And this is why I can't and won't support Black Lives Matter

Just one of the reasons why I have not and can not jump on the big bandwagon issue these past several months. There were a LOT of organizations of various sorts that came out with broad statements of support. I knew all along that it was foolish to make a statement about ANY political issue. Due legal process has not run its full course. Many have yielded to the moral outrage of the moment, without weighing whether it was wise.

 

And now this has happened and there is growing backlash against the movement, its leaders, and its "protestors". From the very beginning it has been borne of anger and that has given way to outright hatred and now the very many incidents of violence, and as we see here attempted murder of two innocent Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies. Not just the attempt itself: "activists" and some leaders of the same movement tried to prevent the officers from receiving proper treatment at the hospital's emergency room.

 

I am going to make a bold, bold prediction, and I am absolutely serious. It is not something I say lightly, it is not said in anger or with any ill will toward anyone. And this is just the historian in me. Someone who has studied matters like this at great length, for most of his life.

 

Here it is: Black Lives Matter will sooner than later be seen as a movement that inflicted far greater harm than any good. This article at The Wall Street Journal, and many other articles about the situation with the two officers, illustrates why.

 

And the longer Black Lives Matter is given inconsiderate support the worse this is going to get.

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I am a bad Star Wars fan (for abandoning the sequel trilogy)

There is a rumor... rumor mind ya so take this with an industrial sized salt lick... that somewhere in the Disney Vault there rests a cut of Star War Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker that is drastically different and better than what was released theatrically last Christmas.  This cut was allegedly assembled by George Lucas: the Maker himself.  This edit supposedly adds new material, removes several elements we saw in The Rise of Skywalker's theater version and perhaps even has a new ending.  The result is a film that is at least forty percent altered from the original cinematic release.

It is supposed to fix the problems that The Rise of Skywalker has, as well as many of the problems that the entire sequel trilogy is rife with.

It is the hope of many fans that "the George Lucas Cut" - IF it exists at all - will be released eventually, and sooner than later.  One possible venue would be Disney+ (where The Mandalorian and the complete The Clone Wars series have made their home).  One must wonder how much the Disney execs will be watching the upcoming release of the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League on HBO Max.  Success for that cut would certainly compel Disney to cast an eye upon potential product for its own streaming service.

I bring up the Lucas Cut rumor because I am increasingly finding myself hoping and praying that it's true.  And that it will get released.  And that it is just as magnificent as it's being made out to be.

Because at this point that's what it's going to take to make me respect the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

Yes folks, there it is.  I am going to always and forever be a Star Wars fan.  But going forward... I'm going to try to forget that Episodes VII, VIII and IX ever happened.  Because there are substantial problems with what should have been a final fulfilling arc in the Skywalker saga.  Problems which can not be ignored any longer.  As far as I'm concerned the Skywalker tale on film ends with Vader's redemption, the Emperor's death and Luke's reunion with his friends amid the celebration on Endor.

Because it is now abundantly clear that Disney had no idea what it was doing when it produced the sequel trilogy.

It was Daisy Ridley's comments this past week that made the kill shot.  It seems that even after the cameras stopped rolling there was indecision about Rey's parentage.  At one point or another she was related to Obi-Wan Kenobi, or was Palpatine's granddaughter, or just what Kylo told her in The Last Jedi: "no one".  I wish she had been nobody special.  It would have made Rey a much more potent character.  Better than that: it would have reinforced the notion that the Force belongs to anyone and everyone.  That it was not the sole provenance of favored lineages like the Skywalkers or the Palpatines.  One of the major themes of A New Hope was that a hero can come from the most humble of beginnings.  Rey was set to follow that theme.  And then they made her a granddaughter to Palpatine...

Did these people seriously understand Star Wars at all?  Did they even care?

Blame can be assigned across the board.  I'm not going to bother divvying it up.  But mistakes were made.  Atrocious mistakes.  The components were there for a majestic trilogy, the one we had been long promised but had come to believe would never be made.  All of the pieces were within ready grasp.  They even had the cast of the original trilogy willing to sign aboard for the project.

The sequel trilogy had everything going for it, seemingly.  And they messed it up.

Personally, what was most unforgiving about what happened in the sequels was how Snoke was treated.  Here was a new character - a fantastic character - perfectly set up to be a truly horrific and fascinating villain.  Snoke brought about the reaction that Darth Vader evoked during his first onscreen appearance: even without knowing anything about him, we knew he was evil.  And we hated him for it.  And we wanted to see more of him.  Snoke had presence.

I can look past how Snoke was killed in The Last Jedi.  What I can not look past is how sloppily it was made out to be that Snoke was just a puppet for Palpatine.  It was complete laziness, and trepidation, and a failure to give Snoke the respect he deserved.  He deserved much better.

Star Wars deserved better.  It still does.

Could I somehow come to give the sequel trilogy enough lenience that it takes a rightful place with the six core saga films that came before?  Yeah.  Yeah, I could.  And I think that many if not most of the Star Wars fans put off by the sequels - and there are loads of them - could accept the sequels.  But not like this.  They treasure this mythology too much than to accept second or third best.  And Disney erred grievously when it took those fans for granted and saw their wallets more than their hearts.

If the rumors are anywhere accurate, there is a cut of The Rise of Skywalker that is a true chapter of the Star Wars saga.  A film that addresses the problems of its immediate predecessors and not only complements them, it makes them better.

I hope that rumor is a true one.  Because if Star Wars has taught us anything, it is that nothing is beyond redemption.

EDIT 09/14/2020:  Had a moment of realization this morning.  Obi-Wan Kenobi said that a ship the size of a TIE Fighter could not get so far out into space on its own.  Yet in the sequel trilogy we see TIEs swooping in and out of lightspeed all the time.  They even follow the Millennium Falcon, aka "the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy".  What kind of consistency is THAT?!?!?

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First trailer for DUNE is epic!

Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Dune just dropped its first trailer.  And it looks insane!!  The film itself is due in December and here's hoping that the theaters (and everything else) will finally be wide open because this looks to be a movie screaming for the big screen experience.  Love the reveal of the sandworm!

Turn your peepers toward this, ladies and gents:

 

Will Villeneuve's Dune succeed where two previous adaptations have come up short?  I thought the Sci-Fi Channel's version was an admirable attempt (and it did give us the follow-up Children of Dune) and however glorious a mess it was, David Lynch's Dune has a hypnotic quality to its production design.  But those didn't quite nail it.  Or maybe Dune is one of those stories best left to the book and the reader's imagination.  We'll find out in a few months.

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To this blog's friends in Texas and Louisiana:

Thoughts and prayers going out to you as Hurricane Laura approaches.

Longtime readers know how much hurricanes and other tropical systems interest me.  This one already rivals Katrina.  I hope this blog won't be as busy with Laura as it was with Katrina fifteen years ago.

(Has it REALLY been that long?)

Hurricane Laura as of 06:44 pm EST on August 26 2020

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A scenario

 Something put together during the hour of the wolf: that time between 2 and 3 in the morning when you can't sleep and your mind is running through a myriad of thoughts all at once...

It goes like this:

America is thrown into turmoil as a result of a November election that sees no clearly declared winner and in fact is endemic throughout the country's state and local elections.

Factor in that the United States is still in the midst of COVID-19 and this does not look to alleviate anytime soon.

China takes advantage of the chaos in America and fully deploys its naval might in the South China Sea. Taiwan is invaded. American military along with Japanese and Australian forces engage.

North Korean hardliners in that country's army, frustrated with Kim Jong Un for various reasons, depose their leader and install Un's sister as the glorious new leader. North Korea invades the south with China's tacit blessing.

Meanwhile Beijing opens another front. This time in the west, against the Uyghur minority. This becomes a campaign of full-blown ethnic cleansing. And once the real horror of it becomes unavoidably apparent, interests to the immediate west of China become motivated to interfere.

This will be mostly lead by Turkey. And Erdogan, obsessed with restoring the old Ottoman glory (he's already converting Haggia Sophia back into a mosque) mobilizes against perceived Chinese intrusion but also begins his own campaign against religious and ethnic minorities. Armenians are once more targeted. Persecution of minorities spills over into northern Iraq. Once more the Yazidi are fugitives in their own land.

Russia is enraged by Turkey. God only knows what Putin would do. A "crusade" against the "infidel Turks" is altogether possible. There remains some bitterness among the faithful about what happened in 1453 when Mehmet and his boys took Constantinople. Expect sympathies from Greece and other Balkan states against Turkey.

Poland becomes the one really peaceful island in the midst of this. I say that for a number of reasons. I don't see Russia doing anything there. It's not like the Nazis are back and taking over eastern Europe.

Western Europe however becomes hit with numerous terrorist attacks conducted by radical Islamic groups. France is hit especially hard.

I can't figure out what else may be.  It was already 6 a.m. when I first posted this to Facebook and my brain was frazzled after a marathon session of Fallout 4.

But to be succinct about it: the dominoes have fallen and World War III is now underway.

Like I said: a scenario. One of very many.

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Unreliable Narrator, or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Sequel Trilogy

Many of you  by now are hearing the rumors: that Kathleen Kennedy is on the way out as matriarch of the Star Wars franchise.  That the operation will soon be run by either Jon Favreau or Dave Filoni.  That the entire sequel trilogy is going to be scrapped and "re-made".

Personally, I doubt that last one is going to happen.  Because I can't but think of all the little girls I've seen dressed as Rey for the premiere of the past few Star Wars movies.  Rey is a true heroine to them.  Heck, she is for me too.  But especially to young girls who look to Rey as a role model.  Not I or anyone else should take that away from them.  Besides, Star Wars was ripe for a female character on par with Luke Skywalker and young Obi-Wan Kenobi.  Rey fits the role perfectly.

But I won't deny that the sequel trilogy is the worst of the three.  I first had a bad feeling about this when it became clear that too much of The Last Jedi was going to be spent on the Resistance fleet fleeing from the First Order.  And then Snoke getting killed.  And then the reveal that the enemy of The Rise Of Skywalker would be a resurrected Emperor Palpatine...

I've had a theory for many years.  It's about Star Trek, the original series.  So many episodes of that show are timeless classics.  And then there were the utterly hokey ones like "Spock's Brain".  You know, the episode where aliens run off with Spock's gray matter so it can serve as the new computer running their indoor plumbing.

How hokey can you get?  But it begs the question: did the over-ridiculous premise of the episode disqualify it from being canon?  Because it just doesn't seem, you know... "Star Trek"-ish.

I've a solution to that.  How the bad Trek can co-exist with the good.  Those episodes are actually fake captain's log entries that James Kirk made when at times he was feeling extra bored.  And then decades if not centuries later the data dump of the U.S.S. Enterprise is being researched by historians who don't know any better.  And they find the stuff about the brain stealers and the space Nazis and whatever else and they assume that those things "really" happened.  When in fact it was just Kirk having his fun.

That's my theory and I'm sticking by it.

So what bearing does that have on a post about Star Wars?

I've re-watched The Rise Of Skywalker at least a dozen times now since it became available on iTunes and then Blu-ray and now on Disney+, and... how should I put this?  It's frustrating the heck out of me.  Part of me likes it.  Part of me is "meh" about it but the larger part of me can't stop thinking how much makes no sense.  Like travel times through hyperspace: it shouldn't be that instantaneous.  And how Palpatine is brought back so late into the entire saga.  A lot of small issues that accumulate.  Plenty enough of them lingering from the previous film The Last Jedi.

And now... I sadly lament that the Star Wars sequel trilogy - episodes 7, 8, and 9 - are the weakest of the entire series.  When they should have rivaled the original trilogy in greatness.

But then something hit me.  And this is going back a ways...

George Lucas was saying as early as 1982 how the entire Star Wars saga was one story being told by the droids Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio.  It was the tale of the Skywalker Family, being shared with the Whills: a mysterious sect that among other things recorded the history of the galaxy.  And their collection of such stories became "The Journal of the Whills": something that Lucas later described was a larger work of which Star Wars "was just a piece".

Let's assume that was and is and ever shall remain George Lucas' notion about how the story of the core Star Wars legend came about.  We can be assured that hundreds of years after the events of the Skywalker saga, Artoo and Threepio are passing it along to the Whills.  We can trust their word.  They were THERE during that time.  They saw it all happen.  Especially Artoo.  At least, they saw everything from The Phantom Menace through Return Of The Jedi.

But did Artoo and Threepio necessarily witness the later events with such clarity?

No.  They did not.  Apart from traveling aboard the Millennium Falcon during Rey's search for Luke Skwyalker, Artoo went nowhere.  He had been in near-total shutdown for years prior to Rey and Finn's arrival.  And Threepio?  He certainly wasn't off on any cosmic adventure.  Not without his little blue buddy.  Threepio was just hanging around the Resistance base, in Leia's company.

It can be safely assumed that the true chronicle of that part of the Skywalker legend ended with Return Of The Jedi or thereabouts.

So does that mean the sequel trilogy is all trash?  Nope.  Not at all.

Because there was another droid who was witnessing those events.  From the first moments of The Force Awakens, BB-8 was an active and integral part of the sequel trilogy.  And we can rest assured that he chronicled as best he could the larger events around him.

The thing is, BB-8 might well be what is termed an "unreliable narrator".  And if he is sharing his knowledge with Artoo and Threepio (who go on to share it with the Whills) it may not be entirely accurate.  BB-8 is a plucky little droid but he seems confused at times.  Maybe he has a circuit burn out in his memory, as a friend has suggested.  Maybe he's just in way over his cute lil' head.  However it is, BB-8's accounting of history might be severely handicapped when compared to that of Artoo and Threepio.  Those two have a counterpart-level base of understanding.  They are check-summing and error-correcting each other.  BB-8 has no such advantage.  And so it is that, sadly, BB-8's recording of many details is spotty at best.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that BB-8's part in the chronicle is ALL bad.  In a general sense his chronicle is accurate.  And if he tells Artoo that Rey goes to Tatooine to bury Luke and Leia's sabers and that she assumes the Skywalker surname, we can be confident that's what really happened.

It also allows for a lot of leeway of interpretation.  Snoke?  He could have been "made" by Palpatine.  He could also have been some Dark Side shlub who existed long before Palpatine was even born (and The Last Jedi novelization indicates that he was).  Hyperspace travel?  That's BB-8's interpretation of what he was told by Rey and others.  The casino?  Okay we can take BB-8 at his word that's what happened.  There are dozens of elements of the sequel trilogy that defy logic... unless we can accept that they're being conveyed by an unreliable narrator.

I put it to the test.  I re-watched The Last Jedi and The Rise Of Skywalker, per my new paradigm.  And lo and behold it works.  It really, honestly works!  The sequel trilogy is much more palatable now.  After fanwanking my synapses to the breaking point trying to "suss it all out" with the problems of the final three movies, suddenly there is a silver bullet for it all.

But in a funny way, I can still accept the quirks and at times misfires of the sequel trilogy as being part and parcel with being true Star Wars films, even without having BB-8's flaws being the cause of it all.  Because in the end, Star Wars is a legend.  And legends are rarely if ever clean cut affairs.  They don't need to be, either.

It's just that it's nice now to have a reason to accept the sequels as belonging with the other six movies after all.

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In memory of Charlie Daniels...

Daniels and his band performing "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" in concert:

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It's June 27th! Time to play... THE LOTTERY

The classic 1969 short film adaptation of Shirley Jackson's eternally controversial horror tale:

For a film now over fifty years old it holds up exceptionally well.  I think every college freshman English class in America shows this to its students.  Sharp-eyed viewers will spot a very young Ed Begley Jr. in this.

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