*clears throat, steps up to the podium, taps microphone*

We should all get back to blogging. Listen, I know. I know. It’s blogging. It’s old. It’s telegrams and buggy whips. I get it, I feel you, you’re probably not wrong, but here is a counterpoint:

Our choices for social media are occasionally hellish, and are arguably helping to hasten our collective destruction. Don’t get it twisted, social media also helps us become more informed and entertained — mis/disinformation spreads like norovirus, but good information moves fast, too. I just don’t know which one moves faster, and that’s a grim race I can hardly bear to consider. Point is, though, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, they’re a place you go — like a bar, it’s frequently fun, occasionally interesting, often loud and deranged and usually full of one corner of belligerent drunken assholes who won’t leave you alone. (Unlike a bar, it’s also full of sock puppets and bots. So I guess it’s like a weird sci-fi muppet bar staffed by droids? Fuck, I don’t know, I think I’m losing the thread of the conversation here.)

What I mean is —

Those social media sites are external.

They aren’t yours.

Maybe collectively they can be ours, if we claim them, but just the same: we lack actual ownership. But you need a place to call your own. A place to which you can escape. A place to call home. 

And so I present to you —

*wheels out rickety-ass cart with squeaky wheels*

*whips off the blanket covering it*

*inside is a janky old pile of blog*

BLOGS

ta-da

*does a clumsy pirouette*

Remember those? Remember this place, right here, the one you’re reading? Holy shit, it’s a blog*! Did you even realize you were witnessing such rara avis as a gods-danged blog? That’s right, it’s a “weblog” or “web journal” — not quite as antiquated as a dial-up BBS (and you bet your sweet ass I’d go back to SysOpping one of those if I could), yet still feels like a relic of a bygone era. Most hot takes are done on Twitter. Most cold takes are done on Facebook. Instagram is where you see the pretty pictures. Mastodon is where you go for 10 minutes when you’re fed up with Twitter, then you go back to Twitter because now you remember why you don’t go to Mastodon. Livejournal is where you to go buy Russian dick pills, I think? I dunno. Point is, blogs feel like raggedy junk piles — crashed star destroyers and X-Wings in the Jakku graveyard. Even the name sound awful. BLOOOOG. BLAAAAAHG. BLOOORRRRG. It’s onomatopoeiac: a regurgitative sound, the sound of a dog horking up whatever weird yard garbage it ate.

Here is why we should all get back to writing and reading blogs again:

a) Because Fuck Twitter And Facebook

I mean, c’mon.

b) Because We Need Our Attention Spans Back

Remember being able to read something that took you more than two, three minutes to consume? Not just one glib tweet, not just an article you reshare because you peeped the headline and that’s probably good enough, not some SASSY MEME or ANIMATORTED GIF FILE. Wasn’t that fun? Not having the attention span of a high-anxiety, cocaine-sniffing chipmunk?

c) Because Nuance Is Good, Actually

You can’t build complex flavors on Twitter. It’s social Doritos, man. Delicious. Tasty crunch. Fast to consume. You can’t layer in complexity, though — it’s pretty much just a nacho cheese salt bomb in terms of content. You want nuance, you need more than 240 characters. Yes, Twitter has threading, and I like threads, but it’s still a string of popcorn more than it is a proper meal.

d) Because You Own It

It’s nice to own your stuff. You don’t really own your content on other sites. Okay, yes, technically you kinda do — but trust me when I tell you, the government has ruled that those sites own your shit. Why? So they can petition those places for your info. Twitter doesn’t claim to, or want to, own your shit, but the government says they do anyway, which creates a somewhat sticky situation, legally-speaking. As a person who has literally had tweets turned into a movie, lemme just say: this complicates things. So, as a writer, I note to other writers especially: owning your space, having an Online Place to call your own, is actually pretty great.

e) Because You Control It

I moderate this space. It is not a troll bridge. I control what I say here and who can say what in return. Now, true, Twitter looks to be instituting more robust controls for content posters, which is actually a positive by my metric. So, yay. Just the same, I can institute control over how the information is seen, dispensed, and commented upon without being at the mercy of any kind of giant company, especially one that seems to care very little about the presence of Nazis and a whole lot about the hurt feelings of Nazis. Also, one mis-step on Twitter or one mob campaign can get you suspended or banned outright, losing access to your entire bank of content and access to all your earned friends/followers.

f) Because People Quit Other Social Media Platforms Like They’re Bad Habits

It’s a constant refrain of people saying, “I gotta get off of [insert social media platform here] because it’s bad for me, bad for the world,” whatever. But nobody ever quits blogs. It’s like quitting vegetables. They’re just good for you. Probably. Maybe. Shut up and eat your WORD CABBAGE, jerks.

g) Because It Is Good Writing Practice

This one is for writers expressly, but it’s actually a really good place to churn words and develop a voice, a habit, a feel for language. Twitter is good for jokes, but not long-form content, and most of what writers will actually get paid for is longform content. Not a bad place to cut your teeth. And what the fuck does that mean, anyway? “Cut your teeth.” How would you even cut a tooth, anyway? Scroll saw? Laser torch? Don’t cut teeth, you barbarian. Your teeth are fine the way they are.

h) Because Blogs Can Also Be Newsletters

Newsletters are a new niche hotness, but you can have it both ways: this blog, if you subscribe, becomes a newsletter. Comes right to your email. Oooh. Fancy. High-tech. Mmm.

Of course, blogs have some downsides, too.

You don’t get an instantaneous response, for one. I tweet something and it’s chum in the water — it’s snappy, responsive, lickety-quick. Sometimes you write a blog and… maybe it sits a while. You’ve gone fishing and best put on your PATIENCE PANTS. It’s also not as sexy as Twitter — it’s still the hottest club in town, which means all the COOL PEOPLE are there, even though also all the AWFUL PEOPLE are there, too. For writers, this can feel like there’s less influence in blogs, but it’s also worth noting that publishers, agents and freelance clients might actually want to see some of your work on display. And though I’ve certainly gotten a lot of work over Twitter (Star Wars, the movie, theoretically a portion of my publishing career in general), the blog has long-formed the foundation of my so-called “platform.” (Hate that term, but when I say it, you know what I mean.)

It’s also, if done right, costly — compared to, say, free social media. Which means what I’m suggesting is a privileged option for many. There are of course free ways to go bloggy or do newsletters, just make sure you own what you put up, and be aware what happens if the service shits the bed on you. I own this blog, its domain, and I pay for the hosting (which is not cheap, regrettably), but I know what goes here is mine. I back it all up, and keep it going, and it’s all mine, miiiine, MIIIIIINE MOO HOO HA HA HA ahem. But I’m also trying to justify that by now convincing you all that blogs are a really good idea, and not at all antiquated, but please ignore the selfishness of my request and hie thee hence to the blog factory.

Blogs: they’re not just for breakfast anymore.

Or something.

Anyway, let’s blog. Let’s blog together! Or at least come read my stupid blog, which will continue on being what it will be in the year 2020 — I’m gonna try to get back here and write more longform content. Hope you’ll join me. Feel free to subscribe. And if you want to help pay for it, then buy my books, like Wanderers, which I hear is maybe good? Books: they’re like blogs, but older and longer!

(If you want a good example lately of blogging working for an author, look no further than this very hilarious blog post about designer dogs by author Janel Comeau. I don’t think it’d work in Twitter format, honestly. But now I know who she is! Yay, blogs.)

* for an additional “holy shit,” recognize that I started this very blog in October of the YEAR TWO THOUSAND, which is to say, in nine months this fucker will damn near be old enough to drink, which really does mean I’m old, doesn’t it? fuuuuuuuuck

* * *

WANDERERS: A Novel, out now.

A decadent rock star. A deeply religious radio host. A disgraced scientist. And a teenage girl who may be the world’s last hope. An astonishing tapestry of humanity that Harlan Coben calls “a suspenseful, twisty, satisfying, surprising, thought-provoking epic.”

A sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America. The real danger may not be the epidemic, but the fear of it. With society collapsing—and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them—the fate of the sleepwalkers and the shepherds who guide them depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart—or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.

Print: Indiebound | Let’s Play Books (signed) | The Signed Page | B&N | BAM | Amazon

eBook: Amazon | Apple Books | B&N | Kobo | Google Play | BAM

Audio: Audible | Libro.FM

As both a licensed Star Wars nerd and an unlicensed Story Doctor, I am somewhat fascinated with the question of, “What would I have done differently?” Now that the sequel trilogy (heretofore referred to as “the ST”) is over, I’m driven specifically to that span of films — what would I do if I magically got control of making these three movies from the beginning?

Let’s first and foremost note that I don’t mean, “What would I do to fix them?” because I don’t consider them broken. I like the ST movies a whole damn bunch, and do not consider the trilogy broken. But as a person who writes books for a living, I also recognize that we as storytellers put our own heart stamp on the tales we tell (at least, if we’re telling them right and true), and so I wonder then what would my version of the ST look like?

Why me? Well, I’m a jabroni with a blog, and I am allowed to just say stuff here. But I’m also a jabroni who has — and here you’ll need to excuse the not-so-humble flex — written a whole damn Star Wars trilogy himself, and there aren’t a lot of people who have done that. And I wrote the Marvel adaptation of the film, so I mean, I’m uniquely qualified.*

*not actually qualified, just a nerd

So, fuck it, let’s do this.

Mission Statement, and Caveats

Let’s start off with a massive lack of bravery (and work) on my part and say, I like the ST in its current iteration enough that, honestly, I’d keep most of it. Rey, Finn and Poe are my godsdamn favorites, and I wouldn’t ever want to lose them. They are a darling basket of warm cinnamon buns and don’t you dare touch them. Same with Kylo! And Rose! So, the goal is to keep the relative framework of these films, but see where I’d diverge. If we’re talking about creating a whole new sequel trilogy out of thin air — well, I’d need to get a paycheck for that kind of intellectual heavy lifting. *clears throat*

Final caveat here is that, and I hate I have to say this, but *turns on megaphone* THIS IS ALL JUST ONE JABRONI’S OPINION, I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER RETCONNING THIS FILM, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE MAD AT ME.

I’m not trying to rile anybody up, ease off the throttle.

So, let’s take this film by film, see what I’d keep, tweak, and where we diverge.

We begin with:

The Force Awakens

I totally love this movie. Unironically, unabashedly, I love it. It’s both a love letter to Star Wars and also an endeavor to use a familiar formula in a new way (that also helps re-center characters who are not, for instance, handsome white boys, Kylo excepted). It’s great. Like Return of the Jedi, I can re-watch this movie endlessly, and just not care about whatever is wrong with it. But, just the same, I have changes, because I am a Star Wars fan, and Star Wars fans have Star Wars opinions.

Here’s what I’d change:

It’s too fast, so I’d expand the timeline out a little.

I’ll write a longer, larger post at some point about how modern blockbusters have forsaken breathing room in their narrative for breathless plotting — and TFA falls right into that trap. Outside of Rey’s one instance of getting some sleep, the movie feels like it takes place in the span of its own running time, like an episode of 24, but in space. It feels hasty as shit. (A problem that tROS accelerates, especially in the first half of its running time.)

Why is this? I dunno. I think filmmakers feel like this will create urgency, but all it does it become a rhythmless din of noise and event. It used to be that, because resources were limited and CGI didn’t exist, you had to do a lot with a little. Which meant every scene couldn’t be WHIZ BANG BOOM, you had to… you know, actually have characters just sit around somewhere and talk. Like in Jaws, sometimes the shark breaks, and you learn that less is definitely more.

It offers the added value of letting us get to know the characters. And they’re why we come to the movies. We want to know who they are. We want to see them play off one another. We want to deepen our relationship with them as they deepen their relationships with one another. Just throwing automatons into danger again and again isn’t exciting, because we don’t give one cold fuck about a bunch of automatons. I’m not suggesting this film has that exact problem — it gives us reason to care enough. But it also shortcuts that journey a little.

So, here’s what we (read: I) do.

Halfway through the film. Finn has “rescued” Rey by which I mean, Rey has mostly rescued Finn. First Order attack. “The garbage will do!”

Finn and Rey steal the Falcon. They blast their way free, through the Ravager —

But from there they don’t go right into space. They hunker down somewhere on Jakku — somewhere Rey thinks is safe. Hiding from First Order patrols whizzing overhead, etc. The hunters are closing in. They know their time is dwindling. They’ll get found. But they can’t just escape, either. Remember: there’s supposed to be a goddamn blockade, but somehow in the film it gets relegated to like, one star destroyer? And despite them being in a known ship when they leave Jakku — literally nobody from the First Order is there in space waiting for them.

So, they stay on Jakku.

And that’s when Solo and Chewie track them there.

This is gonna cut the Rathtar business — it’s a fun scene, and I’m loathe to cut a franchise-appropriate creature scene (see: trash compactor, space worm, rancor), but it just doesn’t feel essential. Yes, the Rathtar bullshit gives us the sense that Solo is still a smuggler, back to his old ways, but there’s another way we can earn that.

Solo and Chewie show up and say, hey, yeah, we’re stealing the Falcon back. Finn and Rey decide to go with (because they gotta escape the First Order and also, c’mon, it’s Han Motherfucking Solo), but that still means escaping a First Order blockade. One of Solo’s great skills is blockade running, so let’s see it — a return to form. And then let’s complicate it further — as the Falcon blasts into space, Ren senses the ship. And also jumping into frame are the Guavian Death Gang and Kanjiklub, both attracted by seeing a Falcon ping on their Plot-Convenient Space Radars. So, you get a crazy space battle as they have to stunt-fly the Falcon through the chaos, playing the three separate forces off one another so they shoot each other instead. Meanwhile, Hyperdrive isn’t working, so Rey has to help fix that, still showing off her mechanical skills. (If we want her pilot skills shown off, maybe Chewie mans guns as she helps get the hyperdrive compressor working, showing off skills in two directions — co-piloting the ship and keeping it running.) Shit, maybe Unkar Plutt comes after them here instead of later (per deleted scenes), gets blasted out of the sky.

Just as Kylo Ren is about to descend upon the Falcon, they leap to hyperspace.

And then — we let that play out.

They don’t just leap to the next system.

The talk that Han gives her — “Hey, you’re good in a fight, join my crew?”

In this version, she takes him up on that offer. She says yes. See, TFA wants to set up this dichotomy where both Kylo and her consider Solo a father figure, but it lends the story no time to believably achieve that. (This isn’t new to Star Wars. Ben Kenobi is super-important to Luke, but their time in training consists of one scene with that little dickhead laser-bauble.) We need Rey to have a real relationship with Han Solo — so he becomes a proxy father figure. This is, in a sense, part of her journey, right? Realizing she doesn’t need whoever abandoned her on Jakku first, and relying on Found Family — and then also eventually coming to terms she doesn’t necessarily “need” them either, she needs herself. (Not in a way that diminishes her friends, but in a way that empowers herself as a singular being in the galaxy. With family by choice, not by reliance.)

So. Rey and Finn join his crew. BB-8 has important information, sure, and it needs to get to the Resistance — but remember, Finn is pretending to be a Resistance agent. And he likes Rey. (It’s unclear in TFA how much of this is that he like-likes her, but in this, we’d make that more explicit. More on this at the end of the post.) Further, Rey just wants to go back to Jakku soon as she has the chance. Either choice — they go find the Resistance base, they go back to Jakku — likely ends Finn’s journey, and it takes him away from Rey. So, he convinces her to stay with the crew. Go on a few adventures. And it’s not like Han wants to go to the Resistance, either. (More on that in a few.) That way, Finn gets to not be a stormtrooper and continue the illusion that he’s… somebody, a Resistance agent, a smuggler, anybody at all but the unnamed soldier.

(Here we get to the heart of a lot of this trilogy: people trying to figure out who they are, and where they belong. It’s a beautiful thing. And as true a story as any, in terms of a story we all understand.)

Now, we don’t need to see them go on a bunch of missions with Han Solo. (Though a montage would be doable, I guess.) We just need to move the needle forward in time. We need to see them come out of hyperspace, going to Maz Kanata’s castle, with the sense that they’ve had some adventures. Weeks. Months. Whatever. New outfits, a new rapport, some mild drama and conflict between the “crew,” and so on. Stretch out the narrative. Just make it a little more lived in. And we also know that Han’s onto Finn (“Big Deal”). Maybe BB-8 is getting antsy, and someone gets the droid to spill what he’s carrying (leading to the “It’s true, all of it,” scene with Han talking about Luke).

Point is, they still get to go to Maz’s place, and with minimal narrative rejiggering, you’ve created a whole different impact while keeping structure relatively the same. We can have a moment of quiet contemplation still where Rey regards so much green in the galaxy (play it out like the opposite of Luke regarding the twin suns of Tatooine, because there he’s regarding a galaxy he yearns yet to see, and here she’s regarding a galaxy she didn’t know existed). Then it… roughly works out the same. The one obvious difference is that I don’t think you can have Finn bailing for the same reason of theoretical cowardice — I think it’s more that he knows the adventure is about at its end, Rey and BB-8 will go on without him, and he doesn’t know what to do.

Poe’s Return

I’m torn on this, but fuck it, this is all theoretical — I think I’d like to see Poe’s return to the world play out on screen. His escape from Jakku could even coincide with the Falcon leaving the planet, seeing it fly overhead. I don’t think it needs to be like, 20 minutes of screentime — but a short bit of him crawling his way into Niima Outpost or some shit.

I say this because the reveal he’s alive in TFA feels less plotted as a “reveal” and more accidental, like we weren’t ever supposed to think he was dead in the first place.

(Which is likely accurate, since Poe was supposed to die, initially.)

That Dipshit Map

I don’t know why, but JJ Abrams loves himself a fetch quest. Find the droid, the map, the girl, find the Sith wayfinder, the saber, the Cosmic Porg, the whatever. It’s less mythic and more video game? Less Campbell and more Kojima.

It’s MacGuffins all the way down.

So: let’s talk about the “map” to find Luke.

Now, it’s not all video-gamey — there is something to a “treasure map” that’s intriguing here, but it just doesn’t make a lick of sense. That’s not a huge knock against Star Wars, because a lot of Star Wars… enh, doesn’t make a huge lick of sense. But this feels really unsound, especially since we’ve never really cared much before about “maps” in this galaxy. We care about planets and coordinates, and that’s easy enough, isn’t it? In Star Wars-ian terms, we know the galaxy is home to hundreds, maybe thousands of planets, and Luke Skywalker has gone to one of them, and we don’t know which one. Thassit. Easy. But he’s left behind the coordinates with one man, Max Von Sydow (shut up, I prefer to believe Max Von Sydow is the actual character, because honestly that’s a pretty Star Warsy name). So, when they finally get to the Resistance Base on D’Qar, they think, “We can go get Luke!”

But, turns out, the data is encoded. It’s gibberish. Locked behind a cipher.

And who has the key to that cipher? Artoo.

This also prevents us from having Artoo be nebulously “dormant,” which further prevents Threepio’s weird “As you know, BB-8” scene. (Sidenote: I petition all writing advice to refer to expository dialogue infodumps not as “As You Know, Bob” scenes, but rather, “As You Know, BB-8” scenes, please and thank you.)

Also, Why Don’t They Evacuate D’Qar?

Why don’t the Resistance fighters on D’Qar evacuate the base? They know they’re being targeted by BOMBAD DESTRUCTION from Starkiller Base, right? And yet they’re all like, “Gosh, I hope it doesn’t happen” instead of like, just running to spaceships and being like, “welp, fuck this shit, we out.” In Empire Strikes Back, the Hoth base isn’t in the sights of the Empire and they… evacuate. I guess there’s an argument here as to why they don’t evacuate Yavin IV in A New Hope, but I’d argue there it’s because the GIANT DEATH MOON is coming at you like a big laser-faced Pac-Man. Where you gonna go? Anyway. In my TFA, they simultaneously mount an evacuation while sending the rest of their forces to attack Starkiller.

(And yes, we keep Starkiller. Is it stupid that there’s DEATH STAR TRIPLE XXXTREME? Sure. But the First Order are Empire fanboys, and even in real life, mankind seems ever more interested in huge, nation-killing weapons.)

Clarity of Opposition

I’d also do a little work to establish what the First Order and the Resistance actually are — it’s never made super clear, and I’d clarify that the First Order is basically a rogue nation. Fascist Imperial fanboys who have glommed onto old Imperial tech and forbidden brainwashing techniques to bolster their forces (and this presages a bit of the Palpatine stuff, because, how’d they get all this shit?). Use the Crawl maybe and a few worldbuilding lines remind us that the New Republic has locked down the galaxy’s core, but its edges are wild fuckin’ space, man, full of rogue nations and criminal enterprises and they’re all jockeying for power. First Order has that power. They’re not the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany or even the Roman Empire — they’re somewhere between North Korea and an American militia, politically speaking. Been trying to get a superweapon, now they have one.

The Resistance operates in the shadow of the New Republic — an “unauthorized” A-Team of problem solvers who push back these rogue nations in an effort to protect worlds the New Republic can’t get support for in the Senate. They lead literal resistance movements around the galaxy — a seed planting as far back as The Clone Wars cartoon, and carried on in Aftermath. It would explain why they’re such a small fighting force — because they explicitly aren’t a rebellion. They train rebellions, something Leia is, and has been, good at. It’s also why they don’t have tons of support in the galaxy — they have some allies, but they’re not some massive galaxy-wide presence. They’re small, nimble, and leave few fingerprints. Get these pole positions right and it clarifies the “geopolitical” landscape of the films a bit more, I think.

The Lightsaber Dream

What if…? (That’s what this post is, in a lot of ways — a big bag of what ifs.) What if, when Rey was having her lightsaber dream, and she sees Kylo out there — he sees her, too? It establishes the first Force link between them. Just a touch. Maybe that’s what brings the First Order to Maz’s castle…

Han & Leia

The story needs to commit to their fracture. As it plays out, it feels dramatically weak — they seem to love each other, they’re just off doing shit away from one another. Commit to it, and actually have their son’s radicalization by Snoke be a breaking point. They had some blow-up, blow-out, and it broke them apart. Haven’t seen each other for some amount of time. It makes sense — the two of them run hot. They’re Hulk and Thor, two fires that fire together. We don’t want to infer Ben Solo came from a dysfunctional family (though perhaps a really busy one), but rather, that his fall to the dark side made them dysfunctional. Because it should.

The value-add here is that it gives us a chance to get Han and Leia back together — and in a way that’s a bit more romantic than the weird fatherly hug he gives her at the end? A call back to the I Love You / I Know scene, maybe, or just, like, they figure it out. They fall back in love, or realize they were never out of it. They crash back together like two celestial bodies. (Not inferring they make sexy-times in the Falcon refresher, to be clear.) But we definitely want that sense of two of our series’ epic heroes finding each other again. More than a gee-shucks nostalgia reunion.

Love Is Love Is Love

Here is the big one. One that has ramifications beyond this movie.

So. These films seem to stridently try to avoid most romantic entanglements. Right? Even Han and Leia’s romance now just seems soft, like old fruit. Part of me thinks this is because romance in these genres can be awfully tropey — ahh, of course there is a WOMAN and a MAN and they are gonna ROMANCE EACH OTHER. Something something destiny, just make out already, you hornballs.

Except… the tropey part of it is also a part I like. Though the romance in the prequel trilogy feels awfully strained, it’s still essential to the core of that story. And it should be essential to the core of this one, too. These films are space operas. Operas are… about drama, and conflict, and not just about BIG DAMN SPACE CONFLICTS but more about the relationships between characters. Love and hate and jealousy and friendship. The ST does well with friendship, and… not much else.

In TFA, then, the biggest change is yet a subtle one, and one that is already almost there — you gotta start planting seeds that these characters are gonna fall in love with each other. And I say “these characters” because I mean, all of them. The scope of the changes I’d make would be to put in play a love-triangle that becomes a love rhombus that becomes a love pentagram that becomes, I dunno, some kind of midichlorian fuck-pile. Or cuddle-kissy-pile. It is PG-13, after all.

This one sets up Finn being in love with Rey. (Suggested above, this romantic interesting beind why he doesn’t want to go back to Jakku or to D’Qar.)

It also sets him and Poe being a thing. They have chemistry. They flirt. It’s there already.

Rey needs to meet Poe, too, at the end of all this. Not at the end of TLJ. But here and now. (It doesn’t really add up that she never meets him, so put that shit on screen.)

Eventually, it factors in Rose and Kylo — AND PALPATINE HIMSELF okay lol no, not that one. Ew. *hurrk* Sorry. I went too far. But seriously: friendships are nice, and yay friendships, but these are young adults in a rough, raw galaxy, and sometimes the spark isn’t just about the rebellion, y’know? SOMETIMES IT’S ABOUT A SPARK IN YOUR SPACE PANTS. Also, your space heart. *audience awwws collectively*

And That’s It

Not much else to change here, I don’t think. Han still dies. Phasma still gives up Starkiller Base. It’s a good movie, it holds together, it’s a lot of fun. Again, were I doing a *total rewrite* I might do some stuff really different — it’d be all new characters, Snap Wexley and Mister Bones would be major protagonists, there’d probably be a sexy robot? I’d make changes. But again, going with the raw material of the film as-is, these are the changes I’d make. Probably. Ask me tomorrow, I’d probably change my mind. This shit ain’t math. It’s space math, and space math is some flyboy stuntwork.

Remember, too: Star Wars is junk.

Soon: my re-do of The Last Jedi.

RELEASE THE WENDIG CUT**

** there is no Wendig Cut***

*** there also isn’t likely a JJ Cut, or a Snyder Cut, or whatever, shut up

I drop in briefly to wangjangle some small and potentially useful news before you: hey, Wanderers on Kindle is a mere $2.99 for today, December 27th. Only today. So, if you were thinking of getting it but were like, harrumph, that e-book is too damn pricey, well, here’s your chance to scoop it up at a low, low price. I mean, it’s 800 pages, so that’s like, a third of a cent per page. C’mon. That’s narrative value. (I kid, of course, as value of story and art cannot neatly be contained by or derived from monetary price. I’m just saying, three bucks ain’t a lot and we all gotta save coin where we can.)

Link here, if you want it.

IT’LL MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD.

I mean, maybe — it is about the end of the world, after all. But it’s twisty and turny and I like to think full of hope and humor even as it, uhhh, ends the world.

Enjoy!

Here is a photo of an apple, in recompense. Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go watch the final episode of this season of The Baby Yoda Power Hour.

Star Wars is junk.

No, no, I know, but bear with me.

Junk, let’s just say this now, is not necessarily a pejorative.

Junk can be wonderful. Have you ever been to a junkyard? An old-timey one with appliances and cars and secret treasures buried throughout? Have you ever eaten a cookie, or had ice cream? They’re junk, too. Ever seen a kid play with an empty box? An empty box is junk. But what they do with it — I mean, it’s a pirate ship, a boat, it’s knight armor, it’s an action figure base.Some junk is just trash, admittedly. But some junk is artful. Masterful. Just because it’s old — or cobbled together from various pieces — doesn’t make it bad. It just makes it junk.

Star Wars, particularly the original trilogy and the new sequel trilogy, live in a galaxy of junk. Tatooine to Jakku, trash compactors to Jawa crawlers, it’s a galaxy of junk. A glimmer of the upper echelons of Cloud City swiftly give way to its bowels, of hissing steam and grim industry and those little junk monkeys, the Ugnaughts (sorry, Kuiil), who turn C-3P0 into, you guessed it, junk. (C-3P0, whose one leg was already junk, in fact. And later, an arm, too.) The prequels have a little bit of junk, of course — Anakin is born into it. But the worlds there are mostly shiny and new, and the CGI reflects it, having eschewed practical SFX built out of, well —

Junk.

The greatest piece of junk in Star Wars is the Millennium Falcon.

It’s a hunk of metal, lumpy and odd. It’s routinely shown being cobbled together at the same time it’s been damaged left and right. It’s name, the Falcon, is an ironic one — it looks less like a falcon and more like a, I dunno, a manhole cover. It’s not a sleek fighter. It’s a cargo ship. It carries things.

It’s also the coolest ship in the damn galaxy.

And that, to me, is Star Wars. Star Wars is the Millennium Falcon — they both are ill-fitted, cobbled-together hunks of space junk that carry a lot of weight and somehow still fly crazy fast, pulling off unbelievable stunts time and time again. And we love it. Despite its look, despite the junk, we love it.

Star Wars is junk.

* * *

I saw the Rise of Skywalker, and it is, indeed, junk.

It’s junk cobbled together from all the other detritus and debris from this galaxy — in many cases, literally so, as it endeavors to climb to the top of the pile of this wonderfully broken galaxy and culminate both three films (this trilogy) and nine films (the trilogy of trilogies). It makes this attempt, and mostly, gets it right. “Gets it right,” is subjective, obviously, and I’m not making any declarations here for how it objectively does this or that. Some people are going to love this film and some are going to hate it and all of those people, I think, could stand to remember that Star Wars is junk, and so is this movie. Just as Return of the Jedi was — just as, in a way, all of them are. Some are more “elevated” than others. Certainly Empire is often thought to be the pinnacle of Star Wars storytelling — and then comes along scrappy ROTJ, to bork it all up. I say that lovingly. Empire is the better film. Jedi is my favorite of the two. Just as The Last Jedi is probably the best of the sequel trilogy, but also, my favorite is (so far), The Force Awakens. Sometimes it’s good to see the art in junk and regard it as such, while also acknowledging that sometimes it is not the most artful things that spark joy.

We like what we like, you know?

So, before we begin any spoiler talk, my assessment of Rise of Skywalker is that it fits in neatly in the tradition of being delightful junk. It also remixes Return of the Jedi, same as the two earlier Sequel Trilogy films are broken mirrors of the first two Original Trilogy films. It does a lot of heavy lifting. It wants to show you so many things that it has cobbled together (put more crassly, it wants to show you its junk, hurr hurr, hurr hurr), and it’s like an eager kid telling you a story. AND THEN THEY DID THIS, AND THEN THEY WENT HERE, AND THEN AND THEN THIS AND THAT AND THIS AND AND *deep breath* AND THEN THIS. It is almost desperate to please you. (And, mostly, for me, that gambit paid off. I was indeed pleased and tickled. Mostly.)

Is it good? I dunno. It’s junk, and I liked it.

Does it have high points? It sure does.

Does it have low points? Well, yeah, it has those, too. And for all the wonderful talk of The Last Jedi, that has low points, too. CASINO PLANET, while admirable, doesn’t work for me in execution, only in idea. DJ is a stuttering cipher who has no meat on his narrative bones except to be a carrier of theme — he’s not a character, he’s a purpose. It’s fine.

(We don’t have to love a thing entirely to still love it.)

Does Rise of Skywalker hit emotional beats? It does, it really does. I got misty-eyed at parts, because these are films I love dearly, and someone like JJ Abrams — like Rian Johnson before him and *checks notes* JJ Abrams before him — knows how to orchestrate feelings even when they can’t always orchestrate plot. Are sometimes these emotional beats right on the edge of manipulative? They are. And you can almost feel it, but it’s like how you know a roller coaster is designed to elicit your thrills — it doesn’t stop the thrills from happening.

So, if you want to stop reading here, that’s it, that’s my capsule review. I liked it. It’s junk, wonderful junk. I’ll see it again tomorrow, and I’ll see it dozens more times and dozens more after that, because I am a sucker for Star Wars, and I love these characters, and Star Wars, like pizza (another junk food), is great even when it’s not great.

But I like also to pick apart story, to see what lessons we can learn as storytellers.

And that part comes next.

Which means: spoilers inbound.

Spoilers, spoilers, spoooooiiiiilers. These will not be encoded with ROT13 as I do on Twitter, but rather, BOLD, FACE-SLAPPING SPOILERS. Ye be warned.

* * *

Let’s start off with pacing.

Pacing is hard. Doubly hard in action or adventure films.

Star Wars does pacing badly. Almost always. Even at its best, the films are nearly always paced super goofily. Now, there’s two aspects of pacing — what I would consider external pacing, and internal pacing. Internal is about the passage of time in the story itself. External is how we, the audience, perceive the rhythm of that passage.

Example:

Empire is amazing, but it kinda shrugs away how much time they’re spending in different places. So its internal pacing — the timeline — is confusing. How long is Luke on Dagobah? Does it perfectly line up with how long Han and Leia are on the lam? Ennnh. Answer unclear, ask again later. But the film does external pacing well! We feel a nice ebb and flow of narrative, we get moments of tension and action, and we get moments of conversation and exploration. In a video game sense, think of how Bioware encourages these long conversations with the other characters that seem like filler but are arguably the point — the treasure! — of the game. It’s not the shooting. It’s the talking. ESB does this well. So does, I’d argue, TLJ — though TLJ also has a muddy timeline, it does have a powerful rhythm to its narrative architecture.

On the other hand, TFA feels paced like the whole film fits in its own running time. Both internal and external pacing are largely in a rush. And that’s true here, too, at least for the first half — the first half of Rise of Skywalker is fucking breathless. It doesn’t stop. It just goes from place to place, from plot dongle to plot widget. It hastily hard-charges through the story and through action scenes without much pause. The second half is better paced. It takes more time. It is willing to stop.

And Star Wars is best when it’s willing to stop.

Think, if you will, of Luke regarding the binary sunset to the swelling score.

Think of Anakin in ROTS, staring out over Coruscant, clearly broken, but not realizing it.

Think of Rey in the desert, making her dinner, looking up at the sky.

These are moments of quiet contemplation — of, in SW terms, peace and purpose. And it does serve a purpose: it gives us a moment to catch our breath. To regard the vastness of the universe and the truth of these characters. In a more stripped down sense, these moments fill the room with oxygen — they are not building tension so much as they are building to the building of tension. We fill the room with oxygen so that eventually, we can set it aflame. We can blow it up, swallow it. It also gives us time to root ourselves, to care about the characters. Stories like Star Wars thrive on moments of quiet contemplation.

And Rise of Skywalker has too few of these moments.

* * *

I want the four-hour version of this film. I’m told one exists — a long, possibly clumsy cut. But I want it. Because there’s so much missing here.

Let me backtrack and explain: as I said, this film endeavors to culminate both three films, and nine films, and it does those things well. Sometimes, too well — it tries very hard to please everybody. Did you like TLJ? This film synthesizes it. Did you hate it? This film answers it. Did you want Leia to be a Jedi? Done. Did you want Rey to be both Somebody and Nobody, a Palpatine, a Skywalker? Done. All of it! Boom! Did you want Reylo? Done. Did you want Ben Solo’s redemption, but also, not too much of his redemption? Done. Palpatine? He’s back. Did you want Luke to catch a lightsaber instead of throwing it away? Done. But also, porgs? Yep, porgs. Han Solo as an almost Force Ghost? Fuck it, why not? Christ, are you still mad (as, admittedly, I was) that Chewie never got a fucking medal in A New Hope? WELL, THIS SHIT FIXES IT. It just throws everything at the wall. Sith! Jedi! Skywalkers! Death stars! Desert planets! Forest planets! Ewoks! AhhhHHHHHaaahhhh *hnnngh* narrative orgasm *hrrrrgggh*.

But as a film, it also forgets to be a singular unit.

It forgets to conclude itself.

It introduces things, and then… forgets them entirely.

Finn has something important to tell Rey. It’s referenced multiple times!

And then, forgotten.

Finn has a destiny, is maybe Force sensitive! But it’s mostly a plot thing. More a “cake and eat it too” component, or a piece designed to simply urge the plot forward (“How do we get from A to B? Uhh, Finn has a ‘feeling’!”).

Finn and Poe are at odds for… reasons? Maybe romantic reasons?

And then it’s gone.

Chewie is dead, but then he’s not… somehow? I have to see it again, but I don’t remember there being two transports. And Rey certainly should’ve been able to sense his life presence — as she is able to do literally 20 minutes later in the movie.

The film seems to forget that it has characters whose arcs need an end. It mostly eschews them to finish off Rey and Kylo’s arcs — Finn and Poe and muddled. Poe seems to be relitigating his same lessons from the first film, oh he’s a hothead, and now also he’s an ex-criminal which makes him shady. Finn is Force-sensitive, and maybe loves Rey, but maybe doesn’t, and maybe he loves Rose, but maybe Jannah, but then, nah, nobody. None of it concludes. Poe maybe loves Zorii Bliss, and she wants to kill him until conveniently she doesn’t want to kill him anymore For Reasons, and then even at the end, Poe doesn’t get to kiss anybody, which seems like a crime punishable by the Hague. Doubly so because it’s not Finn he’s kissing, because at the end of the day the two characters with the most onscreen chemistry are those two. (Don’t worry, we’ll talk about the LGBT thing.)

Lotta love in the air.

None of it fulfilled.

Except between Rey and Kylo — by then, Ben. I don’t know that I’d say it’s forced. I think it’s there, and it’s not surprising, and it’s earned. But it then fails to address that there should be complexity and consequence to that choice. By redeeming him and kissing him and then watching him die, Rey has gone through some shit. And there’s no real consequence for that because by then, we’re at the end of the film, and there’s little more to see, or do, except to see our trio of friends back together one last time. Which warms the heart, and brings the tears, but also makes me wish for more with these characters. I want to see them navigate that fallout in a way that’s real, that’s earned. I’d honestly want to see them be together — romantically. Either earn the earlier tension between them, or dissipate it by bringing them all together, literally, romantically.

The film earns an ending to its trilogy.

It somewhat earns an ending to the trilogy of trilogies.

But it doesn’t really conclude itself. To thine ownself, it is not true.

And I think it could get there with another 20-30 minutes — or, ideally, a whole other film, way the last Avengers film was split in twain. But I suppose we won’t get that. I’ll always wish for it. I’ll always wish to see the bigger emotional panorama, because it’s clear a lot was flayed from the emotional meat in order to accommodate the swiftly-moving plot.

* * *

Small stories are why we care about stories.

It’s not big stories. Big stories are too big. They’re just architecture — when done right — for small stories. Luke as a kid who wants off a planet, who is struggling with finding out he has a bad dad. Han as a gambler with debts, selfish to selfless. Leia as a princess without a home.

Rise of Skywalker cares about Rey’s small story. Maybe Kylo’s, too.

It mostly forgets about everyone else’s small story.

Their stories are lost in the crashing tides of the galaxy’s churning narrative seas.

* * *

It suggests, perhaps, that films are no longer the best way to tell these stories.

Ironically, Mandolorian (so far) feels stretched thin over its episodic structure (though Chapter 7 was amazing), but Rise of Skywalker could play better over 8, 10, even 12 episodes. Gosh, I wish it would. Could you imagine seeing this story told more in the framework of Avatar: The Last Airbender? As a structure, how amazing would that be? To give the big emotional beats the time to percolate, to boil over, to be earned?

Alas.

* * *

Babu Frik forever. Babu Frik for life.

* * *

Palpatine fucks, I guess? Ew.

* * *

Okay real talk I thought we’d get more, there. Thought we’d learn that Palpatine created Anakin, we’d hear more about Plagueis and his ability to never die, thought if Rey was part of him at all she was like Anakin — manifested from the living Force, or drawn from the Dark Side. Not that Palpatine literally fucks. Because I guess he literally fucks. What the fuck.

Seriously, what the fuck.

I don’t want to bow-chicka-bow-wow that wizened scrotal Sith goblin. Ugh. JFC.

* * *

Okay.

Ahem.

Let’s reset.

* * *

The last thing to talk about is the worst thing to talk about. Not worst as it, unnecessary. Worst as in, the least satisfying aspect of the film.

There exists a much-vaunted LGBT kiss in the film. It’s about a half-second of screen-time. I guess to their credit, it’s at least a named character from TLJ — er, though I confess, I forget her name. But it’s hasty. It gets less time than the banana slug. It gets less time than nearly everything. You might miss it. Many probably did.

The reasons for this are potentially so it’s easy to cut out for Chinese censors — but even that feels like an excuse. Because a film could always be cut in a way to excise that. Not that one should do so just to make money, to be clear! Only that, we still could’ve gotten Finn and Poe tongue-fucking in a Millennium Falcon cargo bin and they could’ve clipped that for Chinese audiences. This sort of thing should be present. On-screen. And I joke about the tongue-fucking, but it doesn’t need to be explicit — LGBT characters should be allowed to exist in this universe, on screen, in a lived-in, live-there way. Not backgrounded. Just present. Always present. We can have aliens and robots but not LGBT representation? C’mon. We watch a lot of cartoons with our kid, and they’re doing it better. Way better! Craig of the Creek! We Bare Bears! She-Ra! Dragon Prince! Steven Universe! Star Vs The Forces Of Evil! C’mon, Star Wars. Get it done. JFC.

Certainly others are better equipped too to talk about the film’s representation in other directions. Finn being largely underused, chasing after Rey, is not ideal. Poe being hot-headed again and now, a criminal, and having to re-do the same character arc as before — that’s not great, either. But Jannah and Finn have good moments. Lando, too. Rose being totally sidelined? And I mean, totally sidelined?

Oof.

It’s certainly a place where the film could’ve done more work.

A lot more work, probably.

* * *

Star Wars is junk, and so is this movie.

It’s a candy bar, but a really good one.

It’s a junker car, but one that feels great when you’re driving it, even if it sometimes looks janky as fuck bounding down the road.

It’s the Falcon, it’s Threepio, it’s the Jakku desert. Junk strewn everywhere, but often to artful purpose, to articulate a feeling, to paint a picture.

I know the cool thing to do is “rank” the films — I’m always dubious of that because my rankings fluctuate wildly. And also I have two rankings: how much I like a movie, as noted, is not always the same as how “good” I think the movie is. I guess if I had to rank this one, right now it’d fall somewhere in the middle? Above nearly all the prequel films (including RO and Solo), but below a lot of the others. It satisfied me like a Snickers, but like a Snickers, it did not always feel like a complete meal — satisfying texturally, satisfying to the dopamine hit, satisfying in its sweetness and its crunch, but not in how long it leaves me feeling good. Maybe sometimes too sweet. Maybe other times not enough. And maybe sometimes I question my decision to have eaten candy in the first place.

I look forward to the next thing. Because I always do. And perhaps the greatest compliment I can give this movie is it makes me want to write Star Wars again — not to fix anything, not to patch over this film, but to play in the galaxy again, to extend out what was done here, to keep seeing these characters come back. Because I don’t want their tales to be done. Their tales can’t be done. There has to be more — otherwise, whatever was the point?

I could say more. It’s Star Wars, after all. Gimme a pot of coffee and a slice of pie and we could sit at this diner all night. But I’ve said my piece. And as with all these movies — which mean a lot to me, for good and for ill — I’ll keep thinking about them, and finding things I love, bits of preciousness among the debris. I’m sure you will, too.

For now, we rest.

And wait for the ending of the Mandalorian because NO BABY YODA NO I LOVE YOU BABY YODA I WILL GIVE MY LIFE FOR YOU AHHHHH ahem.

What I’m trying to say is:

MTFBWY. See you on the other side of the (Star) War.