Will Bradley The Legend-Slayer Amps Up His Game- Going After The Big Guys-Going After A Fake Hero -With “Solo: A Star War Story” (2018) In His Sights

Will Bradley The Legend-Slayer Amps Up His Game- Going After The Big Guys-Going After A Fake Hero -With “Solo: A Star War Story” (2018) In His Sights

By Will Bradley

Solo: A Star Wars Story, starring a guy named Alden Ehrenreich as Han, Hans, Hand, Hands, Jimmy Hands, Hans Bricker or whatever alias he is using these days to cover up his assorted criminal activities, Emilia Clarke, and the rightly legendary Chewy who has correctly distanced himself from the Solo, so-called rebellion cabal and its hangers-on       

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I think I am ready for the “bigs” now-ready to take on and slay the legend of legends one Han Solo (aka Hans, Hand, Hands, Hans Bricker, Jimmy Hans, Hans Christian Anderson and a fistful of other alias gleaned from interplanetary police files, most reliably the planet Krypton known for its efficient record-keeping only outshined by the Earth’s Inquisition when they were riding high in Europe under the guidance of various pontiffs a few centuries ago) late of the so-called rebellion against some phantom Empire of his mind. Ready, to as I will explain more below, take on the weak link in the ominous Star Wars industry which has done a tremendous disservice to the movie-going population by touting a mob of kinky humans and their “alien” hangers-on from every god forsaken planet and piece of shrapnel in the universe. (By the way any use of word “alien” refers not in these troubled Earth times to displaced Earthlings without a visa looking for some safe haven but denizens of other planets seeking to get into Earth without proper papers or with the explicit desire to do criminal wrong.) 

Making mock heroes of weak-link Han, originally from Kanas home of another legendary faker Dorothy Smith and her faithful and heroic dog Toto who saved her ass more times than I can count, a kid named ominously Luke Skywalker from out in the high desert of California whose police record spans at least one galaxy, an ex-call girl who goes by the name Leia, Lea, Lee something like that posing as the Czar of all the Russia missing-link daughter, a few out of date worthless tinpot robots with single letter or numbered names and assorted miscreants of various nationalities, planetary homes and so-called occupations. I will, let me make it clear, not hear a word said against one Chewbacca, aka Chewy, who was dragged down in the mud by this Han character and who after have seen the light exposed this bum of the month for what he is. Chewy has also in exchange for no prison time given me valuable information about all the rotten things this crew did again law and order, hell, against small-case reason.     

I freely admit that I am not ready to take on the whole cabal, not ready to go after the “biggest of the big” yet but feel confident that once I take down this hoodlum Han I will be fired up for a frontal assault on this whole sorted legend, freeing humankind at least from serious grafters, con men and women and midnight shifters. No question I have had major success in de-fanging the legends of small fry starting with modern guys like Johnny Cielo. Yes, Johnny Cielo the so-called famous early American aviator who if you had believed the legend was just behind Icarus and well ahead of the Wright Brothers down at wind-swept Kitty Hawk in the pantheon of manned flight. (That debunking was easy since Johnny was three-years old, I have a copy of his birth certificate for public inspection for those who still want to hang on to their silly illusions about this Piper Club pilot, when the brothers soared into the breathless air down there in heavy blow coastal North Carolina). Identified the woman posing as 1940s film siren and nothing but pure eye candy even at this remove Rita Hayworth which was supposedly his claim to fame as Jenny Homes, a street hooker from Hoboken who did resemble Rita superficially but could not have acted her way out of a paper bag. She would later run off with some Mach V test pilot when Johnny’s money ran out and she ran him down as a two-bit hustler when she fled back to Key West and started telling the tale. Telling it to some stumble-bum drunk who then retailed it to a desperate reporter in Miami and that was that. I also have the ticket receipts and flight plan of Johnny last flight before falling down into the ocean with four passengers in the Gulf of Mexico busting the legend that he was the main guy transporting guns and supplies to Fidel and his boys when it counted before 1959. Hogwash.

More, more cred if you like since I am going after very big prey, attempting to knock down Star Wars legends for crying out loud. I need all the cred I can get, maybe a few strong-arm guys wouldn’t hurt either-with or without sidearms once the “industry” feels threatened, feels my sting. Which may already be happening since this so-called prequel hagiographic film hardly earned its keep and righty so since the world need never hear of another hard-luck story about how a guy like poor Hank, Hack, Ham, very appropriate name, or whatever name he is using under whatever current rock he is under was abused by nefarious around him. I weep no tears on that score.

To continue with my resume I took one Robin Hood, he of “give to the poor” fame and through his church and estate records, the ones still intact which by every academic account are right, took him down for the count as a rack-renting gouger of his tenants lands, livestock and young daughters. All while working under the name Robert Hawkins, whom the Medieval historian Lawrence Staines has exposed as a malignant jack-roller and whoremaster as well. (I thank Brother Staines for his help in debunking this stiff whom we have come to know as Robin the Hood around my way.) Took down a what turned out to be a poor farm boy imagined by some cloistered young woman sent to convent to keep her away from mantraps to be a great lover, named him Don Juan, real name, Diego Nunes and described him to all the world warts and all. Took down a guy named Zorro too, although a little sorrowfully since the guy who did a review of a Zorro movie starring Antonio Banderas proudly spoke of his Spanish heritage via his mother and liked the idea that a Spaniard would get positive play in the legend game. Sorry Si but old Zorro once he used the peasants out there in California before the republic to beat back the then all-powerful Dons who had bogus Spanish land grants was like Robin Hood as greedy and callous toward them as the latter had been toward his yeomen. Maybe worse since in a modern twist emulated later by the coal barons back East forced those poor buffers to buy all their supplies from his overpriced and cheapjack company stores.

My most recent expose, the one I am rather personally happy about since I had to endure walking through the catacombs on the lower level of hell to view a whole exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston when they were corralled by some misbegotten loveless curators into presenting a show about the ill-named Age of Casanova, the so-called great lover who never painted picture number one so what the hell was that about anyway in a well-thought of art museum. Such misguided approaches only add to the chaos around various ill-deserved legends. Nevertheless I took down this clownish, boorish, asexual, according to various memoirs left behind by his supposed one nightstand lovers, as easily as Diego Nunes. Turned out he was another one of those figments of the imagination this time of a smart young Renaissance woman who nevertheless paid the price for her indiscretions refusing to recant when the Inquisition rolled into old Venice town taking no prisoners. Funny, sad funny anyway one of the few heroic and therefore worthy of a legend has never gotten any recognition for her brave stand against the night-takers.     

This Han Solo business, not his real name as I have alluded to up above and will detail below, though is a big jump and I will tell you why. If you were to believe the story being retailed of late in the seemingly never-ending Star War-related industrial complex through this film I have just waded through you would have assumed that he was an orphan imprisoned in one of those still nasty dungeons by some savage predators. Not so, Han, Han Brown was born, I have a copy of the birth certificate, in Lawrence, Kansas begotten by Ellis Brown through his wife Amy not in some honky-tonk interplanetary gin mill as he always was claiming. He left home of his own will, ill-will when he was sixteen to either become the best spaceship pilot in the universe or the richest sneak thief or both. After leaving home he picked up this tramp in some bar in Tulsa, a young woman with a funny name beginning with a “Q” that nobody could ever pronounce and so she took the name Queenie and they went through the petty crime night like Bonnie and Clyde. The few times they were caught Han would talk some gibberish and get out of it. Until the great irium caper where he was caught big-time and sent Queenie over since he was afraid of closed spaces like jails. Off on his own he ran into Chewy who tried to straighten him out but failed and maybe if he had left this delinquent, he could have avoided having to fink the bum out to save his own hide, to avoid jail time. Han, like Johnny Cielo talked like he was the king of the hill as a pilot but looking through his police files I noticed that he flunked the flying test twice before he was granted a license. Moreover after ditching a couple of ships with passengers in deep space after he bailed out his license was actually suspended the first time and then revoked after the second incident and so he was officially flying illegally under Empire law.

Han, using the alias, Handel Smith, did grab a job running weapon to the rebels against that Empire which without the steady hand of a guy like Darth Vader was crumbling, was rift with every con artist in the black hole. Offered more money by king-pin Johnny Dryden, king of the fairy queens, Hanry grabbed the loot with all arms and grabbed Queenie who had done her time, his time and was ready to crush the universe if necessary, to get back on track. Something had changed in her, had changed in her in prison like with a lot of women, men too as she was as happy to be a bad ass girl as good. Han did not know that but the bastard was instrumental in breaking her. What else can I say. A classic bum of the month but I know millions will say he was such a good-looking funny, fun-loving boy. Ask Queenie that question if you dare.      

Present At The Creation-When Luke, Leia And Han Could Say To Be Young Was Very Heaven-George Lucas’ “Star Wars” (1977)-A Film Review

Present At The Creation-When Luke, Leia And Han Could Say To Be Young Was Very Heaven-George Lucas’ “Star Wars” (1977)-A Film Review   

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne (somehow the editorial assistant, obviously a stringer, in a few of my previous recent reviews didn’t believe in spell-check or in inquiring to me personally how to spell my name and did so with the incorrect “LeMoyne” which drew a tell-tale red line under the incorrect spelling and should have been picked up.)     

Star Wars, starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher (Eddie Fisher, he of the flyaway to Elizabeth Taylor reputation and jilted former girl next door Debbie Reynold’s daughter), Harrison Ford (he of the sullen Valley boy post-World War II hot rod “chicken run’ at midnight set in future star-studded American Graffiti ), and a cast of odd-ball characters from wizard Alex Guinness to Darth Vader aka James Earl Jones he of the authoritative-or else-voice and all the refuge of the galaxy wars and whatever techno-props were available at the time of film shooting) directed by George Lucas, 1977      

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Seth Garth of this publication (and formerly for a long time of the prestigious American Film Gazette which impressed me no end since I had been spoon-fed on that publication, on-line of course from my young girlhood) is a beautiful man. Is a guy who has helped me out ever so much in trying to establish myself as a writer, a journalist really in this my first real job since I got out of journalism graduate school at NYU (we won’t count the couple of years spent as a waitress, ah, waitperson at Zack’s in the Village, a barista at you know where and as a cashier at Whole Foods although maybe eventually once I get established and get my own by-line I can use the material I gathered at those locales to fill out a few columns when I need something in a hurry like every writer since Homer’s time has done when deadline approaches).

Let’s settle this right away before the Internet rumor mills churn their grist and spew out the usual scandalous misinformation, no way, since I already have a companion whom I met as a barista at you know where, are Seth, the older seasoned writer who has seen it all and I, who still has star-dust in my eyes, sleeping together. That little literary trope has been done to death both in real life with the likes of the late Norman Mailer and others of the male-heavy literary establishment of a generation ago, now too as it turns out with the rise of the #MeToo expose movement, and their “young female met at some publishing event” so-called acolytes or in fiction most recently as part of the novel Asymmetry reviewed in the New York Review of Books.  Christ Seth has daughters older than I am and moreover as much as he has helped me he is “damaged goods” in the romance department having like half the older guys around here been married at least three times and is adamantly no longer interested in the marriage ceremony. I am the “B” of LGBTQ” so marriage is a hope especially if to another woman not that we can do that. I am very interested in that prospect once I earn my keep in the literary world, or at least can write reviews for cold hard cash.         

Seth has helped me in ways that matter as a matter of being a mentor to me, nothing more. Teaching me the ropes in this dog eat dog business where truly you are only as good as your last piece hitting publication and then the wolves begin to howl, especially if you are any good. And especially by those will fall by the wayside and can’t write and will earn their cold hard cash keep trashing those of us who can, who want to, as “film historians,” culture critics, book review essayists from whatever rock they have make their short climb. Teaching me things that they have never taught in any journalism class because if they did then many more people would be perfectly content to end their days as baristas at you know where. The biggest thing Seth has taught me which came in handy recently when I had my first real set-back in the business was that you had better yell loudly, very loudly when some cowardly editor succumbs to office politics and takes a plum assignment away from you.

Along with that very sound advice Seth also said, hell, since I am only a stringer anyway and life is precarious down at the bottom of the publishing food chain that I should take the opportunity when it presents itself to publicly write about what is what inside the fish bowl. Basically to dare any editor or fellow writer to cut me off at the knees and not let it be published (and laughingly Seth said what the hell you are getting paid by the word so stretch things out to pay the rent anyway-another good piece of advice especially when you submit your piece just before the deadline and that empty space you were supposed to fill is empty and the first smells of panic take flight from the offices upstairs). Again it is good to know the animal you are dealing with, fangs or licks. Seth told me that Greg, the guy who hired me and the guy who has taken that plum assignment away from me was put in charge after a vote of no confidence in the last site manager and so is actually something of a usurper, a guy who got his job on the rebound. Moreover, Greg is responsible to an Editorial Board and no new guy wants to lock horns with that crowd so Seth said I should write whatever comes into my thoughts and dare Greg and/or the Ed Board to not publish the piece.   

The number one villain in this dog eat dog saga is one Sam Lowell (who as he told me to do in the interest of full disclosure also happens to be a friend of Seth from the old days when they were in high school and hung around the same forlorn corner in the small town where they both come from and which tells you how really cutthroat this business is despite high tone glossy presentations and nice manners at cocktail parties and awards galas). Yes, that Sam Lowell of the big film review by-line back in the day who won his spurs in the profession by doing an incredible job of analyzing the history of film noir. That work is still the benchmark by which anybody who has come after has to consult if they don’t want to be laughed out of the room. A powerful man, a fixture, a force of nature if he wants to be, even if he is well past his prime and when I met him seemed to be a little wizened and not the florid-faced big shot I had expected to meet. But more on that later. For now though what has me pissed off, what had Seth pissed off for his own reasons about “passing the torch” and of plain orneriness from their long-time sometimes prickly relationship, is that Sam took without a murmur from anybody but Seth my Hammer Film Production six-film series of psychological thrillers from the 1950s that Greg had given to me after I had done a good on a couple of small reviews (for little money as one might expect from a stringer). Sam’s reason, if he needed one, was that he had done a couple of years ago the eight- film Hammer Film Production of film noirs from the late 1940s and early 1950s that Columbia Pictures had outsourced to them as low-cost using low production values, and unknown or has-been actors to keep the expenditures down in a time when movie attendance was being eaten away by the advent of television.

Greg immediately called me in to give me the bad news. I sat there stunned, left, and ran into Seth at the water cooler and told him my story. He said march myself right back into Greg’s office and get something in return. That is when Greg offered me this complete (so-far) Star Wars series looking back at the epic from the fresh eyes of somebody who was not present at the creation but who, truth, loved the action-packed series. Not only that but I have first dibs on any future Marvel or DC Comic studio productions with the understanding that I would have a better grip on why millions of kids have their parents pony up for high-priced tickets and expensive sodas and inedible popcorn to see this stuff that the older writers who have been drafted, mostly kicking and screaming, to write about since I love those films as well.

My blood is up though, egged on a little by Seth who has his own axes to grind with Sam or maybe just for old times blood sport sake, and I am not finished with Mr. Sam Lowell the big-time by-line columnist. I might have been, I might have let it go given what Greg had given me to get me on my way to a coveted by-line but Sam made the fatal mistake of thinking I was some carpet to walk all over. I had started two of the reviews for that Hammer Production (that outfit if you have never heard of it is English by the way, or it was back in the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s when beside noir and psychological thrillers they also did low-rent horror and monster movies) and had, my mistake, shown him those rough drafts. What he said about them, that snake in the grass, my expression, that wizened old thief bastard, Seth’s expression, was that they were good, that they should be published, and he would see Greg about doing so. That part I took with some kindness and was starting to have a different opinion of the guy, starting to see that this cutthroat business was real but only on the surface when Sam said he wanted me to then, under his by-line “ghost” a couple of rebuttal reviews essentially trashing what I had written and making me out to be some holy goof who should have stayed in the service industry, have stayed a barista at that place. That done, that holy goof stuff done, Sam had the bright idea that we would have “dueling” reviews with me playing the naïve dunce and him the thoughtful and erudite film critic. With me writing everything on both sides like some sleazy lawyer, some hired gun, writing whatever paper or cyberspace would take.

This is where Seth really did put me straight, really made me realize that if I was to make it in the profession I had better know what was what or else I would be continually hammered by guys like Sam Lowell[O1] . This is what Seth told me about Sam (aided by a little independent research and some serious conversations with Leslie Dumont, who when she was younger had been put under the same Sam hammer as a stringer until she finally left and got her big by-line at Women Today and by Sam’s long-time companion Laura Perkins who nevertheless knew the pitfalls and pranks of her man). Everybody knows that Sam Lowell re-wrote the book on the meaning of film noir. Made his name and rightly so telling that new wave of film makers of the 1960s who were interested in the genre going forward what made noir so compelling, even B-film material, from plot to shadowy photography to the sublime sound tracks. Even today if one is serious about film noir your first stop is Sam’s work. I have never heard anybody, even his most vociferous detractors like Cella Dunne say otherwise. What people don’t know although if they had thought about and had compared it to academia and other professions Sam like the professors, the one note book writers, the one genre artists had one big idea which he milked forever. Got that by-line and never looked back. But aside from the million all expenses paid lectures and conferences, the pithy little pieces for half-baked journals generated by aficionados, that expensive by-line Sam never really expanded his universe. Truth.

Seth thought maybe it was because Sam like him was from hunger and that once he made his mark he quit, he let the fate sisters ride him to wherever they wanted to take him. I have mentioned this before as has Seth but Sam was perfectly happy when he was short of an idea for a review, especially if it was a not a noir to take whatever the studio publicity department handed-out, cut off the top, type his name in and sent it along. Allan Jackson, when he was walking with the king here, unaided by any such hinderance as an Ed Board was perfectly happy to publish the piece no questions asked. Meanwhile Sam was on some beach, maybe with Seth, maybe with some young woman, some Seven Sisters young woman who were his preferred acolytes and grinders, snagged from one of those high-priced lectures drinking whiskey sours and cavorting the day and night away. The other thing that Sam would do and this is where Leslie Dumont came in with her insights was to have a stringer, her mostly, write the whole thing and sent it in under Sam’s name. Even tried, the old dog, the old “controversy” gag with Leslie which Sam had tried on me. Allan was more than happy to publish the pieces in double columns. Hopefully this will get some dewy eyes opened up and not throw writers off the trial but I thought you should know what I now know courtesy of Seth Garth, a beautiful man.             

       

Now to the task at hand. As I mentioned a minute ago in the “negotiations” between Greg and I we agreed that I would do a retrospective of the entire Star Wars series now in its eighth rendition (plus a couple of outliers in the bunch to introduce new elements, a black resistance fighter and a female wannabe Jedi for starters) from fresh eyes, from eyes that were not bedazzled by the first spectacle which animated my parents’ generation back in the 1970s when they needed to have something to take their minds off of what with the international gas crisis and endless ragtag inflation eating up their dollars like crazy. This “fresh eyes” approach is important since we have just witnessed in young Will Bradley’s review of the eight installment Star Wars: The Last Jedi what were jaded eyes since Will in his own words could give a fuck about the stupid series. This from a guy who slept through the one film he did see when his parents grabbed a video from their local store and threw it in their VCR.  Greg wanted a much better take, a rationale for why new generations have gravitated to the series over the past forty or so years, young, old and in between.

I am just the gal to do this job because I too saw my first Star War film via the old VCR although it was the very first one that I am reviewing here. My parents loved the movies, had met at some retrospective at the Tattler Theater in old-time Ann Arbor, at Michigan and while their professions never intertwined with their love of films there was a constant flow of films from the 1960s to 1990s running through the house in Cos Cob. From then on I was hooked on the series unlike timid and fearful Will. I might add, and here Seth has given me another good piece of advice kick your competitor when she or he is down and Will is very down in the eyes of our supreme leader Greg. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were reviewing Saturday morning kid shows before long after that stunt with the precious A-1 review material he was given to work with and blew. In case you have forgotten Will in any case was a guy who went mano a mano with sainted Seth over the question of the homosexuality of Sherlock Holmes and Doc Watson in their long film collaboration and got it wrong, totally wrong not knowing about the dilly boys that this pair hung around with on the wharves between cases. Will got caught with what I would call his pants down not knowing of the rampant homosexuality in the English public school (private schools here). Everybody, except beloved Seth who does have a heart after all he has gone through, had a great big laugh at that faux pas, even I chuckled when I heard what he had tried to do to defend himself after Seth lashed him to the mast.        

As the Star War series has progressed we have seen many more sophisticated technological gizmos per film but I am here to tell you that the basics were all set up in that first film from the grotesques of the galaxy who no self-respecting persons not bitten by the “politically correct” bug would let in the neighborhoods to the latest in space age travel. That is however not the most important part-not the Hollywood “hook” that Seth has told me that every film and every film review needs. Usually it is the time-honored boy meets girl or these days girl meets boy or whatever other combination, hopefully “B” meeting “B” but you don’t see much of that yet the screen can produce-including inter-species love if the 2018 Oscar for Best Film is any indication. Here though and it will drag out at least through this first trilogy, the part of the saga that is the fight against the dark side, the Darth Vader side is the whole question of good and evil and what to do about it. What do good guys and gals do about it when the baddies want the galaxy and they want it now.

With that as the backdrop we have our three main players here and in the trilogy. Future Jedi warrior prince angel avenger Luke Skywalker, played by young Mark Hamill, the fairy queen Princess Leia of the royal house of whatever since apparently even is advanced space technology and future times we are going to be bedeviled by goddamn monarchies and future romantic interest Han Solo, played by hard-working Harrison Ford of the jut-jaw who is the only one who broke out of the sci-fi paydays good as they were. (Han was in once everybody figured out you can’t have incest once it turns on a dime that Luke and Leia were brother and sister and, and the children of … well see the film, oops see the trilogy). They will be guided in their battles against the fallen satanic angel gone on a vengeance run one Black Knight breathing heavy Darth Vader and his boss some mad monk who as usual wants to rule the world and needs a good gunslinger to do his dirty word. The battle is joined, the endless battles and heavy casualties on the bad guys side. This is one point I will agree with Will Bradley on for such a massive force the bad guys seem to be very ill-trained not to be able to beat a few kids and assorted amateurs. More later since I have run out of billable words.    

The Star Wars Industry Churns Onward-Luke Skywalker aka Mark Hamill Cashes His Check-Director Rian Johnson’s “Star War: The Last Jedi-VIII (Sure, Sure) (2017)-A Film Review

The Star Wars Industry Churns Onward-Luke Skywalker aka Mark Hamill Cashes His Check-Director Rian Johnson’s “Star War: The Last Jedi-VIII (Sure, Sure) (2017)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Will Bradley      

Star Wars: The Last Jedi-VIII, starring the Mark Hamill (the late) Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, and an ensemble cast backing up the main actors, directed by Rian Johnson, 2017   

No question the Star Wars industry has spawned nothing but gold, more than faux Vegas Canto Bight shown in a sequence in VIII could ever dream of for creators, actors, directors and the thousands needed to keep the operation churning. No question either that from my perspective this thing had been played out, has lost plenty in the script department since this Last Of The Jedi has stuck pretty much to the action-filled and story-thin formula that has driven everything after the first trilogy. Frankly I don’t give a damn about IX although I know as sure as I am now writing that we will be besieged by such a production if for no other reason that to keep the gold coming in.

If all of this sounds a bit cynical then you are right on the money. I did not ask for this assignment, did not want it and hopefully have not dug myself into a hole by griping about my fate publicly. Here’s how this one has played out. Seth Garth and Johnny Callahan, the latter a serious financial angel for this publication, both desperately wanted to tackle this film. Seth had done a few of the earlier episodes and Johnny has actually done the review of the very first one for the hard copy edition of this publication back in 1977. Meaning this: both men have been aficionados since day one. Sensing that this golden operation was finally bringing this monster to a close both wanted to pay homage to, well, let’s call a thing by its right name-their youth. Greg Green, site manager and the guy who hands out the assignments, decided to make a Solomonic decision and pass them both by and look for somebody who was less involved emotionally and cinematically with this saga. Thus I got the call having not even been born when the series started and moreover as disinterested a party as could be about the whole business after falling asleep when my parents rented a tape for the VCR from the local video store  (showing my age at least against those who know only DVDs or streaming).           

Okay where to start. Darth Vader, oops, Kylo Ren, really   Benjy Solo, who turns out to be the late Mr. Vader’s grandson showing how if not incestuous in the direct sense at least in the storyline the whole thing was, is, played by Adam Driver, is up to his born to be bad self continuing from the last episode wreaking havoc on a sullen galaxy where he is acting as a discipline for the chief universal bad guy, a blob named Smoke, no, Snork, no, Snoke. For the good guys, good guys and gals as it turned out with a new generation of possible Jedi Knights coming from the female side of the sexual divide with Rey, played by Daisy Ridley, we have the same old same old leading the charge, leading the Resistance to the bad guys with General Leia, played by the late Carrie Fisher in her last film, and a few young bravos along side Rey and her friends Poe and Finn.             

What no Luke Skywalker? (Hans Solo, Benjy’s dad has passed beyond done in by Benjy’s hands as well although his ever-faithful companion Chewie is still going at it strong helping young Rey out of a couple of jams although he hasn’t improved his English much in the subsequent forty or so years). Yes, Luke is around but he is sulking on some desolate island having apparently given up the virtuous Jedi Knight job. The sulk  inherited from his reaction to his earlier attempts to tame an unruly universe. Half this film is spent with wanna-be Jedi Knight Rey trying might and main to get Luke back in the struggle, back into the resistance against bad boy Benjy, okay Kylo, and his handler Snoke. The other half is the usual fight to the death, yawn, between the good guys and the bad with the bad guys who vastly outnumber the good but who apparently were ill-trained by Snoke and his minions taking a pummeling before the end. Needless to say as things wind up, wind up for this episode anyway, the Resistance, the rebels are still holding on, still around in case the galaxy decides enough is enough with new head bad guy Kylo, okay, Benji and bring down a hell and damnation on his sorry butt.       

News Flash: before the end good old boy Luke does show up for one last hurrah holding off the bad guys to let the good guys and gals escape. That done one Luke Skywalker who Seth Garth and Johnny Callahan speak of in hushed tones cashed his check. What will happen next without his magic wand to protect the universe.   

The New Breed Of Sci-Fi Adventure-“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (2015)-A Film Review

The New Breed Of Sci-Fi Adventure-“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (2015)-A Film Review    

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (VII), starring Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, 2015

         

Science Fiction movies sure aren’t what they used to be. Although I was, am not a great fan of the genre and have taken this assignment to review one of the seemingly never-ending Star Wars sagas (number 7 if you can believe it) that ripple through the cinematic universe every few years to give flagging studio tickets sales a boost as our boss Greg Green said when he assigned this beast to “broaden my horizons” I sat through my fair share of them growing up. Growing up just outside of Albany, New York my older brother would in the interest making his “baby-sitting” of me woes lighter take us in his car to the Majestic Theater in downtown Albany on Saturday afternoon’s to the matinees.

Of course since the average film was much shorter then usually around an hour and one half there would be a double-feature, sometimes a horror movie and a sci fi or sometimes two sci fi’s for the afternoon. What has struck me as amazing according to my recollections (and some “cheap sheet” research via invaluable for movie summaries if not for everything Wikipedia) after viewing this chapter of Star Wars was how differently these films have tracked society in their respective times.  Then, the late 1950s maybe early 1960s these sci fi films had “aliens” (not earthly aliens seeking shelter from earth’s storms in places like America to work and raise families without fear of death and disaster from the forces controlling their home societies) who were inevitably scary and ready to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting earth. Were in those deep freeze Cold War days foreboding when we were not quite sure we would make it from one day to the next if the “big one,” the nuclear bombs we rightly feared would blow us away. And the storylines and bad guy monsters and weird forces from outer space left no room for compromise-it was earthly civilization, us, such as it was or them.

Naturally the earthly civilization won out over the mutants and creeps who tried to do us in (read in newspeak the Soviets). Naturally as well in those days the leaders, usually one leader, who figured out how to tame the alien menace was an All-American, uh, guy who as Si Lannon loves to say went mano a mano with these unearthly forces. Saved civilization and grabbed the good-looking young woman in the fall-out (some things haven’t changed witness the younger versions of Hans Solo and Princess now General Leia and their courting ritual in the first three Star War sagas from about a million years ago it seems). Alternatively beat down the mad scientist who created some kid scary stuff, usually grossly radioactive and had to take the fall.      

That was then though. Maybe it is the intervening years where the Soviet menace has turned to dust and those “alien” enemies, the “them” have gone from outer space to around the corner and the world having explored the skies and found nothing unfriendly or otherwise (the cynic would say thus far) that has changed things. Add in a little what I would call sarcastically “universal multi-culturalism” and you have a very different mix. Now those scary monsters who populate the Star Wars alternative planets are just regular guys and gals who hang around bars mixing in with humans and whatnot.

Gruesome monsters that still scare me who I wouldn’t want to run into in daylight much less a dark alley at night but who we can’t offend because they might be allies, and besides “body-shaming” is socially taboo these days. More hopefully real live earthling minorities as in this film actually do good in the struggle against what is now not just earthly evil but universal. But perhaps the biggest difference, surprise is that those delicate passive young women of the 1950s have been transformed into righteous warriors in their own right kicking ass and taking numbers just like the good guys of yore. Here the warrior Rey played by Daisy Ridley showing her metal to good effect and throwing down bad guys left and right.  

All of those changes are basically pluses but that does not stop the story line from being the same old same old-here the latest incarnation of the bad guys, the First Order, looking for universal dominance against the gnat-like Resistance (a very appropriate term these days in America). Here the line-up is a young woman, a young black man, a gung-ho pilot, Hans Solo, General Leia against that mass of incompetent soldiers in that silly white armor aided by massive firepower which would make the Pentagon generals green with envy, led by General Huk, directed by ugly Supreme leader Snoke with the ringer being an imitation Darth Vader dressed in Johnny Cash black Kylo.

The ringer part-this Kylo aka Ben is none other than the progeny of Hans and Leia when they were doing their own version of mano a mano. Get this though Kylo aka Ben is so enamored of the dark side that he kills his Oedipal father Hans. Nothing but mourning all around. Except the Resistance is able to crush the First Order (for now) and that young woman, that Rey, gets to Luke Skywalker which is what this whole trip was all about. Stay tuned for the next one (2017 already filmed and shown) and the next one for 2019 just in time once again to boost flagging studio ticket sales. Nothing here made me want to grab onto the genre for dear life.