Recapping Sir Alec Guinness’s Rocky Relationship With STAR WARS

On Friday, May 27, one of the most anticipated installments in one of the biggest franchises of all time dropped: Obi-Wan Kenobi, the new Disney+ mini-series. The six-part program features Ewan McGregor reprising his role as the titular Jedi Master, who he first portrayed in the STAR WARS prequel trilogy (1999-2005). McGregor’s Kenobi, was one of the most popular characters in the three widely disdained prequels, largely because his performance paid loving tribute to the actor that originated the role in the original STAR WARS trilogy.

That would be Sir Alec Guinness, who embodied Kenobi, Ben to his friends, in STAR WARS (1977, later re-titled A NEW HOPE), THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980), and RETURN OF THE JEDI (1980). So as McGregor again summons the wise, gentle spirit of Guinness for his new journey as Kenobi, let’s look back at an amusing factor that many fans are well aware of, but that many others may be blissfully unaware of – that is, Guinness’s heavy distaste for that “Galaxy far, far away.”

Hatred is a strong word, and Guinness never outright said he hated George Lucas’ iconic creation; just that it wasn’t really his cup of tea, and that its overwhelming popularity was a bit concerning. Since science fiction wasn’t his preferred genre (“Crumbs, not for me”), Guinness took the role for the money, and, with royalties from the 1977 film, and its sequels, he pocketed around $50 million, so we can definitely say that he didn’t hate the money.

Guinness had qualms at the beginning of the shoot of STAR WARS in Tunishia early 1976, noting in a letter to a friend that “new rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day on wadges of pink paper - and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable.” 

Funnily enough, he concluded his note to Anne Kaufman with some chat about his fellow cast members: “I must off to studio and work with a dwarf (very sweet – and he has to wash in a bidet) and your fellow countrymen Mark Hamill and Tennyson (that can’t be right) Ford – Ellison (? – No!*) – well, a rangy, languid young man who is probably intelligent and amusing. But Oh, God, God, they make me feel ninety – and treat me as if I was 106. Love, Alec *Harrison Ford – ever heard of him?”

In another letter, later in the shoot, Guinness wrote, “Apart from the money, I regret having embarked on the film. I like them well enough, but it's not an acting job, the dialogue - which is lamentable - keeps being changed and only slightly improved, and I find myself old and out of touch with the young.”

But when the film was released in the summer of ‘77, he was quite complimentary, writing in his diary: “It’s a pretty staggering film as spectacle and technically brilliant.”

At the height of the film’s success, Guinness appeared on the BBC talk show, Parkinson (hosted by Sir Michael Parkinson), where he praised STAR WAR’s “marvelous, healthy innocence. Great pace, wonderful to look at. Full of guts, nothing unpleasant – I mean, people go ‘bang bang’ and people fall over and are dead, but no horrors, no sleazy sex - in fact, actually, no sex at all, when it comes to that. And a sort of wonderful freshness about it, kind of like a wonderful fresh air. When I came out of the cinema at Tottenham Court Road, I thought to myself, ‘Oh Lord, London’s awfully gritty and dirty and full of rubbish, isn’t it’. Because it had all been so invigorating.”

But still, the script’s words were a sticking point as he told his diary, “some of the dialogue is excruciating and much of it is lost in noise.”

20 years later, Guinness was still going on about the dire dialogue in an interview in Talk magazine (1999): “What I didn't tell Lucas was that I just couldn't go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines. I'd had enough of the mumbo jumbo.”

Throughout the years before his death in 2000, the grand actor went back and forth from thankfully acknowledging the fortune he received from the franchise (“Blessed be STAR WARS” he even said at one point), and lamenting that his involvement in the movie that earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination was something that made him squirm.

Possibly Guinness’s best summation came in Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography: “A refurbished STAR WARS is on somewhere or everywhere, I have no intention of revisiting any galaxy. I shrivel inside each time it is mentioned. Twenty years ago, when the film was first shown, it had a freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy at the influence it might be having.”

Perhaps the most amusing episode in the saga of Guinness’s rocky relationship with STAR WARS comes in the form of an oft told tale about a young boy, who, when asking for an autograph from the original Kenobi, told him that he had seen the 1977 movie 100 times (actually 102 times). Guinness response was that he only give him the autograph, if the boy promised that he’d never see the film again.

This is how Guinness described the scene in his last memoir, A Positively Final Apperance (2000): “The bad penny first dropped in San Francisco when a sweet-faced boy of twelve told me proudly that he had seen Star Wars over a hundred times. His elegant mother nodded with approval. Looking into the boy’s eyes I thought I detected little star-shells of madness beginning to form and I guessed that one day they would explode.

“I would love you to do something for me,” I said. “Anything! Anything!” the boy said rapturously. “You won’t like what I’m going to ask you to do,” I said. “Anything, sir, anything!” “Well,” I said, “do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?”

He burst into tears. His mother drew himself up to an immense height. “What a dreadful thing to say to a child!” she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities.”

Despite this anecdote being in Guinness’s book, I thought it was an exaggeration or amalgam of the man’s encounters with fans, but it’s been confirmed by the boy himself – Daniel Henning, an actor/audiobook narrator, who had, at 12 years old, met Guinness at an event in 1979. In 2019, Henning put out the audiobook, Alec Guinness Hated Star Wars or How I Became a Famous Star Wars Fan: A True Star Wars.

Just last month, Henning gave his first ever interview about his exchange on the podcast, Rebel Force Radio. Henning told hosts, Jason Swank and Jimmy Mac, that it occurred at the San Francisco International Film Festival, which held an Alec Guinness tribute at the Palace of Fine Arts that year.

Henning says it went down like this: “I said, ‘Sir Alec, hello - I have seen STAR WARS 102 times,’ and I paused because I thought, when other people heard that they were kind of shocked and I thought that the audience might have some reaction too, which they did, there were gasps, there was laughter, there was a little bit of applause, and then Sir Alec literally did this in his chair (slumps back and acts dead)…and then he leans up to the microphone, and says, ‘it wasn’t even my best picture.’

Henning goes on, “And it would mean very much to me, if I could have your autograph.’ And I expected him to say, ‘Come down to the stage,’ and just sign it there. That was my fantasy of what was going to happen, that was how I was going to meet Alec Guinness, right? But instead, he said, he pointed his finger at me, and said ‘I’ll see you after the show.’”

After some joking around that I’ll edit for time, Henning explains, “We went backstage, my Mom and I, they immediately let us in, and everyone knew, like all the people backstage were like ‘there he is, there he is, there’s that boy.’ People were hanging around wanting to see whatever this is going to be, I guess. I didn’t quite realize that in the moment, but then when it happened, I was like ‘oh, they were all listening.’ We’re standing there and they bring Sir Alec over to me, and he was, huge smile on his face, and he was lovely, and charming, and the very first thing he said to me was, ‘I feel like I should give you some of my money back.’

Following even more kidding around banter, Henning arrives at the pivotal moment: “He says, ‘I’ll give you the autograph, but I want to ask you to do something for me.’ And I said, ‘anything.’ He said, ‘you’re not gonna like what I am going to ask you to do,’ and I said, ‘anything, anything!’ And he said, ‘Do you think you could manage never to see STAR WARS again?’ That is certainly not what I was expecting him to say. Again, I thought it was just going to be the moment of him signing the autograph, I didn’t realize we were going to get into his psychological issues with STAR WARS.”

The 12-year old Henning agreed that he would never again see the original movie again, and that Guinness even put it in writing (“you’ve promised me not to see STAR WARS again”) with his autograph on the program for the festival. Listen to the entire interview.

It’s interesting that Henning points out that Guinness’s first responses to the boy’s tally of viewings were about it not being his best work, and then the money thing. An art versus commerce predicament for the actor so succinctly displayed.

Whatever his issues with the supreme space opera, Guinness brought gravitas and a aged wisdom to the then budding franchise, despite only being 58 years old when he began his run as Kenobi. Having watched the first two episodes of Disney+’s Obi-Wan Kenobi series, I can attest that McGregor is successfully channeling Guinness, but at the same time putting forth his own rugged take on the character.

While the great Jedi Master Kenobi has grown in stature as a core character in the ginormous saga with the now extended portrayal by McGregor in the prequels, and the new series, I have a bad feeling that Guinness would still be shaking his head at the absurd longevity of the cult surrounding STAR WARS, and would be lamenting how the dialogue is still so lame.

More later...

Christopher Nolan: The Man and His Motifs Part 1

As I’m about to watch TENET for the first time - something I’ve been waiting to do since its release last summer (I chickened out going to the theater), I thought I’d revisit this article I wrote about its Director, Christopher Nolan, for the Chinese magazine Front Vision in 2017. As the magazine is aimed towards young people, my style is a bit different from my usual babble. 

Here’s Part 1:

In the nearly two decades since his acclaimed 1998 thriller FOLLOWING, Christopher Nolan has joined the elite club of major filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, and J.J. Abrams, that are household names.

This is largely because of Nolan’s immensely popular DARK KNIGHT trilogy, in which the screenwriter/producer/director re-wrote the rulebook on how a dormant franchise can be rebooted, a beloved character can be revitalized, and a genre can be completely re-imagined.

But to understand why so many critics throw around the words “visionary” and “cinematic genius” when writing about Nolan, and to get a better perspective on the themes and ideas expressed in his work, one must start with his childhood obsession with a low budget science fiction flick that took the world by storm forty years ago.

Nolan was seven years old in 1977 when he first saw George Lucas’ game changing blockbuster STAR WARS (later re-titled STAR WARS: EPISODE IV - A NEW HOPE), and it no doubt made him realize how powerful and transcendent movies can be.

At the Tribecca Film Festival in 2015, Nolan told the audience that in his youth he’d been “experimenting using Super 8 films and stuff. And then from the second I saw ‘Star Wars’ everything was space ships and science-fiction.”

This led to of one of Nolan’s first amateur films, SPACE WARS, a title obviously inspired by Lucas’ sci-fi epic, which was a stop motion animation short that the British born Nolan made with his buddies in Evanston, Chicago (his family had relocated there from London).

While attending college in Hertford Heath, Hertfordshire, and London, Nolan studied many notable directors including Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, Martin Scorsese, and Brian De Palma, as well as the old masters including Alfred Hitchcock, and Orson Welles.

These influences can be felt throughout Nolan’s filmography which began in proper in 1989 with a short entitled TARANTELLA. Other shorts followed - LARCENY (1995), and DOODLEBUG (1997) - without much notice, but his first feature length film, 1998’s FOLLOWING, a black and white film made for $6,000, turned a lot of critics’ heads and won awards and Nolan’s career was off and running.

FOLLOWING is an odd, disturbing story about a man (Jeremy Theobald) who follows various strangers around the streets of London until he is called out by one of his subjects (Alex Hall), and the two start a series of robberies together. The narrative is non linear as it cuts back and forth through time with its strands intensely coming together at its conclusion revealing its twist.

This formula was also used in Nolan’s second film, MEMENTO, which had a much bigger budget ($9 million), which meant color film and a shinier polish. But while Nolan directed, wrote, edited, co-produced, and did the cinematography for his first film, his second was a more collaborative effect.

MEMENTO was based on a pitch by Nolan’s brother, Jonathan. Nolan adapted it into a screenplay, and handed over the cinematography and editing duties to Wally Pfister and Doddy Dorn, and the producing duties to Suzanne Todd, and Jennifer Todd. Nolan’s wife, Emma Thomas, also co-produced as she’s done on all of her husband’s films.

The film concerns an insurance agent (Guy Pearce), who is on the trail of his wife’s murderer, but his anterograde amnesia keeps throwing him off track. MEMENTO put Nolan on the movie map aided by a wave of glowing reviews, including many placings on critics’ lists of the best films of 2000, and two Academy Award nominations (for Best Editing and Best Screenplay). 

The scenes in both FOLLOWING and MEMENTO reward active viewing as they are like puzzle pieces that the audience has to move around in their minds in order to figure out where they fit in the plot. 

For Nolan’s third project, INSOMNIA, the director moved into the realm of adaptation as the film is a remake of a 1997 Norwegian film directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg. The screenplay, based on the original by Skjoldbjærg, and Nikolaj Frobenius, was written by Hillary Seitz, with Pfister and Dorn returning to shoot and edit. 

The much less non linear INSOMNIA stars Al Pacino as a homicide detective who works with a local cop (Hillary Swank) in a small Alaskan town to investigate a murder in which Robin Williams plays the prime suspect. It’s the most star power Nolan has worked with than before, and he pulls impressive performances out of his cast. 

After proving that he could handle a remake with great aplomb, Nolan’s next film would find him tackling a much bigger prospect - a reboot of a major series. 

After the critical failure of Joel Schumacher’s BATMAN & ROBIN, considered by many to be the worst entry in the franchise, Warner Brothers hired Nolan to help get Batman back to the basics. Along with co-writer David S. Goyer, Nolan re-invented the character’s origin story, and reclaimed the dark tone that the previous films had turned into a joke.

Stay tuned for Part 2 in which we explore the DARK KNIGHT trilogy, INCEPTION, and DUNKIRK.

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STAR WARS Finally Gets A Holiday Special That Won't Make Fans Vomit

Since Disney started its massive reboot of the STAR WARS series in 2015, there has seemingly been an agenda to fix the mistakes from the early films that have plagued fans for decades. So like ROGUE ONE explains how the flaw in the Death Star was put there on purpose by an Empire-hating engineer, and RISE OF SKYWALKER features Chewbacca finally getting his medal, we now have the redemption of arguably the most maligned, and embarrassing segment of the entire franchise: The Star Wars Holiday Special.

The CBS program, which aired on this date in 1978, brought together nearly all of the stars of the 1977 sci-fi smash, introduced new characters in the form of Chewbacca’s family, and the premise of celebrating “Life Day,” but reduced the proceedings into a icky ‘70s variety showcase complete with comedy stars such as Bea Arthur, and Harvey Korman, and a musical appearance by Jefferson Starship.

The ultra cringe and vomit-inducing fiasco, which also included a coked-up Carrie Fisher singing a Life Day carol, was hated by STAR WARS creator George Lucas, and has never been officially released on any home video format (it’s easily findable on YouTube though).

Today, the 41st anniversary of the release of the original, The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special releases on Disney +, and it’s a much more enjoyable experience – largely because it leaves the cheesy variety show trappings behind and finds its comedy in winking satirical jabs at the saga.

The story involves the newer additions to the series ensemble, Rey, Finn, Poe Dameron, and Rose Tico (voiced by Helen Sadler, Omar Miller, Jake Gree, and Kelly Marie Tran) getting ready for a Life Day party which will be visited by Chewbacca’s family – Itchy, Malla, and Lumpy – another nod to the ’78 special. But to the dismay of her friends, Rey decides to leave the proceedings in order to become a Jedi master who can better train Finn.

Rey journeys to an ice planet (must be a lot of them in their galaxy) and finds an ancient key (looks like a piece of krypton shaped like a Christmas tree) that can transport her and BB-8, who I forgot to mention until now, across time and space. So Rey can jump through time holes and observe scenes from previous episodes like Yoda training Luke, Ben Kenobi training and later fighting Anakin, Luke’s attack on the Death Star, and the battle with the AT-AT Walkers (the last two are really cool looking recreations). There’s also a cameo by Baby Yoda* from the The Mandalorian because, of course, there would have to be.

There are cameos abound from just about every STAR WARS character you can think of, but very few are voiced by the original actors. Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian), Anthony Daniels (3-CPO), and Kelly Marie Trans (Rose), are the only actors who reprise their roles. That may be the only thing the ’78 special has above this update, but, except for Matthew Wood standing in for Adam Driver, the rest of the voice cast is pretty convincing especially Matt Lanter’s Luke. Jeesh, Mark Hamill can do an UberEats commercial, but not show up for this?

The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special is a fun, fast paced 47 minutes that STAR WARS fans will eat up, and then immediately want to help themselves to seconds. It contains a lot of very funny fan service satire with its gags about the series’ plot points and aesthetics. For some reason, the running joke about Luke taking occasional swigs from a carton of blue milk made me the laugh the most. 

I doubt either Star Wars Holiday Special will be ever be considered canon, but this new LEGO one will at least be thought of a lot more fondly. Life Day and Chewbacca’s family may not exist anywhere else in the saga, but now their existence doesn’t feel as shameful. Consider those wrongs righted, I will.

* I know, I know - that's not really his name, but what else do we call him?

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Some STAR WARS Day Musings

Every May 4th, my former neighbors would put these inflatables in their yard

A few weeks ago, I posted on Facebook that, “Of the nine STAR WARS movies, I think only four of them are good. I’ll reveal which ones sometime soon.”

Since it’s May the 4th (as in “May the fourth be with you”), which has been branded as STAR WARS Day, it’s as good as time as any to reveal those four films from the franchise, but I have to say that my answers are pretty boring.

Firstly, I’m talking about the nine entries (or Episodes as their called in each movie’s opening crawl) that make up the Skywalker Saga. I’m not counting expanded universe offshoots such as the Ewok TV movies, the animated THE CLONE WARS, ROGUE ONE, SOLO, or The STAR WARS Holiday Special for that matter. I’m clarifying this because some folks brought up a few of these titles in the thread under my Facebook post.

So here’s my boring answer: the four films in the series that I think are the only really worthwhile Episodes are: STAR WARS *, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, RETURN OF THE JEDI, and THE FORCE AWAKENS. Basically the ones that have Han Solo in them (you could say he also appears in THE RISE OF SKYWALKER, but that’s just a cameo). 

Pretty obvious, huh? I’m discounting the prequels as I hated them (as many fans do), and the last two (THE LAST JEDI, RISE) because while they were passably entertaining, they will doubtfully be considered as classics in the decades to come.

*As I’ve written before on this blog, I can never think of the original 1977 series starter by the revised title it was given four years after it’s release. You can read about why, in this post: It’ll Always Be STAR WARS, Not A NEW HOPE To Me (December 13, 2016).

Unsurprisingly, my choices come from growing up with the original trilogy, and favoring the later day comeback (THE FORCE AWAKENS) that most captures the spirit of the original trilogy.

Happy STAR WARS Day people! I’ll leave now with this question: when Luke Skywalker, C-3PO and R2-D2 made an appearance on The Muppet Show (February 1980 – just a few months before THE EMPIRE STRIKE BACK’s release), was that canon?

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When TV Characters Become Movie Critics: Part 1

  

I have long been amused when a character in a television show gives their opinion about a popular movie – sometimes while the film is still playing in theaters. In many cases, the criticisms echo those of many people in the audience, which helps to blur the line between fantasy and reality. 

On the NBC sitcom, Community, Annie (Alison Brie) gives her study group friend Abed (Danny Pudi) DVDs of three of the Indiana Jones movies because, as both say in unity, “The fourth one blows!” This is a sentiment that both holds consensus in the show’s world, and the real one’s - especially the online community. 

Community (now streaming on Netflix) was full of such moments in which pat put downs of many movies were offered (see Den of Geek’s The 68 Movie References in Community), and the same goes for such shows as The Simpsons, Big Bang Theory, Rick & Morty, and countless other pop culture-minded programs. 

But here I wanted to look at the shows that have character’s point of views on certain movies come up more organically – for the most part. 

The first such moment of movie appraisal that I remember noting was from the late ‘70s to early ‘80s soap opera satire, Soap. In an episode towards the end of the first season (airdate: March 14, 1978), a character named Flo Flotsky, played by television veteran Doris Roberts, perhaps best known for her role as Ray Romano’s mother in the CBS sitcom Everyone Loves Raymond, deflects from her son, Father Tim Flotsky (sal Viscuso), telling her he’s fallen in love with Corine (Diana Conova) by spouting out her critique of the massively popular space epic that was still reigning at the box office when the episode aired:

Flo Flotsky: “Y’know I finally saw that ‘Star Wars’ movie they’re all ravin’ about. I dunno. In my day if they had a leading man it was Clark Gable. Today they got a little machine that goes ‘boop.’ I mean, frankly, I could have stayed home and looked at my upright vacuum cleaner.”

Later, another shot at a mega movie hit, happened during the last season of the NBC show Seinfeld (a mega hit itself) that was broadcast on March 19, 1998. Like STAR WARS, TITANIC was still in theaters when this exchange took place:

George Costanza (Jason Alexander): “I saw ‘Titanic.’ So that old woman, she’s just a liar, right?”

Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld): “And a bit of a tramp if you ask me.”

In the episode “The Rat Pack” from The Sopranos’ fifth season (broadcast: March 14, 2005), most of the female contingent of the cast gather for a Film Club night in which they watch Orson Welles’ CITIZEN KANE. Carmela (Edie Falco) hosts the screening, which takes place in the family’s swanky viewing room, and even reads aloud from Leonard Maltin’s review of the film from one of his yearly guides before it begins.

After they watch the film, the reactions from Carmela and her fellow mob wife group members are priceless:

Adriana (Drea de Matteo): “So it was a sled, huh? He should’ve told somebody.”

Gabriella Dante (Maureen Van Zandt): “I think it’s fascinating that man had all that stuff, but he died alone with nothing and nobody.”

Carmela: “Good. Prick.”

Rosalie Aprile (Sharon Angela): “I hated it. ‘You supply the war, I’ll supply the headlines.’ How conceited.”

Following these comments, the ladies run out of things to say except to briefly compliment the cinematography (“That was very good”) so they fall back into their regular gossiping. The show never reveals whether they have another Film Club, but my guess would be that it was a one-time thing. 

While The Office US (2005-2013) regularly highlighted the absurd, insensitive, and just plain wrong utterances of its protagonist Michael Scott (Steve Carrell), every now and then the character would say something that was actually on point. One such moment was when he shared his thoughts on the fourth entry in the DIE HARD franchise (LIVE FREE AND DIE HARD): 

Michael: “You know what, here’s the thing about ‘Die Hard 4.’ ‘Die Hard 1,’ the original, John McClane was just this normal guy. You know, he’s just a normal New York City cop, who gets his feet cut, and gets beat up. But he’s an everyday guy. In ‘Die Hard 4,’ he is jumping a motorcycle into a helicopter. In air. You know? He’s invincible. It just sort of lost what ‘Die Hard’ was. It’s not ‘Terminator.’” 

Following this, one of his co-workers says “Dude, you should review movies.” Yeah, maybe he should. 

Finally, there’s this conversation from The Handmaid’s Tale (“Women’s Work, June 6, 2018) between June (Elizabeth Moss) and Janine (Madeline Brewer) about childbirth: 

Janine: “You’ll probably get to the cool part soon - the baby’s foot pushes out of your stomach, like in ‘Alien.’ (laughs) Charlotte used to do that all the time. (awkward pause) You haven’t seen ‘Alien’?” 

June: “I just thought the sequel was better.” 

These are just several instances of TV characters giving us film critiques, I know there are hundreds, and as the Part 1 implies I’ll be posting more, so if you know of any please place them in the comments below or email them me via the address above on the right. 

So I’ll leave you now with this quote from Seinfeld, where the STAR TREK movies frequently came up. Jerry on STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN: “Well, it was the best of those movies.” 

I completely agree. 

More later…

THE RISE OF SKYWALKER Says Goodbye To STAR WARS For Now

Now playing at every multiplex from here to a galaxy far, far away:

STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

(Dir. J.J. Abrams, 2019)

So, here we are. The highly anticipated ninth episode of the Skywalker saga is here and it’s a chaotically overblown piece of pure spectacle. By the end of its two hour and 21 minute running time, I was too worn out to judge whether it was a satisfying conclusion to the series that started back in 1977, so I’ll try to hash that out here. 

This last time deals with the battle between the Rebels and The Empire – sorry, that’s the Resistance and The First Order. Darth Vader wannabe Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) discovers that dark lord, Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), last seen being thrown into the Death Star’s reactor by Vader in RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983), is still alive and has assembled a massive fleet of Star Destroyers. 

After conferring with General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher in footage mostly cut from THE FORCE AWAKENS), our heroes Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), and the droids C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), and the roly-poly cutie BB-8, set out to find a McGuffin, a Sith Dagger to be exact, that will possibly lead them to Palpatine. There is also another McGuffin, a Sith Wayfinder – a small pyramid shaped compass that also may lead them to the former Emperor of the Galaxy. I think. 

Amid these plot points are bombastic light saber duels between Kylo Ren and Rey, who still have the Force connection going for them, as well as some sexual friction; blaster-fire aplenty, and a ginormous space battle that is like the similar finales of STAR WARS and RETURN OF THE JEDI times a hundred. 

I didn’t mind the obvious bits of fan service as it was fun to see Billy Dee Williams reprising Lando Calrissian, or Chewie cheating at holochess, Wedge, Ewoks, Jawas, and a few surprise cameos, but when it comes to Palpatine – is he really enough of a fan favorite to resurrect? I like McDiarmid, but it seems they couldn’t come up with a good enough villain and had to reach back 30 years for one. 

Director Abrams, who co-wrote the screenplay with Chris Terrio, has fashioned a spectacle-filled behemoth that equally overwhelmed and underwhelmed me – sometimes at the same time. Just as many times as I got thrilled with how they were recreating the STAR WARS from my youth, I got bored at how they were recreating the STAR WARS of my youth. 

I grew up with the original trilogy (1977-1983), then pretended the prequels (1999-2005) didn’t exist, but came back into the fold with THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015) which captured the old vibe. I liked the followup, THE LAST JEDI (2017), more than most fans but will concede that its flaws are hard to ignore.

I enjoyed RISE OF SKYWALKER quite a bit, but I’m feeling fatigue from the whole damn series. I’ll still watch The Mandalorian (love Baby Yoda!), but after this exhausting and sometimes incoherent entry, I hope they take a long break between RISE and another STAR WARS movie. 

I feel that I, and the hoards of over-critical fans, deserve it.

More later...

SOLO: A Passable STAR WARS STORY With No Real Surprises

Opening tonight at every multiplex from here to a galaxy far, far away:

SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY

(Dir. Ron Howard, 2018) 

Now that we’re starting to get used to the idea of having a new STAR WARS movie every year, here’s the highly anticipated young Han Solo adventure which fills in the intergalactic space smuggler’s back story. 

Fans will finally get to see how Han meet Chewbacca (and give him his nickname, Chewie), how he got his treasured blaster, how he won his beloved ship, the Millenium Falcon, from Lando Calrissian; and how the hell he ran the Kessel Run, first mentioned in the original 1977 film *, in under 12 parsecs.

But the obvious question is: do fans really need to see how these things happened? Maybe they were best left as asides in movies from 40 years ago?

Anyway, Alden Ehrenreich plays the 28-year old Han (we also see how he got his last name, and it’s kind of GODFATHER PART II-ish) who we first meet as a slick street thief in the lawless world of Corellia. Han and his girlfriend Qi’ra (a brunette Emilia Clarke, you know, the blonde who loves dragons from Game of Thrones) scheme to escape the drudgery of Imperial shipyard slums, but they get separated after a lightspeeder chase.

Han ends up joining the Empire to become a pilot, but because he’s Han, he gets expelled from the academy, and he meets up with a gruff as usual Woody Harrelson as Tobias Beckett, a criminal scoundrel with a crew who will give Han lessons in how to be a criminal scoundrel. One of the first lessons is, of course, trust no one.

Finnish basketball player Joonas Suotamo takes over from Peter Mayhew for Chewbacca whose first encounter with Han I won’t spoil, Westworld’s Thandie Newton plays Beckett’s lover/crime partner, and most importantly, a smooth as ice Donald Glover steps into Billy Dee Williams’ shoes as the iconic Lando, stealing every scene he’s in.

With respect to not spoiling plot points, I’ll just say that the premise involves a heist (will all the STAR WARS STORIES be heist flicks?) in which Han and crew set about stealing some of the plutonium-like Coaxium (McGuffin!) from mines on the planet Kessel for the slimy yet dapper crime lord Dryden Voss (Paul Bettany), who appears to have Han’s love, Qi’ra, under his command.

All the things you’d expect in a STAR WARS movie are here from tons of blaster fights, scrapes with storm troopers, quipping robots (Lando’s droid, L3-37, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge fulfills that function), gripping space battles with TIE Fighters, etc. Well, everything, that is, except the Force.

For the first time, the Force isn’t part of the story. Nobody has it or speaks of it - I didn’t see any lightsabers - so this may be why Han doesn’t believe in it when we catch up with him in Episode IV.

SOLO is a fine sci-fi adventure that keeps moving so there is a fair amount of fun, but it was pretty much what I expected. Ron Howard, who took over from Phil Lord and Chris Miller (THE LEGO MOVIE, the 21 JUMP STREET films), assembles all the elements from the crisply coordinated set-pieces to the marks of the colorful ensemble with his well polished style, but I still would love to see what Lord and Miller would’ve done with it.

I was entertained plenty, but I still craved something more. There was nothing that I was surprised by - even a secret cameo in the third act didn’t mean much to me. Aldenreich is good in the title role, but I can’t say I really bought him as being the same character that Harrison Ford made so iconic. That’s probably because I’ve lived with Ford for forty years as the legendary scruffy headed nerfherder. A friend said that Aldenreich doesn’t look like Ford, but he looks like the character. I guess I can go with that, but it’s still hard to not think of Ford.

I can go with Glover’s Lando though – maybe he’s the one who should’ve gotten his own movie.

So SOLO is a predictable package that’s a passable STAR WARS STORY. The way it leaves room for a sequel is also really expected - i.e. there's no Jabba the Hut and Greedo here so that could be featured in a follow-up that’ll serve as yet another prequel to the first film. It’s obvious that Lucasfilm is planning on filling every gap in the shared universe of these narratives, so that there will be nothing left to the imagination. 

Forget the other franchise of the same name, this is the real NEVERENDING STORY.

* Click to find out why I’ll never refer to the first STAR WARS as A NEW HOPE.

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Film Babble Blog's Top 10 Movies Of 2017 Part 2

And now Part 2 of Film Babble Blog’s Top 10 Movies of 2017. Included are memorable lines, or exchanges from each film. For Part 1, featuring entries 10-6 click here.

5. THE BIG SICK (Dir. Michael Showalter)

Terry (Ray Romano): “So, uh, 9/11…No I mean, I’ve always wanted to have a conversation with…about it. With…people.”

Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani): “You’ve never talked to people about 9/11?”

Terry: “No what’s your, what's your stance?”

Kumail: “What’s my stance on 9/11? Oh um, anti. It was a tragedy, I mean we lost 19 of our best guys. (awkward pause) That was a joke, obviously. 9/11 was a terrible tragedy. And it’s not funny to joke about it.” 

4. THE DISASTER ARTIST (Dir. James Franco)

Tommy Wiseau (James Franco): “I did not hit her. It’s not true. It’s bullshit. I did not hit her. I did not. Oh, hi Mark.”

3. DUNKIRK (Dir. Christopher Nolan)

Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance): “Men my age dictate this war. Why should we be allowed to send our children to fight it?”

2. THE SHAPE OF WATER (Dir. Guillermo del Toro)

Giles (Richard Jenkins): “Would I tell you about her? The princess without voice. Or perhaps I would just warn you, about the truth of these facts. And the tale of love and loss. And the monster, who tried to destroy it all.”

1. GET OUT (Dir. Jordan Peele)

Dean Armitage (Bradley Whitford) confiding with his daughter's new boyfriend Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya): “By the way, I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could. Best president in my lifetime. Hands down.”

Spillover with a few more quotes (Click on the titles in boldface for my reviews):

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (Dir. Luca Guadagnino)

BABY DRIVER (Dir. Edgar Wright)

LUCKY (Dir. John Carroll Lynch) “There’s a difference between lonely and being alone.”

GOOD TIME (Dirs. Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie)

BLADE RUNNER 2049 (Dir. Denis Villeneuve)

THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE (Dir. Chris McKay) “Black. All important movies start with a black screen.”

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Dir. Rian Johnson) Yoda’s review of the sacred Jedi texts: “Page turners, they are not.”

PHANTOM THREAD (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

MOLLY’S GAME (Dir. Aaron Sorkin)

HOSTILES (Dir. Scott Cooper)

Films I haven’t seen yet, but didn’t want to wait to do this list any longer before I caught up: COCO, BPM (BEATS PER MINUTE), MUDBOUND, THE SQUARE, FACES PLACES, and many, many more.

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THE LAST JEDI Continues STAR WARS’s Winning Streak

Opening in your star system tonight:

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI

(Dir. Rian Johnson, 2017)

Warning: There may be Spoilers!

At the end of the previous Episode of STAR WARS, Stormtrooper turned Resistance (the new version of the Rebel Alliance) fighter Finn (John Boyega) was left injured and unconscious after helping to destroy the First Order’s (the new Empire) Starkiller Base (another Death Star), General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher), Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) and the rest of the good guys were mourning the death of Han Solo (Harrison Ford); while newly recruited Resistance fighter Rey (Daisy Ridley) had traveled to the planet Ahch-To to find Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamil) so that he can help bring down the bad guys.

The last shot of FORCE AWAKENS has an emotional Rey handing an old grizzled Luke his old iconic lightsaber.

So now, after two years we get Luke’s reaction to Rey’s gesture, and it doesn’t disappoint. Neither does the rest of THE LAST JEDI, the solid seventh entry in the series that satisfyingly follows through with the threads of the former film, while providing a steady stream of call backs to the original trilogy (Episodes IV-VI) that should please both the casual and hardcore fans.

The most obvious prediction about the content of THE LAST JEDI is that it’ll mirror Episode V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK as much as THE FORCE AWAKENS mirrored the first STAR WARS movie (still not calling it A NEW HOPE, dammit!).

Well, yeah, there are definite parallels - Luke channeling Yoda in training Rey to the ways of the force, Yoda himself appearing (welcome back, Frank Oz!), the reveal of a character’s lineage, and those much loved AT-AT walkers – but it has enough clever story beats and tongue-in-cheek humor needed to make those elements feel fresh.

The plot deals with the First Order achieving more power in their fight against the Resistance via being able to track their movement through hyperspace. General Leia gets harmed in an attack, and while she’s incapacitated, Laura Dern as Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo takes control to the chagrin of Poe Dameron (a cocky, returning Oscar Isaac) who’s called a “flyboy” twice by Amilyn.

Finn finds a friend in fellow Resistance member Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), who catches him trying to run away like he was planning to in Episode VII. Together they travel to a planet that has a Monte Carlo-style gambling resort to find a code breaker, but end up with the somewhat shady Benicio del Toro as an unnamed character with an odd speech impediment.

As for the rest - you know the drill: space battles, lightsaber duels, and the powerful pull of the dark side of the force fill the screen as John Williams' triumphant score bursts out of the sound system.

THE LAST JEDI has more depth, darkness, and drama than THE FORCE AWAKENS. It's a blast, even in its talky downtime, and it makes great use of its game cast.

Hamill gets his beefiest role since RETURN OF THE JEDI, and it's his best performance (yes, I've seen CORVETTE SUMMER). Ridley and Boyega make more of an impression that their first efforts, while Driver steals the show every time he appears.

However, there are a few issues. There is no backstory to the Emperor figure that is Snoke, and the reveal of who Rey’s parents are feels like an afterthought. Also, C3PO's red arm in the previous movie is never explained (I hear there's a comic that tells what happened there but I doubt I’ll ever read that).

Director and writer Johnson (BRICK, THE BROTHERS BLOOM, LOOPER) molds his style successfully into the series, and doesn't need as many wipe transitions to move the pace along, something that J.J. Abrams overdid.

As for it being Fisher’s swan song (I think, but maybe they’ve got some footage of her that will be used in the next one), it's touching to see her Leia in a more substantial role than in Episode VII. They take a big chance with her image in a surreal scene that I won't spoil - I’ll just say that it works.

Glad to see that STAR WARS continues to be back on track again as the stench of George Lucas’s awful prequels has long since faded, and the good will of the galaxy far, far away has been regained.

I’ve seen that many critics are calling it the best since EMPIRE, and I don’t disagree. Maybe the nostalgia that the member berries have triggered has blinded my judgement, but I’m happy that the franchise that dominated my childhood is yet again going good guns (or blasters).

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Elvis & STAR WARS: 40 Years Ago Today

Elvis Presley died on this date in 1977. STAR WARS was released earlier that summer.

So the big pop culture question is: did Elvis see STAR WARS?

Sadly, the answer from every source is no, he didn’t, but he wanted to. The day before he passed he was trying to obtain a print of the movie so he could watch it with his daughter, Lisa Marie. Three days before that, he had taken her, and his girlfriend Ginger Alden to see the then latest James Bond movie, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, the last film he saw at the cinema (the picture above is of them in his 1973 Stutz Blackhawk III coming back from the movie).

I posted the above blurb a year ago today on Facebook - the 39th anniversary of the King’s death - and doing new research now, I see that I wasn’t alone in wondering about whether he was able to experience the hugely popular space epic before he shuffled off this mortal coil. The STAR WARS blog, Episode Nothing, had a very similar post entitled “Did Elvis see Star Wars?”, and in 2014 the Elvis blog, elvispresleyexpert.wordpress.com, even asked “Could Star Wars have saved the life of Elvis Presley?”

As far back as 2005, the site everything2.com, also speculated about it, and pondered if the movie’s director, George Lucas, ever saw Presley in concert.

It’s too bad that one of the biggest films of all time wasn’t seen by one of the biggest performers of all time. I, of course, can’t (or don’t want to) speculate on whether if it would’ve saved him, but I bet he would’ve loved it.

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Was 2016 The Worst Year Ever For Sequels?

It sure seemed like last year was crowded with bad sequels, and it’s true – from ZOOLANDER 2 to JASON BOURNE to NOW YOU SEE ME 2 to ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS to INFERNO to BAD SANTA 2 to…okay, you get the idea – there were a whole lot of follow-up fails in 2016. But was it the worst year ever for sequels?

To answer that, let’s take a look back at sequel history. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 KKK epic BIRTH OF A NATION, may not be the first feature length film (this piece makes the case that Charles Tait’s 1906 crime drama THE STORY OF THE KELLY GANG holds that honor), but it did have the first sequel ever, THE FALL OF THE NATION, released in 1916.

Then came the first film trilogy, a horror film trilogy at that, about a clay statue called a golem that comes to life – THE GOLEM (1916), THE GOLEM AND THE DANCING GIRL (1917), and THE GOLEM: HOW HE CAME INTO THE WORLD (1920).

After that there were various film series over the next several decades including the Universal Monsters movies, the Inspector Hornleigh trilogy, the Dashiell Hammett THIN MAN series, and all those Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicello BEACH PARTY flicks in the ‘60s.

The ‘60s also gave us James Bond, a franchise that’s still going strong with its most recent installment, last year’s SPECTRE, being its 24th. The ‘60s also brought forth Sergio Leone’s DOLLARS trilogy (three classic westerns that starred Clint Eastwood as “The Man With No Name”), Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers' PINK PANTHER films, the German “Dr. Mabuse” series, and various Godzilla and King Kong movies, including one in which the two iconic creatures fought each other.

But it wasn’t until the ‘70s that sequels really became a thing. The decade hosted THE GODFATHER PART II, CLASS OF ’44 (followup to THE SUMMER OF ’42), JAWS 2, EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, FRENCH CONNECTION 2, the AIRPORT series, the PLANET OF THE APES series, the DIRTY HARRY series, and more Godzilla, Bond, and PINK PANTHER movies.

However, that was nothing compared to the ‘80s, when sequels dominated the box office, and franchises really began trending. The summer of 1980 could be considered the first big sequel summer as it boasted the first of many follow-ups to the massive sci-fi smash STAR WARS, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK; along with SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT 2, CHEECH AND CHONG’S NEXT MOVIE, HERBIE GOES BANANAS, and BON VOYAGE, CHARLIE BROWN (AND DON’T COME BACK!). 

The rest of the ‘80s was sequel crazy, with each year packed with more and more film follow-ups averaging to 10-12 sequels a year by the end of the decade. 

1989 was particularly notable as ’88 only had one sequel that was in the box office top 10 for the year (CROCODILE DUNDEE 2 – yes, really), but ’89 had four big brand franchise entries that ranked among the biggest hits of the year – INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, BACK TO THE FUTURE 2, LETHAL WEAPON 2, and GHOSTBUSTERS II. I’m really not sure why some sequels get roman numerals in their titles while others just go for plain numbers, but I digress.

The sequel thing died down a bit in the ‘90s. Not that there weren’t a lot of sequels being made (1990 had a record high of 14 sequels), but less of them made the box office top ten for their perspective years. There were only two years of the last 40 in which any sequels failed to make the yearly top 10 movies at the box office and they were in the ‘90s – 1993 and 1996. Mind you, both those years had movies in their top 10 that led to sequels (’93 had JURASSIC PARK and THE FUGITIVE, while ’96 had INDEPENDENCE DAY and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE).

In the 2000s, franchises became stronger with sequels appearing more rapidly (THE HARRY POTTER, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, and the Marvel movies particularly). A record seven sequels made the top 10 in 2003, helped by the fact that there were two MATRIX movies that year. That was out of the nearly 20 sequels that were released in ’03.

After that, every year until now sequels made up half or more of the annual box office top 10 lists. 2011, which set the record for the most sequels to date (26), had nine sequels in the top 10 (the only non sequel that year was THE SMURFS, another that led to a sequel).

This has been the norm with every year following bringing around 30 sequels, a handful of which that are among the biggest box office draws.

In 2016, the two sequels I enjoyed the most, CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, and FINDING DORY, were also the two biggest grossing films of the year. The rest of the top 10 was made up of spin-offs (ROGUE ONE, FANTASTIC BEASTS, DEADPOOL, and SUICIDE SQUAD), a remake (THE JUNGLE BOOK), with only two original entities – the animated hits ZOOTOPIA and THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS in the mix. Oh, and #6 at the box office, BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, which wasn’t technically a sequel, but it’s sort of difficult to not think of it as one.

In tallying up sequels from the last 40 years, 1994 stands out as a particularly bad year as there was only one sequel in the box office top 10 – CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, the third installment of the Jack Ryan series, and it just got in under the wire at #10. CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER was well reviewed – it stands at 82% on the Rotten Tamatometer, but the rest of that year was littered with a dozen horribly panned, low grossing sequels including BEVERLY HILLS COP III (really? That gets a roman numeral?), CITY SLICKERS 2: THE SEARCH FOR CURLY’S GOLD, THE NEXT KARATE KID, D2: THE MIGHTY DUCKS, HIGHLANDER III: THE SORCERER, MAJOR LEAGUE II, MY GIRL 2, NAKED GUN 33⅓: THE FINAL INSULT, THE NEVER ENDING STORY III, and DEATH WISH V: THE FACE OF DEATH, which got a 0% on the Rotten Tomatometer.

But by sheer quantity alone, 2016 crushes 1994. While it had a number of sequels that weren’t bad – i.e. both box office and critical-wise – including THE CONJURING 2, BRIDGET JONES’S BABY, NEIGHBORS 2: SORORITY RISING, and STAR TREK BEYOND – there was an unbearable slew of follow-up failures including ZOOLANDER 2, LONDON HAS FALLEN, MY BIG FAT WEDDING 2, GOD’S NOT DEAD 2, THE HUNTSMAN: WINTER’S WAR, X-MEN: APOCALYPSE, ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, NOW YOU SEE ME 2, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS, INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE, THE PURGE: ELECTION DAY, JASON BOURNE, ICE AGE: COLLISION COURSE, MECHANIC: RESURRECTION, RIDE ALONG 2, JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK, BOO! A MADEA HALLOWEEN, and BAD SANTA 2.

That’s six bad sequels more than ’94, and several more than every other year.

So, in my book, or on my blog, 2016 definitely comes in as the worst year for sequels in film history. Sure, that’s another reason to be happy that the year is over, but, as people keep point out on other fronts (especially politically), 2017 doesn’t look like it's gong to be much better.

There’s nearly three dozen sequels scheduled for the next 12 months including more STAR WARS, KONG, ALIENS, Marvel superheroes, DC superheroes, Universal Monsters, TRANSFORMERS, SAW, SMURFS, APES, and that hugely anticipated, but largely feared BLADE RUNNER sequel. No doubt, 2017 has powerful potential to destroy 2016’s worst year for sequels record.

So be afraid, be very afraid – and Happy New Year!

More later…