count – this is the first Star Wars film not scored by the maestro himself, John Williams. But Michael Giacchino is just about the best possible successor I could imagine; his work relies on motifs and melodies in a very Star Wars-ian way, and he’s already followed in Williams’s footsteps on Jurassic World. Giacchino has proven himself versatile and gifted, and while I’m excited any time I see Giacchino’s name on a score, Rogue One compounds my interest. How much will he borrow from Williams’s operatic book of themes, and how much will he innovate? Will we see his trademark puns on the soundtrack titles?

1. Hcho-peh... hcho-peh... hcho-peh. You might not recognize it when I type it out, but you’ll know it when you hear it – Rogue One is bringing back the heavy-breathing, black-clad Dark Lord of the Sith himself, Darth Vader. While it remains to be seen whether he’ll be seeking the Rebel base, hunting down the stolen Death Star plans, or both, the original Man in Black is back. Here’s hoping director Gareth Edwards treats Vader like he depicted Godzilla – sparingly, obliquely, and terrifyingly powerful.

How about it, folks? What are you most excited to see in Rogue One? We’ll see you back here next week for a look at Rogue One. Until then, may the Force be with you.

The Top 10 Force Awakens Musical Moments

Two weeks after looking at the Prequel Trilogy scores composed by the maestro, John Williams, The Cinema King is happy to present a consideration of Williams’s latest opus for the Star Wars saga. We present, then, “The Top 10 Force Awakens Musical Moments” in our ongoing tribute to the maestro himself, John Williams. (Spoilers throughout, folks, so if you are one of the last dozen people who hasn’t seen The Force Awakens... I just don’t know what to say.)

A note on sources:  we’re talking, of course, about the music composed by John Williams and performed by a freelance orchestra (the first time the London Symphony hasn’t scored a Star Wars film). For source/cue division, I’m relying on the original soundtrack release, though it’s worth noting that some of the cues are cut a little differently on the “For Your Consideration” album distributed on the Disney Studios Awards website. (One, my #3 choice, appears there but not on the official soundtrack release.)

10. “Snoke”
 Strange though it may seem, “Snoke” lands on our Top 10 list not exactly for what Williams did with the piece but for the rabid fan speculation it inspired. We know very little about the First Order’s Supreme Leader Snoke (as Han asks in a deleted scene, “What makes him supreme?”), but Williams might be giving us a tantalizing clue. “Snoke” sounds an awful lot like “Palpatine’s Teachings” from Revenge of the Sith, with a low, rumbling men’s chorus that seems to imply that Snoke is actually Darth Plagueis – Palpatine’s Sith Master, thought to be deceased. Or perhaps Williams is actually devising a motif for the Dark Side itself. Either way, we know Snoke is not to be taken lightly, and Williams has given us something worth debating until Episode VIII.

9. “Scherzo for X-Wings”
 This one almost didn’t make the cut, albeit solely on principle – it’s a concert suite arrangement found on the soundtrack but not in the film proper. But it’s such a great piece that I threw it on here anyway, a fast-paced cut perfect for an aerial dogfight that captures the rapid energy of Poe Dameron as the greatest pilot in the Resistance. Poe has his own musical flourish, sure, but “Scherzo” belongs not just to one pilot but to the entire Black Squadron. Heck, if we could retroactively feature it in some of the Red/Rogue Squadron scenes in the Original Trilogy, the more the better.

8. “Han and Leia”
 Kudos to director JJ Abrams for holding back General Leia’s on-screen debut to coincide with her reunion with Han Solo, and equal points go to John Williams for reviving “Han Solo and the Princess” to tug at our heartstrings all the more. The scene could have worked with just the looks exchanged by Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford – punctuated by the applause-worthy interruption of C-3PO – but it’s that musical reminder of their romance that really turns on the waterworks.

7. “Kylo Ren Arrives at the Battle”
 Things go from bad to worse whenever Kylo Ren shows up, imbued as he is with an ungodly amount of power and an ill temper to match. But it’s the descending five notes that let us know just how much bantha poodoo has hit the proverbial fan, and it accompanies the visuals to perfection as we see Kylo Ren survey the destruction of Maz Kanata’s watering hole in pursuit of his prize – which quickly becomes a chase through the forest as Rey captures his attention just as he takes her hostage. It’s a solid blend of action score and character-driven motifs, and Williams nails it, as per usual.

6. “The Falcon”
 I’ve long lamented that Han Solo never got his own theme tune (apart, perhaps, from “The Asteroid Field” from The Empire Strikes Back), but with The Force Awakens we got the next best thing – a motif for the Millennium Falcon. Situated somewhere between Roland Barrett’s “Of Dark Lords and Ancient Kings” and Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo à la Turk,” “The Falcon” motif might also be a theme for Finn, since he appears in both action scenes where the track is featured, but it’s more likely that one of the saga’s unsung heroes finally got, well, sung.

5. “The Starkiller”
 Whether you thought that Starkiller Base was the next logical step in the franchise or just a Death Star turned up to eleven, Williams gave us a surprisingly mournful melody – a far cry from the suspenseful countdown heard in “Destruction of Alderaan” from Star Wars. It’s mildly reminiscent of the middle section of “Across the Stars” out of Attack of the Clones, and the suggestion that it’s as much an elegy for the soul of Kylo Ren as for those killed by the Starkiller weapon makes its deployment in the film a somber affair, inducing goosebumps and perhaps even a tear of sorrow.

4. “The Ways of the Force”
 Throughout The Force Awakens, Williams is judicious in his invocation of classic motifs, but in “The Ways of the Force” he goes fro broke by reusing the “Burning Homestead” cut from Star Wars at the moment that the lightsaber flies into the hand of Rey, choosing her over Kylo Ren. Blending the Force theme, Rey’s motif, and Kylo Ren’s fanfare, Williams crafts a charged and frenetic action cue that is as frantic as it is meaningful. If this is Rey’s “burning homestead” moment, what does that portend for her hero’s journey? And if this is her first glimpse at what the ways of the Force can teach her, how much more powerful will she be after a few rounds of Jedi training?

3. “The Resistance”
 While some might lament that the Resistance is just another iteration of the Rebel Alliance, a small band of dissenters against a monopolistic force of evil, they have something the Rebels never had – a unified musical motif (unless you count the fleeting “Rebel Fanfare” heard throughout the Original Trilogy). And I’ve chosen this particular cue as my #3 moment because it encapsulates the first big Resistance action scene in the new films as Poe Dameron gets to show off his skills as Finn and Han continue the fight at ground level. It’s not much more than a minute of music, but it’s immediately unforgettable and sends the audience cheering just as Finn does.

2. “The Jedi Steps”
 Leave it to Williams to come up with two minutes of original music that dwarfs nearly everything else on the soundtrack (hey, it ain’t #1, is it?). The ascending scales as Rey takes her steps up the mystical island retreat of – SPOILERS – a self-exiled Luke Skywalker lead the viewer/listener up those same steps toward enlightenment, promising us that the true adventure is only just beginning. It’s a promise that I hope will be fulfilled in the as-yet-untitled Episode VIII, provided we see Williams return, but I think “The Jedi Steps” prove that the Maestro still has a few tricks up his sleeve. (And the flirtatious blend of “Rey’s Theme” with the Force theme during the end credits is just icing on the cake.)

1. “Rey’s Theme”
 In terms of reintroducing the Star Wars saga to a new audience, Williams outdid himself with an instant classic, instantly recognizable as a reference point for its title character and for the Sequel Trilogy (is that what we’re calling it?) as a whole. With orchestral bells straight out of his Harry Potter work and a musical thirst for adventure and for one’s place in the universe, “Rey’s Theme” awakened something in us all – a reminder of what it is to live in that galaxy far, far away and the possibilities therein. The entire score is permeated by “Rey’s Theme,” proving how deft Williams has always been with motifs and how versatile his work can be, repurposed for tragedy, action, and mystery.

Hit the comments section to tell me your favorite musical moment from The Force Awakens! And be sure to subscribe up above to make sure you don’t miss future reviews, or...

Heads up, True Believers – we’ll continue to Make Yours Marvel this Wednesday with another installment in “The Grand Marvel Rewatch,” so check back then for 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. Or subscribe above, and receive those missives right in your inbox. Nuff said!

The Top 10 Prequel Trilogy Musical Moments

It’s been a while since I did one of these (all the way back in October), but it’s finally time to revisit my Top 10 lists from the Star Wars soundtracks. This being the fourth installment in the series, you might logically expect this post to cover The Phantom Menace. Except, here’s the thing about the Prequel Trilogy – even though John Williams was doing some of his finest work, the films were surprisingly unfriendly to his score, editing it in a madcap and indigestible fashion, often using recycled takes of previous material.

In light of that, I’m mixing it all up together, and we’re taking the work of three films as one distinct corpus. We present, then, “The Top 10 Prequel Trilogy Musical Moments” in our ongoing tribute to the maestro himself, John Williams.

A note on sources:  we’re talking, of course, about the music composed by John Williams and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. For source/cue division, I’m relying on the original soundtrack releases only, setting aside the “Ultimate Edition” Phantom Menace release, as it’s more of a straight film edit than an orchestral suite arrangement (put another way, it’s the same stuff, repackaged differently).

10. “The Immolation Scene”
 Regardless of your feelings about the Prequel Trilogy, whether or not it did justice to the story of Anakin Skywalker, the music of John Williams deftly carries that saga to the point where, as ever, you could mute the dialogue and it still works. Case in point – the moment when the dismembered Anakin slides into the volcanoes of Mustafar. Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) wails plaintively over the fate of his apprentice, but it’s Williams’s elegiac score that strikes the mood.

9. “Main Title/The Revenge of the Sith”
 The prequel trilogy has two very understated opening sequences, but Revenge of the Sith pulls out the stops for a CGI-laden space battle, replete with an action-packed track from Williams. Beginning with warlike taiko drums, Williams holds back after the opening fanfare until dropping us into the aerial combat. Weaving in General Grievous’s theme with the familiar Force theme, Williams accounts for the combatants while compelling us to feel for the characters.

7. TIE: “Panaka and the Queen’s Protectors”
7. TIE: “The Droid Invasion/The Droid Battle”
 This one’s a tie because they’re two distinct cuts on the score for The Phantom Menace, but they represent two different sides of the Battle of Naboo – on one hand, the noble palace guard and their struggle to retake the throne room, and on the other, the emotionless droid army marching toward the battlefield. Williams stakes out equally compelling motifs to represent these forces, weaving them together with a theme especially for the Naboo Starfighters and with an orchestral take of “Duel of the Fates” to create an epic soundscape for the sweeping battle sequences. (There’s even a nod to “The Imperial March” in there – a special No-Prize to those who hear it!)

6. “Anakin’s Betrayal”
 Anakin’s fall to the dark side ought to feel like a real punch in the gut, and Williams delivers the musical equivalent of said shot to the belly. The choral sounds on this track feel very much like a spectator falling to his knees, weeping at the doom of the Republic as the Jedi perish in Order 66. More effective than the on-the-nose funereal march Williams devised for the prequels, “Anakin’s Betrayal” feels properly solemn.

5. “The Chase Through Coruscant”
 I love a good action cue more than just about anything in the realm of Star Wars music (well, maybe not as much as a power-packed motif like “The Imperial March”), and this ten minute cue from Attack of the Clones is perfect for those late-night study binges, tense drives through traffic, or just a run-of-the-mill diversion from boredom. The frenetic pace of Williams’s drums here, coupled with an electric guitar (cut from the film) also popped up in the Quidditch scene in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – hey, if it works, it works.

4. “Love Pledge/The Arena”
 After moving through the love theme from Attack of the Clones (about which, more in a bit), Williams turns in a musical piece that was butchered in the film edits but survives in majestically sinister form on the soundtrack album as a martial march fit for the Separatist forces and the great beasts to which they attempt to feed our protagonists. It echoes “The Droid Invasion” ever so slightly, but it becomes its own piece such that I wish we’d heard more of it. When I think Attack of the Clones, this is almost always the second thing I think of.

3. “Battle of the Heroes”
 It all had to come to this, the clash of two titans turning against each other, with only the fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance. Even when Williams isn’t weaving in bits of “The Imperial March” or consciously echoing “Duel of the Fates,” “Battle of the Heroes” comes to a place of horrorstruck necessity, with no less respect for the grandeur of the battle. One wonders if there’s an edit of the Obi-Wan/Vader duel from A New Hope with this cut in.

2. “Across the Stars”
 At the risk of this Top 10 turning into a Prequel Trilogy apologia – say what you want about the chemistry between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman, “Across the Stars” is a love theme that makes you believe in this relationship (even against all visual evidence). It’s a piece so beautiful it hurts, belonging more properly to the great screen romances like Gone With the Wind than to Attack of the Clones.

1. “Duel of the Fates”
 This can’t be a surprise to anyone, but here’s a piece of music that really became synonymous with Star Wars in a way that only the “Main Title” and “The Imperial March” had done before – it’s overall Top Three material, for sure. “Duel of the Fates” is astonishingly and instantly epic, dethroning “O Fortuna” for sure and governing the whole Prequel Trilogy with a sense of cosmic import married to cinematic spectacle. It’s among Williams’s best work, instantly recognizable from Note One, and it carried us back to a galaxy far, far away even before we bought our tickets.

Hit the comments section to tell me your favorite Prequel Trilogy musical moment! And be sure to subscribe up above to make sure you don’t miss future reviews or my “Top 10 Force Awakens Musical Moments”!

Heads up, True Believers – we’ll continue to Make Yours Marvel this Wednesday with another installment in “The Grand Marvel Rewatch,” so check back then for 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Or subscribe above, and receive those missives right in your inbox. Nuff said!

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

First of all, if you haven’t seen The Force Awakens just yet, read on without fear of being spoiled (although really, what else did you have to do this weekend?). I’m very sensitive to the fact that this is a film with a heavy curtain of secrecy around it. The spoilers are out there if you really want them, but I’d advise anyone to go into The Force Awakens with a clean palate because this is a film that works best when it washes over you and introduces itself to you on its own terms. It’s a remarkable achievement, breathing new life into a franchise that needed it, setting a fantastic tone for the forthcoming Disney era.

Again, no spoilers here, so I’ll refrain from the usual plot synopsis, only to say that the film’s opening title crawl is immensely captivating stuff, clicking into place a lot of the rumors and official releases such that you have an instant sense of the state of that galaxy far, far away these thirty years after Return of the Jedi. In addition to the familiar faces of Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), and Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) – listed in the order they’re credited on the film – The Force Awakens introduces us to a new trio: stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega), scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley), and hotshot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac). And menacing the galaxy is one more black-clad acolyte of the dark side, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), and the First Order’s plan to unseat the Republic.

I found myself thinking immediately of the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi from Return of the Jedi: “You cannot escape your destiny.” And while I’m on record as being one of those moviegoers who ordinarily detests the deus ex machina of destiny, it’s undeniably woven into the fabric of the Star Wars universe, and director JJ Abrams does some very intriguing work with it. Throughout The Force Awakens, we have characters who are either running from their destiny or sprinting headlong toward it, and all of them end up pretty much exactly where they are meant to be – from the stormtroopers in the opening scene to the folks present in the final shot of the film (and what a gorgeous, sweeping final shot it is). Heck, even Greg Grunberg, a childhood friend of Abrams, fulfills his destiny by appearing here as an X-wing pilot.

JJ Abrams had the unenviable task of being the only person to direct a Star Wars film without George Lucas's hand on his shoulder (including, of course, The Clone Wars and that horrible thing I watched last Friday). While I’ve never been a full Abrams disciple, there’s no question that he more than lives up to the legacy of the original trilogy. (As for the prequels, they’re largely set aside, save for one passing reference.) As a director, Abrams keeps the pace of the film at an even clip, sprinkling in enough humor to make this possibly the funniest Star Wars film in the saga without compromising the film’s overall tone. More apparent is the film’s reverential and referential attitude toward the original trilogy; nearly every sequence in the film has some callback to a previous moment, giving lie to George Lucas’s oft-quoted refrain about the poetry of the saga. But what’s remarkable here is that the aggregate effect isn’t one of plagiarism; there’s a deference, to be sure, to what came before, but it advances the saga forward and cues up more than enough for Episodes VIII and IX to continue to explore.

Bizarrely, and actually gratefully, I’m more interested in the new characters than in the returning faces. Yes, there’s a wonderful reintroduction moment for every returning character (even the ones you weren’t expecting to be applause-worthy), but the Finn-Rey-Poe trio could easily be the new Luke-Leia-Han for this generation, and not necessarily in that order. This is great news for the franchise as a whole, because it shows that Star Wars is capable of sustaining itself beyond the inevitable first flash of nostalgia that The Force Awakens was always destined (there’s that word again) to invoke. And say what you want about the prequels, but they always pointed to A New Hope, never sufficiently building their own world (save for those long and tedious political conversations). The Force Awakens propels the narrative forward, to say nothing of the introduction of an equally compelling trio (or quartet, depending on how you do the math) of antagonists. Let’s just say this – Kylo Ren is everything we wanted from Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker.

I’ll have to see the film again to give a more detailed assessment – I know there are folks chomping at the bit to talk about some of the more spoileriffic details – and I’d like to revisit the film with more of the John Williams score under my belt. I was just too overwhelmed by the film to drink it all in at once. And that’s such a good thing. I felt myself smiling like a child again once those blue words “A long time ago...” appeared on the screen, felt my jaw fall as the title crawl clued me into the story. I smiled, I laughed, I gasped, and I very nearly cried in a few moments, and not only out of sadness when the film went for the emotional tug. My eyes were misty because I felt, finally, I’d come home. Chills up my arms, chokes in my throat (not the kind induced by the dark side, mind you), and a permanent grin across my face: these were the feelings The Force Awakens conjured up in me. Like some magical incantation, cast out across the void of decades, Star Wars is back.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is rated PG-13 for “sci-fi action violence.” This film is slightly bloodier than previous Star Wars films, but the level of violence and action is about the same.

The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

Last night while the rest of the world slept, fans across the country were united in projecting their hopes, dreams, and imaginations against the latest – and, some have said, greatest – Star Wars film.

This is not a review of that film. This is a review written by a very confused, very dissatisfied Star Wars fan who, for the first and likely last time in his life, inflicted upon himself the horror, the horror, that is The Star Wars Holiday Special from 1978.

Any attempt to summarize the plot of The Star Wars Holiday Special, such as it is, would be doomed to inevitable failure. Suffice it to say that something has happened to prevent Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) from attending some kind of festivity (the nebulously defined “Life Day”), leading the audience to be held captive for a series of bizarre and senseless vignettes which can only loosely be defined as tangentially relevant to the Star Wars universe, including the sale of a mustache groomer, a Wookiee cooking/drag show, a kaleidoscopic sex drug, and the first appearance of Boba Fett, which is in no way, shape, or form worth sitting through this monstrosity.

To say that this film is unwatchable by modern standards would be to pay The Star Wars Holiday Special a compliment. It is, in fact, unwatchable by any standards of any generation ever. Ten minutes in, I was already not sure whether what I had seen – an interminably long segment which consists of an apparent Married With Children script done entirely in Wookiee-speak followed by a hallucinatory juggling act with Chewbacca’s bloated son Lumpy as voyeur – was actually real or whether I had somehow died on the way home that evening and dreamt up the rest.

The Holiday Special – a poor name indeed, for it is neither festive nor special –  is so catastrophically mystifying that it is a great wonder that Star Wars became the fan-fueled juggernaut that it is today. One wonders how many fans looked at this thing and never returned to that galaxy far, far away, for fear of getting another Holiday Special as recompense for their entertainment dollar. After twenty-five minutes, I felt so insensate that I wondered if Jar Jar Binks might show up as the least offensive thing on the screen. That’s right; a racist cartoon rabbit would not only fit in perfectly in the milieu of the Holiday Special, but might actually have been the most entertaining part of it. Wrap the ethical centers of your brain around that one.

Thirty minutes in, I had to go to the bathroom. I considered leaving it run in my absence, wondering if it would make a difference. I started asking myself a lot of questions. Would I miss anything of merit? (No.) How the hell did they get Art Carney to appear in this travesty? Was this still canon, in the wake of the Great Disney Purge? Had it ever been canon? What had become of my life that I was thinking so deeply about this thing at eleven at night? Could I ever enjoy anything ever again?

Halfway through the Holiday Special, my computer abruptly restarted itself. A scan of my computer revealed no corrupted processes, no viruses, no malware. It is as if my computer refused to suffer any further indignity by playing a moment more of the Holiday Special than was absolutely necessary, as if it wished to spare me the perpetual suffering. As I verified that my computer wasn’t irreparably damaged by the experience, I found myself at a crossroads. I could go to bed, post the review as if I’d seen the whole thing. No one would know. No one would ever have to know, and I’d probably be doing myself a favor. But, equal parts stubborn and honest, I soldiered on.

Thank heavens I did. Not because the animated segment lived up to any expectations at all. No, I’m thankful I didn’t give up so that I’m never tempted to sit through this thing again. I can now say that I’ve watched the first appearance of Boba Fett, and the cartoon episode which interrupts the Holiday Special is as shambolic, plotless, and pointless as anything else in the ninety-some minutes of my life I’m never getting back. Then there’s a strange scene in which Bea Arthur cuddles with a hamster while tending bar at the Mos Eisley Cantina, in which the set and the costuming look even cheaper than their playfully hokey appearance in the original Star Wars film.

It’s at this moment in the Holiday Special that my mind returns to inquisition. Is this thing meant to be funny? Coherent? It’s certainly neither, though there are moments that playact at the former. In short, what the hell is this thing supposed to be, and on what level did anyone look at the finished product and say, “Yep, that’s something I want the rest of the world to see”? If this film was so much as shown a picture of a cohesive narrative, it wasn’t looking. It’s as if George Lucas had a child with David Lynch, and then that child were given a box of Star Wars action figures and a Betamax video camera, and then that child snorted a tremendous amount of cocaine and passed out. The Star Wars Holiday Special is that fever dream.

Thank God I’m going to see The Force Awakens in a matter of hours. I had said of the new film, “It can’t be worse than The Phantom Menace.” What I should have said was, “It can’t be as unfathomably inaccessible as The Star Wars Holiday Special.”

The Star Wars Holiday Special is rated why are you even still reading this.

The Top 10 Things I’m Looking Forward to in The Force Awakens

Without much at the box office to review and having caught up on most of my home viewing, I turn to the future. There’s a new Star Wars movie coming out next month – words I never thought I’d say, but they taste sweeter than ice cream. I’m so very excited about a great many things, but here are my “Top 10 Things I’m Looking Forward to in The Force Awakens.”

10. It’s the start of a new trilogy. Lest we forget, there are two more movies coming down the pike, to say nothing of all the “Anthology” films designed to fill in the gaps between the main films. While much has been made of The Force Awakens as a return to that galaxy far, far away, we must also remember that Episode VII is going to establish themes and plotlines for the next trilogy – and perhaps beyond.

9. It’s not George Lucas. And I don’t mean that as a slight to the man; for all the faults of the Prequel Trilogy, I do feel he’s hugged the cactus long enough, and he’s still the man responsible for birthing Star Wars into the universe. What I mean is, up until now we’ve really only seen George Lucas’s Star Wars, with his authorial hand at the narrative till. I’m excited to see what other voices bring to the galaxy.

8. Stellar space dogfights. In a way, I’m more excited about this one than lightsaber fights. We’ve done the lightsaber thing over and over, but Return of the Jedi is still the benchmark for great space combat. In light of the CGI pixelfest opening of Revenge of the Sith, and with the inclusion of an X-Wing pilot as one of our chief new characters, we’re in for some stellar space fighting.

7. Fun new merchandising. Look, if there’s one thing you’ve learned about me on this blog, it’s that I’m a hopeless shill, an easy mark. I’ve been devouring the new canon novels, spending far too much time on the Star Wars Card Trader app, and delighting in bobbling the head of my Kylo Ren Funko figurine. All of this has gone on, many rightly note, with a pretty hefty spoiler embargo from Disney. Just imagine what neat new doodads I’ll be able to put on my shelf once the movie lands.

6. Opening the puzzle box. Speaking of spoilers, let’s talk about the fact that the movie remains almost entirely unspoiled. We know next to nothing save what we’ve glimpsed in well-edited trailers and gorgeous movie posters. Maybe I’m just adept at dodging those murky spoileriffic corners of the Internet, but JJ Abrams has always been known for his puzzle box approach to filmmaking, keeping his cinematic cards as close to his directorial chest as possible. With the long arm of The Mouse at his side, we’re in for a real surprise come December.

5. Meeting new friends. It’s evident that The Force Awakens won’t just be treading familiar ground. We have a trio of new protagonists in Finn, Rey, and Poe Dameron, creepy antagonists in Kylo Ren, Captain Phasma, and General Hux, as well as the instantly lovable BB-8, heretofore unseen figures, and the overall shape of the galaxy in the wake of the fall of the Empire (if indeed it really fell). With no clue how all this fits together, with the tease that some characters are connected to the Original Trilogy in surprising ways, and with Disney positioning many performers as breakout figures, Star Wars ought to introduce us to a few new stars.

4. Seeing old friends. But of course, The Force Awakens isn’t discarding our holy trinity of science fiction. Luke, Han, and Leia are coming back, as are Chewbacca and that dynamic droid duo of C-3PO and R2-D2. Heck, even Admiral Ackbar is confirmed for a return. (Lando can’t be far behind, right!) It’s been thirty years in-canon, and only a little longer for us in the real world. The Force Awakens has a lot of catching up to do.

3. A new John Williams score. This was very nearly my #1 on the list, and I really can’t undersell just how pivotal Williams’s music will be to the success of The Force Awakens. Even if the film is a catastrophe on the level of Attack of the Clones, it’ll make a brilliant silent film with just the score turned up to eleven. He’ll be remixing the familiar tunes, as the trailers indicate, but I’m equally if not more excited to hear how he brings new characters to musical life.

2. Where is Luke Skywalker? Remember that puzzle box I mentioned? Abrams and company have let nothing slip about the whereabouts of Luke Skywalker, the only surviving Jedi (well, assuming Ahsoka Tano doesn’t make it out of Rebels). We know Mark Hamill is in the film – how could he not be? – but the trailers haven’t given us more than a momentary glimpse at a cybernetic hand which, to be fair, might not even be his. The mystery of science fiction’s greatest hero, and the implication that his absence might be a major plot point, has me all a-flutter.

1. That childlike sense of wonder. Credit the marketing team for this one, but the #1 reason I’m excited about The Force Awakens is that I feel genuinely excited about it. Something of a tautology, I know, but there’s a difference between this and my excitement for the next superhero movie. With the latter, I have a fairly good idea of what’s coming, and my excitement stems from confidence in the direction of whichever franchise I’m financing with my ticket. With Star Wars, the trailers and promotional materials give me a very different feeling, a reminder of why I fell in love with Star Wars at age eight or so, a promise that everything is going to be different but nothing is going to be too far afield. So far, everything I’ve seen of The Force Awakens has been a wonderful blend of nostalgia, promise, mystery, and wonder. Abrams, known for his Spielbergian sense of awe, is a worthy heir to the franchise, and I have the feeling of coming home to that galaxy far, far away.

Despite my obvious enthusiasm, rest assured I’ll be giving this one a fair shake come December. I haven’t made my mind up in advance, and if it’s absolute dreck I won’t flinch to say so. But I’ve got a very good feeling about this.