Previously-
And there it is! This is the one! The favorite of the prequels, and the new favorite period among many millennials, zoomers, and alphas.
Well, I moaned and groaned about toxic fandom enough in the other ones, so let's just avoid that topic this time, and look at the extended life this one has had in continuity.
The new/final Disney season of "Clone Wars" catches right up to Sith, and Order 66 is in-situ.
Vader and Ahsoka re-meet in "Rebels".
The "Obi-Wan Kenobi" miniseries bridges "Sith" and "Hope" as far as the Obi & Ani friendship/rivalry goes.
More Christensen as Anakin pops up in "Ahsoka".
Palpatine's resurrection in "Rise Of Skywalker" ties in to the plot dump at the opera in "Sith".
So, the snowball of new stuff is kind of being rolled around "Sith".
And "Hope". Andor season 2 is the new thing everyone's wagging their tongues about.
Oh! Right! The "Sith" actress for Mon Mothma in the deleted scene is Mon Mothma in "Rogue One" and both seasons of "Andor". There you go!
Anyway!
After I saw "Sith" in the theater, I had a "there, I'm done" feeling.
Reading Le Guin has made me all philosophical on what it means to turn myth into a cash cow, and how that cash register being grafted on mutates the story you're telling.
That, and being old enough now to have seen some cycles repeat.
Not just with Star Wars, but with everything that's hung around since I was a kid.
Oh, and the moral rot that's formed on Harry Potter. That's been educational.
Commodified art is kind of inescapable in our fucked up society.
I dunno if its been good for us. I struggle over that.
I like to think trickles of goodness have gotten through the cracks.
I think "Sith" is a good warning about the rise of fascism.
I think we'll always need that restated in any form we can get it.
We've got "Hunger Games" for that too.
The arts community has been pretty good at being mostly reliably anti-fascist.
You don't see anyone making the movie where "the real Nazis" are pink haired college kids protesting wars.
Ah, but there I go dipping into toxic fandom again.
Well, it's unavoidable.
Star Wars is an anti-Nazi story.
Real-life Nazis trying to steal it is more than a bit offensive.
But....Star Wars was also always a cash cow, and corporatists kiss fascism's boots more often than they don't.
But! That's right in the fucking prequels! Part of Palpatine becoming Emperor is having the banks and the merchants on side.
It's a complicated ball of rubber bands.
I just hope the new kids that discover Star Wars keep getting the right things out of it, and that it leads to them discovering even better stuff.
But, if they stagnate in the Star Wars fandom pool, but keep getting the anti-fascist message from it, I guess they could certainly do worse.
And it's to the kiddies I leave Star Wars.
Be good, kids.
Be Luke, don't be Anakin.
Be Rey, don't be Kylo.
Be Yoda, don't be Palpatine.
And if any weirdo on Youtube tries to reverse those, that's not a "critic" that's a propagandist, and they aren't your friend.
I guess that's what I wanted to say.
I'll retro-link this to the 18th Star Wars day.
6 comments:
I watched it again for the first time in a decade. Hayden Christensen's performance gets worse mostly towards the end. With regards to your old quote that "Portman had completely checked out by this time" I can sort of see it, but I think she could have been worse than she was. I think she really botches the whole "there's still good in him" bit before she passes out and dies but that's maybe just George Lucas not really directing great performances out of his actors.
About the Luke/Leia birth sequence: that "ooh bah, ooh bah" thing the nurse robot does has been stuck in my head for ages and I forgot where the hell it was from!
Aside from a couple of musings on Trump being like Palpatine, I mostly rewatched this trying to see if the digital backdrops and CGI have held up. Think how many hours went into making this stuff. I think it's mostly pretty good but one's mileage may vary, I don't know that having the backgrounds full of moving parts is such a good idea.
I still think it's a good movie, but God knows if I would really love any Star Wars movie if I were watching any of them for the first time at age 42.
Speaking of old memories, I finally dug out the prog CD Legion sent me ages ago, and transferred it to my HD, and a flash drive. Those old CDRs have a surprising shelf life. I was hearing tech-cynics saying they'd disintegrate in 5 years. Peace of mind that I saved all that. Dunno why. Guess I'm getting wistfully nostalgic about every damned thing.
What was on it? King Crimson, Ozric Tentacles, Flower Kings, METAMORFOSI, etc.? That's what was on mine. He also sent me one that was Angalgard's "Hybris." I know that I still have mine and they do still work, but I remember song titles well enough to the point where I can just Youtube them. And I did end up buying a lot of those albums on CD anyway.
But no, they weren't going to disintegrate after five years. They DO however scratch real fucking easily.
CDs are weird, because so many people secretly hated them while they were a big deal. Steve Albini called them "a rich man's eight track tape" and told people to eat bacon and egg sandwiches off of them. John Mellencamp said they were an excuse to make people buy their record collections a second time. And countless people thought paying $19.99 for a piece of foil sandwiched between two pieces of plastic at WALMART was ridiculous. And it was.
Oh well.
Swap Ozric Tentacles for Rush, and Metamorfosi for Peter Gabriel era Genesis. Legion put long-ass text commentary files in there too. Wonder what became of ol' Leege. I know he wanted to be a gaming programmer. Gaming fandom (and some reporters) went pretty CHUD. Wonder where he came down on all that.
As for "would I like Star Wars if I started now?". I dug "Hunger Games", and I was in my 40's when I finally caught up to 'em. Jesus, it's hard to think of a brand-new franchise. There ain't many.
His old Twitter page is up, but he hated Twitter so moved here:
https://mastodon.world/@legion
When he was still on Twitter I did periodically check his page out for the hell of it. He may or may not still be conservative in some ways (he supported Bush/Iraq) but he pretty clearly dislikes Trump, which is good.
I can't imagine him wanting to converse with me these days (he was getting pretty sick of me by the time he left the board) but if we did I'd ask him what he thought of Bark Psychosis' "Hex," the album from 1994 for which a British rock journalist coined the term "post-rock." I got into that one a few years back and don't remember him talking about it.
He sent me the first two CDRs in 2000 and the second in summer 2001, the second had the Genesis "Selling England By The Pound" on it, Marillion's "Misplaced Childhood," Fates Warning's "A Pleasant Shade Of Grey," King Crimson's "Larks' Tongues In Aspic" and "Discipline," and Yes' "Tales From Topographic Oceans," which I specifically requested because I didn't want to pay money for it and not like it (it's the one with four twenty minute songs on it, none of which were really among Yes' best, and which some people claim signalled the end of the glory days of prog.) A load of post-rock mp3s too, that genre was still in its heyday at the time he sent those CDs.
I have no idea what the state of it is nowadays--none of the big post-rock bands (Godspeed You Black Emperor, Mogwai, Sigur Ros, Tortoise) seem to be kicking up much press these days, and hell, there isn't even really a ROCK "trend" anymore, the last big one was that silly garage rock revival around 2002 or so (Stripes, White Stripes, Hives, Vines) which now seems like a blip on the radar--God knows if kids are looking up those albums in 2025 the way I would have been fascinated to look up an album from 1980 in 2001.
Couple that with the dying embers of baby boomers trying to continually get future generations interested in Beatles, Springsteen (has he been on the cover of Rolling Stone yet this year? Aren't they obliged to put him there twice a year?), Hendrix, Floyd, Zeppelin etc. and the future is looking kinda bleak for bands with guitars coming up with much of anything new.
I can't remember the last time I even tried a franchise. Didn't do "Hunger Games," "Twilight," "Harry Potter," Marvel Comic Universe, any of it. Just sort of feel a headache coming on when I think of trying a franchise.
I did "Star Trek" TOS and the first six movies ten years ago, but that's a drop in the bucket now with Trek, eh.
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