CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
After Maul refuses to help him with some deadbeats.
Troll Kingdom
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Hello I'm Going To Watch All of Star Wars
- Thread starter The Tomtrek
- Start date
The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
Episodes 312 & 313 - Ghosts of Geonosis
The crew of the Ghost are on a top secret mission from Bail Organa himself (it's nice to see Bail again)! They're to visit Geonosis and rescue a Rebel squad that has lost communication. They went there to investigate the planet after the Ghost found it abandoned (in "The Honourable Ones" last season) - led by no other than Saw Gererra!
From the off you can tell that this is going to be one of those "filling in the lore gaps" episodes - something that Clone Wars did all the time, but Rebels doesn't do as much.
Exploring the caverns beneath Geonosis, Kanan, Rex Ezra and Chopper come under attack by battle droids! While it was only a couple of episodes ago that they ran into Battle Droids before (and 'ended the Clone War') I guess if they're going to find more of them on any planet in the galaxy, Geonosis makes the most sense. Plus, as we soon learn, they're being controlled by a surviving Geonosian so they're not really the same as the crazy still-Separatist Droids we saw before.
They're rescued by Saw Gererra! Saw's changed a lot since the last time we saw him, in Season 5 of The Clone Wars: He's cut his hair! He's grown a beard! He's changed the colour of his eyes! He sounds a lot like Forest Whitaker!
I actually quite like Whitaker in this role. Saw here isn't totally crazy-go-nuts like we'd later see him, but there's something in Whitaker's performance that makes him seem just a bit too odd. Maybe it's the weird
pauses he puts in his sentences, or his crazy 'eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh' laugh that goes on way too long, but you get the feeling that there's something really wrong with this guy. But at the same time, he still feels like the same character we saw in Clone Wars, just one that's had 17 years of fighting under the Empire. In this episode we see how Saw is a much more extreme Rebel compared to the crew of the Ghost (something Agent Kallus alluded to to Zeb when they were on that moon), and it's good that they do that as it helps show that the Rebel alliance is, at this point, a collection of separate groups who may have totally different ideals when it comes to fighting against the Empire.
We see this most of all when they find the Geonosian who was controlling the droids, who Ezra (REALLY PATRONISINGLY) nicknames "Klik-Klak". Saw is desperate to find out from Klik-Klak what the Empire was building on Geonosis, and call Klik-Klak can do is just draw this 'circle in a circle':
WHAT COULD IT BE? WHAT COULD IT BE?
Seriously though, this is a really neat way to tell the audience what's going on, but without tipping off the characters. We know it's the Death Star because we know what the Death Star looks like (even if I were viewing this from a strictly chronological point of view, we'd still know what it is because of the plans Poggle gave to Dooku at the end of Attack of the Clones) - but the characters in the show have no idea what that means (and Klik-Klak can't just tell them) so they remain blissfully unaware as to what it means.
It should be noted that while all this is happening Sabine and Zeb are out on the surface of Geonosis salvaging a shield generator's power core (that Klik-Klak was presumably using to shield himself??). It's a total filler b-story, but there's some nice interactions between Sabine and Zeb, and they also get to fight Battle Droids.
As it turns out, the thing Klik-Klak was protecting was a Geonosian Queen egg, possibly the last chance his species has to survive. It's actually quite impressive how sympathetic this show makes a Geonosian, who have previously only been shown as evil bug creatures. Really, making the point that Geonosians are actual intelligent people who are as deserving of life as anyone else really re-contextualises their previous appearances - were they a swarm of evil bug people, or just people trying to defend their planet from an invading army? ('a bit of both' is really the only answer here).
The first half of this episode is basically just there to introduce us to Saw and Klik-Klak and the mystery of what happened to Geonosis. It's got a nice slow build-up - helped by the fact that this is a double length episode - with the Sabine/Zeb stuff keeping it interesting. In the second half of the episode, though, we go almost pure action as The Empire arrives!
There's really no good reason why the Empire arrives other than to make the episode more interesting, but they do! I just want to highlight the Captain of the Light Cruiser in this episode: Captain Brunson:
Not only is she a slightly more three-dimensional Captain than the standard Officer of the week, but (if I can put my political hat on for a moment) it's great that this is now the third woman of colour working for the Empire that Lucasfilm have introduced into the new canon (after Rae Sloane and Ciena Ree) and that's just great to see.
But yeah, I really really like everything in the latter part of this episode. From the Ghost going down into one of the Geonosian sinkholes to rescue Kanan and pals, to them being assaulted by Stormtroopers in Jetpacks while still in the middle of the sinkhole, to Sabine being the most awesome we have ever seen her been (and that's saying something) by getting out HER NEW JETPACK (that she stole back in "Imperial Super Commandos") and KICKING EVERYONE'S ASS while the rest of the crew watch (and Kanan just asks what's going on because he's blind). It's great. Sabine's great. This isn't even a Sabine episode but she still gets great shit to do.
We also finally find out what happened to Geonosis! Namely, after the Empire built whatever it was building (IT'S THE DEATH STAR) they gassed the entire planet, killing almost all of the Geonosians. Again, it's another chance to show how evil the Empire actually is, in this case committing genocide. The crew plan to take these back as proof... but they lose them while escaping. To be fair, that's only because they escape by flying through the light cruiser as it explodes so that's fair enough!
Despite this, everything ends well. Klik-Klak gets to stay on Geonosis with his queen egg, and Saw is rescued.
I really like this episode - I think out of all of the extended episodes we've had so far this is one that really makes use of the extra time well. It lets us have a nice build up in the first half, and gives a lot of time for the action sequences in the second. But it does have some flaws. While we get to see Saw Gererra show his extremes by threatening to take Klik-Klak and the egg away by himself for questioning, this basically gets forgotten as soon as the Empire arrives. And I do have problems with how Ezra treats Klik-Klak, but that's more of an "Ezra is an idiot" thing.
BUT YEAH, overall this is great. It neatly works in various elements of the Star Was universe together and sets up something big that won't get paid off until... a film that was already released by the time this episode aired. Oh. Star Wars!
Episode 312 - Warhead
The Empire is sending out strange pods across the galaxy... full of droids! One lands of Atollon and makes it's way towards Chopper base...
The droid itself is one of the cool protocol droids based off Ralph McQuarrie's original design for C-3PO. In a nice touch, he gets attacked by the spiders on Atollon (also based on a McQuarrie design) for some hot McQuarrie on McQuarrie action.
Meanwhile the crew of the Ghost leave Zeb behind in charge, with Chopper and AP-5. AP-5 seems... really bitchy? Like previously he's always been dry and sarcastic, but now he's just straight up insulting Zeb. It's weird.
The plot of this episode is as basic as it gets: Zeb brings back the droid, it turns evils, they fight it, they capture it, they send it back and it explodes.
That's sort of the problem of this episode... it's a bit simple. It originally started off as a b-plot, with what will be the next episode ("Trials of the Darksaber") as the a-plot, but they were then both expanded out into individual episodes. Only the thing is they didn't really add a lot to this episode to make it feel like the plot can actually support itself.
Don't get me wrong, when the infiltrator droid attacks it's a good sequence, borrowing heavily from various films such as Aliens and Predator in the feel it's trying to get across (the droid has a self destruct countdown that's 100% taken from Predator). It's a fun sequence, but it's just that. It attacks, they beat it, the end.
BUT I do like seeing Zeb actually in charge of things. There's been a subtle shift in Zeb's character since the start of the season; he's started to act a bit more mature (he rarely fights with Ezra like a teenager like he used to) and has actually been very effective in what he does. This episode is a great example of that, where he is able to take charge of the situation and not only sucessfully capture the droid but work out the best thing to do with it - namely send it back to the Empire with it's self destruct counting down so that it blows up the Star Destroyer it returns to. And it works! Good work, Zeb.
This episode isn't terrible, I just wish there was something more to it. Maybe make the droid a bit more threatening, or hell even have a b-plot. Multiple episodes this season have had cutaways to other members of the cast doing something while main plot is going on and while it does seem like filler at the time, this episode shows exactly why that stuff is needed.
THAT'S IT. I'M CALLING IT. I'm up to date with Rebels and I don't want to wait a week for each new episode to review so I'm moving on! I might even get to watch a 'Star Wars' film sometime soon!
The crew of the Ghost are on a top secret mission from Bail Organa himself (it's nice to see Bail again)! They're to visit Geonosis and rescue a Rebel squad that has lost communication. They went there to investigate the planet after the Ghost found it abandoned (in "The Honourable Ones" last season) - led by no other than Saw Gererra!
From the off you can tell that this is going to be one of those "filling in the lore gaps" episodes - something that Clone Wars did all the time, but Rebels doesn't do as much.
Exploring the caverns beneath Geonosis, Kanan, Rex Ezra and Chopper come under attack by battle droids! While it was only a couple of episodes ago that they ran into Battle Droids before (and 'ended the Clone War') I guess if they're going to find more of them on any planet in the galaxy, Geonosis makes the most sense. Plus, as we soon learn, they're being controlled by a surviving Geonosian so they're not really the same as the crazy still-Separatist Droids we saw before.
They're rescued by Saw Gererra! Saw's changed a lot since the last time we saw him, in Season 5 of The Clone Wars: He's cut his hair! He's grown a beard! He's changed the colour of his eyes! He sounds a lot like Forest Whitaker!
I actually quite like Whitaker in this role. Saw here isn't totally crazy-go-nuts like we'd later see him, but there's something in Whitaker's performance that makes him seem just a bit too odd. Maybe it's the weird
pauses he puts in his sentences, or his crazy 'eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh' laugh that goes on way too long, but you get the feeling that there's something really wrong with this guy. But at the same time, he still feels like the same character we saw in Clone Wars, just one that's had 17 years of fighting under the Empire. In this episode we see how Saw is a much more extreme Rebel compared to the crew of the Ghost (something Agent Kallus alluded to to Zeb when they were on that moon), and it's good that they do that as it helps show that the Rebel alliance is, at this point, a collection of separate groups who may have totally different ideals when it comes to fighting against the Empire.
We see this most of all when they find the Geonosian who was controlling the droids, who Ezra (REALLY PATRONISINGLY) nicknames "Klik-Klak". Saw is desperate to find out from Klik-Klak what the Empire was building on Geonosis, and call Klik-Klak can do is just draw this 'circle in a circle':
WHAT COULD IT BE? WHAT COULD IT BE?
Seriously though, this is a really neat way to tell the audience what's going on, but without tipping off the characters. We know it's the Death Star because we know what the Death Star looks like (even if I were viewing this from a strictly chronological point of view, we'd still know what it is because of the plans Poggle gave to Dooku at the end of Attack of the Clones) - but the characters in the show have no idea what that means (and Klik-Klak can't just tell them) so they remain blissfully unaware as to what it means.
It should be noted that while all this is happening Sabine and Zeb are out on the surface of Geonosis salvaging a shield generator's power core (that Klik-Klak was presumably using to shield himself??). It's a total filler b-story, but there's some nice interactions between Sabine and Zeb, and they also get to fight Battle Droids.
As it turns out, the thing Klik-Klak was protecting was a Geonosian Queen egg, possibly the last chance his species has to survive. It's actually quite impressive how sympathetic this show makes a Geonosian, who have previously only been shown as evil bug creatures. Really, making the point that Geonosians are actual intelligent people who are as deserving of life as anyone else really re-contextualises their previous appearances - were they a swarm of evil bug people, or just people trying to defend their planet from an invading army? ('a bit of both' is really the only answer here).
The first half of this episode is basically just there to introduce us to Saw and Klik-Klak and the mystery of what happened to Geonosis. It's got a nice slow build-up - helped by the fact that this is a double length episode - with the Sabine/Zeb stuff keeping it interesting. In the second half of the episode, though, we go almost pure action as The Empire arrives!
There's really no good reason why the Empire arrives other than to make the episode more interesting, but they do! I just want to highlight the Captain of the Light Cruiser in this episode: Captain Brunson:
Not only is she a slightly more three-dimensional Captain than the standard Officer of the week, but (if I can put my political hat on for a moment) it's great that this is now the third woman of colour working for the Empire that Lucasfilm have introduced into the new canon (after Rae Sloane and Ciena Ree) and that's just great to see.
But yeah, I really really like everything in the latter part of this episode. From the Ghost going down into one of the Geonosian sinkholes to rescue Kanan and pals, to them being assaulted by Stormtroopers in Jetpacks while still in the middle of the sinkhole, to Sabine being the most awesome we have ever seen her been (and that's saying something) by getting out HER NEW JETPACK (that she stole back in "Imperial Super Commandos") and KICKING EVERYONE'S ASS while the rest of the crew watch (and Kanan just asks what's going on because he's blind). It's great. Sabine's great. This isn't even a Sabine episode but she still gets great shit to do.
We also finally find out what happened to Geonosis! Namely, after the Empire built whatever it was building (IT'S THE DEATH STAR) they gassed the entire planet, killing almost all of the Geonosians. Again, it's another chance to show how evil the Empire actually is, in this case committing genocide. The crew plan to take these back as proof... but they lose them while escaping. To be fair, that's only because they escape by flying through the light cruiser as it explodes so that's fair enough!
Despite this, everything ends well. Klik-Klak gets to stay on Geonosis with his queen egg, and Saw is rescued.
I really like this episode - I think out of all of the extended episodes we've had so far this is one that really makes use of the extra time well. It lets us have a nice build up in the first half, and gives a lot of time for the action sequences in the second. But it does have some flaws. While we get to see Saw Gererra show his extremes by threatening to take Klik-Klak and the egg away by himself for questioning, this basically gets forgotten as soon as the Empire arrives. And I do have problems with how Ezra treats Klik-Klak, but that's more of an "Ezra is an idiot" thing.
BUT YEAH, overall this is great. It neatly works in various elements of the Star Was universe together and sets up something big that won't get paid off until... a film that was already released by the time this episode aired. Oh. Star Wars!
Episode 312 - Warhead
The Empire is sending out strange pods across the galaxy... full of droids! One lands of Atollon and makes it's way towards Chopper base...
The droid itself is one of the cool protocol droids based off Ralph McQuarrie's original design for C-3PO. In a nice touch, he gets attacked by the spiders on Atollon (also based on a McQuarrie design) for some hot McQuarrie on McQuarrie action.
Meanwhile the crew of the Ghost leave Zeb behind in charge, with Chopper and AP-5. AP-5 seems... really bitchy? Like previously he's always been dry and sarcastic, but now he's just straight up insulting Zeb. It's weird.
The plot of this episode is as basic as it gets: Zeb brings back the droid, it turns evils, they fight it, they capture it, they send it back and it explodes.
That's sort of the problem of this episode... it's a bit simple. It originally started off as a b-plot, with what will be the next episode ("Trials of the Darksaber") as the a-plot, but they were then both expanded out into individual episodes. Only the thing is they didn't really add a lot to this episode to make it feel like the plot can actually support itself.
Don't get me wrong, when the infiltrator droid attacks it's a good sequence, borrowing heavily from various films such as Aliens and Predator in the feel it's trying to get across (the droid has a self destruct countdown that's 100% taken from Predator). It's a fun sequence, but it's just that. It attacks, they beat it, the end.
BUT I do like seeing Zeb actually in charge of things. There's been a subtle shift in Zeb's character since the start of the season; he's started to act a bit more mature (he rarely fights with Ezra like a teenager like he used to) and has actually been very effective in what he does. This episode is a great example of that, where he is able to take charge of the situation and not only sucessfully capture the droid but work out the best thing to do with it - namely send it back to the Empire with it's self destruct counting down so that it blows up the Star Destroyer it returns to. And it works! Good work, Zeb.
This episode isn't terrible, I just wish there was something more to it. Maybe make the droid a bit more threatening, or hell even have a b-plot. Multiple episodes this season have had cutaways to other members of the cast doing something while main plot is going on and while it does seem like filler at the time, this episode shows exactly why that stuff is needed.
THAT'S IT. I'M CALLING IT. I'm up to date with Rebels and I don't want to wait a week for each new episode to review so I'm moving on! I might even get to watch a 'Star Wars' film sometime soon!
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
I can't wait to post my HOT TAKE on Rogue One!
The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
Rogue One
As such, it means that the film can be a lot more loose with it's style - it's not beholden to the 1930's Space Serial Homage format that Lucas started in 1977, and is allowed to be more modern, and tonally different - easily shown with the fact that it has no opening crawl.
One of the things it throws into the mix is a prelude - set before the main story (only a couple of years after the end of Revenge of the Sith) - but that prelude encapsulates this films style in a nutshell: it's shot in a much more energetic and modern style than Lucas', but at the same time we see things very familiar to us - namely the interior of the Erso's house which was deliberately designed to be reminiscent of the Lars homestead on Tatooine (complete with blue milk).
And that style carries us through most of the film. Gareth Edwards shows us everything we know from 'Star Wars' (and Rebels) but shown in a slightly different light - a more realistic and (dare I say it) 'grittier' way. And it works... mostly. There are some times when Edwards just says "fuck it" and goes full on 1977, though.
As for the actual story... it's OK. The story hangs around the characters, all of which are realised to different degrees of success. Jyn obviously gets the most time, and while the connection with her father works, and works as essentially the backbone of the story, her arc doesn't quite come together properly. She starts off being totally separated from both the Rebels and the Empire, and only joins in with the mission because it's to do with her father... only to become anti-Rebel when her father is killed (by the rebels, which she specifically states in the film). This is fine, only about two scenes later she's giving impassioned speeches about how the Rebels must fight the Death Star and Rebellions are built on hope... and her grievances with the Rebellion are never mentioned again.
It's also kind of annoying that despite the fact that she watches Krennic kill her mother in the opening scene, she never really displays any kind of emotion towards him or even thinks about him as an issue throughout the whole film. In fact, the only interaction they have is when she tells him who she is, just before he's shot by another character. She doesn't even get to shoot him! Since by it's design this film could never give a proper resolution to the Death Star part of the story, having Jyn get some sort of revenge on Krennic would have been a good way to at least get some sort of closure for her character, but as it is now she doesn't really get to have that.
Cassian is good, he's a great example of a darker side of the Rebel Alliance that we've never really seen before, complete with him killing unarmed Rebel Agents. He has a dark past that's only alluded to, which is fine because this isn't really his story. He goes through a change of heart when he doesn't kill Galen Erso, which again doesn't really get explained other than "he doesn't want to be bad any more". It's not as big as a problem for his character as, again, this isn't his story.
K-2SO is a great comedy droid that fits in well with droids like Chopper and AP-5. Alan Tudyk basically plays him as a sarcastic C-3PO and that's fine! He also looks cool. He's not a vitally important part of the plot but it's nice that he's there.
Chirrut and Baze are... there? Donnie Yen is great, and manages to add a lot of humour to a character that could have just been a really generic blind ninja monk. Jiang Wen as Baze Malbus isn't nearly as interesting, and the only thing that actually makes us care about his character at all is how Chirrut relates to him - nothing really about the character itself. I do like that by being "Guardians of the Whills" they offer a new look at a group of force wielders (or worshippers?) that aren't Jedi. We've come across examples of non-Jedi force users before, such as the Nightsisters, or Ahsoka, but this is the first time we see it as a fully fledged religion. It's nice that in order to do that they borrow from the earlier drafts of Star Wars, bringing in concepts like the "Whills" and the phrase "May the force of others be with you".
Bodhi Rook actually gets his own nice little arc, going from a desperate ex-Imperial pilot to a full member of the Rebellion. That's all he really gets to do, though!
So while all of the crew of "Rogue One" (the ship, not the film) are in themselves pretty good, the trouble is that they never seem to feel like they're actually part of a group together. Characters don't really talk to each other outside of explaining the plot, and you never really get the sense of them getting closer and more trustworthy of each other. At the end, when they all volunteer to go on what could be (and is) a suicide mission they don't seem to join Jyn because of the development of their relationships over the film, but just because they happen to be the main characters so I guess they should probably go. The worst example of this is when Baze Malbus calls Jyn 'little sister' at the end when they've literally spoken about two lines to each other throughout the film.
So Saw Gererra's back! And he's crazy! Well, he was already slightly crazy in Rebels but now it's totally lost it. Also his eyes have changed colour again. I feel like they were trying to do something with Saw in this film, but either they never worked out what it was. He's obviously meant to represent a more extreme version of the Rebellion... to make the Rebellion look better? But this film also shows us a dark side to the Rebels, so that doesn't really work. Is it to show that sometimes people fighting oppressive systems can be just as bad as the thing they're fighting? No?? I mean we see how civilians on Jedha are caught in the crossfire between Saw's group and the Empire but the film never really goes into that. They also set up some really obvious parallels between Saw and Darth Vader, complete with them now being part mechanical and relying on aid for breathing, but again they don't really do anything with this parallel. Forest Whitaker gives an interesting performance as Saw, to the point where I really can't tell if he's being really good at playing a crazy person or just terrible at acting. Since he played a more sane version of Saw pretty well in Rebels, I'd go with the former.
Krennic. Krennic is great! I like that he's not just another boring Admiral with a grand master plan who's evil for evil's sake. Instead he's just a guy who wants his boss to recognise his work so he can get a promotion, but that asshole Wilhuff keeps getting in his way! I love that he tries to complain to Vader about Tarkin and it totally doesn't work (because Vader and Tarkin are total bros). While they didn't play up the Jyn angle as much as they could, I love the fact that in the end he's killed by Tarkin because he was just getting in the way too much and trying to take the credit for the Death Star.
The first half of this film feels a bit disjointed, with characters going from planet to planet for no real reason. The stuff in Saw's base is also full of some stuff that I'm not sure is even there - namely the weird truth telling squid thing. Why is it there? Why do they say it'll destroy Bodhi's mind when he's fine about 10 minutes later? Why do they make such a big thing of it? I guess they wanted to show Saw's group use techniques that are too 'extreme' for normal Rebels, but didn't want to go as far as showing, say, torture, so they just went with a big useless squid thing instead.
Everything gets much better once we get to Scarif, especially because the battle scene in the third act is amazing. It's basically just Gareth Evans getting to play with his Star Wars toys using technology that he never would have had before, and as such there are some great sequences of ships crashing into the shield wall, ships pushing other ships into other ships to crash down in the shield gate, and this...
It's fun as hell as it's great to see what Star Wars with modern effects can really look like (they sort of did this with The Force Awakens, sure, but it's much more effective here).
So how does it fit in with everything that's come before it? Well, unsurprisingly, very very well. Rogue One is rare in that it's a Star Wars film set mid-continuity that was made fully aware of everything that came before it and everything that came after it. Revenge of the Sith was also like this back in the day when we thought that was the last Star Wars film and - pffft - like they'd ever do a Star Wars TV show!
But Rogue One now has the opportunity to have the little details that connects it to everything else, from Rebels references (including a Chopper cameo!) and Clone Wars references (Saw Gerrera), to returning characters from the prequels with Bail Organa (and technically Mon Mothma), to nods forwards like, well, everything in the last two minutes of the film.
Tarkin is there! I've seen the film a few times now and I still don't find the CGI distracting (although it is noticeable). Tarkin didn't really have to be in this film, but it's good that they went to the extra effort to put him in as the rivalry between and Krennic, and of course helps tie the film to both Rebels and Star Wars.
Vader is there! I like his cool castle on Mustafar, and the fact that he chills out in bacta when not in his suit. His scene with Krennic does seem a bit useless, more of an excuse to have a scene with Vader in order to justify his appearance at the end. But yeah his appearance at the end is amazing, so whatever.
Bail Organa's here! Again, he's a nice tie in with the prequels, Clone Wars and Rebels, and they even dragged Jimmy Smits back in to play him. He's pretty much there only to make those ties to what's come before, and also to drop hints at the plans he has for an "old Jedi friend".
R2 and 3PO have a cameo! It's good that they're here as they are both the torch-bearers for the Star Wars universe. The cameo isn't bad, but if you ask me I think it would have been better if we just saw them on the Tantive IV at the end.
This film is, generally, a really fun watch, but with a few problems. The biggest problem with this film is that it tries to have it both ways. It tries to be a separate self contained "Star Wars story" at the same time it's also trying to be a loving direct prequel (and it is a prequel) to Star Wars.
This is most obvious in the ending. If this were really just a 'Star Wars story' as it claimed to be, then it would have ended right as Cassian and Jyn died. They're the characters of this story, so it ends with them. But it doesn't, it continues on so we can get Darth Vader Fucking Things Up and crazy-faced Princess Leia speeding off into the start of the next film. It's 100% there because they wanted to tie things up with Star Wars, and while I like all of those scenes and they are amazing fan service, they aren't really a part of the story.
In the context of this film on it's own, we have no idea who Leia is. We can maybe guess that she's the person Bail is talking about, but he talks in such vague terms that we can't do that for sure. But the fact remains is that they were so desperate to tie this in directly with Star Wars that it hurts the independence of this film. I don't think it hurts it so much that it makes it a bad film, it's just the film is never sure if it wants to show us a new version of the Star Wars universe or give us nostalgia and show us exactly what we saw in 1977.
So overall, I like Rogue One. It's flawed, especially in the character and plot department, and it has it's problems standing as it's own film, but there's enough good about it that makes up for that. On the whole, Rogue One is a film where the whole isn't quite the sum of it's parts. It's a lot of (really good) moments, both new and referential, that sort of but not quite come together to make an exciting and engaging Star Wars film. It would be weird to just sit down and watch Rogue One on it's own, because most of it's entire plot is resolved in a totally different film. But if you're like me and are watching everything in order? It's perfect for that.
Fun fact: It's really hard to find screencaptures of Rogue One for scenes that are actually in the film!
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...
Rogue One is the first of the "Star Wars Stories" - films set not as a part of the main Star Wars narrative, but side stories that (at least in theory) stand on their own.
As such, it means that the film can be a lot more loose with it's style - it's not beholden to the 1930's Space Serial Homage format that Lucas started in 1977, and is allowed to be more modern, and tonally different - easily shown with the fact that it has no opening crawl.
One of the things it throws into the mix is a prelude - set before the main story (only a couple of years after the end of Revenge of the Sith) - but that prelude encapsulates this films style in a nutshell: it's shot in a much more energetic and modern style than Lucas', but at the same time we see things very familiar to us - namely the interior of the Erso's house which was deliberately designed to be reminiscent of the Lars homestead on Tatooine (complete with blue milk).
And that style carries us through most of the film. Gareth Edwards shows us everything we know from 'Star Wars' (and Rebels) but shown in a slightly different light - a more realistic and (dare I say it) 'grittier' way. And it works... mostly. There are some times when Edwards just says "fuck it" and goes full on 1977, though.
As for the actual story... it's OK. The story hangs around the characters, all of which are realised to different degrees of success. Jyn obviously gets the most time, and while the connection with her father works, and works as essentially the backbone of the story, her arc doesn't quite come together properly. She starts off being totally separated from both the Rebels and the Empire, and only joins in with the mission because it's to do with her father... only to become anti-Rebel when her father is killed (by the rebels, which she specifically states in the film). This is fine, only about two scenes later she's giving impassioned speeches about how the Rebels must fight the Death Star and Rebellions are built on hope... and her grievances with the Rebellion are never mentioned again.
It's also kind of annoying that despite the fact that she watches Krennic kill her mother in the opening scene, she never really displays any kind of emotion towards him or even thinks about him as an issue throughout the whole film. In fact, the only interaction they have is when she tells him who she is, just before he's shot by another character. She doesn't even get to shoot him! Since by it's design this film could never give a proper resolution to the Death Star part of the story, having Jyn get some sort of revenge on Krennic would have been a good way to at least get some sort of closure for her character, but as it is now she doesn't really get to have that.
Cassian is good, he's a great example of a darker side of the Rebel Alliance that we've never really seen before, complete with him killing unarmed Rebel Agents. He has a dark past that's only alluded to, which is fine because this isn't really his story. He goes through a change of heart when he doesn't kill Galen Erso, which again doesn't really get explained other than "he doesn't want to be bad any more". It's not as big as a problem for his character as, again, this isn't his story.
K-2SO is a great comedy droid that fits in well with droids like Chopper and AP-5. Alan Tudyk basically plays him as a sarcastic C-3PO and that's fine! He also looks cool. He's not a vitally important part of the plot but it's nice that he's there.
Chirrut and Baze are... there? Donnie Yen is great, and manages to add a lot of humour to a character that could have just been a really generic blind ninja monk. Jiang Wen as Baze Malbus isn't nearly as interesting, and the only thing that actually makes us care about his character at all is how Chirrut relates to him - nothing really about the character itself. I do like that by being "Guardians of the Whills" they offer a new look at a group of force wielders (or worshippers?) that aren't Jedi. We've come across examples of non-Jedi force users before, such as the Nightsisters, or Ahsoka, but this is the first time we see it as a fully fledged religion. It's nice that in order to do that they borrow from the earlier drafts of Star Wars, bringing in concepts like the "Whills" and the phrase "May the force of others be with you".
Bodhi Rook actually gets his own nice little arc, going from a desperate ex-Imperial pilot to a full member of the Rebellion. That's all he really gets to do, though!
So while all of the crew of "Rogue One" (the ship, not the film) are in themselves pretty good, the trouble is that they never seem to feel like they're actually part of a group together. Characters don't really talk to each other outside of explaining the plot, and you never really get the sense of them getting closer and more trustworthy of each other. At the end, when they all volunteer to go on what could be (and is) a suicide mission they don't seem to join Jyn because of the development of their relationships over the film, but just because they happen to be the main characters so I guess they should probably go. The worst example of this is when Baze Malbus calls Jyn 'little sister' at the end when they've literally spoken about two lines to each other throughout the film.
So Saw Gererra's back! And he's crazy! Well, he was already slightly crazy in Rebels but now it's totally lost it. Also his eyes have changed colour again. I feel like they were trying to do something with Saw in this film, but either they never worked out what it was. He's obviously meant to represent a more extreme version of the Rebellion... to make the Rebellion look better? But this film also shows us a dark side to the Rebels, so that doesn't really work. Is it to show that sometimes people fighting oppressive systems can be just as bad as the thing they're fighting? No?? I mean we see how civilians on Jedha are caught in the crossfire between Saw's group and the Empire but the film never really goes into that. They also set up some really obvious parallels between Saw and Darth Vader, complete with them now being part mechanical and relying on aid for breathing, but again they don't really do anything with this parallel. Forest Whitaker gives an interesting performance as Saw, to the point where I really can't tell if he's being really good at playing a crazy person or just terrible at acting. Since he played a more sane version of Saw pretty well in Rebels, I'd go with the former.
Krennic. Krennic is great! I like that he's not just another boring Admiral with a grand master plan who's evil for evil's sake. Instead he's just a guy who wants his boss to recognise his work so he can get a promotion, but that asshole Wilhuff keeps getting in his way! I love that he tries to complain to Vader about Tarkin and it totally doesn't work (because Vader and Tarkin are total bros). While they didn't play up the Jyn angle as much as they could, I love the fact that in the end he's killed by Tarkin because he was just getting in the way too much and trying to take the credit for the Death Star.
The first half of this film feels a bit disjointed, with characters going from planet to planet for no real reason. The stuff in Saw's base is also full of some stuff that I'm not sure is even there - namely the weird truth telling squid thing. Why is it there? Why do they say it'll destroy Bodhi's mind when he's fine about 10 minutes later? Why do they make such a big thing of it? I guess they wanted to show Saw's group use techniques that are too 'extreme' for normal Rebels, but didn't want to go as far as showing, say, torture, so they just went with a big useless squid thing instead.
Everything gets much better once we get to Scarif, especially because the battle scene in the third act is amazing. It's basically just Gareth Evans getting to play with his Star Wars toys using technology that he never would have had before, and as such there are some great sequences of ships crashing into the shield wall, ships pushing other ships into other ships to crash down in the shield gate, and this...
It's fun as hell as it's great to see what Star Wars with modern effects can really look like (they sort of did this with The Force Awakens, sure, but it's much more effective here).
So how does it fit in with everything that's come before it? Well, unsurprisingly, very very well. Rogue One is rare in that it's a Star Wars film set mid-continuity that was made fully aware of everything that came before it and everything that came after it. Revenge of the Sith was also like this back in the day when we thought that was the last Star Wars film and - pffft - like they'd ever do a Star Wars TV show!
But Rogue One now has the opportunity to have the little details that connects it to everything else, from Rebels references (including a Chopper cameo!) and Clone Wars references (Saw Gerrera), to returning characters from the prequels with Bail Organa (and technically Mon Mothma), to nods forwards like, well, everything in the last two minutes of the film.
Tarkin is there! I've seen the film a few times now and I still don't find the CGI distracting (although it is noticeable). Tarkin didn't really have to be in this film, but it's good that they went to the extra effort to put him in as the rivalry between and Krennic, and of course helps tie the film to both Rebels and Star Wars.
Vader is there! I like his cool castle on Mustafar, and the fact that he chills out in bacta when not in his suit. His scene with Krennic does seem a bit useless, more of an excuse to have a scene with Vader in order to justify his appearance at the end. But yeah his appearance at the end is amazing, so whatever.
Bail Organa's here! Again, he's a nice tie in with the prequels, Clone Wars and Rebels, and they even dragged Jimmy Smits back in to play him. He's pretty much there only to make those ties to what's come before, and also to drop hints at the plans he has for an "old Jedi friend".
R2 and 3PO have a cameo! It's good that they're here as they are both the torch-bearers for the Star Wars universe. The cameo isn't bad, but if you ask me I think it would have been better if we just saw them on the Tantive IV at the end.
This film is, generally, a really fun watch, but with a few problems. The biggest problem with this film is that it tries to have it both ways. It tries to be a separate self contained "Star Wars story" at the same time it's also trying to be a loving direct prequel (and it is a prequel) to Star Wars.
This is most obvious in the ending. If this were really just a 'Star Wars story' as it claimed to be, then it would have ended right as Cassian and Jyn died. They're the characters of this story, so it ends with them. But it doesn't, it continues on so we can get Darth Vader Fucking Things Up and crazy-faced Princess Leia speeding off into the start of the next film. It's 100% there because they wanted to tie things up with Star Wars, and while I like all of those scenes and they are amazing fan service, they aren't really a part of the story.
In the context of this film on it's own, we have no idea who Leia is. We can maybe guess that she's the person Bail is talking about, but he talks in such vague terms that we can't do that for sure. But the fact remains is that they were so desperate to tie this in directly with Star Wars that it hurts the independence of this film. I don't think it hurts it so much that it makes it a bad film, it's just the film is never sure if it wants to show us a new version of the Star Wars universe or give us nostalgia and show us exactly what we saw in 1977.
So overall, I like Rogue One. It's flawed, especially in the character and plot department, and it has it's problems standing as it's own film, but there's enough good about it that makes up for that. On the whole, Rogue One is a film where the whole isn't quite the sum of it's parts. It's a lot of (really good) moments, both new and referential, that sort of but not quite come together to make an exciting and engaging Star Wars film. It would be weird to just sit down and watch Rogue One on it's own, because most of it's entire plot is resolved in a totally different film. But if you're like me and are watching everything in order? It's perfect for that.
Fun fact: It's really hard to find screencaptures of Rogue One for scenes that are actually in the film!
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
I liked Rogue One when I watched it (which is probably the most important thing for a movie, really!) but some of the reactions to it seem a bit...over the top? Like I don't want to call something "overrated" or tell people they're wrong for liking something more than I did. But I keep seeing people saying "it was the best Star Wars movie since TESB!" online and it makes me feel like I'm a bit out of touch with Star Wars fandom or something?
Like I get that a lot of people hate the prequels by default and that there's been a big backlash against The Force Awakens, so let's forget them (and they all do have their problems, certainly!) That still means people think it was a better Star Wars movie than Return of The Jedi and even though ROTJ had its faults I just don't get why so many people would think that! Now obviously I'm a bit biased towards Jedi because I first saw it when I was five or something and loved it and Bib Fortuna but...
Have you noticed how all the things people praise most about Rogue One have nothing to do with the main characters? Like the Darth Vader scene (which is great on its own) happens after all the main characters are already dead! You could leave it out the movie and just show Leia receiving the transmission on the Tantive IV (which would actually have fit better with A New Hope) and it wouldn't have made a dfiference to the story. I mean I wouldn't want them to do that, because Vader killing people is fun, I'm just saying. Wouldn't it have been better if we saw Vader kill people earlier in the movie so that there's a threat that he might do the same thing to our main characters? Or even if say Cassian was the last rebel killed by Vader after successfully passing on the flash drive. As it is the Vader scene feels a bit disjointed (but cool)?
The space battle is great and looks great (that shield gate thing was cool) but...in ROTJ we at least have Lando, Wedge and I guess Admiral Ackbar in its big aweseome space battle and we care about what happens to them. In Rogue One we have...a guy who looks like Ackbar and some archive footage or people we remember from ANH. Wouldn't it have been better if one of the main character was part of the space battle and maybe made some noble sacrifice? LIKE SAY Bodhi Rook who we know is a PILOT but is down on the beach plugging a wire in or something instead of doing any piloting? Obviously this would mean changing things around a bit, but I'm not sure what the point was of Jyn's group going off on a rogue mission when the whole rebel fleet just showed up at Scarif about ten minutes later anyway.
With ROTJ all my favourite moments involve the main characters like Luke springboarding off a gangplank and catching his lightsaber or Vader killing the Emporer or Leia making friends with a teddy bear or Han...okay Han didn't do much in ROTJ. Although obviously the characters in Jedi had an advantage with it being the third movie in a trilogy.
(What was the point of Baze going "I believe in the Force now!" shooting about two stormtroopers...then just dying too?)
But yeah it was still good.
Like I get that a lot of people hate the prequels by default and that there's been a big backlash against The Force Awakens, so let's forget them (and they all do have their problems, certainly!) That still means people think it was a better Star Wars movie than Return of The Jedi and even though ROTJ had its faults I just don't get why so many people would think that! Now obviously I'm a bit biased towards Jedi because I first saw it when I was five or something and loved it and Bib Fortuna but...
Have you noticed how all the things people praise most about Rogue One have nothing to do with the main characters? Like the Darth Vader scene (which is great on its own) happens after all the main characters are already dead! You could leave it out the movie and just show Leia receiving the transmission on the Tantive IV (which would actually have fit better with A New Hope) and it wouldn't have made a dfiference to the story. I mean I wouldn't want them to do that, because Vader killing people is fun, I'm just saying. Wouldn't it have been better if we saw Vader kill people earlier in the movie so that there's a threat that he might do the same thing to our main characters? Or even if say Cassian was the last rebel killed by Vader after successfully passing on the flash drive. As it is the Vader scene feels a bit disjointed (but cool)?
The space battle is great and looks great (that shield gate thing was cool) but...in ROTJ we at least have Lando, Wedge and I guess Admiral Ackbar in its big aweseome space battle and we care about what happens to them. In Rogue One we have...a guy who looks like Ackbar and some archive footage or people we remember from ANH. Wouldn't it have been better if one of the main character was part of the space battle and maybe made some noble sacrifice? LIKE SAY Bodhi Rook who we know is a PILOT but is down on the beach plugging a wire in or something instead of doing any piloting? Obviously this would mean changing things around a bit, but I'm not sure what the point was of Jyn's group going off on a rogue mission when the whole rebel fleet just showed up at Scarif about ten minutes later anyway.
With ROTJ all my favourite moments involve the main characters like Luke springboarding off a gangplank and catching his lightsaber or Vader killing the Emporer or Leia making friends with a teddy bear or Han...okay Han didn't do much in ROTJ. Although obviously the characters in Jedi had an advantage with it being the third movie in a trilogy.
(What was the point of Baze going "I believe in the Force now!" shooting about two stormtroopers...then just dying too?)
But yeah it was still good.
The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
Star Wars
(I am watching the 'Despecialized.Edition, v2.7' of this film)
Man, how the hell do you review Star Wars? I mean really, what about this film can I say that hasn't been talked about in the last 40 years? It changed the way films are made!
I could go on about the revolutionary special effects, or the "used future" asethetic that breathed new life into science fiction as a genre, or how the film's throwback to the days of action-adventure serials made it a breath of fresh air in the increasingly cynical 1970's movie world. Or how Lucas managed to combine a little of all the things he loved - pulp sci-fi novels like the John Carter of Mars series and the Lensman series, John Ford Westerns, the films of Akira Kurosawa, various WWII films, the comics of Mœbius, and the aforementioned science fiction serials of the 1930's - into a cohesive whole that at once feels new and interesting and at the same time feels classic and timeless.
But that's all been said by other people, in ways more nuanced than I ever could.
So instead, I'm going to focus on what this film is now that it's not either a one-off science fiction film (as it was originally released as... mostly) or the first part of a trilogy (as it was known as for most of it's life) but as just another part of a very long story. A part that now has a direct predecessor, so that it's not even picking up years after the previous episode any more. How has a film like this survived the process of being now in the middle of a franchise that spans films, TV, books and comics? The answer is: really really well.
Yeah it's actually crazy how you can watch this science fiction film from 1977, directed some guy who's only real hit before this was that film about cruising in the 50's starring Richie Cunningham, almost seamlessly fits in with everything that now exists around it. Obviously a lot of it has been re-contextualised, and there are some parts that are a bit dodgy, but overall it fits in excellently. And this is just watching the original version! That doesn't take into account some of the tweaks that were done in the Special Edition(s) to make it more in line with the other films!
Part of it is that the people making the newer content went out of their way to have things match up - this is especially true with things like Rebels and Rogue One, which are set very close to this film. But a lot of it is because when Lucas originally wrote the film, he wanted you to feel like you were coming in during the middle of the story - he likened it to coming into a movie theatre and starting with part three of a Flash Gordon serial. To do this, he adds a lot of world building details that give the film a sense of place. "The spice mines of Kessel" and "The Kessel Run", "The Imperial Senate" is mentioned many times during the start of the film despite it never once appearing, heck even the opening crawl is telling you things that have already happened and that until just over a month ago we were never expected to have actually seen.
Let's start from the beginning: So we know now that Vader is in hot pursuit of the Tantive IV after seeing it escape from the battle of Scarif. Does it, then, still make sense that Leia is playing the "this is a diplomatic mission!" card with him? Sort of. We, the audience, knows that Vader won't fall for that because he literally saw the ship blast away from the battle - but Leia doesn't know that. So it makes sense that she would protest that she's a senator, but at the same time it makes sense that Vader is having none of it. It's also consistent with how Leia was acting around the Imperials in Rebels - she's been using her position as a senator as a way of protecting herself for years, so of course she does it again here. Also Leia looks like the late and beautiful Carrie Fisher here, and not a crazy CGI lumpy faced thing, which is a definite change from Rogue One.
It's actually kind of weird to have the narrative follow C-3PO and R2-D2 for so long. Even though they are essentially the two core characters for the entire saga, and were featured heavily in the prequels and Clone Wars (R2 especially), they've been out of the story for so long now that jumping back to them essentially carrying the story - especially in the first act of the film - feels a bit strange. Not bad strange, but now that we have such a wide view of the events of the Star Wars galaxy at this point, it's slightly harder to go back to seeing everything from their perspectives.
While we saw Leia in both Rebels and Rogue One, this is the first time we've seen Luke since he was handed off to Owen and Beru at the end of Revenge of the Sith. In those 19 years he's... turned into a hick. It's probably always been there, but Luke viewed in the context of all the other people and planets he's such a yokel. He's running around in his uncle'struck landspeeder, shooting wildlife bullseyeing womp rats and hanging around wasting time with his friends at Tosche Station. For the son of Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala, he's kind of an idiot. When Beru says "he has too much of his father in him", we know exactly what they mean by that (although, of course, their only experience of Anakin was him coming to their house, taking a swoop bike, bringing back Shmi's corpse, having a breakdown in their garage, giving an over-dramatic speech at her grave, and then disappearing forever, taking on of their droids with him).
But still, when he goes on his heroes journey and actually starts to have an adventure, you can see a lot of Anakin in him. But not whiny and unstable Hayden Christensen Anakin, no no. Clone Wars Anakin. Yeah it's actually never really occurred to me until this recent rewatch, but a lot of the energy and enthusiasm that Luke has here can totally be found in that version of Anakin. You can totally see that Anakin being the guy to swing across a chasm, or hatch up a crazy plan to dress as Stormtroopers and pretend Chewbacca is their prisoner. With the addition of Clone Wars, Luke now actually kind of does really feel like Anakin's son. Another way that show just makes Star Wars better!
Leia, too, feels like the child of Padmé and Anakin. The obvious parallel there is between "aggressive negotiations" Padmé in Attack of the Clones, and Leia murdering fools on the Death Star here - it's why they both wear white!
But the real standout here is Obi-Wan. It's actually insane how so much of what Obi-Wan says and does can be read in a totally different way than Alec Guinness ever intended, but it all totally works. It's a real credit to his acting (which is, obviously, amazing). The obvious scene for this is of course when he's telling Luke about when Darth Vader "betrayed and murdered" his father. As far as Sir Alec was aware when he was saying those lines (and Lucas as he was writing them) that was totally and utterly true, but now of course we know it's actually Obi-Wan telling Luke a series of lies and half-truths in order to 'protect' him from the reality of the situation - that Obi-Wan fucked up.
It's also so that Obi-Wan can persuade Luke into joining him on the trip to Alderaan, and start him on the path of becoming a Jedi so that he can be the one to take down Vader and the Emperor - after all, that's why he was watching Luke on Tatooine all this time, to wait for this exact moment. Note that literally the first thing Obi-Wan does when he gets alone with Luke is start telling how great his Jedi dad was, and then give him Anakin's lightsaber.
The thing I've always liked about Guinness' performance, especially in light of everything I've watched leading up to this, is how knowledgeable is he about things that a strange hermit living on Tatooine really shouldn't. He sees through Han Solo's "it can outrun Imperial cruisers!" bullshit easily (seriously, Obi-Wan gives Han the best "this is total bullshit and you know it, Han" expression while he's going on about how great the Falcon is, it's amazing). He just so happens to know about the operational range of TIE Fighters, and of course he recognises the Death Star for what it is way before anyone else. It's not clear at this point just how much Obi-Wan knows about the Death Star. Did he learn about it during the Clone Wars, when the Geonosian plans were captured by the Republic (possible)? Or has he been in some sort of communication with the Rebels, and so knows about it from them after Scarif (that one's not very likely)? Or did he just know from experience the different between moons and planet-killing battlestations (probably)?
The confrontation with Vader is different now, too. Not only do we know that the last time these two characters met was almost two decades ago (Vader's comment of 'old man' is made all the more impactful when you consider what Obi-Wan looked like the last time Vader saw him!), but we also know that Vader had another reminder of is life as Anakin only a couple of years before that when he faced Ahsoka. Vader's "now I am the Master" totally works with the frustrated and jealous Anakin who was made about being put in the Jedi Council but not made a master. Obi-Wan's line of "if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine" is now said in the knowledge that Obi-Wan has been taught by Qui-Gon how to become one with the force - something Vader would know nothing about (hence why he kicks Obi-Wan's robes when he's gone, because really Vader wouldn't know what the fuck at this point).
And it goes without saying that because basically everyone who has played Obi-Wan has been amazing, from Ewan McGregor to James Arnold Taylor and on to Sir Alec Guinness, the character feels consistent from The Phantom Menace all the way to here. There's really no doubt that this is the same person - the one who fought Darth Maul on Naboo, who held Satine in his arms as he died, and the one who fought Anakin on Mustafar.
The Rebel Alliance is here again, pretty much the same as it was in Rogue One! Except where in Rogue One we saw it as a Council of Generals, Senators and Ex-Senators, now it's pure military. It helps that most of the main Rebel Commanders we saw in Rogue One were killed off at the end of that film, leaving General Dodonna and his band of old white guys in charge. Mon Mothma has apparently left for reasons unknown. I wonder what happened to all those Senators we saw as part of the Rebel Council in Rogue One once the Senate got dissolved? Did they stay with the Rebellion? Were they killed?
Seeing the film in the context of Rogue One explains why they were only able to send out 30 fighters against the Death Star, and why they had to recruit rookies like Luke to fly with them - the majority of the Rebel fleet was destroyed at the battle of Scarif, and this is pretty much what's left. Also Wedge is there! Wedge! From Rebels! That's a thing! Not that guy next to Luke in the briefing, though. Fuck that guy.
Then there's the smaller stuff - Dr. Evazan and Poda Baba obviously escaped Jedha only to run into Obi-Wan on Tatooine. Tarkin's here and finally he's played by an actual human being! His ruthlessness and his overconfidence has been nicely established from Clone Wars to Rebels and Rogue One, as was his relationship with Vader. It is kind of cool seeing them working together here, just as they did way back in the Clone Wars. R2-D2 has the same (INCORRECT) Death Star plans that were transmitted by Jyn from Scarif. Red Leader and Gold Leader are back, and survived Scarif only to die here!
I know a lot of people think that having Chewbacca in Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith 'ruined' the character (or something), but I actually quite like it. It's a great way to easily show just how things bad have gotten when the guy who was obviously a relatively important Wookiee (he was with Tarrful, the main Wookiee general, during the Clone Wars) is now slumming it with a cocky smuggler in the ass-end of the galaxy.
As for why he never mentions hanging out with Yoda and Ahsoka? Well, like R2-D2, who was also present during some major events of the prequels, it's important to note that we can never actually hear what they're directly saying. They're always translated and filtered through someone else, 3PO for R2, and Han for Chewbacca. So really we have no idea exactly how Chewie feels about seeing a Jedi, because we only get his thoughts filtered through Han, who is a skeptic. So it's possible to imagine (AND I'M NOT SAYING THIS IS WHAT I THINK HAPPENED) that Chewie could have said to Luke "Holy shit, where the hell did you find a Jedi Knight?!" and Han just relays it as "Where did you dig up that old fossil?".
Star Wars is an amazing film. You don't need me to tell you that. But as I'm the one watching everything, it's really fascinating to see just how well this fits in with everything that's come before it (but made after it), and it's an amazing achievement to everyone involved in this film that it holds up so well almost 40 years after it was released.
Whether it's a one-off throwback to the classic Flash Gordon series with a dirty and used aesthetic, or an important chapter of a saga about the rise of an Empire and the fall and redemption of a Jedi: Star Wars is fucking great.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...
It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy....
It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy....
(I am watching the 'Despecialized.Edition, v2.7' of this film)
Man, how the hell do you review Star Wars? I mean really, what about this film can I say that hasn't been talked about in the last 40 years? It changed the way films are made!
I could go on about the revolutionary special effects, or the "used future" asethetic that breathed new life into science fiction as a genre, or how the film's throwback to the days of action-adventure serials made it a breath of fresh air in the increasingly cynical 1970's movie world. Or how Lucas managed to combine a little of all the things he loved - pulp sci-fi novels like the John Carter of Mars series and the Lensman series, John Ford Westerns, the films of Akira Kurosawa, various WWII films, the comics of Mœbius, and the aforementioned science fiction serials of the 1930's - into a cohesive whole that at once feels new and interesting and at the same time feels classic and timeless.
But that's all been said by other people, in ways more nuanced than I ever could.
So instead, I'm going to focus on what this film is now that it's not either a one-off science fiction film (as it was originally released as... mostly) or the first part of a trilogy (as it was known as for most of it's life) but as just another part of a very long story. A part that now has a direct predecessor, so that it's not even picking up years after the previous episode any more. How has a film like this survived the process of being now in the middle of a franchise that spans films, TV, books and comics? The answer is: really really well.
Yeah it's actually crazy how you can watch this science fiction film from 1977, directed some guy who's only real hit before this was that film about cruising in the 50's starring Richie Cunningham, almost seamlessly fits in with everything that now exists around it. Obviously a lot of it has been re-contextualised, and there are some parts that are a bit dodgy, but overall it fits in excellently. And this is just watching the original version! That doesn't take into account some of the tweaks that were done in the Special Edition(s) to make it more in line with the other films!
Part of it is that the people making the newer content went out of their way to have things match up - this is especially true with things like Rebels and Rogue One, which are set very close to this film. But a lot of it is because when Lucas originally wrote the film, he wanted you to feel like you were coming in during the middle of the story - he likened it to coming into a movie theatre and starting with part three of a Flash Gordon serial. To do this, he adds a lot of world building details that give the film a sense of place. "The spice mines of Kessel" and "The Kessel Run", "The Imperial Senate" is mentioned many times during the start of the film despite it never once appearing, heck even the opening crawl is telling you things that have already happened and that until just over a month ago we were never expected to have actually seen.
Let's start from the beginning: So we know now that Vader is in hot pursuit of the Tantive IV after seeing it escape from the battle of Scarif. Does it, then, still make sense that Leia is playing the "this is a diplomatic mission!" card with him? Sort of. We, the audience, knows that Vader won't fall for that because he literally saw the ship blast away from the battle - but Leia doesn't know that. So it makes sense that she would protest that she's a senator, but at the same time it makes sense that Vader is having none of it. It's also consistent with how Leia was acting around the Imperials in Rebels - she's been using her position as a senator as a way of protecting herself for years, so of course she does it again here. Also Leia looks like the late and beautiful Carrie Fisher here, and not a crazy CGI lumpy faced thing, which is a definite change from Rogue One.
It's actually kind of weird to have the narrative follow C-3PO and R2-D2 for so long. Even though they are essentially the two core characters for the entire saga, and were featured heavily in the prequels and Clone Wars (R2 especially), they've been out of the story for so long now that jumping back to them essentially carrying the story - especially in the first act of the film - feels a bit strange. Not bad strange, but now that we have such a wide view of the events of the Star Wars galaxy at this point, it's slightly harder to go back to seeing everything from their perspectives.
While we saw Leia in both Rebels and Rogue One, this is the first time we've seen Luke since he was handed off to Owen and Beru at the end of Revenge of the Sith. In those 19 years he's... turned into a hick. It's probably always been there, but Luke viewed in the context of all the other people and planets he's such a yokel. He's running around in his uncle's
But still, when he goes on his heroes journey and actually starts to have an adventure, you can see a lot of Anakin in him. But not whiny and unstable Hayden Christensen Anakin, no no. Clone Wars Anakin. Yeah it's actually never really occurred to me until this recent rewatch, but a lot of the energy and enthusiasm that Luke has here can totally be found in that version of Anakin. You can totally see that Anakin being the guy to swing across a chasm, or hatch up a crazy plan to dress as Stormtroopers and pretend Chewbacca is their prisoner. With the addition of Clone Wars, Luke now actually kind of does really feel like Anakin's son. Another way that show just makes Star Wars better!
Leia, too, feels like the child of Padmé and Anakin. The obvious parallel there is between "aggressive negotiations" Padmé in Attack of the Clones, and Leia murdering fools on the Death Star here - it's why they both wear white!
But the real standout here is Obi-Wan. It's actually insane how so much of what Obi-Wan says and does can be read in a totally different way than Alec Guinness ever intended, but it all totally works. It's a real credit to his acting (which is, obviously, amazing). The obvious scene for this is of course when he's telling Luke about when Darth Vader "betrayed and murdered" his father. As far as Sir Alec was aware when he was saying those lines (and Lucas as he was writing them) that was totally and utterly true, but now of course we know it's actually Obi-Wan telling Luke a series of lies and half-truths in order to 'protect' him from the reality of the situation - that Obi-Wan fucked up.
It's also so that Obi-Wan can persuade Luke into joining him on the trip to Alderaan, and start him on the path of becoming a Jedi so that he can be the one to take down Vader and the Emperor - after all, that's why he was watching Luke on Tatooine all this time, to wait for this exact moment. Note that literally the first thing Obi-Wan does when he gets alone with Luke is start telling how great his Jedi dad was, and then give him Anakin's lightsaber.
The thing I've always liked about Guinness' performance, especially in light of everything I've watched leading up to this, is how knowledgeable is he about things that a strange hermit living on Tatooine really shouldn't. He sees through Han Solo's "it can outrun Imperial cruisers!" bullshit easily (seriously, Obi-Wan gives Han the best "this is total bullshit and you know it, Han" expression while he's going on about how great the Falcon is, it's amazing). He just so happens to know about the operational range of TIE Fighters, and of course he recognises the Death Star for what it is way before anyone else. It's not clear at this point just how much Obi-Wan knows about the Death Star. Did he learn about it during the Clone Wars, when the Geonosian plans were captured by the Republic (possible)? Or has he been in some sort of communication with the Rebels, and so knows about it from them after Scarif (that one's not very likely)? Or did he just know from experience the different between moons and planet-killing battlestations (probably)?
The confrontation with Vader is different now, too. Not only do we know that the last time these two characters met was almost two decades ago (Vader's comment of 'old man' is made all the more impactful when you consider what Obi-Wan looked like the last time Vader saw him!), but we also know that Vader had another reminder of is life as Anakin only a couple of years before that when he faced Ahsoka. Vader's "now I am the Master" totally works with the frustrated and jealous Anakin who was made about being put in the Jedi Council but not made a master. Obi-Wan's line of "if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine" is now said in the knowledge that Obi-Wan has been taught by Qui-Gon how to become one with the force - something Vader would know nothing about (hence why he kicks Obi-Wan's robes when he's gone, because really Vader wouldn't know what the fuck at this point).
And it goes without saying that because basically everyone who has played Obi-Wan has been amazing, from Ewan McGregor to James Arnold Taylor and on to Sir Alec Guinness, the character feels consistent from The Phantom Menace all the way to here. There's really no doubt that this is the same person - the one who fought Darth Maul on Naboo, who held Satine in his arms as he died, and the one who fought Anakin on Mustafar.
The Rebel Alliance is here again, pretty much the same as it was in Rogue One! Except where in Rogue One we saw it as a Council of Generals, Senators and Ex-Senators, now it's pure military. It helps that most of the main Rebel Commanders we saw in Rogue One were killed off at the end of that film, leaving General Dodonna and his band of old white guys in charge. Mon Mothma has apparently left for reasons unknown. I wonder what happened to all those Senators we saw as part of the Rebel Council in Rogue One once the Senate got dissolved? Did they stay with the Rebellion? Were they killed?
Seeing the film in the context of Rogue One explains why they were only able to send out 30 fighters against the Death Star, and why they had to recruit rookies like Luke to fly with them - the majority of the Rebel fleet was destroyed at the battle of Scarif, and this is pretty much what's left. Also Wedge is there! Wedge! From Rebels! That's a thing! Not that guy next to Luke in the briefing, though. Fuck that guy.
Then there's the smaller stuff - Dr. Evazan and Poda Baba obviously escaped Jedha only to run into Obi-Wan on Tatooine. Tarkin's here and finally he's played by an actual human being! His ruthlessness and his overconfidence has been nicely established from Clone Wars to Rebels and Rogue One, as was his relationship with Vader. It is kind of cool seeing them working together here, just as they did way back in the Clone Wars. R2-D2 has the same (INCORRECT) Death Star plans that were transmitted by Jyn from Scarif. Red Leader and Gold Leader are back, and survived Scarif only to die here!
I know a lot of people think that having Chewbacca in Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith 'ruined' the character (or something), but I actually quite like it. It's a great way to easily show just how things bad have gotten when the guy who was obviously a relatively important Wookiee (he was with Tarrful, the main Wookiee general, during the Clone Wars) is now slumming it with a cocky smuggler in the ass-end of the galaxy.
As for why he never mentions hanging out with Yoda and Ahsoka? Well, like R2-D2, who was also present during some major events of the prequels, it's important to note that we can never actually hear what they're directly saying. They're always translated and filtered through someone else, 3PO for R2, and Han for Chewbacca. So really we have no idea exactly how Chewie feels about seeing a Jedi, because we only get his thoughts filtered through Han, who is a skeptic. So it's possible to imagine (AND I'M NOT SAYING THIS IS WHAT I THINK HAPPENED) that Chewie could have said to Luke "Holy shit, where the hell did you find a Jedi Knight?!" and Han just relays it as "Where did you dig up that old fossil?".
Star Wars is an amazing film. You don't need me to tell you that. But as I'm the one watching everything, it's really fascinating to see just how well this fits in with everything that's come before it (but made after it), and it's an amazing achievement to everyone involved in this film that it holds up so well almost 40 years after it was released.
Whether it's a one-off throwback to the classic Flash Gordon series with a dirty and used aesthetic, or an important chapter of a saga about the rise of an Empire and the fall and redemption of a Jedi: Star Wars is fucking great.
The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
Obligatory of cool shots from Star Wars I like because sometimes George Lucas really knows how to compose a frame:
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
GOOD WRITE-UP.
One thing that's stood out to me lately is just how well written the orginal Star Wars is, compared to some more recent movies (not just TFA and RO, just blockbusters in general..) Just look at how good the two big exposition scenes are, when Obi-Wan is telling Luke about his father and when Tarkin is giving a briefing on the Death Star. We really learn quite a lot about the history of the Star Wars universe there, and its current status (the Imperial Senate has just been disolved) and about Obi-Wan, Vader and Tarkin as characters. We learn everything we really need to know for the story to work: And it's never boring! Obviously the great performances of Peter Cushing and Alec Guiness (and just the way he says "evil") help a lot, but we also get simple iconic moments like Vader's "I find your lack of faith disturbing" that tell us so much in so little time. COMPARE THAT TO say The Force Awakens where "The Republic" is mentioned for the first time about a minute before it gets blown up and we just think "wait, who were they?" Star Wars appears to be quite a simple story but it's actually really hard to make a story look that simple and coherent.
One thing that's stood out to me lately is just how well written the orginal Star Wars is, compared to some more recent movies (not just TFA and RO, just blockbusters in general..) Just look at how good the two big exposition scenes are, when Obi-Wan is telling Luke about his father and when Tarkin is giving a briefing on the Death Star. We really learn quite a lot about the history of the Star Wars universe there, and its current status (the Imperial Senate has just been disolved) and about Obi-Wan, Vader and Tarkin as characters. We learn everything we really need to know for the story to work: And it's never boring! Obviously the great performances of Peter Cushing and Alec Guiness (and just the way he says "evil") help a lot, but we also get simple iconic moments like Vader's "I find your lack of faith disturbing" that tell us so much in so little time. COMPARE THAT TO say The Force Awakens where "The Republic" is mentioned for the first time about a minute before it gets blown up and we just think "wait, who were they?" Star Wars appears to be quite a simple story but it's actually really hard to make a story look that simple and coherent.
The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
The Star Wars Holiday Special
There are two very important facts to know about The Star Wars Holiday Special:
The basic premise is this: Han Solo and Chewbacca are speeding home towards Kashyyyk (named 'Kazook' here) so that Chewie can get home to his family for the Wookiee holiday of "Life Day". Unfortunatley, due to the large Imperial presence on the way toKashyyyk Kazook Kashyyyk they are delayed, and Chewie might not make it in time!
Instead of focusing on, say, Han and Chewie's exploits trying to get home, instead it focuses on Chewie's family, and what they do while they wait for him to return home. That's it. That's what this special is about. Wookiee's waiting for something.
As such, the special has a variety show format: a collection of set pieces strung together with a light narrative, a series of 'comedy bits' and musical appearances all with a Star Wars setting. I mean, hell, this is a TV Special not high drama, so I guess that makes sense??
The thing about the Holiday Special is that it has a very deceptive start. It starts with Han and Chewie in the Falcon pursued by two Star Destroyers (using a lot of footage from 'Star Wars' because, they, effects are expensive). While Harrison Ford obviously gives no shits about what he's saying or doing, it still makes you think that, hey, Han and Chewie are cool characters so it'll be fun to see more of them!
But after the over-dramatic opening titles roll and the list of B and C-tier celebrity cameos are read out, it goes straight to the Wookiees; and for nine - NINE - minutes not a single word of English is spoken. It's all Wookiee, baby.
So, uh, what do we see Chewie's family do during this time that consists 100% of unsubtitled shyriiwook? Well, uh, we see Malla ask Lumpy to take out the trash. And... we see Itchy carve some cool wooden X-Wings. And Lumpy watches a bizarre hologrammatic circus show while music that can only be described as a fusion of synth and calliope forged in the heart of hell plays.
Hey can I just say that Lumpy looks utterly terrifying throughout this whole thing? Like, I was actually surprised at how good the Wookiee prosthetics and costumes are in this thing; they're easily as good as Chewbacca's mask, but done on a TV budget, and there's three of them! But still, Lumpy has the cold dead eyes of a killer, and a mouth that's a little too human. Plus they keep using this sound clip for him that sounds like a fucked up dog bark (at the very start of this clip) which is both utterly hilarious and also something out of a nightmare.
Finally, FINALLY, they decide to contact Luke Skywalker to see where Chewie is and we actually have a character who speaks a language people can understand!
This is pretty much how each of the appearances of the main cast members of Star Wars go. Malla calls them up on her SECRET REBEL COMMUNICATOR, they talk about how Chewie isn't there yet, and then stop talking. Luke (and R2-D2!) at least tries to cheer up Malla in a way that really really really looks like he's flirting with her. This is not the last time in this special that someone will flirt with Malla, FYI.
You may notice that there's something off about Mark Hamill here. Well, when this was filmed he had very recently been in a car accident, which caused a lot of scarring on his face. As these scars were still very visible (they would have faded by the time they filmed Empire) they applied a shit-ton to make up to him to cover them. So he looks like this.
The next bit has Malla contact a local trader onKashyyyk Kazook the Wookiee homeworld named Saun Dann, played by Art Carney. The thing about Saun Dann is that I have no idea if he's supposed to be a forgetful old man, or if that's just what Art Carney is like. I think he's supposed to be doing a character similar to the one he played on 'The Honeymooners', but I've never seen that show so really I have no idea. So what we get is an old trader (complete with visible hearing aids and glasses!) bumbling around trying to sell quirky space things (a pocket-sized aquarium!) to an Imperial Guard who is in his shop. It's, uh, well... it's better than the holographic circus stuff!
That said, he also gets THE BEST LINE IN THE ENTIRE SHOW when he's trying to tell Malla that Chewie is still on his way, but can't because there's an Imperial in the shop:
"Don't say a word, madam, I know just why you're calling! You're wondering when that SHAGGY CARPET you ordered will arrive at your home. Let me assure you, madam, it's on its way! Y'know, it was made especially by you by a little old woman four planets away. She did it all by herself! In fact, you might say she did it by hand.
SOLO."
Amazing.
OH SHIT, WHAT'S THAT? IT'S ONLY MOTHERFUCKING DARTH VADER! OK now this thing is about to kick off! Remember when he totally wrecked those guys at the end of Rogue One? Well here he WALKS DOWN A CORRIDOR!
Yes, Vader's only live-action appearance here is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene made entirely out of deleted footage from Star Wars (with one new line from James Earl Jones). This is why he's talking to Chief Bast, who died in the Death Star explosion. Anyway he's saying that he wants to blockadeKashyyyk Kazook because he knows Rebels are there, or something.
OK, that's done. What's next? Well, Malla needs to cook dinner for Life Day, so of course she puts on a cooking show (on her flat screen TV!) to show her how it's done. This is the first of Harvey Korman's three (count 'em) appearances in this special and, I'm sad to say, this one is easily the best.
He's a female TV chef named 'Gormaanda'. He looks like this:
So the 'joke' behind this segment is that she keeps making the cooking more complicated, and keeps adding extra arms with which to do it, all while Malla tries to keep up. That part isn't actually entertaining to watch, but Harvey Korman is obviously A) having the time of his life doing this, B) trying desperately not to break out laughing during the whole thing, and C) having real trouble with whoever is controlling the extra arms behind his back, that it is actually pretty fun to watch just because of how fucking crazy it is.
FUN FACT: Gormaanda actually got referenced in one of the short kids books released around the time The Force Awakens came out, making her officially part of the new canon!
It should be noted that throughout the special there are a few quick cut aways to what Chewie and Han are doing, which is that they are sitting in the Millennium Falcon cockpit set surrounded by footage from Star Wars, talking about how they have to get Chewie home.
Saun Dann turns up at the Wookiee's house, with Life Day gifts for all the family! That's at least three new chances to have a special guest star do a bit! When Saun Dann gives Malla her gift he insists that she give him a kiss on the cheek which is FUCKED UP, SAUN DANN. Yet another example of someone flirting with Malla!
The first one we see is for Itchy and it's by far the most disturbing thing in this entire special. Because, let's face it, he gives him porn. It's porn.
Well, okay, it's a program for Itchy's "mind evaporator" (a sort of virtual reality headset) where a holographic character (played by singer Diahann Carroll) who tells Itchy that she's his fantasy and that she can tell how 'excited' he is. She then goes on to sing a really, really boring song while wearing the most bizarre silver wig while Itchy makes noises that can only be described as "orgasmic".
This is it. I'm calling it. This is the weirdest thing in all of Star Wars (okay, in all of the Star Wars that I am watching - Han Solo vs. the Space Otter is probably weirder). It's an elderly Wookiee getting sexual pleasure from a holographic singer IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS DAMN HOUSE in what is supposed to be a family special!
After this literal nightmare finishes, they get contacted by no other than Princess Leia and C-3PO!
I'm not sure why Leia looks like she's doing her taxes either.
OK, let's address the elephant in the room. Carrie Fisher was, rather infamously, high as fuck after having done all the cocaine in Hollywood during the filming of the special. To her credit, in this scene you can't really tell unless you're looking for it, but it was always one of those fun little details about why the Holiday Special is just this total clusterfuck. But now, of course, after her death from issues that were no doubt a result of her habits during this time, it's a rather tragic instead. At least in this scene.
Again, she doesn't do anything except as where Chewie is and then go away.
OH SHIT, THE EMPIRE HAS ARRIVED. They're out hunting for Rebels, and they've work out that one of the family members is missing! Luckily, Saun Dann is able to distract one of the Imperials by using Malla's present: A box which contains a holographic Jefferson Starship.
Okay, so, to this bit's credit it's not as bad as the Diahann Carroll bit. In fact it's a pretty good song, mostly. But of course they realised that you can't just have a band play a normal song and have it look normal, that wouldn't be Star Wars at all! Instead they covered all of the band's instruments with a pink glow effect, sort of like a lightsaber, but shit. BUT it does look like the lead singer is singing into a glowing pink dildo, so that's something.
But really, what makes this part kind of enjoyable is that the Imperial watching it seems to really dig the song. He's just having a good time, and that's great.
The Imperials kick Saun Dann out and start ransacking the house. In order to distract Lumpy, he goes and watches a cartoon. A cartoon about his dad? And the other rebels?? And Boba Fett???
Widely considered one of the least-worst parts of the Holiday Special, the animated segment is at least a welcome break from all the Wookiee-ness. It's actually a story about Luke, Han, Chewie and Leia (well, Leia doesn't do much...) all voiced by their proper actors. PLUS, yeah, Boba Fett is in it and he's really cool and is wearing dope yellow armour (I'm guessing at this point all the animators had to work on were the early all-white designs for Boba?).
The story is pretty simple: Han and Chewie are after a "magical talisman", but it seems to have driven Chewbacca mad! Luke, 3PO and R2 go off to see what's going on, meet up with a guy named Boba Fett, who seems nice, and find out that the Talisman has poisoned Han and Chewie is trying to save him and now Luke's been poisoned and uhhhhhh okay. Chewie and Boba go into town to get an antidote, but 3PO and R2 catch a transmission from Boba to Darth Vader so they know he's working for the Empire so he escapes but they still get the antidote so everyone's OK.
I mean... it's fine? It's hardly an episode of Clone Wars, but still. The animation style is... questionable...
This animated section was done by a company called 'Nelvana', who would later go on to do the Ewoks and Droids cartoons - so I guess someone out there liked this bit!
But the main thing about this animated segment is... did this actually happen? Is this a retelling of something that actually happened to Luke and Han? If so, why is it animated? And why is Lumpy watching it? Is it Rebel propaganda? It's not very good if it is, because the bad guy gets away at the end? WHY IS LUMPY WATCHING A CARTOON STARRING HIS OWN DAD???
A long ago in a galaxy far, far away....
The Star Wars Holiday Special!
Starring Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker!
Harrison Ford as Han Solo!
Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia!
with Anthony Daniels as C-3PO!
Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca!
R2-D2 as R2-D2!
and James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader!
Introducing Chewbacca's family:
His wife, Mala
His father, Itchy
His son, Lumpy
With Special Guest Stars:
Beatrice Arthur!
Art Carney!
Diahann Carroll!
The Jefferson Starship!
Harvey Korman!
And an animated Star Wars story
ON THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL!
The Star Wars Holiday Special!
Starring Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker!
Harrison Ford as Han Solo!
Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia!
with Anthony Daniels as C-3PO!
Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca!
R2-D2 as R2-D2!
and James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader!
Introducing Chewbacca's family:
His wife, Mala
His father, Itchy
His son, Lumpy
With Special Guest Stars:
Beatrice Arthur!
Art Carney!
Diahann Carroll!
The Jefferson Starship!
Harvey Korman!
And an animated Star Wars story
ON THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL!
There are two very important facts to know about The Star Wars Holiday Special:
- In many ways, this special contains the absolute worst of Star Wars. There are lows here that were never reached by even the worst episodes of Clone Wars or Rebels (let alone the prequels!)
- I utterly adore The Star Wars Holiday Special
The basic premise is this: Han Solo and Chewbacca are speeding home towards Kashyyyk (named 'Kazook' here) so that Chewie can get home to his family for the Wookiee holiday of "Life Day". Unfortunatley, due to the large Imperial presence on the way to
Instead of focusing on, say, Han and Chewie's exploits trying to get home, instead it focuses on Chewie's family, and what they do while they wait for him to return home. That's it. That's what this special is about. Wookiee's waiting for something.
As such, the special has a variety show format: a collection of set pieces strung together with a light narrative, a series of 'comedy bits' and musical appearances all with a Star Wars setting. I mean, hell, this is a TV Special not high drama, so I guess that makes sense??
The thing about the Holiday Special is that it has a very deceptive start. It starts with Han and Chewie in the Falcon pursued by two Star Destroyers (using a lot of footage from 'Star Wars' because, they, effects are expensive). While Harrison Ford obviously gives no shits about what he's saying or doing, it still makes you think that, hey, Han and Chewie are cool characters so it'll be fun to see more of them!
But after the over-dramatic opening titles roll and the list of B and C-tier celebrity cameos are read out, it goes straight to the Wookiees; and for nine - NINE - minutes not a single word of English is spoken. It's all Wookiee, baby.
So, uh, what do we see Chewie's family do during this time that consists 100% of unsubtitled shyriiwook? Well, uh, we see Malla ask Lumpy to take out the trash. And... we see Itchy carve some cool wooden X-Wings. And Lumpy watches a bizarre hologrammatic circus show while music that can only be described as a fusion of synth and calliope forged in the heart of hell plays.
Hey can I just say that Lumpy looks utterly terrifying throughout this whole thing? Like, I was actually surprised at how good the Wookiee prosthetics and costumes are in this thing; they're easily as good as Chewbacca's mask, but done on a TV budget, and there's three of them! But still, Lumpy has the cold dead eyes of a killer, and a mouth that's a little too human. Plus they keep using this sound clip for him that sounds like a fucked up dog bark (at the very start of this clip) which is both utterly hilarious and also something out of a nightmare.
Finally, FINALLY, they decide to contact Luke Skywalker to see where Chewie is and we actually have a character who speaks a language people can understand!
This is pretty much how each of the appearances of the main cast members of Star Wars go. Malla calls them up on her SECRET REBEL COMMUNICATOR, they talk about how Chewie isn't there yet, and then stop talking. Luke (and R2-D2!) at least tries to cheer up Malla in a way that really really really looks like he's flirting with her. This is not the last time in this special that someone will flirt with Malla, FYI.
You may notice that there's something off about Mark Hamill here. Well, when this was filmed he had very recently been in a car accident, which caused a lot of scarring on his face. As these scars were still very visible (they would have faded by the time they filmed Empire) they applied a shit-ton to make up to him to cover them. So he looks like this.
The next bit has Malla contact a local trader on
That said, he also gets THE BEST LINE IN THE ENTIRE SHOW when he's trying to tell Malla that Chewie is still on his way, but can't because there's an Imperial in the shop:
"Don't say a word, madam, I know just why you're calling! You're wondering when that SHAGGY CARPET you ordered will arrive at your home. Let me assure you, madam, it's on its way! Y'know, it was made especially by you by a little old woman four planets away. She did it all by herself! In fact, you might say she did it by hand.
SOLO."
Amazing.
OH SHIT, WHAT'S THAT? IT'S ONLY MOTHERFUCKING DARTH VADER! OK now this thing is about to kick off! Remember when he totally wrecked those guys at the end of Rogue One? Well here he WALKS DOWN A CORRIDOR!
Yes, Vader's only live-action appearance here is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene made entirely out of deleted footage from Star Wars (with one new line from James Earl Jones). This is why he's talking to Chief Bast, who died in the Death Star explosion. Anyway he's saying that he wants to blockade
OK, that's done. What's next? Well, Malla needs to cook dinner for Life Day, so of course she puts on a cooking show (on her flat screen TV!) to show her how it's done. This is the first of Harvey Korman's three (count 'em) appearances in this special and, I'm sad to say, this one is easily the best.
He's a female TV chef named 'Gormaanda'. He looks like this:
So the 'joke' behind this segment is that she keeps making the cooking more complicated, and keeps adding extra arms with which to do it, all while Malla tries to keep up. That part isn't actually entertaining to watch, but Harvey Korman is obviously A) having the time of his life doing this, B) trying desperately not to break out laughing during the whole thing, and C) having real trouble with whoever is controlling the extra arms behind his back, that it is actually pretty fun to watch just because of how fucking crazy it is.
FUN FACT: Gormaanda actually got referenced in one of the short kids books released around the time The Force Awakens came out, making her officially part of the new canon!
It should be noted that throughout the special there are a few quick cut aways to what Chewie and Han are doing, which is that they are sitting in the Millennium Falcon cockpit set surrounded by footage from Star Wars, talking about how they have to get Chewie home.
Saun Dann turns up at the Wookiee's house, with Life Day gifts for all the family! That's at least three new chances to have a special guest star do a bit! When Saun Dann gives Malla her gift he insists that she give him a kiss on the cheek which is FUCKED UP, SAUN DANN. Yet another example of someone flirting with Malla!
The first one we see is for Itchy and it's by far the most disturbing thing in this entire special. Because, let's face it, he gives him porn. It's porn.
Well, okay, it's a program for Itchy's "mind evaporator" (a sort of virtual reality headset) where a holographic character (played by singer Diahann Carroll) who tells Itchy that she's his fantasy and that she can tell how 'excited' he is. She then goes on to sing a really, really boring song while wearing the most bizarre silver wig while Itchy makes noises that can only be described as "orgasmic".
This is it. I'm calling it. This is the weirdest thing in all of Star Wars (okay, in all of the Star Wars that I am watching - Han Solo vs. the Space Otter is probably weirder). It's an elderly Wookiee getting sexual pleasure from a holographic singer IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS DAMN HOUSE in what is supposed to be a family special!
After this literal nightmare finishes, they get contacted by no other than Princess Leia and C-3PO!
I'm not sure why Leia looks like she's doing her taxes either.
OK, let's address the elephant in the room. Carrie Fisher was, rather infamously, high as fuck after having done all the cocaine in Hollywood during the filming of the special. To her credit, in this scene you can't really tell unless you're looking for it, but it was always one of those fun little details about why the Holiday Special is just this total clusterfuck. But now, of course, after her death from issues that were no doubt a result of her habits during this time, it's a rather tragic instead. At least in this scene.
Again, she doesn't do anything except as where Chewie is and then go away.
OH SHIT, THE EMPIRE HAS ARRIVED. They're out hunting for Rebels, and they've work out that one of the family members is missing! Luckily, Saun Dann is able to distract one of the Imperials by using Malla's present: A box which contains a holographic Jefferson Starship.
Okay, so, to this bit's credit it's not as bad as the Diahann Carroll bit. In fact it's a pretty good song, mostly. But of course they realised that you can't just have a band play a normal song and have it look normal, that wouldn't be Star Wars at all! Instead they covered all of the band's instruments with a pink glow effect, sort of like a lightsaber, but shit. BUT it does look like the lead singer is singing into a glowing pink dildo, so that's something.
But really, what makes this part kind of enjoyable is that the Imperial watching it seems to really dig the song. He's just having a good time, and that's great.
The Imperials kick Saun Dann out and start ransacking the house. In order to distract Lumpy, he goes and watches a cartoon. A cartoon about his dad? And the other rebels?? And Boba Fett???
Widely considered one of the least-worst parts of the Holiday Special, the animated segment is at least a welcome break from all the Wookiee-ness. It's actually a story about Luke, Han, Chewie and Leia (well, Leia doesn't do much...) all voiced by their proper actors. PLUS, yeah, Boba Fett is in it and he's really cool and is wearing dope yellow armour (I'm guessing at this point all the animators had to work on were the early all-white designs for Boba?).
The story is pretty simple: Han and Chewie are after a "magical talisman", but it seems to have driven Chewbacca mad! Luke, 3PO and R2 go off to see what's going on, meet up with a guy named Boba Fett, who seems nice, and find out that the Talisman has poisoned Han and Chewie is trying to save him and now Luke's been poisoned and uhhhhhh okay. Chewie and Boba go into town to get an antidote, but 3PO and R2 catch a transmission from Boba to Darth Vader so they know he's working for the Empire so he escapes but they still get the antidote so everyone's OK.
I mean... it's fine? It's hardly an episode of Clone Wars, but still. The animation style is... questionable...
This animated section was done by a company called 'Nelvana', who would later go on to do the Ewoks and Droids cartoons - so I guess someone out there liked this bit!
But the main thing about this animated segment is... did this actually happen? Is this a retelling of something that actually happened to Luke and Han? If so, why is it animated? And why is Lumpy watching it? Is it Rebel propaganda? It's not very good if it is, because the bad guy gets away at the end? WHY IS LUMPY WATCHING A CARTOON STARRING HIS OWN DAD???
The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
So far in the Star Wars universe we've seen plenty of atrocities that the Empire has carried out: The takeover of Lothal, the enslavement of the Wookiees, the destruction of Jedha city and the destruction of Alderaan. The Holiday Special now adds another to that list, arguably the worst one of them all.
You see, Lumpy has this kick-ass stuffed bantha toy in his room (on the right).
But when the Imperials are looking through him room - and making A BIG MESS - they rip off the head of the bantha! THAT'S FUCKED UP. To make it even worse, when they're done the head Imperial tells Lumpy to go and clean up his room! THE MONSTERS.
Instead of tiding up his room, Lumpy instead decides to put together his gift from Saun Dann - a mini-transmitter. To do so he watches an instructional video (on his flatscreen TV) presented by Yet Another Harvey Korman Character. This one is some kind of robot guy, and the joke is that he keeps losing power and has to rub part of his body to charge himself back up again?
I honestly can't understand why anyone would find this funny, or this it was a good idea in any way. There's really nothing more to say about it other than that.
MEANWHILE the Imperials stop to watch a mandatory Imperial broadcast on Malla's TV. I guess this is the Holonet? We briefly saw the Holonet in the background of some Rebels episodes, where it was basically just TV. So, yeah, this is probably the Holonet.
It's a "live and unedited" broadcast from Tatooine! We get to see a bit of unused footage from Mos Eisley shot for Star Wars (which is pretty cool) before cutting into a Cantina, run by none other than Bea Arthur! Well, her character is 'Ackmena', but she's basically just Bea Arthur.
This segment is split into two parts: The first is about another character played by Harvey Korman trying to flirt with Ackmena, but she is having none of it. He has a hole in his head that he pours drinks into.
The second - and better - part is about Ackmena trying to get everyone out of the cantina, as the Empire has just imposed a curfew on the whole of Tatooine (WHAT ABOUT THE HUTTS???). She does this in the best way possible: By singing a song and dancing.
You know what? I like this. I non-ironically like this. This is basically the most successful part of the Holiday Special, and does what everything else in this show fails at: being actually entertaining. It's all down to Bea Arthur being a total pro and actually seeming to give somewhat of a damn about her performance, but she really does actually kind of sell the role of a weary bartender who has to work under the oppression of the Empire. PLUS we get to see a whole bunch of the costumes and creatures from the Cantina that we didn't get a good look at in Star Wars, and we get to see Bea Arthur cuddle up next to a giant rat which is something I'll treasure forever.
And the song is pretty catchy, too! It's based around one of the pieces the Cantina Band play in Star Wars, but now Bea Arthur is singing to it as she leads her patrons out of the cantina.
Lumpy uses his transmitted to make all-but-one of the Imperials leave his house! BUT the reaming Stormtrooper finds him out, and is about to catch when ~HAN AND CHEWIE ARRIVE~.
I actually find it really enjoyable to watch how little Harrison Ford cares about being in this Special. But you know what? It's actually really nice to see him show affection for Chewbacca and his family. In the films you get the sense that Chewie and Han are friends, sure, but they never show the amount of affection you see here. Han knows all of Chewie's family! And he hugs Chewie! Multiple times! That's more than he ever does in any of the original trilogy!
With Chewie back, they can begin the Life Day celebrations. The Life Day celebrations involve, apparently, holding up glowing snowglobes, putting on some lovely red robes, and somehow (psychically?) meeting up with all the other Wookiees at the "tree of life".
And 3PO's there! And R2's there! And Leia's there! And Luke's there! And Han's there! WAIT WHAT? This entire special has been about trying to get to Kazooyyyk for Life Day... so how the hell did Luke and Leia and the droids get there? What's happening here? Is this something that's actually physically happening, or what? WHAT'S GOING ON?
3PO also decides to have a mild existential crisis:
"It is indeed true that at times like this R2 and I wish that we were more than just mechanical beings and were really alive, so that we could share your feelings with you."
R2 and 3PO feel sad about not having feelings.
And, yes, Carrie Fisher sings. She sings a song in counterpoint to the Star Wars main titles. That's a thing that happens. Obviously very high (SHE HUGS CHEWBACCA AND NEVER LETS GO) Princess Leia is singing.
To be fair to Carrie Fisher, she doesn't have a bad voice. Although she obviously struggles with some of the higher notes. But yeah, why is she singing? I don't know. No one knows. That's the terrible secret of The Star Wars Holiday Special. No one knows.
We get some clips from Star Wars (which, in the way it's presented, sort of looks like Chewie having a PTSD flashback) and the 'bacca family sit down to enjoy their Life Day.
So there's a lot of terrible things in the Holiday Special, so why do I like it so much?
The thing about the Holiday Special that makes it so bad is also the thing that makes it amazing: it's not just one bad idea done badly, it's an amazing series of bad ideas that must of SOMEHOW seemed like a good idea at the time.
Let's have 9 minutes of just wookiees! Let's have a circus show! Let's have a singer sing a sex song to an elderly Wookiee! Let's have a band play a song, but also they glow pink! Let's have Harvey Korman in THREE ROLES! Let's get the original cast in and make them have small scenes! Let's cover Mark Hamill's face in make-up to cover his scars! Let's ignore Carrie Fisher being out of her fucking skull! Let's have Bea Arthur sing a song to the Catina aliens! Let's have Carrie Fisher sing a song! To the Star Wars theme!
It's such an amazing collection of bad ideas and wrong moves that it all just turns into this magical hour-and-a-half of utter insanity. And that's why I love it, because there's nothing else in Star Wars (or anywhere else really) like it.
Watching it again (because, yeah, I've watched this baby a few times now) I was surprised as to how much budget must have been thrown at it. Not only the Wookiee make up, but the amazing amount of blue screen work (both the Diahann Carroll and Jefferson Starship songs are 100% shot on blue screen) and an entire animated segment! They even got in a full orchestra for the (actually pretty good) musical score!
Looking at this from the perspective of everything in order, The Holiday Special not only shows us more direct examples of what life under the Empire is actually like (something we didn't really see a lot of before Rebels), but also fleshes out Chewbacca as a character. Now we know that he's not just an ex-military man who's fallen in with this rogue smuggler, he's also a family man! He obviously has to spend time with Han because of his life debt, but also to provide for his family.
I'm not going to pretend The Holiday Special is a secret gem of the Star Wars universe or anything like that, but at the same time I'm not going to pretend that I don't get a massive kick out of watching it. Well, most of it.
You see, Lumpy has this kick-ass stuffed bantha toy in his room (on the right).
But when the Imperials are looking through him room - and making A BIG MESS - they rip off the head of the bantha! THAT'S FUCKED UP. To make it even worse, when they're done the head Imperial tells Lumpy to go and clean up his room! THE MONSTERS.
Instead of tiding up his room, Lumpy instead decides to put together his gift from Saun Dann - a mini-transmitter. To do so he watches an instructional video (on his flatscreen TV) presented by Yet Another Harvey Korman Character. This one is some kind of robot guy, and the joke is that he keeps losing power and has to rub part of his body to charge himself back up again?
I honestly can't understand why anyone would find this funny, or this it was a good idea in any way. There's really nothing more to say about it other than that.
MEANWHILE the Imperials stop to watch a mandatory Imperial broadcast on Malla's TV. I guess this is the Holonet? We briefly saw the Holonet in the background of some Rebels episodes, where it was basically just TV. So, yeah, this is probably the Holonet.
It's a "live and unedited" broadcast from Tatooine! We get to see a bit of unused footage from Mos Eisley shot for Star Wars (which is pretty cool) before cutting into a Cantina, run by none other than Bea Arthur! Well, her character is 'Ackmena', but she's basically just Bea Arthur.
This segment is split into two parts: The first is about another character played by Harvey Korman trying to flirt with Ackmena, but she is having none of it. He has a hole in his head that he pours drinks into.
The second - and better - part is about Ackmena trying to get everyone out of the cantina, as the Empire has just imposed a curfew on the whole of Tatooine (WHAT ABOUT THE HUTTS???). She does this in the best way possible: By singing a song and dancing.
You know what? I like this. I non-ironically like this. This is basically the most successful part of the Holiday Special, and does what everything else in this show fails at: being actually entertaining. It's all down to Bea Arthur being a total pro and actually seeming to give somewhat of a damn about her performance, but she really does actually kind of sell the role of a weary bartender who has to work under the oppression of the Empire. PLUS we get to see a whole bunch of the costumes and creatures from the Cantina that we didn't get a good look at in Star Wars, and we get to see Bea Arthur cuddle up next to a giant rat which is something I'll treasure forever.
And the song is pretty catchy, too! It's based around one of the pieces the Cantina Band play in Star Wars, but now Bea Arthur is singing to it as she leads her patrons out of the cantina.
Lumpy uses his transmitted to make all-but-one of the Imperials leave his house! BUT the reaming Stormtrooper finds him out, and is about to catch when ~HAN AND CHEWIE ARRIVE~.
I actually find it really enjoyable to watch how little Harrison Ford cares about being in this Special. But you know what? It's actually really nice to see him show affection for Chewbacca and his family. In the films you get the sense that Chewie and Han are friends, sure, but they never show the amount of affection you see here. Han knows all of Chewie's family! And he hugs Chewie! Multiple times! That's more than he ever does in any of the original trilogy!
With Chewie back, they can begin the Life Day celebrations. The Life Day celebrations involve, apparently, holding up glowing snowglobes, putting on some lovely red robes, and somehow (psychically?) meeting up with all the other Wookiees at the "tree of life".
And 3PO's there! And R2's there! And Leia's there! And Luke's there! And Han's there! WAIT WHAT? This entire special has been about trying to get to Kazooyyyk for Life Day... so how the hell did Luke and Leia and the droids get there? What's happening here? Is this something that's actually physically happening, or what? WHAT'S GOING ON?
3PO also decides to have a mild existential crisis:
"It is indeed true that at times like this R2 and I wish that we were more than just mechanical beings and were really alive, so that we could share your feelings with you."
R2 and 3PO feel sad about not having feelings.
And, yes, Carrie Fisher sings. She sings a song in counterpoint to the Star Wars main titles. That's a thing that happens. Obviously very high (SHE HUGS CHEWBACCA AND NEVER LETS GO) Princess Leia is singing.
To be fair to Carrie Fisher, she doesn't have a bad voice. Although she obviously struggles with some of the higher notes. But yeah, why is she singing? I don't know. No one knows. That's the terrible secret of The Star Wars Holiday Special. No one knows.
We get some clips from Star Wars (which, in the way it's presented, sort of looks like Chewie having a PTSD flashback) and the 'bacca family sit down to enjoy their Life Day.
So there's a lot of terrible things in the Holiday Special, so why do I like it so much?
The thing about the Holiday Special that makes it so bad is also the thing that makes it amazing: it's not just one bad idea done badly, it's an amazing series of bad ideas that must of SOMEHOW seemed like a good idea at the time.
Let's have 9 minutes of just wookiees! Let's have a circus show! Let's have a singer sing a sex song to an elderly Wookiee! Let's have a band play a song, but also they glow pink! Let's have Harvey Korman in THREE ROLES! Let's get the original cast in and make them have small scenes! Let's cover Mark Hamill's face in make-up to cover his scars! Let's ignore Carrie Fisher being out of her fucking skull! Let's have Bea Arthur sing a song to the Catina aliens! Let's have Carrie Fisher sing a song! To the Star Wars theme!
It's such an amazing collection of bad ideas and wrong moves that it all just turns into this magical hour-and-a-half of utter insanity. And that's why I love it, because there's nothing else in Star Wars (or anywhere else really) like it.
Watching it again (because, yeah, I've watched this baby a few times now) I was surprised as to how much budget must have been thrown at it. Not only the Wookiee make up, but the amazing amount of blue screen work (both the Diahann Carroll and Jefferson Starship songs are 100% shot on blue screen) and an entire animated segment! They even got in a full orchestra for the (actually pretty good) musical score!
Looking at this from the perspective of everything in order, The Holiday Special not only shows us more direct examples of what life under the Empire is actually like (something we didn't really see a lot of before Rebels), but also fleshes out Chewbacca as a character. Now we know that he's not just an ex-military man who's fallen in with this rogue smuggler, he's also a family man! He obviously has to spend time with Han because of his life debt, but also to provide for his family.
I'm not going to pretend The Holiday Special is a secret gem of the Star Wars universe or anything like that, but at the same time I'm not going to pretend that I don't get a massive kick out of watching it. Well, most of it.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Thank you for writing this up (I READ IT ALL) so that now I can pretend to know things about the Holiday Special without having watched it! (I've watched parts of it on Youtube obviously.)
How DID the Holiday Special turn out like it did? I assume Lucas didn't write or direct it himself, but was he too busy with Empire to know what was going on or did he actually think it all sounded like a great idea?
How DID the Holiday Special turn out like it did? I assume Lucas didn't write or direct it himself, but was he too busy with Empire to know what was going on or did he actually think it all sounded like a great idea?
The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
Lucas was involved at the very early stages - the concept and the initial story. The basic idea was to have something that sustained the franchise before Empire came out.
Gary Kurtz basically explained it as:
"It did start out to be a lot better [with a different script]. We had half a dozen meetings with the TV company that was making it. In the end, because of work on promoting Star Wars and working on the next film, we realized we had no time. So we just left it to them and just had the occasional meetings with them, provided them with access to props and the actors, and that was it."
However it kept getting rewritten and rewritten - by writers other than Lucas - until it turned into what we have now. The directors also changed part-way through production as the original director wasn't used to shooting for TV, so he was replaced with an experienced TV director.
The Holiday Special was one of those things that made Lucas do determined to make sure he owned everything when Empire came out, as this was partly a result of Fox being able to do what they wanted with the Star Wars licence, as they owned it.
Gary Kurtz basically explained it as:
"It did start out to be a lot better [with a different script]. We had half a dozen meetings with the TV company that was making it. In the end, because of work on promoting Star Wars and working on the next film, we realized we had no time. So we just left it to them and just had the occasional meetings with them, provided them with access to props and the actors, and that was it."
However it kept getting rewritten and rewritten - by writers other than Lucas - until it turned into what we have now. The directors also changed part-way through production as the original director wasn't used to shooting for TV, so he was replaced with an experienced TV director.
The Holiday Special was one of those things that made Lucas do determined to make sure he owned everything when Empire came out, as this was partly a result of Fox being able to do what they wanted with the Star Wars licence, as they owned it.
Loktar
Pinata Whacker
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Maybe on Life Day.
The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
(I am watching the 'Despecialized.Edition, v2.0' of this film)
"The Empire Strikes Back" is the best Star Wars film, and indeed the best Star Wars anything, out there. You know this, I know this, it's just how it is.
So again that makes it very hard to actually write about in a lot of ways, because everything's already been said - heck, "I am your Father" is arguably the most famous line in all of Star Wars.
So like with Star Wars (the film), I'll start by focusing on how the elements of The Empire Strikes Back work within the larger Star Wars context that now exists.
Firstly, I really like how they handle the passage of time between the two films. Time has obviously passed - the Rebels are in a new base on the planet Hoth, the Empire has a new giant fuck off Star Destroyer, and we even get references to unseen adventures ("that bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mantell"), but at the same time the characters are still exactly as they were at the end of Star Wars: Han and Luke are still buddies, Han and Leia still argue with each other, Luke and Leia still sort of like each other in a way that a brother and sister really shouldn't, and R2 and 3PO are there. All of the elements that are new at the start of the film - the Hoth Ice Base, the Taun Tauns - are not super important to understanding the film, so they don't need any lengthy explanations. Also you could probably fit in a visit to Chewie's family in the gap and that works out fine too.
All this is just a nice way of saying "this is something new" while at the same time saying "but you haven't missed anything important". It might not seem like much, but it's a harder thing than you might think to pull of, and then it's done badly it can really affect the entire film (I'm looking at you, The Force Awakens).
One of the biggest things that's affected by viewing this after everything else is Yoda's introduction. Of course, the original intent behind Yoda messing with Luke was to misdirect the audience, who would have the same expectations as Luke would as to what a "Jedi Master" would look like. The idea that this weird and crazy little green guy is in fact that powerful master that trained the powerful master from the previous film is, obviously, supposed to be a surprise.
But of course, we don't get that any more. We know who Yoda is very well! Heck, we've even been on Dagobah before! AND SO HAS R2-D2! So when we see Yoda start talking to Luke and messing up his stuff, the question is no longer "Who is this guy, and where is Yoda?" but "Has Yoda gone mad while he was on Dagobah?". This worked as an explanation a bit better before Yoda was on Rebels. Before, when the last time we saw him was Revenge of the Sith, that would have meant a period of over 20 years would have passed without seeing Yoda - more than enough time to believe he could have just gone crazy on his on on Dagobah. But now we've seen him as a vision in the Lothal Temple on Rebels only a few years before this, it doesn't work quite as well.
Anyway, even if it doesn't fool the audience any more, the point of Yoda's deception is to test Luke's patience. This is one of the biggest things about this film that's been changed by the prequels and Clone Wars; now that we've seen Anakin's fall to the dark side (over an extended period, as in Clone Wars) we now know the things that made him do it - such as his emotional attachments and his lack of patience (complaining that Obi-Wan was holding him back, being mad that he wasn't made a master). Now that we know that, we can see Yoda testing for those same characteristics in Luke - and finding them.
Watching it now, it's very obvious how similar Luke is at the start of his training on Dagobah to Anakin is during the prequels (again, Clone Wars Anakin helps with this a lot), to the point where you can actually see why Yoda would be very cautious at training him, at risk of losing Luke the same way he lost Anakin.
The most important difference here is that Yoda himself has changed. Having learnt from his mistakes with Anakin and the Clone Wars, Yoda now more obviously tries to stop Luke from falling into the same trap his father did, and teaches a slightly different type of Jedi philosophy than the Jedi of the prequels. Prequel Yoda probably wouldn't have said "Adventure... Excitement... A Jedi craves not these things!" and he definitely would not have said "War does not make one great!" because that's a lesson he only learnt by waging a war and losing.
But at the same time, both Obi-Wan and Yoda are still obviously just training Luke so that he can kill the Emperor. Obi-Wan probably has more of an attachment to Luke (as he knew him more), but Yoda seems to be there just to make sure he's the Jedi who can end the Sith. When Luke fails Yoda's tests and goes off to save Han and Leia, Yoda's first thought it that there's another out there to replace him if Luke dies. I'm not saying Yoda is an asshole about it, or indeed doesn't care about Luke, but it's more that he's focused on the larger picture than he is wanting Luke to become a Jedi so he can feel better about himself.
It's also interesting to see how much there is of Anakin in Luke, especially when he's fighting Vader. His cockyness at the start of the fight - advancing on Vader with his lightsaber, "You'll find out I'm full of surprises!" - is exactly like Anakin would do it. And of course, like Anakin, he pays for it with the loss of a hand.
It's not a big deal, but it's interesting that at no point is it ever explained why Obi-Wan's a ghost. It's easy enough to put the pieces together and realise that it's because Obi-Wan was training with Qui-Gon to become part of the living force... but at no point does Luke (who hasn't a clue about any of this) go "Hey Ben why are you a ghost?". Again, it's not a big deal, but still.
And then there's that reveal. It's not a surprise any more that Vader is Luke's dad. It wasn't a surprise even before the prequels came out because of how it become part of popular culture. But without the surprise of the reveal, does it still have any impact?
Yeah, yeah it does. Instead of the shock of "VADER'S HIS WHAT??", we instead are able to focus on exactly what this means to Luke - namely that his entire world has been turned upside down. The person he hates is the person he looked up to all these years, and the people he trusted lied to him. It's no surprise that he then decides to kill himself (look, I don't think Luke was thinking "If I fall down this shaft I'll probably get cause in an air flow and escape!", he was leaping to his death) once he's confronted with all this.
Vader, too, now feels like a direct continuation of Anakin. Mainly because this is the first time Vader has been written as being Luke's father, so his actions regarding Luke are now a lot more complicated than they were in Star Wars, where he was just A Bad Guy. The opening crawl tells us that Vader is "obsessed with finding young Skywalker", when talking with the Emperor he convinces him that it would be a good idea to try and turn Luke to the Dark Side, and then when he finally reveals himself to Luke the first thing he does is ask Luke to join him in overthrowing Palpatine.
Way back in Revenge of the Sith, when the Empire was first formed, Anakin (then Darth Vader) told Padmé than he believes he can overthrow Palpatine, but at that point it was obvious that, in reality, he wouldn't be able to. Nevertheless, it seems that during all this time Anakin/Vader still believes that and tries to get Luke to help him (ironically, of course, Luke would help him overthrow Palpatine, but probably not in the way Vader was expecting!).
It actually adds a really nice dimension to Vader, that makes him more than the scary henchman of Tarkin that he was in the previous film. It's worth mentioning that all this characterisation is still present in the film whether you're watching it in the context of everything, or just as a sequel to Star Wars, but everything that has come before this does nothing but strengthen what was already there.
Speaking of Palpatine, he's in this film! Depending on which version you're watching, he either looks mostly like he should, or like an old woman with orangutan eyes.
I'm watching the orangutan eyes version, because that's how I roll. I actually don't mind the redone version of this scene with Ian McDiarmid that was done for this scene for the DVD Special Edition that much, although it bothers me that he looks like Revenge of the Sith Palpatine instead of Return of the Jedi Palpatine (because they obviously filmed it during the shooting of the former). Whatever version of the scene you watch (the redone version also changes the dialogue slightly, having Palpatine tell Vader that Luke Skywalker is the person who destroyed the Death Star, and Vader pretending to be shocked about this news even though he obviously already knew it) it still fits in with what we've seen of Palpatine and Vader's relationship from Revenge of the Sith, and obviously sets up the idea that Palpatine wants Luke to turn to the Dark Side as well... probably as a replacement to Vader (something which gets explored in the next film).
Of course, there is that one obvious way watching this film with the knowlege of everything else makes it slightly worse...
Yep, because we know for sure that Luke and Leia are both Anakin's children, we get some unambiguous sister on brother action here. Like I said back in the Revenge of the Sith review, I wish they hadn't made their sibling relationship clear back in the film as it would avoid moments like this being super creepy (although it still would be creepy when the reveal is made in the next film). Obviously stuff like this is unavoidable because of how the films were made, but that doesn't make it better! To be fair, this same reveal now strengthens the moment where Luke reaches out to Leia at the end of the film. Before, he was just trying to connect with someone he was close to, but now it can be seen as the first step of them realising they have some other connection, and the idea that Leia herself might have some level of force sensitivity.
Lando! Lando's back! And he's gone up in the world! It's kind of cool to go from Lando being a small-time smuggler, gambler, and generally untrustworthy guy to being the responsible owner of a mining facility... and still an untrustworthy guy. I don't think knowing the character from Rebels really adds much to the film, except maybe making it more surprising when he turns on Han (as he could be an asshole in Rebels, but never that bad), but it doesn't make it worse in any way. It also helps that Lando is now has the voice of a younger Billy Dee Williams, rather than Billy Dee Williams in his 70's.
Boba Fett's there, and Vader seems to have some sort of relationship with him, so that's cool. Also he's still hanging out with Dengar and Bossk, apparently.
There's not really much else in terms of connections to everything else (oh, Hobbie's here. From Rebels).. Part of this is because a lot of the things that have tried to have direct connections to the Original Trilogy have aimed squarely at Star Wars (Revenge of the Sith, Rebels, and Rogue One are all trying to connect with that film), and so Empire is full of a lot of original elements that, so far, haven't been 'connected' with anything else.
But part of the reason why Empire is so good is that not only does it have a lot of self-contained plot, but that all of it is really good. I am, of course, mainly referring to the Han and Leia relationship. In Star Wars, Leia was clearly the love interest for Luke, and she and Han had a rather strained relationship. They start in that exact same position at the start of this film, but the film manages to have Han and Leia fall in love in a way that shouldn't work but really really does.
Let's take a look at the famous first kiss scene on the Falcon. On paper, this is a really fucked up and creepy scene - Leia repeatedly tells Han that she's not interested, and Han keeps pushing and insisting she's wrong, eventually kisses her against her wishes, and then as soon as they're interrupted Leia runs away. Leia literally tells Han that she doesn't like him, and Han says "ACTUALLY I THINK YOU DO, BABE". If this was done wrong, it would have come of as uncomfortable, creepy, and basically would have destroyed the entire subplot.
But yet it doesn't come off like that at all. It works. Somehow it works. It's a mixture of things really - Kershner's direction, both Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher's acting and chemistry (the fact that they were totally doing it in real life obviously helped!) and John Williams' incredible music all transform this scene into one of total romance, of two characters expressing feelings for each other that they always had, but didn't want to admit.
And that carries on through the entire film. Han doesn't pursue Leia as the woman he wants to be with at the end of the film, but instead they both gradually start to express their feelings toward each other, resulting in the perfect "I love you." "I know" exchange. The fact that this is obviously something they both have to work out is what makes it seem like an actual, mature, relationship. Again, it's another thing it's important to highlight because it's very possible to totally fuck this up and have your 'charming' male character look like a total fucking asshole (I'm looking at you, Jurassic World).
(It's also interesting to note that two years later Harrison Ford would do a very similar love scene in Blade Runner and it does come off as creepy, but there it's done to reinforce the idea that Deckard was an asshole.)
OK I just want to gush about Irvin Kershner's direction here. The Empire Strikes Back is, to me, easily the best looking Star Wars film and that is directly the result of Kershner's direction and Peter Suschitzky's lighting. What makes it work is that Kershner's style is essentially a more refined version of Lucas'. Like Lucas, Kershner prefers to shoot a scene mainly using the wide master shot, rather than cutting back and forth. He also doesn't move his camera a lot, and instead has the elements in the frame provide the moment, and not the other way round. There's not a single shot in the film where he moves the camera unnecessarily to make things seem 'more dramatic' (unlike most directors today) which means that you end up with a film filled with really interesting shot compositions that change with the moment of the characters, and therefore with the story. This gives the film the same "classic" feel that Star Wars has - lending a nice sense of visual continuity - but much much better. It will be interesting to compare this to JJ Abrams' style, which is basically the opposite of everything Kershner does.
But - BUT - even though visually this film is 'Lucas, but better' the main difference between this film's direction and Star Wars' is that Kershner actually knows how to handle actors. Lucas is famous for not being an actor's director, and as such the performances in Star Wars were a bit shallow. That actually fit the tone of the film very well, and so it wasn't a problem then (it was, arguably, more of a problem in the prequels), but as soon as you get a director in that actually knows how to get actors to convey things properly a whole new level is added to the film.
Take, for example, the scene where Luke says goodbye to Han before the leaves for the Battle of Hoth. It could have been just this moment of Han saying "Good luck, kid.", in the same way he did to Luke at the end of Star Wars. But instead, we also get this amazing moment where Luke starts to say something to Han, stops, and they have this great bit of non-verbal communication:
It's just a nice little character moment that you would have never really got from Lucas, because he simply wouldn't have told his actors to do it. It just makes the characters that much more human, and tells the story in ways other than characters explaining their feelings to each other, and this film is full of moments like that.
Well, that's it. It's all downhill from here. This is peak Star Wars. Previous Star Wars has been amazing because of how it adds to the lore of the universe, or how it treats characters, or for just being an exciting adventure ride, but The Empire Strikes Back does all of this and then some.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.
Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of Hoth.
The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space....
It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.
Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of Hoth.
The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space....
(I am watching the 'Despecialized.Edition, v2.0' of this film)
"The Empire Strikes Back" is the best Star Wars film, and indeed the best Star Wars anything, out there. You know this, I know this, it's just how it is.
So again that makes it very hard to actually write about in a lot of ways, because everything's already been said - heck, "I am your Father" is arguably the most famous line in all of Star Wars.
So like with Star Wars (the film), I'll start by focusing on how the elements of The Empire Strikes Back work within the larger Star Wars context that now exists.
Firstly, I really like how they handle the passage of time between the two films. Time has obviously passed - the Rebels are in a new base on the planet Hoth, the Empire has a new giant fuck off Star Destroyer, and we even get references to unseen adventures ("that bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mantell"), but at the same time the characters are still exactly as they were at the end of Star Wars: Han and Luke are still buddies, Han and Leia still argue with each other, Luke and Leia still sort of like each other in a way that a brother and sister really shouldn't, and R2 and 3PO are there. All of the elements that are new at the start of the film - the Hoth Ice Base, the Taun Tauns - are not super important to understanding the film, so they don't need any lengthy explanations. Also you could probably fit in a visit to Chewie's family in the gap and that works out fine too.
All this is just a nice way of saying "this is something new" while at the same time saying "but you haven't missed anything important". It might not seem like much, but it's a harder thing than you might think to pull of, and then it's done badly it can really affect the entire film (I'm looking at you, The Force Awakens).
One of the biggest things that's affected by viewing this after everything else is Yoda's introduction. Of course, the original intent behind Yoda messing with Luke was to misdirect the audience, who would have the same expectations as Luke would as to what a "Jedi Master" would look like. The idea that this weird and crazy little green guy is in fact that powerful master that trained the powerful master from the previous film is, obviously, supposed to be a surprise.
But of course, we don't get that any more. We know who Yoda is very well! Heck, we've even been on Dagobah before! AND SO HAS R2-D2! So when we see Yoda start talking to Luke and messing up his stuff, the question is no longer "Who is this guy, and where is Yoda?" but "Has Yoda gone mad while he was on Dagobah?". This worked as an explanation a bit better before Yoda was on Rebels. Before, when the last time we saw him was Revenge of the Sith, that would have meant a period of over 20 years would have passed without seeing Yoda - more than enough time to believe he could have just gone crazy on his on on Dagobah. But now we've seen him as a vision in the Lothal Temple on Rebels only a few years before this, it doesn't work quite as well.
Anyway, even if it doesn't fool the audience any more, the point of Yoda's deception is to test Luke's patience. This is one of the biggest things about this film that's been changed by the prequels and Clone Wars; now that we've seen Anakin's fall to the dark side (over an extended period, as in Clone Wars) we now know the things that made him do it - such as his emotional attachments and his lack of patience (complaining that Obi-Wan was holding him back, being mad that he wasn't made a master). Now that we know that, we can see Yoda testing for those same characteristics in Luke - and finding them.
Watching it now, it's very obvious how similar Luke is at the start of his training on Dagobah to Anakin is during the prequels (again, Clone Wars Anakin helps with this a lot), to the point where you can actually see why Yoda would be very cautious at training him, at risk of losing Luke the same way he lost Anakin.
The most important difference here is that Yoda himself has changed. Having learnt from his mistakes with Anakin and the Clone Wars, Yoda now more obviously tries to stop Luke from falling into the same trap his father did, and teaches a slightly different type of Jedi philosophy than the Jedi of the prequels. Prequel Yoda probably wouldn't have said "Adventure... Excitement... A Jedi craves not these things!" and he definitely would not have said "War does not make one great!" because that's a lesson he only learnt by waging a war and losing.
But at the same time, both Obi-Wan and Yoda are still obviously just training Luke so that he can kill the Emperor. Obi-Wan probably has more of an attachment to Luke (as he knew him more), but Yoda seems to be there just to make sure he's the Jedi who can end the Sith. When Luke fails Yoda's tests and goes off to save Han and Leia, Yoda's first thought it that there's another out there to replace him if Luke dies. I'm not saying Yoda is an asshole about it, or indeed doesn't care about Luke, but it's more that he's focused on the larger picture than he is wanting Luke to become a Jedi so he can feel better about himself.
It's also interesting to see how much there is of Anakin in Luke, especially when he's fighting Vader. His cockyness at the start of the fight - advancing on Vader with his lightsaber, "You'll find out I'm full of surprises!" - is exactly like Anakin would do it. And of course, like Anakin, he pays for it with the loss of a hand.
It's not a big deal, but it's interesting that at no point is it ever explained why Obi-Wan's a ghost. It's easy enough to put the pieces together and realise that it's because Obi-Wan was training with Qui-Gon to become part of the living force... but at no point does Luke (who hasn't a clue about any of this) go "Hey Ben why are you a ghost?". Again, it's not a big deal, but still.
And then there's that reveal. It's not a surprise any more that Vader is Luke's dad. It wasn't a surprise even before the prequels came out because of how it become part of popular culture. But without the surprise of the reveal, does it still have any impact?
Yeah, yeah it does. Instead of the shock of "VADER'S HIS WHAT??", we instead are able to focus on exactly what this means to Luke - namely that his entire world has been turned upside down. The person he hates is the person he looked up to all these years, and the people he trusted lied to him. It's no surprise that he then decides to kill himself (look, I don't think Luke was thinking "If I fall down this shaft I'll probably get cause in an air flow and escape!", he was leaping to his death) once he's confronted with all this.
Vader, too, now feels like a direct continuation of Anakin. Mainly because this is the first time Vader has been written as being Luke's father, so his actions regarding Luke are now a lot more complicated than they were in Star Wars, where he was just A Bad Guy. The opening crawl tells us that Vader is "obsessed with finding young Skywalker", when talking with the Emperor he convinces him that it would be a good idea to try and turn Luke to the Dark Side, and then when he finally reveals himself to Luke the first thing he does is ask Luke to join him in overthrowing Palpatine.
Way back in Revenge of the Sith, when the Empire was first formed, Anakin (then Darth Vader) told Padmé than he believes he can overthrow Palpatine, but at that point it was obvious that, in reality, he wouldn't be able to. Nevertheless, it seems that during all this time Anakin/Vader still believes that and tries to get Luke to help him (ironically, of course, Luke would help him overthrow Palpatine, but probably not in the way Vader was expecting!).
It actually adds a really nice dimension to Vader, that makes him more than the scary henchman of Tarkin that he was in the previous film. It's worth mentioning that all this characterisation is still present in the film whether you're watching it in the context of everything, or just as a sequel to Star Wars, but everything that has come before this does nothing but strengthen what was already there.
Speaking of Palpatine, he's in this film! Depending on which version you're watching, he either looks mostly like he should, or like an old woman with orangutan eyes.
I'm watching the orangutan eyes version, because that's how I roll. I actually don't mind the redone version of this scene with Ian McDiarmid that was done for this scene for the DVD Special Edition that much, although it bothers me that he looks like Revenge of the Sith Palpatine instead of Return of the Jedi Palpatine (because they obviously filmed it during the shooting of the former). Whatever version of the scene you watch (the redone version also changes the dialogue slightly, having Palpatine tell Vader that Luke Skywalker is the person who destroyed the Death Star, and Vader pretending to be shocked about this news even though he obviously already knew it) it still fits in with what we've seen of Palpatine and Vader's relationship from Revenge of the Sith, and obviously sets up the idea that Palpatine wants Luke to turn to the Dark Side as well... probably as a replacement to Vader (something which gets explored in the next film).
Of course, there is that one obvious way watching this film with the knowlege of everything else makes it slightly worse...
Yep, because we know for sure that Luke and Leia are both Anakin's children, we get some unambiguous sister on brother action here. Like I said back in the Revenge of the Sith review, I wish they hadn't made their sibling relationship clear back in the film as it would avoid moments like this being super creepy (although it still would be creepy when the reveal is made in the next film). Obviously stuff like this is unavoidable because of how the films were made, but that doesn't make it better! To be fair, this same reveal now strengthens the moment where Luke reaches out to Leia at the end of the film. Before, he was just trying to connect with someone he was close to, but now it can be seen as the first step of them realising they have some other connection, and the idea that Leia herself might have some level of force sensitivity.
Lando! Lando's back! And he's gone up in the world! It's kind of cool to go from Lando being a small-time smuggler, gambler, and generally untrustworthy guy to being the responsible owner of a mining facility... and still an untrustworthy guy. I don't think knowing the character from Rebels really adds much to the film, except maybe making it more surprising when he turns on Han (as he could be an asshole in Rebels, but never that bad), but it doesn't make it worse in any way. It also helps that Lando is now has the voice of a younger Billy Dee Williams, rather than Billy Dee Williams in his 70's.
Boba Fett's there, and Vader seems to have some sort of relationship with him, so that's cool. Also he's still hanging out with Dengar and Bossk, apparently.
There's not really much else in terms of connections to everything else (oh, Hobbie's here. From Rebels).. Part of this is because a lot of the things that have tried to have direct connections to the Original Trilogy have aimed squarely at Star Wars (Revenge of the Sith, Rebels, and Rogue One are all trying to connect with that film), and so Empire is full of a lot of original elements that, so far, haven't been 'connected' with anything else.
But part of the reason why Empire is so good is that not only does it have a lot of self-contained plot, but that all of it is really good. I am, of course, mainly referring to the Han and Leia relationship. In Star Wars, Leia was clearly the love interest for Luke, and she and Han had a rather strained relationship. They start in that exact same position at the start of this film, but the film manages to have Han and Leia fall in love in a way that shouldn't work but really really does.
Let's take a look at the famous first kiss scene on the Falcon. On paper, this is a really fucked up and creepy scene - Leia repeatedly tells Han that she's not interested, and Han keeps pushing and insisting she's wrong, eventually kisses her against her wishes, and then as soon as they're interrupted Leia runs away. Leia literally tells Han that she doesn't like him, and Han says "ACTUALLY I THINK YOU DO, BABE". If this was done wrong, it would have come of as uncomfortable, creepy, and basically would have destroyed the entire subplot.
But yet it doesn't come off like that at all. It works. Somehow it works. It's a mixture of things really - Kershner's direction, both Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher's acting and chemistry (the fact that they were totally doing it in real life obviously helped!) and John Williams' incredible music all transform this scene into one of total romance, of two characters expressing feelings for each other that they always had, but didn't want to admit.
And that carries on through the entire film. Han doesn't pursue Leia as the woman he wants to be with at the end of the film, but instead they both gradually start to express their feelings toward each other, resulting in the perfect "I love you." "I know" exchange. The fact that this is obviously something they both have to work out is what makes it seem like an actual, mature, relationship. Again, it's another thing it's important to highlight because it's very possible to totally fuck this up and have your 'charming' male character look like a total fucking asshole (I'm looking at you, Jurassic World).
(It's also interesting to note that two years later Harrison Ford would do a very similar love scene in Blade Runner and it does come off as creepy, but there it's done to reinforce the idea that Deckard was an asshole.)
OK I just want to gush about Irvin Kershner's direction here. The Empire Strikes Back is, to me, easily the best looking Star Wars film and that is directly the result of Kershner's direction and Peter Suschitzky's lighting. What makes it work is that Kershner's style is essentially a more refined version of Lucas'. Like Lucas, Kershner prefers to shoot a scene mainly using the wide master shot, rather than cutting back and forth. He also doesn't move his camera a lot, and instead has the elements in the frame provide the moment, and not the other way round. There's not a single shot in the film where he moves the camera unnecessarily to make things seem 'more dramatic' (unlike most directors today) which means that you end up with a film filled with really interesting shot compositions that change with the moment of the characters, and therefore with the story. This gives the film the same "classic" feel that Star Wars has - lending a nice sense of visual continuity - but much much better. It will be interesting to compare this to JJ Abrams' style, which is basically the opposite of everything Kershner does.
But - BUT - even though visually this film is 'Lucas, but better' the main difference between this film's direction and Star Wars' is that Kershner actually knows how to handle actors. Lucas is famous for not being an actor's director, and as such the performances in Star Wars were a bit shallow. That actually fit the tone of the film very well, and so it wasn't a problem then (it was, arguably, more of a problem in the prequels), but as soon as you get a director in that actually knows how to get actors to convey things properly a whole new level is added to the film.
Take, for example, the scene where Luke says goodbye to Han before the leaves for the Battle of Hoth. It could have been just this moment of Han saying "Good luck, kid.", in the same way he did to Luke at the end of Star Wars. But instead, we also get this amazing moment where Luke starts to say something to Han, stops, and they have this great bit of non-verbal communication:
It's just a nice little character moment that you would have never really got from Lucas, because he simply wouldn't have told his actors to do it. It just makes the characters that much more human, and tells the story in ways other than characters explaining their feelings to each other, and this film is full of moments like that.
Well, that's it. It's all downhill from here. This is peak Star Wars. Previous Star Wars has been amazing because of how it adds to the lore of the universe, or how it treats characters, or for just being an exciting adventure ride, but The Empire Strikes Back does all of this and then some.
The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
SHOUTOUT TO MY BOY IRVIN KERSH WHO DIRECTED THE BEST LOOKING STAR WARS FILM
]
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
You know how Mark Hamill has loads of scenes with a puppet (and a robot) in this movie but you never once actually think about the fact that Mark Hamill in the only person there, you think of Yoda (and R2) as being just as real as Luke? That's good! It's easy to take it for granted but Yoda was an amazing creation and Hamill was (is) actually a damn good actor to be able to convince you that he's acting with another person in all those scenes rather than with a muppet.
I remember watching Empire on Christmas day one year in the late eighties and there was an ad break right after Vader said "The Force is with you, young Skywalker...but you're not a Jedi yet" and I taped it off tv that day and now every time I watch it I still expect an ad break there because I watched that tape so much.
Also I used to look away when Han cut the taun taun open because I was sad it died?
I like LOBOT.
The only good thing Family Guy ever did was point out that Lando was wearing Han's clothes in the final scene.
I like that when Obi-Wan wants someone to wait he puts his hands up like this...
I remember watching Empire on Christmas day one year in the late eighties and there was an ad break right after Vader said "The Force is with you, young Skywalker...but you're not a Jedi yet" and I taped it off tv that day and now every time I watch it I still expect an ad break there because I watched that tape so much.
Also I used to look away when Han cut the taun taun open because I was sad it died?
I like LOBOT.
The only good thing Family Guy ever did was point out that Lando was wearing Han's clothes in the final scene.
I like that when Obi-Wan wants someone to wait he puts his hands up like this...
The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure
Okay. Okay. The Ewok films. I can do this.
So right after Return of the Jedi was made, George Lucas thought it would be a cool idea to make a half-hour Ewok TV movie for his daughter Amanda, who was a fan of them. He shipped the idea around everywhere, but the only TV station that showed any interest was ABC, who's only stipulation was that it took up two hours of time (oddly enough, the film would be shown in theatres in the UK!).
With that in mind, a lot about this film is made so much clearer.
The film opens with a husband and wife looking for their children on Endor, having obviously crashed their ship on the planet. Their search is interrupted by then being kidnapped BY A GIANT???
Anyway, that's the set-up, but really the story is about the two kids - Cindel and Mace ('Mace' was a character name Lucas came up with in the earlier drafts of Star Wars, so it's not surprising he'd use it here and in the prequels) - teaming up with the Ewoks to rescue their parents. Only the trouble is that this would have been fine for a half-four story, but apparently not enough to fill the required two hours (technically only 90 minutes if you don't include adverts) and so as such this film is filled with SO MUCH FUCKING PADDING it's hard to believe.
Before the kids enter the story, we're introduced to Wicket the Ewok, his dad Deej and two of Wicket's older brothers: Weechee and Widdle (yes, his name is 'Widdle Warrick'). Weechee and Widdle have gone and got themselves stuck on a mountain or something and Deej has to use his hang-glider to go rescue them. This isn't really relevant to the story in any way but I guess it does introduce some of our Ewok characters so sure, fine. Also credit to them for actually making an actual working hand-glider and getting a guy in an Ewok suit to fly it.
It's during this early sequence that you realise that this film has the same problem the Holiday Special had, in that a large majority of the main characters do not speak English. The way the Holiday Special dealt with this problem was that it didn't, and we just had scenes upon scenes of Wookiees growling at each other. This film takes a different approach, and instead has a narrator describe the action on screen during the more Ewoky parts of the film, which at times makes it feel like you're watching an Ewok nature documentary (which I totally would, by the way). At other times the narrator pops up to explain the plot, because the characters giving exposition are doing so in Ewokese.
It's also when you notice that not only do the Ewoks eyes never move or blink, giving them the cold, dead eyes of a killer, but their mouths don't move. The non-blinking eyes was a thing in Jedi (to the point where they made them blink on the blu-ray THE FUCKERS) but I do seem to remember there was at least some sort of mouth movement. But here it's nothing, and it's creepy.
So Wicket's dad and brothers find the two kids in their crashed space ship. They are:
Cindel Towani - A literal child wearing the height of 80's space-fashion.
Mace Towani - A not-Luke Skywalker who is A) a whiny shit, and B) the WORST DAMN ACTOR IN ALL OF STAR WARS.
No seriously, I'd take Jake Lloyd any day of the week over this guy. I mean the girl who plays Cindel is okay I guess, but Mace is really supposed to be the main English-speaking character AND HE FUCKING SUCKS.
So anyway, the Ewoks rescue the kids... so then they all go out to rescue their parents, right? HAHAHA NOPE! The quest to rescue their parents doesn't actually start until 45 minutes into a 90-minute film. In the meantime we have a whole load of bullshit filler: Cindel gets sick, the Ewoks give her medicine, they run out of medicine, they go and get more from a tree, Cindel teaches Wicket some English, Mace takes Cindel away from the Ewoks because he hates them for some reason, they get attacked by a really unconvincing monster and fall asleep inside a tree.
I want to talk about the effects in this film. Because they're really bad, and because they were still done by Industrial Light & Magic? Apparently ILM, lead by Dennis Muren (who did effects for Star Wars and Empire!) were "encouraged" to use more traditional effects techniques, such as stop-motion, when they made this film. Which I'm guessing is just code for "we have no budget so GOOD LUCK GUYS". And as such it's actually kind of shocking that even in the 80's ILM's work could look so ropey.
Anyway, the kids wake up to find out that the Ewoks are fighting the Bad Effects Monster they ran away from the previous night, and after Wicket KILLS IT WITH A POISON DART they also find their father's 'life monitor' on the animal's collar. Each of the Towani family wears a sort of bracelet that shows them the vital signs of the other members of their family. This isn't important now. Anyway, this somehow leads them to work out that their parents are being kept by the beasts owner, the Giant "Gorax" - and by "leads them to work out" I mean "the narrator explains it all directly because no one in the story is able to say it".
Our story begins in a time long long ago, deep in an enchanted forest on the distant moon of Endor...
Okay. Okay. The Ewok films. I can do this.
So right after Return of the Jedi was made, George Lucas thought it would be a cool idea to make a half-hour Ewok TV movie for his daughter Amanda, who was a fan of them. He shipped the idea around everywhere, but the only TV station that showed any interest was ABC, who's only stipulation was that it took up two hours of time (oddly enough, the film would be shown in theatres in the UK!).
With that in mind, a lot about this film is made so much clearer.
The film opens with a husband and wife looking for their children on Endor, having obviously crashed their ship on the planet. Their search is interrupted by then being kidnapped BY A GIANT???
Anyway, that's the set-up, but really the story is about the two kids - Cindel and Mace ('Mace' was a character name Lucas came up with in the earlier drafts of Star Wars, so it's not surprising he'd use it here and in the prequels) - teaming up with the Ewoks to rescue their parents. Only the trouble is that this would have been fine for a half-four story, but apparently not enough to fill the required two hours (technically only 90 minutes if you don't include adverts) and so as such this film is filled with SO MUCH FUCKING PADDING it's hard to believe.
Before the kids enter the story, we're introduced to Wicket the Ewok, his dad Deej and two of Wicket's older brothers: Weechee and Widdle (yes, his name is 'Widdle Warrick'). Weechee and Widdle have gone and got themselves stuck on a mountain or something and Deej has to use his hang-glider to go rescue them. This isn't really relevant to the story in any way but I guess it does introduce some of our Ewok characters so sure, fine. Also credit to them for actually making an actual working hand-glider and getting a guy in an Ewok suit to fly it.
It's during this early sequence that you realise that this film has the same problem the Holiday Special had, in that a large majority of the main characters do not speak English. The way the Holiday Special dealt with this problem was that it didn't, and we just had scenes upon scenes of Wookiees growling at each other. This film takes a different approach, and instead has a narrator describe the action on screen during the more Ewoky parts of the film, which at times makes it feel like you're watching an Ewok nature documentary (which I totally would, by the way). At other times the narrator pops up to explain the plot, because the characters giving exposition are doing so in Ewokese.
It's also when you notice that not only do the Ewoks eyes never move or blink, giving them the cold, dead eyes of a killer, but their mouths don't move. The non-blinking eyes was a thing in Jedi (to the point where they made them blink on the blu-ray THE FUCKERS) but I do seem to remember there was at least some sort of mouth movement. But here it's nothing, and it's creepy.
So Wicket's dad and brothers find the two kids in their crashed space ship. They are:
Cindel Towani - A literal child wearing the height of 80's space-fashion.
Mace Towani - A not-Luke Skywalker who is A) a whiny shit, and B) the WORST DAMN ACTOR IN ALL OF STAR WARS.
No seriously, I'd take Jake Lloyd any day of the week over this guy. I mean the girl who plays Cindel is okay I guess, but Mace is really supposed to be the main English-speaking character AND HE FUCKING SUCKS.
So anyway, the Ewoks rescue the kids... so then they all go out to rescue their parents, right? HAHAHA NOPE! The quest to rescue their parents doesn't actually start until 45 minutes into a 90-minute film. In the meantime we have a whole load of bullshit filler: Cindel gets sick, the Ewoks give her medicine, they run out of medicine, they go and get more from a tree, Cindel teaches Wicket some English, Mace takes Cindel away from the Ewoks because he hates them for some reason, they get attacked by a really unconvincing monster and fall asleep inside a tree.
I want to talk about the effects in this film. Because they're really bad, and because they were still done by Industrial Light & Magic? Apparently ILM, lead by Dennis Muren (who did effects for Star Wars and Empire!) were "encouraged" to use more traditional effects techniques, such as stop-motion, when they made this film. Which I'm guessing is just code for "we have no budget so GOOD LUCK GUYS". And as such it's actually kind of shocking that even in the 80's ILM's work could look so ropey.
Anyway, the kids wake up to find out that the Ewoks are fighting the Bad Effects Monster they ran away from the previous night, and after Wicket KILLS IT WITH A POISON DART they also find their father's 'life monitor' on the animal's collar. Each of the Towani family wears a sort of bracelet that shows them the vital signs of the other members of their family. This isn't important now. Anyway, this somehow leads them to work out that their parents are being kept by the beasts owner, the Giant "Gorax" - and by "leads them to work out" I mean "the narrator explains it all directly because no one in the story is able to say it".
The Tomtrek
Love Wookiee
I'M SORRY I NEEDED TO SPLIT THIS INTO TWO POSTS BUT I REALLY NEED MORE THAN 10 IMAGES TO SHOW WHAT THE HELL THIS FILM IS DOING.
So this means that, yeah, finally, the Caravan of Courage is about to set off, right? RIGHT? NOPE. They've gotta go see Logray.
You remember Logray, right? C'mon, he was in Jedi! He's this dude:
He spins the Ewok-dreidel (pictured) to show Mace and Cindel a vision of their parents being held by Gorax (because I guess they couldn't hear like two minutes ago when the narrator explained it all to the audience). SO THEY FINALLY FUCKING DECIDE TO GET SOME PEOPLE TOGETHER AND GO AND SAVE THEIR PARENTS. WE'RE AT LIKE 40 MINUTES IN HERE NOW.
BUT WAIT. FUCKING Logray has to give out some FUCKING gifts to the whole party, in a scene that's totally and completely not at all like the gift-giving scene in Lorien so I don't know why I even brought it up! Cindel gets a ~magic candle~, Wicket gets a ~magic walking stick~, Deej, Weechee and Widdle each get a weird sort of crown that looks like wings??, and Mace gets a ~magic stone~ that he complains about. There's also a magic crystal and a tooth that they have to give to other people on the way.
YEAH, THIS IS IT! HALF WAY THROUGH THE FILM AND THEY'RE FINALLY GOING ON THE FUCKING JOURNEY TO RESCUE THEIR PARENTS!
Almost immediately after leaving, they meet another Ewok. His name is Chukha-Trok, and he greets them by cutting a tree down right on top of them. I'll say this right now: Chukha-Trok is the best Ewok.
My beautiful Ewok son, Chukha-Trok.
Chukha-Trok takes no shit from nobody, he just likes to cut down trees with his axe AND THAT'S IT. Even when he's given the tooth from Logray he still doesn't want to come along, until Mace challenges him to an AXE THROWING CONTEST which consists of Mace throwing an axe into a tree and then Chukha-Trok hitting that axe with his axe. I mean it's not really much of a contest but whatever, it convinces him to come along.
They then meet the final member of the party, an Ewok Priestess named Kaink. She's okay, I guess, but it's not like she's Chukha-Trok or anything. She agrees to join only after she gets that magic crystal and Cindel turns it into a mouse or something. Look, it's not very clear and the narrator isn't really helping us out at this point, so whatever.
Unfortunately we still have 40 minutes to kill so, yeah, have some filler: Mace falls into a magic lake and has to be rescued by Wicket's magic walking stick. They meet a group of fairies called "wisties" (it REALLY sounds like they're saying "whisky") and Cindel uses her magic candle to turn them into a Queen Fairy or something??
They then later find out that she eats laughter or something. By this point they're clearly making any shit up to fill time.
I get that the idea of a group of heroes out on a quest encountering a series of different people and creatures is a classic storytelling device - heck, that's exactly what The Hobbit is, and that's great! But do they all have to be so boring? Like literally one of the things that happens is that the horse carrying Cindel runs away and Chukha-Trok has to bring it back. That's it. That's a whole sequence in this film.
OK I'm just going to skip to the part where they arrive at Gorax's castle, which is in the middle of a desert which they apparently have on the Forest Moon of Endor. Mace finally uses his magic rock to find a way inside, and he and the Ewoks go in, leaving Cindel, Wicket and, uh, I think it's Widdle? at the entrance because they're young and can't do stunts or anything.
They use a giant spider-web to climb across a large chasm, only to be attacked by a giant spider which OH MY GOD DID ILM REALLY DO THESE EFFECTS? REALLY?
ARE YOU SURE?
Kaink hypnotises the spider with her magic crystal and makes it fall to it's death. Hooray!
They finally meet the Gorax (he's a giant!) and find the parents. One of the Ewoks distracts the Gorax while Mace rescues his parents. His parents are weird in that they're both terrible actors, but also are basically just stock parents from any 80's kids film. I mean this is an 80's kids film but it's still not a character type you expect to find in the Star Wars universe.
So this is Gorax.
As far as effects for this film goes, he's okay. He doesn't say anything. He's just an angry giant. But sure, whatever, he's not terrible.
HOWEVER when the fucking fairy (who is apparently a Fairy Queen called 'Izrina', although I'm not sure how Mace knew that since she can't talk!) decides to distract Gorax he fails his arms around, breaking off parts of the cave roof AND LANDING ON POOR OLD CHUKA-TROK. Even though it was only about two stones that hit his head, that's apparently enough to kill him.
Goodbye Chukha-Trok, you were too beautiful for this world.
The craziest thing of all is that they kill Gorax when the mother (who has done literally nothing in this film at all) shoots him and causes him to fall down the giant chasm. The mother.
Everyone's saved and blah blah blah all the Ewoks dance and the film ends.
Hey, so, this isn't a good film? I mean even of the level of "80's made-for-TV kids film" this still isn't very good? The characters are pretty bad, the story is terrible, it's so very obviously a half-hour plot extended to triple it's intended length, and the effects are terrible.
On most objective levels, this is still better than the Holiday Special. But really, in my opinion, the fact that it's better actually makes it worse. The thing I like about the Holiday Special is that it's so bad in such an insane way that it makes it entertaining. But this is just mediocre, and boring, and not fun to watch at all.
Sooooo if this was made after Jedi, why am I watching it now? Well, back in the days of the old EU, the placement for this film and Battle for Ender was placed at around just before the events of Return of the Jedi. This is mainly because Wicket is obviously still roughly the same age as we see him in Jedi, but there's no obvious Imperial or Rebel presence anywhere on Endor (which there would be if this was post-Jedi. Plus the fact that Cindel seems to have to explain the concept of space ships to Wicket. For this film, that placement sort of works. The next film introduces some massive problems with that, though.
BUT at least it ends with the Towani family back together again, all living happily ever after.
So this means that, yeah, finally, the Caravan of Courage is about to set off, right? RIGHT? NOPE. They've gotta go see Logray.
You remember Logray, right? C'mon, he was in Jedi! He's this dude:
He spins the Ewok-dreidel (pictured) to show Mace and Cindel a vision of their parents being held by Gorax (because I guess they couldn't hear like two minutes ago when the narrator explained it all to the audience). SO THEY FINALLY FUCKING DECIDE TO GET SOME PEOPLE TOGETHER AND GO AND SAVE THEIR PARENTS. WE'RE AT LIKE 40 MINUTES IN HERE NOW.
BUT WAIT. FUCKING Logray has to give out some FUCKING gifts to the whole party, in a scene that's totally and completely not at all like the gift-giving scene in Lorien so I don't know why I even brought it up! Cindel gets a ~magic candle~, Wicket gets a ~magic walking stick~, Deej, Weechee and Widdle each get a weird sort of crown that looks like wings??, and Mace gets a ~magic stone~ that he complains about. There's also a magic crystal and a tooth that they have to give to other people on the way.
YEAH, THIS IS IT! HALF WAY THROUGH THE FILM AND THEY'RE FINALLY GOING ON THE FUCKING JOURNEY TO RESCUE THEIR PARENTS!
Almost immediately after leaving, they meet another Ewok. His name is Chukha-Trok, and he greets them by cutting a tree down right on top of them. I'll say this right now: Chukha-Trok is the best Ewok.
My beautiful Ewok son, Chukha-Trok.
Chukha-Trok takes no shit from nobody, he just likes to cut down trees with his axe AND THAT'S IT. Even when he's given the tooth from Logray he still doesn't want to come along, until Mace challenges him to an AXE THROWING CONTEST which consists of Mace throwing an axe into a tree and then Chukha-Trok hitting that axe with his axe. I mean it's not really much of a contest but whatever, it convinces him to come along.
They then meet the final member of the party, an Ewok Priestess named Kaink. She's okay, I guess, but it's not like she's Chukha-Trok or anything. She agrees to join only after she gets that magic crystal and Cindel turns it into a mouse or something. Look, it's not very clear and the narrator isn't really helping us out at this point, so whatever.
Unfortunately we still have 40 minutes to kill so, yeah, have some filler: Mace falls into a magic lake and has to be rescued by Wicket's magic walking stick. They meet a group of fairies called "wisties" (it REALLY sounds like they're saying "whisky") and Cindel uses her magic candle to turn them into a Queen Fairy or something??
They then later find out that she eats laughter or something. By this point they're clearly making any shit up to fill time.
I get that the idea of a group of heroes out on a quest encountering a series of different people and creatures is a classic storytelling device - heck, that's exactly what The Hobbit is, and that's great! But do they all have to be so boring? Like literally one of the things that happens is that the horse carrying Cindel runs away and Chukha-Trok has to bring it back. That's it. That's a whole sequence in this film.
OK I'm just going to skip to the part where they arrive at Gorax's castle, which is in the middle of a desert which they apparently have on the Forest Moon of Endor. Mace finally uses his magic rock to find a way inside, and he and the Ewoks go in, leaving Cindel, Wicket and, uh, I think it's Widdle? at the entrance because they're young and can't do stunts or anything.
They use a giant spider-web to climb across a large chasm, only to be attacked by a giant spider which OH MY GOD DID ILM REALLY DO THESE EFFECTS? REALLY?
ARE YOU SURE?
Kaink hypnotises the spider with her magic crystal and makes it fall to it's death. Hooray!
They finally meet the Gorax (he's a giant!) and find the parents. One of the Ewoks distracts the Gorax while Mace rescues his parents. His parents are weird in that they're both terrible actors, but also are basically just stock parents from any 80's kids film. I mean this is an 80's kids film but it's still not a character type you expect to find in the Star Wars universe.
So this is Gorax.
As far as effects for this film goes, he's okay. He doesn't say anything. He's just an angry giant. But sure, whatever, he's not terrible.
HOWEVER when the fucking fairy (who is apparently a Fairy Queen called 'Izrina', although I'm not sure how Mace knew that since she can't talk!) decides to distract Gorax he fails his arms around, breaking off parts of the cave roof AND LANDING ON POOR OLD CHUKA-TROK. Even though it was only about two stones that hit his head, that's apparently enough to kill him.
Goodbye Chukha-Trok, you were too beautiful for this world.
The craziest thing of all is that they kill Gorax when the mother (who has done literally nothing in this film at all) shoots him and causes him to fall down the giant chasm. The mother.
Everyone's saved and blah blah blah all the Ewoks dance and the film ends.
Hey, so, this isn't a good film? I mean even of the level of "80's made-for-TV kids film" this still isn't very good? The characters are pretty bad, the story is terrible, it's so very obviously a half-hour plot extended to triple it's intended length, and the effects are terrible.
On most objective levels, this is still better than the Holiday Special. But really, in my opinion, the fact that it's better actually makes it worse. The thing I like about the Holiday Special is that it's so bad in such an insane way that it makes it entertaining. But this is just mediocre, and boring, and not fun to watch at all.
Sooooo if this was made after Jedi, why am I watching it now? Well, back in the days of the old EU, the placement for this film and Battle for Ender was placed at around just before the events of Return of the Jedi. This is mainly because Wicket is obviously still roughly the same age as we see him in Jedi, but there's no obvious Imperial or Rebel presence anywhere on Endor (which there would be if this was post-Jedi. Plus the fact that Cindel seems to have to explain the concept of space ships to Wicket. For this film, that placement sort of works. The next film introduces some massive problems with that, though.
BUT at least it ends with the Towani family back together again, all living happily ever after.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
I rented the two Ewoks movies from the video shop when I was a child, probably more than once.
Literally nothing you wrote sounded familiar.
But I have this gif!
Literally nothing you wrote sounded familiar.
But I have this gif!