Double Feature time: Return of the Jedi/Halloween III: Season of the Witch

It seemed only fair to have a double feature entry featuring the last entry of the original Star Wars trilogy since I did entries with the previous two films.

I was estatic when I learned Jedi was entered into the National Film Registry a couple of years ago, as the original Star Wars & The Empire Strikes Back were already in that illustrious lineup. Like it's two predecessors, Jedi's release came within a year of that of an entry in the Halloween series. But whereas Jedi would go onto join its 2 predecessors as one of the biggest moneymaking films ever, Halloween III was a flop when it was released mainly due to the absence of its serial killer, Micheal Myers. When all the subsequent entries in the series had Michael, this film deserves credit for trying something different, unlike many of the slasher film series that were dominant in the 80s. Happily, the film has gotten a bit more appreciation over the years, although I doubt that this stop the next Halloween film (whenever that's released) from having Michael in it.

Double Feature time: The Empire Strikes Back/Halloween II

With the recent passing of the legendary James Earl Jones, I thought I'd take a look at a film where he has one of his most famous lines-and how it is similar to a slasher sequel which came out the following year.

Like their respective originals, the respective second entries in the Star Wars and Halloween series premiered in a year of each other. Both of these also introduced elements to their storylines which would influence their respective franchises for years to come. These aspects are, in another coincidence, family oriented. Who can forget the way James Earl Jones told Luke "I am your father!!!" Likewise, Halloween II would reveal that Michael Myers is Laurie's brother. Of these two, it was Halloween's that would end up having a more detrimental effect on its series, as it takes away from the mystery of Michael's character. Jamie Lee Curtis eventualy agreed as the plot twist was erased when she returned for the original's 40th anniversay film with Halloween (2018).

The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Here's a review of the latest Star Wars film.

For many, the big moment is here. The final story of the Skywalker saga officially hits theaters this weekend. But I for one wouldn’t be surprised if there were more film entries in this series, with or without Skywalkers. After all, Star Wars does have the backing of some studio that uses a mouse as its mascot.

But onto the movie itself.

Although never explicitly stated, the film begins one year after the events of the previous film The Last Jedi. The opening crawl says that there’s a radio transmission being heard in certain parts of the galaxy and it’s the voice of the Emperor (Ian McDiamid), who somehow survived when Vader tossed his hammy ass down that shaft in Return of the Jedi. Leia sends people out to investigate the matter, while her son Kylo Ren does the same with the intention of destroying the Emperor, which isn’t surprising since Ren killed his master Snoke in the previous film.

Ren has what’s called a Sith wayfinder device and traces the Emperor’s signal to the planet of Exegol. He hears the Emperor’s voice, along with Vader’s, saying they’re the voices Ren has heard all his life. The Emperor is indeed here, although somewhat physically beaten (Vader’s toss was obviously hell for the Emperor’s fingernails). He tells Ren that he’s the reason Snoke existed at all, and has been biding his time creating a new fleet of Star Destroyers. Ren is promised this fleet if he kills Rey.

Speaking of Rey, she’s on the latest Resistance base, honing her Jedi skills with Leia’s help (Carrie Fisher, thanks to deleted footage). She’s a bit pissed, though, when the Millennium Falcon returns and it’s on fire. This was because of Poe, Finn, and Chewbacca using the gas pedal erratically after escaping bad guys while getting info on Ren’s wayfinder device from a spy inside the First Order.

But the group does manage to tell the Resistance that the Emperor has returned. One of them (Dominic Monaghan) says that the Sith have been known to dabble in cloning (which is actually how the Emperor was able to return in the comic Dark Empire). Rey realizes that Luke’s notes refer to a Sith artifact which could help them out. His notes state that it may be on the planet Pasaana. After hugging Leia goodbye, Rey is off, with Poe, Finn, Chewbaccca, BB-8, and C-3PO. Rose declines because Leia needs her help if First Order ships arrive.

They arrive on Pasaana and quickly get in a skirmish with First Order troops, but get help from Lando Calrissian. The group is honored to meet him, and Lando says that he and Luke searched for the artifact on the planet years earlier and takes them to the spot where they last heard it was located. Meanwhile, Ren and Rey’s Force telepathy is activated and he’s able to determine where she is.

Our heroes are soon engulfed in what seems to be quicksand. But instead of killing them, it basically tosses them into an underground cave. They find a dagger with Sith text inscribed on it. However, 3PO states that his programming forbids him from translating it. They’re all suddenly startled by the sight of a huge serpent-like creature. But Rey sees that the creature is wounded and she uses the Force to heal it, before the creature darts off.

Poe suggests that they could get the info out of 3PO’s head at a planet called Kijimi, which he’s familiar with. They find another ship to take them there, as the Falcon is too recognizable. But before boarding, Rey senses Ren and goes out to confront him, doing an awesome Force somersault over his TIE Fighter. During this fight, Chewie gets captured by First Order troops, along with the dagger. Rey uses the Force to prevent the transport holding Chewie from leaving, while Ren does the same in order to release her hold on the ship. This leads to Rey shooting Force lightning, destroying the ship and apparently killing Chewbacca. The shattered heroes quickly leave, while Rey briefly tells Finn about her fears that she’s now getting about herself.

Alas, the next scene is on Ren’s ship, with the audience realizing that Chewie is still alive, and he’s brought before General Hux.

On Kijimi, Poe is able to make contact with his old acquaintance Zorii Bliss (Keri Russell). Rey, Finn, and the others are startled to learn that Poe was a smuggler, while Zorii wastes no time telling Poe how pissed she is at him for basically going off to join the Resistance. But she agrees to take them to a place where the info can be gotten out of 3PO’s head. This operation results in his memory being wiped. But before he can get reacquainted with everyone, Ren and his troops arrive. Rey senses that Chewie is still alive and she and the others board Ren’s Star Destroyer, thanks to a special ID badge that Zorii gives Poe.

As Poe and Finn rescue Chewie, Rey and Ren have another telepathic Force chat while she secretly makes her way to his quarters. Ren tells Rey that the Emperor is her grandfather and that he killed her parents and wants to kill her because he fears Rey’s power. She’s torn over this, and the two exchange lightsaber blows. Rey knocks over Ren’s burnt Vader mask, which leads him to realize that she’s on his ship.

Elsewhere, Poe, Finn, and Chewie are captured, but discover that Hux is actually a spy when he kills the troops about to gun them down. He arranges their escape, even asking Finn to shoot him to make it seem like they overpowered him. When they ask why he’s doing this, Hux basically says he hates Ren.

Ren confronts Rey in the hangar, but she’s able to escape with the others on the Millennium Falcon. Hux himself is killed by Allegiant General Pryde (Richard E. Grant) for treason, and I hate when movies kill annoying characters just when they start to become interesting. The Star Destroyer then destroys Kijimi using its Death Star-esque laser.

The Sith dagger leads our heroes to Kef Bir, specifically the remains of the second Death Star which blew up near Endor. Once there, they encounter a group led by Jannah (Naomi Ackie), who like Finn was once a Stormtrooper. The violent ocean tides are separating them from the Death Star wreckage, but that doesn’t stop Rey from going there herself. As Finn and Jannah follow, Rey finds the wayfinder, and briefly fights a vision of herself as a Sith lord. Ren appears and fights with Rey after destroying the wayfinder. Rey pushes Finn aside with the Force when he attempts to help her.

But Ren is briefly distracted when a dying Leia contacts him via the Force. This allows Rey to impale him, but when she senses that Leia has died, an anguished Rey uses the Force to heal Ren. She’s so shaken that she takes his ship and departs to Ahch-To, where she trained under Luke. After Finn and the others leave, Ren is on the Death Star remains and sees a vision of his father Han. Han says that, while his mother is now gone, what she fought for is still alive. This convinces his son to toss aside his lightsaber, reclaiming his true identity as Ben Solo.

Rey is burning all her links to the Jedi, but Luke’s Force ghost appears and prevents her from destroying her lightsaber. He tells her where Leia’s lightsaber was kept, and that she deliberately put it aside after getting a vision of her son’s eventual death, but that it would one day be used again. With Luke’s encouragement, Rey goes off to face the Emperor, using Luke’s X-wing to get her there (I guess it can fly without an R2 unit?).

Poe and Finn are now the Resistance leaders, although the former has doubts that he can honor Leia. But Lando gives him encouragement just as Rey transmits Exegol’s location to the Resistance, and all the available ships are soon airborne. The Emperor encourages Rey to kill him in order to transfer his spirit into her. As the Resistance arrives, they face a crap-ton of Star Destroyers, all with Death Star weaponry.

Ben arrives and fights off his former troops to help Rey. But the Emperor neutralizes both of them with his Force lightning. He then uses it on the Resistance ships. But after he tosses Ben down a cliff, Rey slowly but surely gets to her feet, hearing the voices of Luke and the other Jedi. She deflects the Emperor’s lightning with both Luke and Leia’s lightsabers, which ends up killing him. This stops the attack on the Resistance, which is soon joined by reinforcements led by Lando and Chewie in the Falcon. Zorii is also part of the cavalry, as is Wedge (Denis Lawson).

The super-duper Star Destroyers are soon all taken out, but the destruction of the Emperor destruction kills Rey. This prompts Ben to use the Force to revive her. They briefly kiss before Ben quietly dies, vanishing like Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Luke did before him. After our heroes celebrate (with glimpses of Cloud City and Endor), Rey goes to Tatooine. At the farm where Luke was raised, she buries Luke and Leia’s lightsabers. A passerby asks her name, and seeing the spirits of Luke and Leia, Rey says “Rey Skywalker.”

Like The Last Jedi, this film has some plot holes. For instance, I hate that we’re just meant to assume that the Emperor (I know his name is Palpatine, but that name always sounded like a generic mouthwash to me -'Maybe he's born with it, maybe it's Palpatine') is alive again. I would’ve preferred it if Ren would try to contact him, just as Rey tries to contact the other Jedi at the film’s beginning. The revelation that Rey herself is the Emperor’s granddaughter has turned off some people, and I can see why, although I’d take that over George Lucas’s midichlorian crap any day. Also, having a fleet of Star Destroyers that can blow things up like the Death Star was definitely pushing it.

But, again like The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker is watchable thanks to the interaction between our heroes. While we get a cliched “I have to tell you something” moment between Finn and Rey (which is never resolved, by the way), there’s at least some sense of the comraderie that the heroes in the original trilogy had. I liked that we learn that Leia did, in fact, train as a Jedi and it was cool that Rey built her own lightsaber that’s yellow, since the original Luke action figures Kenner put out came with a yellow lightsaber. It’s great seeing Williams as Lando again and Ford’s brief cameo was a nice surprise.

Hence, like The Last Jedi, this isn’t a great film per se, but it is watchable. It just fails to achieve the promise of the moments presented in the previous film. As a result, the ending is rushed!

Star Wars Episode IX

This Agony Booth article expresses my optimism that the next Star Wars movie will be good.

As the Christmas release date for the next Star Wars movie approaches, and with filming now reportedly completed, the anticipation and the backlash that have both become synonymous with the franchise since the release of the prequel trilogy remain as prominent as ever.

While the reception for last year’s Solo: A Star Wars Story was less than enthusiastic, the other three films released under the Disney banner—The Force Awakens, Rogue One and The Last Jedi—have all earned critical praise and enormous amounts of money. This is no doubt why, despite demands in some circles, Kathleen Kennedy has not stepped down as the head of Lucasfilm.

Of course, the backlash of some fans wasn’t limited to Solo. Actors John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Kelly Marie Tran have all been unfairly ridiculed on social media since they signed on to the recent films. Both actors who portrayed Anakin Skywalker in the prequel trilogy (Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen) have been through similar abuse and have pretty much disappeared from the acting scene as a result. Esquire posted an article which explains this nicely.

Disliking characters in a movie is one thing, but throwing that dissatisfaction at the performer who’s only doing his or her job is going way too far. Social media has always been a double-edged sword to me, and this is a perfect example of why.

Personally, I find myself really looking forward to the upcoming Episode IX thanks to The Last Jedi. When I saw The Force Awakens, I thought the new characters were likable, just like the ones in the original films. Many considered Ridley’s Rey a Mary Sue (meaning she seemed to know everything), but I thought she was a lot more lively than Natalie Portman’s Padme. Also, Ben Solo’s fall from grace is much more interesting and much less overdone than that of Anakin in the prequels.

But my problem with the film is that the storyline itself is a bit too similar to the original 1977 film. I’m also unhappy with what became of Luke, Han, and Leia after Return of the Jedi. Looking back now, just a few years later, it was probably understandable that Disney would want Episode VII to have similarities to the original film. It was, after all, the first Star Wars film released by Disney, so they naturally wanted to ensure that the $4 billion they paid for George Lucas’s empire was money well spent. Nonetheless, I came away from The Force Awakens thinking these new characters deserved a much better storyline.

But after watching The Last Jedi a few times, I feel that the future is bright for the Star Wars series. Below are some reasons why.

The characters

The Last Jedi felt to me like, if nothing else, the start of a much better storyline for Rey, Finn, Poe, BB-8, and newest addition Rose. It’s also nice that the three non-human heroes of the original films (Chewbacca, R2-D2 and C-3PO) are alongside them without being seemingly shoehorned in like R2 and 3PO were in the prequel trilogy. I found Last Jedi more enjoyable than The Force Awakens perhaps because the emphasis was more on these characters, and unlike the previous film, the narrative didn’t seem to have the baggage of what happened to the original trilogy’s characters hanging over it. Hence, I’m holding out hope, which seems to have become the word of choice with the Disney-produced films, just as “NOOOOO!” was the word of choice with the Lucas-produced ones.

I especially liked the climatic scene between Rey, Kylo Ren, and Snoke, which I initially thought would be a rehash of the duel in Return of the Jedi, but ends up taking a different and interesting turn. Kylo Ren’s continuous inner turmoil, which he failed to purge even after killing his father, leads nicely into what happens in this climatic moment. Rey herself also becomes a more interesting character by having moments of uncertainty about herself, despite her great Jedi skills.

This is not to say that The Last Jedi doesn’t have its flaws. For instance, I’m still unclear as to how the First Order was able to track the Resistance ship when they were at light speed. The amount of time Rey seems to train under Luke is also a bit iffy. I can also understand Mark Hamill’s dissatisfaction with how Luke was portrayed in the film. But the Luke/Rey scenes have a nice sincerity to them, and one could say they give new meaning to Yoda’s classic line “There is another!”

But the way the confrontation between Rey and Kylo plays out should make their next encounter in the upcoming film quite interesting. I also like how Poe’s commitment to his cause ends up, unintentionally, making things worse, but yet we still side with him because of that commitment as he, Finn, Rose, and the rest of the Resistance keep pressing on during the film even though the odds are definitely against them. This is probably best illustrated in the climatic battle scene where Admiral Holdo sacrifices herself by going kamikaze on the Star Destroyers in order to save the remaining Resistance members who are escaping on defenseless transports.

The moment where we see from both Luke and Kylo’s points of view how Luke lost his nephew to the Dark Side is also interesting and even sad. While we may still wonder why Luke simply gave up from what we heard in The Force Awakens, this showed that he did have reasons for becoming disenchanted with the Jedi.

I must also mention the nice touch of Yoda’s cameo. Happily, he looks more like the original puppet from Empire and Jedi, rather than the obvious CGI redo for the prequels.

Hence, I’d like to think the late Carrie Fisher would have been pleased with this film, which was naturally dedicated to her.

What we’ve heard about Episode IX

I’m also happy that Billy Dee Williams will finally be back as Lando Calrissian, whose unexplained absence in Episodes VII and VIII always bugged me. (At least they mentioned Q in Live and Let Die even though he didn’t appear in that film, although the book James Bond: The Legacy explained that Desmond Llewelyn was unavailable.)

From what I’ve been hearing, all the returning actors seem pleased with how things are turning out with the new movie.

The potential for new directions

In addition, considering how lucrative the Marvel characters have become thanks to Disney, everyone’s known from the beginning that the studio set out to make Star Wars more of an ongoing saga than even Lucas imagined. Episode IX has been reported to be the last entry in the series to focus on the Skywalker clan. While I’m still thinking that we’ll see Luke appear as a Jedi ghost, this would certainly bring a new dynamic to the franchise.

While Disney has put any standalone Star Wars films on hold for the time being after the failure of Solo, the ongoing series has the potential to continually reach new heights just like its Avengers series. It has appealing characters, and it’s beginning to bring original storylines into the narrative.

Star Wars itself primarily began as a homage to science fiction serials such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. The first two sequels to the original film went further than that by making the story a fall from grace along the lines of Oedipus Rex. This shift made such an impact that fans pretty much demanded the prequel trilogy that was implied when the Episode V label appeared above the opening crawl for Empire Strikes Back. Even with the dissatisfaction many felt for the prequels, this allowed the saga to thrive as the 21st century began.

With the saga now in Disney’s hands, it seems logical that such changes are necessary in order for the franchise to not become stagnant. The films they’ve put out so far have begun to lay groundwork for the different directions the series can go. Naturally, this can open the door for new characters to appear, with even more story possibilities. Rogue One was already a step in this direction, with an emphasis on completely new characters as well as an ending that was truly bittersweet, as anyone who’s seen the original film can tell you. What if future entries had endings with a similar tone? (Not that I want the series to become downbeat, but shaking things up is always good.)

For a comparison, the original Star Trek, like many shows of its era, was an episodic series. But with the exception of the first and fifth entries, the original series films had an ongoing story arc. I always felt this, intentionally or not, influenced how both The Next Generation and even Deep Space Nine ended up, as it had both standalone entries as well as prominent story arcs. This shows how Star Trek itself thrived well into the ’90s, and why some fans believe that Voyager, Enterprise, and even Discovery are simply rehashes of what Trek had done previously.

In this day and age, when the internet is a cornerstone of society, the backlash to the franchise’s direction—uncalled for or not—will always be around. But the financial and critical successes of the Disney-produced films have given the studio the clout to take things in a different direction, even if it’s one some fans weren’t planning on.

Offhand, the only red flag I can see is if Disney attempts to cross over any of its other characters, Marvel or otherwise, with the Star Wars ones.

The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

This article looks at probably the most embarrassing chapter in the Star Wars canon (yes, even more embarrassing than the prequel trilogy).

For the holiday season, I decided to take a look at something that’s truly scary. No, I’m not talking about Black Christmas, Silent Night Deadly Night, or even Gremlins. I’m talking about a TV special that only aired once, November 17, 1978 on CBS, and that may be the reason why it was, for a time, considered an urban legend of sorts, until the emergence of the internet allowed anyone and everyone to go online and take a look, even if out of morbid curiosity, to see if there actually was a Christmas-themed Star Wars TV special. Yes, there was, and as anyone who’s ever dared to watch it will tell you, if this didn’t damage the Star Wars legacy as much as the prequels did, it comes pretty damn close.

The special begins with Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) onboard the Millennium Falcon being chased by two Star Destroyers, as Han tries to bring Chewie back to his home planet for “Life Day”, which I guess is some sort of Christmas-like holiday. We see stock footage of the ships exchanging fire, and the Falcon going to light speed before the title credits come up. Afterward, we see what looks like a luxurious treehouse on the Wookiee planet of Kashyyyk.

Chewie’s wife Malla, their son Lumpy, and Chewie’s dad Itchy (none of whom have been referenced in Star Wars lore since, thank God) are the residents of this house, and they’re awaiting Chewie’s arrival. We now get our first dose of pain from this special as the three Wookiees talk for several moments in their unintelligible language that only Han can understand. At least Jabba the Hutt and Greedo had subtitles, and we only got small doses of the Jawas, Sand People, and Ewoks bantering with each other. Lumpy quickly annoys his mom, Grandpa, and us before he finally quiets down after watching some sort of holographic show on a table similar to the one Chewie, C-3PO, and R2-D2 played chess on in the original film.

The Wookiee clan contact Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and R2, who are somewhere working on their X-Wing. This scene proves that even Luke can’t understand a damn word they’re saying as it takes Malla showing him a picture of Chewie for Luke to realize that they’re wondering where he is. Luke tells them he doesn’t know, but he’s sure Chewie will arrive soon.

Once Luke signs off, Malla contacts a trader named Saun Dann (Art Carney), whose shop is currently being inspected by Imperial troops (why? We never find out). Dann picks up Malla’s message and clandestinely tells her that both Chewie and Han are on their way. This leads to our next shot, which is deleted footage from the original film of Vader telling an officer to search everywhere on the Wookiee planet for rebels. How do we know this is deleted footage? Because the interior of the Star Destroyer that Vader is supposed to be on is as roomy as the Death Star (those lighted panels on the walls give it away, too).

More pain follows when we see Malla in her kitchen attempting to cook a “bantha rump” by watching a cook on TV. Unfunny antics ensue as Malla is unable to duplicate the cook’s technique as she has just two arms compared to the cook’s four. This cook is supposedly a woman but is played by Harvey Korman, who comes pretty close to making us forget that he was capable of making us laugh.

More stock footage appears as the Falcon is seen dealing with TIE fighters before Dann arrives at the Wookiee home. He brings gifts for the Wookiee clan, the most bizarre of which is some sort of virtual reality program he gives to Itchy. Considering that this was supposed to be a variety special the whole family could enjoy, it’s hard not to note the non-family friendly manner in which Dann describes this program to Itchy. The trader installs the data stick for the program, and Itchy begins enjoying it by sitting on his recliner and putting on special glasses. The program itself consists of singer/actress Diahann Carroll saying things such as, “I am for you!” I’m just wondering if Itchy really should be enjoying himself like this in the damn living room of his home.

Malla next contacts Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and informs them that Chewie hasn’t arrived yet. Like Luke and R2, we don’t have any idea where 3PO and Leia are calling from, but Dann assures the princess that everything’s in good hands (too bad the audience disagrees with him).

Han and Chewie finally arrive at the planet, but decide to land further from the Wookiee house than they’d like because of Imperial patrols in the area. Still more stock footage ensues as the Falcon enters the planet’s atmosphere.

Lumpy hears what sounds like the Falcon roaring by. Everyone is getting excited, especially when someone knocks at the door. Malla opens it only to find Stormtroopers and other Imperial officers on the other side. Tragically, they don’t instantly shoot the Wookiees down.

As the Imperials comb through the house, Dann attempts to keep them occupied by stammering when asked for his ID, and also insisting that Malla cook food for them. He even does Ed Norton’s “warming up the old soup bone” routine before distracting an officer by playing a Jefferson Starship video for him. Carney himself was truly one of the greats, and believe it or not, this moment is proof of that, as we can’t tell if Dann is really this dim-witted or if he’s putting on an act.

As the Stormtroopers search Lumpy’s room, he keeps himself occupied by watching a cartoon on a small TV. This cartoon has Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, and the droids encountering Boba Fett. Lumpy then gasps when he sees that Boba Fett is in league with Vader. This prompts the Imperial officer in charge of rummaging through his home to wonder what the brat is aghast about. This is supposed to be a suspenseful moment, as Lumpy quickly changes the channel. Why the urgency? I guess the officer would be pissed if he saw Lumpy’s old man as a cartoon, and would be wondering why he wasn’t given a chance to be animated himself.

After the cartoon, Lumpy attempts to generate a false voice to make the Imperials return to their base. This requires the brat to watch a video on how to put together a voice-faking device, hosted by a stupid robot (Korman again).

The TV downstairs suddenly receives a news bulletin that Tatooine is under curfew by the Empire. For some reason, we next see footage of the famous Mos Eisley bar, now run by a woman named Ackmena (Bea Arthur, in her pre-Golden Girls days). She’s dealing with the many alien patrons the bar is known for, one of whom (played by, yep, Korman) attempts to flirt with her, even as he pours a drink in his head like he’s a plant (yes, I just typed that). The curfew announcement inspires Ackmena to lead everyone at the bar in song. Bea Arthur was renowned for her singing abilities, so I guess they had to crowbar them in there somehow.

At the same time, Lumpy is getting his machine together, and soon orders the Imperials out of there. One Stormtrooper stays behind and soon discovers that the brat tricked them into leaving. He chases the little Wookiee out of the house, even though he has a blaster.

Fortunately for Lumpy, and unfortunately for us, Han and Chewie are outside by this point, and Han tosses the Stormtrooper down the tree, which is pretty damn high.

With that, the Wookiee family is reunited, and they soon put on red robes and hold candles to celebrate Life Day. We then see many Wookiees appearing to walk into the sun while holding their candles.

But this apparently doesn’t fry them, because the next scene is all of these Wookiees in some sort of hall. Han, Leia, Luke, and the droids appear and wish Chewie and the rest a happy Life Day. Fisher then breaks into song, which proves she didn’t inherit her mom Debbie Reynolds’s singing talent.

We see a close-up of Chewie as clips from the original film are seen, reminding us of something better we could be watching. The special finally ends with Chewie and his Wookiee family holding hands at the dinner table.

So, is this special as bad as its reputation suggests? I can answer that in two words: HELL, YES.

I think it’s safe to say that both Star Wars prequel lovers and haters agree that this special is something best forgotten. Yes, it gives us a Star Wars cartoon (the first of many, as it turned out), but the special is never funny, and completely boring. Both Carney and Arthur are, amazingly, able to keep straight faces throughout this nonsense, but Korman is just embarrassing himself. The Star Wars cast themselves all look like they’d rather be elsewhere, especially Ford, who keeps the same “I gave up a bigger role in Apocalypse Now for this?” face throughout. The use of stock footage here is even more annoying than the flashbacks seen in the final episode of Deep Space Nine.

So how did a beloved movie spawn this painful bit of television? Well, once Star Wars became a huge hit, Charles Lippincott, the man who cemented Lucas’s deals with both Kenner and Marvel, was looking for other ways to keep the Star Wars momentum going. One of these was a Star Wars-themed episode of the CBS variety show Donny & Marie, with the hosts playing Luke and Leia as well as appearances by the droids and the legendary Redd Foxx as Obi-Wan Kenobi. The ratings success of this installment prompted the network to ask about doing a variety show entirely about Star Wars. Lucas did take some initial interest in the idea, and set up a Lucasfilm subsidiary he called Black Falcon to work with Lippincott to develop the special. Shortly after, however, Lucas cut off ties with Lippincott because he was displeased with how Lippincott supposedly lost Lucasfilm money in the Marvel deal by offering the first issues of the Star Wars comic for free. Lucas himself then lost interest in the special because pre-production on The Empire Strikes Back was well underway. As a result, the only ones left to deal with this bizarre assignment were people who had no idea what they were supposed to do because the one person in charge was focusing his attention elsewhere.

Hamill, Ford, and Fisher all reluctantly went along with this because of their contracts. And also, Fisher insisted that she be allowed to sing.

Put this all together and it’s no wonder that even George Lucas (who’s defended the prequels like there’s no tomorrow) hates this special. As SF Debris pointed out in his documentary The Shadow’s Journey, the infamy the special generated was one factor that ended up influencing Lucas into becoming more of a businessman during the making of Empire and Return of the Jedi, rather than the filmmaker he was when he made the original film.

In this day and age, we shouldn’t be surprised that there are people willing to fork out the cash to see just how bad this special is. But if you want to see a variety show about Star Wars that’s actually good, check out the aforementioned Donny & Marie episode, or even the 1980 installment of The Muppet Show which had appearances by Hamill, Mayhew, and the droids. Those two shows are actually enjoyable.

Good guy sidekicks from movies

This article looks at 5 of the best good guy sidekicks from movies.

Throughout history, both in real life and otherwise, there have always been those who seem to be, intentionally or not, subordinate to someone else. The slang expression that describes such a person is “sidekick”. In literature, such characters include Sancho Panza from Miguel de Cervantes’s classic novel Don Quixote, as well as Dr. John Watson from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series. The advent of cinema naturally also produced sidekicks both good and bad. Here are five of the best good guy sidekicks the silver screen has given us over the decades.

1. Dr. John Watson

If there’s one sidekick that gets a lot of exposure, it’s the doctor who accompanies Sherlock Holmes on his cases. Watson not only serves as the everyman to Holmes’s brilliant intellect, he also narrates each of the stories in Conan Doyle’s Holmes canon. This allows readers and film audiences to experience the stories themselves with the same feeling of exhilaration that Watson is projecting as he narrates them to us. Sir Arthur, who was a doctor like Watson, supposedly based Watson on himself.

On the big screen, Watson has been played by numerous actors. Among the most memorable of these is Nigel Bruce, who was Watson to Basil Rathbone’s Holmes throughout the 1940s in numerous films released by Universal. Other actors who did the role justice include Patrick Macnee (opposite Sir Roger Moore’s Holmes in Sherlock Holmes in New York) and Andre Morell (opposite Peter Cushing’s Holmes in 1959’s The Hound of the Baskervilles).

Another rendition I especially liked was Sir Ben Kingsley’s Watson in the 1988 comedy Without a Clue. That film turns the Holmes universe on its ear by suggesting that Watson is the real genius when it comes to solving cases. Holmes himself (here played by Sir Michael Caine) is really a buffoonish, out of work actor whom, to Watson’s dismay, the public cheers as a hero.

2. Jiminy Cricket

Walt Disney made film history in 1937 with the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. That film was the first-ever animated feature film and its great success naturally allowed Disney to make even more animated films over the next few decades.

The first such film was Pinocchio, based on the Carlo Collodi story of the same name and released three years after Snow White. Like that film, this story of a wooden boy who aspires to be worthy of the wish his creator/father made for him to become real was a huge hit (although not immediately; Pinocchio truly began bringing in the cash when it was re-released in 1945). Part of what makes the title character so memorable is his rapport with Jiminy Cricket, who, as he puts it, serves as his conscience (although that duty comes about because of how Jiminy is smitten with the Blue Fairy who gives Pinocchio life). The duo even sing “Always Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide” early in the film. Another song Jiminy sings, “When You Wish Upon a Star”, won the Best Original Song Oscar for that year.

While the seven dwarfs certainly give Snow White a hand, it’s Jiminy who truly set the standard for sidekicks in Disney movies. This could apply to some non-Disney movies as well, as there are many sidekicks who, just like Jiminy, end up ensuring that the hero’s heart is in the right place, and aren’t just someone for the hero to give lessons to. Heck, Steven Spielberg’s film AI: Artificial Intelligence makes numerous references to Pinocchio (and references to it can also be found in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind). Indeed, many subsequent Disney films, including Dumbo, Bambi, Cinderella, Peter Pan, The Lion King, and Cars owe the existence of their sidekicks to this little guy, who would re-appear in 1947’s Fun and Fancy Free and also go on to appear in a number of TV specials from Disney.

3. Chewbacca

Let’s face it, Han Solo’s co-pilot is the textbook definition of what a sidekick should be. This towering bear-like alien is devoted to Han but is never afraid to disagree with him if the circumstances call for it. The fact that Han is able to perfectly understand Chewbacca’s Wookiee language, even though all we hear are subtitle-less growls and roars, only adds to the the appeal this duo holds for many of us.

Throughout the three original Star Wars films, Chewie (as Han and friends call him) helps out the other heroes through various means, including getting Imperial guards out of the way by knocking them down, and even commandeering a Scout Walker in order to blast other Walkers and stormtroopers to bits. He can even fix machinery and carry a dismembered C-3PO on his back in the midst of all this.

So memorable was Chewie’s impact that there was a fan uproar when he was killed off in the Star Wars novel The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime, published in 1999. So it probably shouldn’t be surprising that when The Force Awakens hit theaters 16 years later, the events of that book and all the others which comprise the New Jedi Order series were ignored (hence, why Han dies and not Chewie).

While George Lucas created this character (inspired by his dog, Indiana), Peter Mayhew deserves credit for his amazing work while wearing what must’ve been a hot bear suit. But others who deserve credit for fleshing this character out are Stuart Freeborn, who designed the Chewbacca mask, and making it expressive so Mayhew could project emotion while playing the role, and Ben Burtt, who created the Wookiee language by splicing together the sounds of numerous animals, including bears, tigers, and walruses. Burtt’s work on this and other alien voices for Star Wars, such as Darth Vader’s breathing and the beeps for R2-D2, would earn him a special Academy Award.

4. Short Round

Before Lucas made the misguided decision to show us Darth Vader and Boba Fett in their elementary school years, he gave Indiana Jones a grade-school aged sidekick.

Happily, Short Round, played by Ke Huy Quan, isn’t as intolerable as the younger versions of the aforementioned Star Wars villains. One reason for this is because, while gutsy, Short Round is never overly anxious to get into a fight (à la Scrappy-Doo). Even though Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a larger than life adventure, the character reacts to events the way a real person (especially a real child his age) would. Short Round even gets Indy out of his drug-induced hypnosis, allowing them to escape the title temple. He’s also downright scared in some sequences, such as when he almost falls though a hole he makes on a super high bridge and nearly becomes a meal for the crocodiles in the river below. He even calls out Indy’s desperate attempt to defeat the bad guys by chopping apart the bridge holding all of them with, “He’s not nuts, he’s crazy!”

In contrast, Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace reacts to what’s going on around him with all the urgency of a child playing a video game. And don’t even get me started on his non-reaction when he’s in a spaceship with fighters shooting all around him (must be those damn midicholrians).

While some took issue with Temple of Doom‘s intensity, the film itself, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, is happily reminiscent of the 1930s and ’40s Republic serials from which it drew its inspiration. One reason for this is the nice scenes between Ford and Quan. One minute Short Round is quickly driving Indy through Shanghai to elude bad guys (who cares if he’s too young to drive a car?), and the next he’s playing a card game with him, which ends with both accusing each other of cheating. Hence, this is a hero-sidekick bond that has both humor and heart.

5. Samwise Gamgee

The hobbit who accompanies Frodo Baggins on his quest to destroy the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings trilogy becomes a part of that adventure in an amusing way. He eavesdrops on a conversation between Frodo and the wizard Gandalf. But the wizard uses this as a chance for Sam (as everyone calls him) to prove his devotion to Frodo.

Throughout the three films, Sam, a gardener for Frodo, is constantly pushing his friend through the difficulties they encounter. He even physically carries Frodo at several points in the story. His devotion to Frodo is such that he’s willing and able to return the ring after safeguarding it for him. This stands out as Frodo himself, like the ring’s previous keeper Gollum, is so drawn to it that he cannot bear to be without it for long.

But Sam’s selflessness helps ensure that the ring is destroyed, even though it’s really Gollum’s interference that directly leads to its destruction. The trilogy ends with Sam and Frodo returning to their home, the Shire, and Sam reuniting with his love Rosie.

The trilogy’s author, J.R.R. Tolkien, once wrote that Sam was really the main hero of the story. Below is a quote from a letter Tolkien wrote.

"My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself."

The three books which comprise the trilogy—The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King—were all published in the mid-1950s. Ironically, Tolkien would receive a letter from a man named Sam Gamgee in 1956 regarding the name he shared with Tolkien’s creation. The author replied with:

"Dear Mr. Gamgee,

It was very kind of you to write. You can imagine my astonishment when I saw your signature! I can only say, for your comfort, I hope, that the ‘Sam Gamgee’ of my story is a most heroic character, now widely beloved by many readers, even though his origins are rustic. So that perhaps you will not be displeased at the coincidence of the name of this imaginary character of supposedly many centuries ago being the same as yours."

These are just five examples of characters who actually made the term “second banana” sound good. In my next article, I’ll be going in the other direction, with the top 5 bad guy sidekicks from the movies.

Trekkies vs. The People vs. George Lucas

This article looks at documentaries that focus on the followings to science fiction's two biggest franchises.

It goes without saying that Star Trek and Star Wars are the two biggest science fiction franchises ever. Even non-science fiction fans can recognize elements from either franchise, such as “beaming” or “the Force”. So it’s not surprising that numerous books and essays have cropped up over the decades which attempt to explain why these two franchises have such passionate followings.

Trekkies (1997)

While there are several books about the topic, perhaps the first such documentary on Star Trek fandom was the 1997 film Trekkies. This film was produced and hosted by Denise Crosby, who played Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The film largely consists of Trek fans from all walks of life discussing their love for the franchise. We see fans dressed as Klingons ordering food at restaurants. The cashier even tells Crosby that he often serves Klingons. Other fans discuss the technology seen in the Trek shows and how it may not be too far from reality. One such fan even attempts to build a chair similar to the one the crippled Captain Pike occupies in the original Star Trek two-parter “The Menagerie”.

It also has appearances from several of the actors and actresses from the various Trek shows, save Enterprise (the debut of which was still four years away). The actors relate stories of their encounters with Trekkies. For instance, Kate Mulgrew, who played Captain Janeway on Voyager, states that people have come to her asking her to marry them.

Yes, the film also addresses the famous “Kirk vs. Picard” debate. Chase Masterson, who played Leeta on Deep Space Nine, chimes in to say that both Kirk and Janeway are studs.

There’s one touching moment where James Doohan, who played Scotty on the original series, talks about a female fan who wrote to him expressing her suicidal thoughts. But he asked her to come to upcoming conventions where he would make appearances. She did so, and some years later, she contacted Doohan again thanking him for his support and gave him the news that she was getting her master’s degree.

One famous Trekkie the film looks at is Barbara Adams, the woman who famously dressed in Starfleet garb during her time as a grand juror in the Whitewater investigation. Adams was later dismissed from the jury, not for her attire, but for disobeying the judge’s order to not give interviews.

Crosby herself takes time to address her own thoughts on the franchise. At one point, she produces fan-made drawings of various Trek characters, including Yar and her half-Romulan daughter Sela (also played by Crosby). Of all the TV actors who have quit their shows, Crosby is the only one I know of who managed to get her best roles on her show after her character was killed off. Crosby even addresses this wonderful irony in the film.

A life-long Trekkie herself, Crosby suggested the idea of the film to director Roger Nygard, who had just directed her in the 1991 TV movie High Strung. He agreed, and filming began at a convention at a Hilton in Los Angeles that was organized by William Campbell, who played Trelane in the original show’s “The Squire of Gothos” and Koloth in “The Trouble With Tribbles” and Deep Space Nine‘s “Blood Oath”.

Trekkies received positive reviews and even spawned a sequel, Trekkies 2, which was released in 2004. The sequel mainly looks at Trek fans outside the United States and even profiles fans from the first film, including Adams. Trekkies itself was given a theatrical release in May 1999. Ironically, the film was released the same weekend as Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. And speaking of which…


The People vs. George Lucas (2010)

Like Trekkies, this film looks at Star Wars fans and their extreme devotion to the franchise. There’s no specific host in the film, but there are discussions with numerous people linked with the films, including Gary Kurtz, who produced the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, as well as David Prowse, who wore the awesome Darth Vader suit in the original trilogy.

This film also goes into great depth about Star Wars creator George Lucas. Specifically, it goes into how he first inspired the love of millions of people before many of those people became disenchanted with him decades later because of his decisions in how to handle the franchise.

Indeed, a great deal of this documentary centers on how Star Wars is a creation of Lucas’s, but—some argue—also a pop culture juggernaut that belongs to the world.

The film even takes a brief look at Lucas’s other cash cow, the Indiana Jones series. Specifically, it goes into how fans became just as dissatisfied with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and its “nuke the fridge” scene as they had been with the Star Wars prequels (yes, there is a clip of that insufferable South Park episode to drive the point home even more). At one point, film critic Rafik Djoumi talks about how fan dissatisfaction with that film was directed even more at Lucas than its actual director, Steven Spielberg.

Another factor adding fuel to that fire is Lucas’s refusal to allow the original cuts of the first three Star Wars films to be released on Blu-ray. We see fans reacting to his insistence that the revised versions are the only ones in existence by reproducing the original versions on their own.

But the film’s director, Star Wars fan Alexandre Philippe, insisted that the movie isn’t meant to be an anti-Lucas diatribe (although one gets that impression from the title). To his credit, the film does showcase fans who actually love the prequels and even Jar Jar Binks. Philippe also goes into a fair amount of detail about how Lucas began his filmmaking career with his unique works THX-1138 and American Graffiti, and how those two films culminated into the great achievement that was the original Star Wars.

One of the fans interviewed is Jason Nicholl, creator of the blog nukethefridge.com. The film is dedicated to him, as he died prior to its release. A sequel is reportedly in the works, and will focus on the franchise since Lucas sold it to Disney in 2012.

Both Trekkies and The People vs. George Lucas are definitely worth a look for fans of these franchises. They both take a nice hard look at how people can be taken with something to the point of obsession. However, one could say that each film was made for different reasons. Trekkies was meant simply as a look at Trek fans, while The People vs. George Lucas was made because of how the fans’ relationship with the creator of their franchise has changed over the decades.

It must be noted that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry received some criticism from fans, specifically for how he insisted the Star Trek animated series that ran from 1973-1974 be ignored (and it’s still only occasionally mentioned in the annals of Trek lore), as well as the direction he took both Star Trek: The Motion Picture and the first season of The Next Generation. However, Trekkies doesn’t throw much actual criticism in Roddenberry’s direction as People does with Lucas. Perhaps this is because Roddenberry died in 1991, and some say that TNG truly took flight after that (not to mention the debut of all the subsequent Trek shows).

Since these two films were released, their respective franchises have gone in somewhat different directions. The fifth Trek series Enterprise debuted in 2001 but plummeting ratings kept it from enjoying the same seven-season run as its three predecessors, and it was canceled in 2005. At the same time, the 2002 film Star Trek: Nemesis deservedly flopped, thus bringing the big screen adventures of Picard and his crew to an end.

Seven years after that, Trek got the same reboot treatment as Batman and James Bond. The 2009 Star Trek had the original crew now played by different actors. That film was successful enough to get two sequels, Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond. But the passing of Anton Yelchin, who played Chekov in the reboot series, has left future reboot entries in doubt.

But a new Trek TV series Star Trek: Discovery is set to air on CBS in November. It was co-created by Alex Kurtzman, who co-wrote the first two entries in the Trek reboot series. Like Enterprise, this show takes place before the original Trek series. Here’s hoping that’s all it has in common with Enterprise.

As for Star Wars, Disney has given us a mixed bag so far. While The Force Awakens had more appealing main characters than the prequels, that didn’t change the fact that the film itself just repeated things we saw in the original film while simultaneously going the Alien 3 route of pissing all over the feeling of satisfaction the original movies left us with.

Rogue One, on the other hand, proved overall a better Star Wars prequel than the prequel trilogy. It was also a treat to see the late, great Peter Cushing (well, as close as we could get to him anyway) on the big screen again.

But Carrie Fisher’s passing soon after that film’s release has left a feeling of uncertainty about where to take the franchise next. Her scenes for the upcoming The Last Jedi were reportedly already shot before her death. But time will tell how the following entry in the sequel trilogy will go without her.

Time will also tell if Discovery or any of the many Star Wars films Disney doubtlessly has on the drawing board will do their respective franchises justice. I don’t doubt that Disney will keep squeezing cash out of Star Wars like it has with Marvel. But even if any future films are not embraced as classics, and even if Discovery doesn’t last a single season, they will, at least, remind us of the greatness of their respective original entries.

Double Features

My latest Agony Booth article goes into nice ideas for double features.

Double features are almost as old as cinema itself. Before TV came around, a movie would be preceded by an animated short, a live-action short, a newsreel, and then the main feature. During the Great Depression, cinemas began to give customers two movies for the price of one in order to attract more ticket buyers. These presentations initially began with a low-budget film (the B-movie) before an interlude and then the main feature. This allowed studios that specialized in making B-movies, such as Republic, to become successful.

The revenue this generated soon led to major studios making their own B-movie features. This practice continues to thrive today, only nowadays these movies usually go straight to video (or streaming). Thanks to the advent of home video and later the internet, people can now have double features of all kinds in their own homes. Here now (in no particular order) are 10 great double features you can have at home and why I find them ideal.

Star Wars (1977)/Halloween (1978): These two films respectively rewrote the books on science fiction and horror (for good and bad, according to some) as it didn’t take long for imitators of both movies to flood cinemas in the wake of their successes. As it turns out, the villains in these movies (Darth Vader and Michael Myers) also wear what would become awesome Halloween costumes. Even the musical scores for both movies have become iconic, and rightly so. In addition, the first sequels for each film (The Empire Strikes Back and Halloween II) can make an ideal double feature since they each brought family connections into the narrative, influencing the directions of their respective franchises (again, for good and bad, according to some fans).

Hang ‘Em High (1968)/Night of the Living Dead (1968): By the end of the 1960s, Italian studios were basically churning out westerns and zombie pictures like they were pizzas. While neither of these films were Italian productions, both capitalized on that craze. Hang ‘Em High, Clint Eastwood’s first American-made western after the three he did with Sergio Leone made him a film star, involves a rancher (Eastwood) who survives a lynching and becomes deputized before hunting down the men who tried to kill him. Night of the Living Dead, an inexpensive production made in Pittsburgh, centers on a group of people who become trapped in a deserted house as reanimated corpses begin engulfing the countryside. Both movies have a gritty, harsh tone, and the fact that both premiered just after the shocking murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy may have made both films cathartic, if you will, for viewers.

Jaws (1975)/Taxi Driver (1976): I actually plan to go into more detail about these two movies at a later time. Needless to say, however, Jaws, Steven Spielberg’s classic film of a shark terrorizing an island community, set the bar when it came to blockbusters, while Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese’s classic picture about a loner (Robert De Niro) who ends up committing terrifying acts, did the same for independent films. One could also say they ended up coloring the public’s perceptions of their respective directors.

High Noon (1952)/Rio Bravo (1959): Two classic westerns released during the genre’s heyday. The former, in which Gary Cooper ends up facing bad guys alone when nobody is willing to assist him, was viewed as a critique of McCarthyism for the manner in which Cooper does the honorable thing. The latter, in which John Wayne fights bad guys with loyal men at his side, was viewed as a counterpoint to that argument, as Wayne’s character doesn’t spend much of the movie asking for assistance. Wayne even called High Noon “un-American”, which is what led to him and director Howard Hawks making Bravo. Regardless of political views, today both movies are rightfully embraced as masterpieces.

The NeverEnding Story (1984)/Labyrinth (1986): Both of these films involve young people who must enter a world they know from a book in order to save lives. NeverEnding Story centers on a lonely boy (Barret Oliver) reading a fantasy book, and as he reaches the end, he realizes that he’s the only one who can save a not-so-fictional land from destruction. Labyrinth stars then-unknown Jennifer Connelly as a fantasy-loving teenager who just wants to live in her own fantasy world and regrets her wish that her infant brother be taken away by the Goblin King (the late, great David Bowie), a character from the play she’s reading. She must then enter that fantasy world to save her brother, dealing with the Goblin King and his minions (created by the late, great Jim Henson). One could also say that both movies make a great argument for why reading is good.

Ghostbusters (1984)/Beetlejuice (1988): Two comedy classics involving ghosts. Ghostbusters centers on four men (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, and the late Harold Ramis) who manage to make a lucrative business out of capturing ghosts. In lesser hands, Beetlejuice could have been just a Ghostbusters knock-off, but Tim Burton stirs things up with his film by making ghosts the main characters. In that film, a couple (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) have recently died and soon enlist the aid of the title character (Michael Keaton) to rid their home of its new owners, an act that they come to regret, as he has a reputation for wrecking havoc among both the living and the dead. Add the fact that both of these movies are hilarious and you have a great double feature.

The Terminator (1984)/Back to the Future (1985): Two time travel stories released in consecutive years. The first, which involves a murderous cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) sent back through time to change history by killing a woman (Linda Hamilton) before she can give birth to the man who will save humanity, was a nerve-jolting thriller, while the second, in which a teenager (Michael J. Fox) accidentally goes back in time thanks to a DeLorean his scientist friend (Christopher Lloyd) has modified, was a comedy. Both films also end up giving nice messages about the importance of believing in yourself and creating your own destiny.

Escape from New York (1981)/Blade Runner (1982): Both of these are science fiction films which show a near future with a dark, apocalyptic outlook that continues to influence the science fiction genre to this day. Escape from New York, which takes place in 1997, involves a criminal (Kurt Russell) being drafted into rescuing the President of the United States (Donald Pleasence) by going into the title city (which is now a maximum security prison), where Air Force One crashed and the president was kidnapped by the dangerous criminals who now inhabit the city. Blade Runner involves a police detective (Harrison Ford) who must go through 2019 Los Angeles to terminate dangerous androids (Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, Joanna Cassidy, and Brion James) who have arrived on Earth (where androids are banned) after violently escaping from an outer space colony (three more years to go as of this writing—let’s see if those colonies come about by then). Another interesting contrast is that Escape contains criticism of police and police actions (one of the characters in the film refers to the U.S. as a fascist state), while Ford’s character in Blade Runner spends much of the movie questioning himself and his actions, especially when he realizes his opponents aren’t as evil as society and his superiors have made them out to be.

Ray (2004)/Walk the Line (2005): Two biopics about music legends. Ray depicts the rise of Ray Charles (a brilliant, Oscar-winning Jamie Foxx) while Walk the Line does the same with music duo Johnny and June Carter Cash (Joaquin Phoenix and a brilliant, Oscar-winning Reese Witherspoon). Both movies do a fine job illustrating the trials and tribulations these artists went through (some of which were of their own making) as they fulfilled their dreams of making music, and thus, ensuring their places in history. Interestingly, both Charles and the Cashes passed away shortly before these films premiered, although both movies received their blessing.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)/Clue (1985): Rocky Horror (which, I must confess, I never really liked, but can understand why many do) is a musical-science fiction-comedy with not-so-subtle nods to Frankenstein, while Clue is a mystery-comedy based on the Parker Brothers board game of the same name. However, both films not only take place in mansions on dark and stormy nights, but both also feature memorable roles for Tim Curry. In Rocky Horror, he plays the doctor who was once described by Us magazine as “a bi-sexual Beetlejuice”, while in Clue, he plays a butler who ends up setting an evening of murder into motion after he invites several people over for dinner. In addition, both movies didn’t get much initial notice when they were released, but today have huge followings as well as midnight showings with audience members performing the action as it plays on screen.

HONORABLE MENTION: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)/Garfield’s Halloween Adventure (1985): As it’s Halloween, it seems appropriate to mention these two animated specials, which may be the most famous of all Halloween cartoons. In the first, Linus waits for the arrival of the Santa Claus-esque Great Pumpkin, while Charlie Brown ends up getting only rocks while trick-or-treating and Snoopy hunts for the Red Baron. In the second, Garfield enlists his dog sidekick Odie to go trick-or-treating with him (both dress up as pirates) in order to get more candy for himself, only for both to get caught up in a genuine ghost story (involving—what else?—pirates, which today reminds me a little of the setting of John Carpenter’s The Fog). The Garfield special actually bests Great Pumpkin in terms of having moments that make you jump, but both specials have a great deal of heart, making them the perfect Halloween treats for all ages.

Summer blockbusters

My latest Agony Booth work looks at the summer blockbuster phenomenon.

Another summer is here, and in the movie world, that means summer blockbusters: the escapist, big-budget films that over the decades have become regarded as mostly fluff. One of the first books I ever read that talked about the summer blockbuster phenomenon was Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, which primarily looked at the rise of numerous American filmmakers during the 1970s, such as Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese.

While the book is certainly informative, it makes a rather simplistic argument that I’ve heard repeated all too often in the ensuing years. Biskind states that the viability of such movies as The Godfather slowly gave way to what he called lesser films such as Star Wars by the decade’s end. The author specifically notes Jaws as the turning point for this. (Though, it’s interesting to note the production of that film was over-budget and over schedule, so there was a good chance that it might have flopped. If so, Duel, Spielberg’s first film, would be seen today as a glimpse of what might have been, rather than the start of a great career.)

As it turns out, Jaws, released on June 20, 1975, was the opposite of a flop. It became the highest-grossing movie of all time, made Spielberg an A-list director, and deservedly won Oscars for sound, editing, and John Williams’ classic score. It also officially kicked off the era of big-budget escapism that Hollywood unleashes on us each summer.

Putting aside the fact that there were blockbusters before Jaws (such as the James Bond films), Biskind’s book states that this shift led to other directors somehow losing their importance, as they were unable or unwilling to make films that would earn as much money as Jaws.

In addition, in this pre-Internet, pre-home-video era, Jaws actually generated positive word of mouth before its June 20 opening thanks to preview screenings in several cities, which led to its record-breaking grosses once it hit theaters nationally. These grosses became the primary focus for Hollywood when it came to summer blockbusters. It didn’t matter if the movie itself was good or not; as long as it made a crapload of money out of the gate, it was considered successful.

Star Wars was released two years after Jaws, and the even greater success of that film cemented Hollywood’s blockbuster obsession. Star Wars not only won seven Oscars (including one for its John Williams score), but as of this writing, has spawned six sequels (compared to just three for Jaws).

George Lucas’s film also brought something else to the table: merchandising. It wasn’t the first movie or TV show to have tie-in merchandise, but Star Wars brought it to another level, to the extent that the Star Wars action figures ended up making more money than the movies themselves. Plus the fact that, due to the initial indifference of everyone Lucas pitched Star Wars to before filming began, he was able to keep all the merchandising rights for himself. None of the countless Star Wars imitators that have come along in the years since have had that same impact (as those toy stores that were inundated with worthless Battlefield Earth action figures can tell you).

But I find Biskind’s argument that Jaws, and later Star Wars, ruined movies to be silly at the very least. Another argument I found on this blog referred to an article once written in GQ that stated Hollywood’s blockbuster fixation can actually be credited to Top Gun.

As anyone who’s seen that film knows, while it’s not science fiction, it certainly isn’t realistic either. While Top Gun supposedly led many guys to enlist in the Navy, the movie itself has scenes that look like they were meant to be put in a video game (so it’s no surprise that there would Top Gun games in arcades later on).

In addition, the music videos for the film’s songs “Take My Breath Away” (which won the Best Original Song Oscar that year) and “Danger Zone” also simply showed extended segments from the film itself, which made one wonder if they were just watching the film again rather than just clips of it. Hence, rather than the action figures that Star Wars gave us, Top Gun gave us moments that were specifically designed to be played on MTV.

Top Gun was certainly not the first dumb summer blockbuster. For instance, the original Friday the 13th came out six years earlier and was the second biggest moneymaker of summer 1980 (beaten only by The Empire Strikes Back). But unlike Friday the 13th, Top Gun had a big star in Tom Cruise, in the midst of his ‘80s heyday. As a result, many blockbusters in ensuing summers have had A-list stars such as (to name a now-infamous example) Nicolas Cage, who scored with The Rock, Face/Off, National Treasure, and Con Air before becoming desperate enough to take any role that came his way (thanks to his enormous spending, which reportedly included purchasing an island). So while Jaws is credited with ushering in the summer blockbuster, Top Gun ushered in the dumb summer blockbuster.

This is not to say all blockbusters since then have been dumb. Indeed, Top Gun came out in 1986, at the same time as classics such as Aliens and The Fly. But that previously linked article also points to two films that came out a decade after Top Gun: Twister and Independence Day. Both those films, like Top Gun, featured popular stars and plenty of moments that made you go "WTF?"

The success of both those films showed that summer blockbusters were perfect for stars who were either on the A-list or being groomed for it. For instance, Twister star Helen Hunt already had the TV success of Mad About You to her name and would win an Oscar a short time later for As Good As It Gets. A later, similarly dumb summer film, The Mummy, had then-up and coming Brendan Fraser and future Oscar winner Rachel Weisz in its cast.

Ironically, both Spielberg and Lucas recently expressed concern with how the film industry is on the cusp of imploding because of this ongoing focus on bigger and bigger event films. I find this concern somewhat ironic, considering how the Star Wars prequels turned out.

This brings me to last summer’s biggest hit, Jurassic World. This was arguably worse than the previous two sequels to Jurassic Park. Chris Pratt taming velociraptors was certainly bullshit (yes, friends, you too can make velociraptors your bitches!), but even more so was Bryce Dallas Howard outrunning a T-Rex in high heels, not to mention the movie’s suggestion that all that’s needed to stop a couple from heading to divorce court is for their kids to come within inches of becoming dino chow. Interestingly, Twister also kept its two leads from getting divorced, in this case by having them drive right into tornadoes.

But like The Force Awakens, Jurassic World’s biggest sin is that it’s essentially a retelling of the first movie, even though it acknowledges the events of that previous film. So the great success of both of these movies makes me wonder if a new kind of blockbuster is coming: one that acknowledges its legendary predecessor, and pisses all over it anyway.

Granted, these two films weren’t the first sequels to do that (Alien 3, anyone?), but they seem to have become the most successful, which means such sequels could become the norm rather than the exception. Still, both movies were entertaining, which is more than can be said for other would-be blockbusters that have flopped, such as Speed 2: Cruise Control or The Lone Ranger. This highlights what is probably a key reason why summer blockbusters continue to thrive: Plot and even coherency can be rendered secondary if the film itself has enough kinetic energy to keep the audience awake for a couple of hours.

But to read Biskind’s book, it sounds like he’s blaming Star Wars for the fact that Coppola has been reduced to directing has-beens like Val Kilmer in films that only play in a fraction of the theaters The Godfather did. In Coppola’s case, his declining clout should really be attributed to filing for bankruptcy in the ‘80s due to all the money he spent making Apocalypse Now (which Lucas originally had a hand in), and his film One from the Heart flopping at the box office.

Just because movies without special effects and action don’t get top priority with some studio executives doesn’t mean that these sorts of films have no chance of becoming appreciated, let alone being made. In other words, while we may question why some films enjoy financial success, there’s always been room for all kinds of films. Those who insist otherwise are basically wasting their breath, as there have been signs of this trend letting up.

But, honestly, there have always been escapist films that have set the bar in terms of financial success. If Jaws did anything different in that regard, it made summer the fashionable time for such movies to be released. Likewise, Star Wars simply brought toys into the equation as no movie did before or since. These two films are still examples of how summer blockbusters can be every bit as smart as straight dramatic, non-blockbuster movies. Hollywood, as is often the case, simply focuses on the rewards those two movies brought rather than the ingredients that led to those lucrative results.

How I would have done the Star Wars prequels

I have a deep, dark confession to make: I actually enjoyed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). Granted, it suffered from the same CGI-overkill that plagued the Star Wars prequels. I can also see why fans didn't care for aliens (or 'inter-dimensional beings' as Indy creator George Lucas preferred to call them) inserted into the story, as the previous three Indy films were more religious-based. But it was a treat seeing Harrison Ford don the famous fedora and whip again. Although he clearly aged since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), he slipped back into the role so effortlessly it was almost as if no time had passed at all (similar to seeing Leonard Nimoy reprise Spock again in the last two Star Trek movies). Bringing Karen Allen's Marion back was another plus since many say she was the best of Indy's love interests.
I suppose I'm kinder to Crystal Skull than the Star Wars prequels because, when all's said and done, Crystal Skull was simply an entry in a beloved series that was less than stellar.
In contrast, the prequels are more deserving of criticism because they actually re-write aspects of what endeared people to the original Star Wars trilogy. The fact that Hayden Christensen was inserted into Return of the Jedi (1983) is, as far as I'm concerned, just as bad as Greedo firing first in the revised Star Wars (1977) because it changes the narrative of both characters and story. Red Letter Media summed it up best in his review when he stated that one of the biggest problems with the prequels was that it made Anakin out to be too central to the Star Wars universe in that he was prophesied as being the one destined to 'bring balance to the Force' (maybe George should have read the Harry Potter series to see how to properly write a character who is pre-ordained for greatness), whereas Vader, in the original trilogy, was part of a bigger story. Having the character basically be, as Red Letter Media called him, 'Space Jesus'(the character apparently had no father) was way too over the top.
In the original trilogy, Luke was an everyday character, which made it easy for many to put themselves in his shoes-not so for the way Anakin was played in the prequels. There is also the fact that the universal appeal of the Force itself was ruined when George introduced us to midichlorians, which are apparently little things in someone's blood that determine if a person can be a Jedi. I won't even go into other bothersome aspects such as R2-D2 and C-3PO appearing(don't get me wrong, I love both those characters, but they had no place in the prequels because it contradicts certain aspects of the original trilogy), Anakin building 3PO, Yoda fighting with a lightsaber like he's the Tazmanian Devil and, yes, Jar Jar Binks.
In my previous entry, I noted that The Godfather Part III (1990) had the same anticipation, and generated the same disappointment, as the prequels. I then realized that there was a 16-year gap between The Godfather Part II (1974) and Part III, as well as a 16-year gap between Jedi and The Phantom Menace (1999). It's an interesting coincidence that such a gap would lead to such disappointment from fans.
While Part III has its good points, The Godfather series should have ended with Part II but the prequels were a story that many fans (including me) were making, at least in their own minds, since Jedi came out. Luke seeing the spirits of his old man, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda smiling at him at Jedi's end allowed us to imagine the story of how these three were proud comrades-in-arms once upon a time only for tragedy to tear them apart before Luke eventually reunites them.

So, I've decided to do something many blogs have done before, which is to give my own ideas on how I would have done the prequels. Before I begin, I will say that there were elements of the prequels I liked. So my own ideas for them will have those elements included. To that end, I will keep the titles of each of the prequels. Once they were announced, the titles of the first two prequels were criticized by some fans. Granted, a title can often be misleading, such as Batman (1989), which has the title character (played by Michael Keaton) taking a backseat to Jack Nicholson's Joker in terms of both screen time and characterization, or (to beat a dead horse yet again) Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), which turned out to be no more faithful to the title novel than many of the other adaptations of Dracula. But a title, more often than not, has little impact on the quality of the actual movie itself.
Secondly, despite the criticism and the Golden Raspberry Awards he received, I have nothing against the casting of Christensen as Anakin Skywalker. If any improvement was needed, it's that the character should have been written differently, not necessarily that a different actor was needed. Christensen has delivered good performances as anyone who has seen Life as a House (2001) and Shattered Glass can tell you.

1. The Phantom Menace: I would start with having Christensen play Anakin in this film. Lucas having the character as a very small boy was superfluous to say the least (check out this article on Jake Lloyd, who played Anakin in Menace, and it's quite sad how he's turned out). I would have Obi-Wan Kenobi encountering Anakin and persuading Yoda to train him. Yoda could be reluctant due to Anakin's reckless nature.
One of their first assignments could be to assist Senator (not Queen) Amidala, whose planet is under siege by a growing force controlled by Darth Tyranus and his aide Darth Maul. Tyranus, unbeknownst to the Jedi, has a pre-Emperor Palpatine in his pocket. During the course of the film, Obi-Wan and Anakin's friend Qui-Gon Jinn could be murdered by Tyranus. The film could end with Tyranus and Maul escaping and with Anakin becoming a Jedi and beginning a romantic relationship with Amidala.

2. Attack of the Clones: Obi-Wan could be spending his time tracking Tyranus and Maul in order to avenge Qui-Gon's death. Anakin notes this obsession, which leads to his own in protecting Amidala, to whom he later proposes. At the same time, Palpatine is secretly plotting against Tyranus as his own political career is expanding. Obi-Wan and Anakin could eventually track down Tyranus just as he's unleashing his new clone army against the Republic. Obi-Wan and Anakin could then have lightsaber duels with Maul and Tyranus, in which Maul is killed by Obi-Wan but Tyranus, after critically injuring Anakin in their duel, escapes.

3. Revenge of the Sith: The Republic is now breaking apart because of the Clone Wars, which allows Palpatine to rise and declare himself Emperor. The war has also separated Anakin and Amidala, which prevents her from informing him that she is pregnant. Anakin also has visions of her dying. These visions could lead to him deducing that Palpatine is in league with Tyranus. Anakin could then barely defeat Tyranus before fighting the Emperor. But Anakin's fight with Tyranus weakens him enough for the Emperor to overpower him. But, instead of finishing him off, the Emperor could use Tyranus's cloning technology on him, similar to what happened to Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation's "The Best of Both Worlds" two-parter, in which he's kidnapped by the Borg, who proceed to turn him into one of them. (In Jedi, Yoda told Luke "Don't underestimate the powers of the Emperor, or suffer your father's fate you will!"). In both cases, these are good men who are overtaken by forces who use their power and knowledge to exterminate their own people.

Anakin fighting both Tyranus and the Emperor could be against the advice of Obi-Wan, Yoda and the other Jedi, who could implore Anakin not to go it alone. Hence, his recklessness and arrogance could still contribute to his fall to the Dark Side.
Thus, when Luke cuts off his hand in Jedi, Anakin could slowly but surely re-emerge since the technology that has imprisoned him for so long has been compromised. This is why it takes him a moment before he saves his son by killing the Emperor.
As Anakin falls to the Emperor, Amidala could give birth to Luke and Leia, but the war could separate her from Luke, who finds his way into Obi-Wan's hands. But she and Leia could make it to safety (hence, why Leia remembers her in Jedi) and Obi-Wan and Luke end up on Tatooine after seeing Yoda off on Degobah, since Luke says in The Empire Strikes Back(1980) that it looked familiar. So, we don't necessarily have to see the death of Amidala as we did in the prequels. Details like that don't necessarily need to be explained outright. For instance, in Jedi, Luke introduces himself to Jabba the Hutt as a Jedi. This led me to assume that he had already gone back to Degobah in between Empire and Jedi, because I would hardly think he would introduce himself to someone in that manner unless he had further training. His rescue of Han Solo from Jabba could then be seen as a test of sorts, since Luke then goes back to Degobah afterward and Yoda tells him that his only remaining task is to confront Vader again.

When someone is disappointed with a film, he/she may say something like "I could write something better than that." Over the years, I've seen many films that have given me the same reaction. I guess this is a reason why I'm now a writer myself-so I could actually try to write something better.