Since I've been revisiting He-Man and the Masters of the Universe recently (see here and here), I've been trying to collect my thoughts on the franchise.
One of my memories as a kid is that near the end of the original franchise, the toys associated with the franchise became more and more diverse, in kind of a weird way. I mean, the toy franchise started out fairly normal--you have a bunch of people who are good, and a bunch of people who are bad. But near the end, you had toys that were animals who could turn into rocks.
As you can see above, there were 10 of them. 5 good ones, that were on the side of He-Man and friends, and 5 bad ones, that were on the side of Skeletor.
As a kid, I remember seeing these in the toy shop, and thinking to myself, "Wow, it's been a while since I watched the He-Man cartoon. I guess the story has expanded a lot since I last saw it. Now they've added these meteor rock animals into the story. I wonder what kind of stories they are telling about them."
Being naive, I had no idea as a kid that the toyline was driving the story rather than the other way around. I assumed that the writers of the TV show had created these Meteoroids for the purposing of expanding the story, and that the toys just came afterwards. (In fact, by the time these toys came out, the He-Man show had already stopped making new episodes, and was in reruns, but I didn't even realize that. I just assumed that new episodes must still be coming out, even though I personally had stopped watching.)
I never actually saw these Meterorbs portrayed in any of the Masters of the Universe media, but as a kid I trusted that they must be part of the story somehow, and for many years after, in my mind they were emblematic of the endless creativity of this series, and how it kept expanding its story outward in new directions.
As an adult, however, it's easy enough to research this stuff on the Internet, and discover that the Meteorbs never appeared on the He-Man TV show. Two of them apparently appeared in one episode of the She-Ra show. (Even though the packaging material on the toys clearly advertised them as allies of either He-Man or Skeletor.)
And in fact, a little bit of further research shows that they were not originally Masters of the Universe toys at all, but were originally a Japanese toyline of transforming eggs from Bandai called Tamagoras, and Mattel just repackaged them as Masters of the Universe toys, and assured us kids that they fit into the storyline somehow.
...which, yeah, kind of makes sense, given that both are rocks that transform into some sort of creature.
The Rock People were another toyline which were advertised as being part of the He-Man world, but apparently only ever appeared in the She-Ra show, because the He-Man show had already stopped production when these toys came out. As a kid, I had one of the Rock People action figures (which I must have gotten as a gift on Christmas or my birthday). As with the Meteorbs, I had never seen the Rock People in any of the cartoons, so I didn't know how they fit into the storyline exactly, but I assumed that they were in the cartoon somewhere, and I just hadn't seen the episodes.
I also had two of the Meteorbs, Ty-Grrr and Crocobite, which I think I got for stocking stuffers one Christmas morning.
Anyway, the point of all this is to try to convey the fascination that the Masters of the Universe franchise could have on a child. As an adult, of course, I recognize that the Meteorbs were just a cynical and lazy cash grab to milk just a few more dollars out of a dying franchise by repurposing Japanese toys, and then trying to convince kids that they were really He-Man toys.
But as a kid, you looked at all these bizarre He-Man toys in the toyshop, and thought, "Wow, is there no end to all the magical creatures that are contained within the story of He-Man."
PS--I was inspired to do this little dive into the history of fringe Masters of the Universe figures because of reminiscing brought on by this video HERE. But I'll wait to post that until I've finished my complete review of Masters of the Universe: Revelation.
*******************
Check out Masters of the Universe #2 (The Coming of the Meteorbs! Falling Stars, Vol. 1) on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3ZCxFDJ
(This is an Amazon Associate's link. If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
I haven't really talked much about the Zorro TV serieson this blog before. (Although I mentioned it in passing HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.) But Disney's Zorro series was a big part of my childhood.
The show was originally on TV in 1957-1959, before my time, but reruns of the show were a staple of the Disney channel in the 1980s.
At some point, I would love to do a watch through of the whole series, from beginning to end, and add it to my TV show review project. But that's going to have to be a project reserved for the distant future, at this point. For one thing, I don't have a lot of free time these days with two young kids. For another thing, I don't have any way of getting ahold of the whole series out here in Vietnam. Even if I was back in the US, it might be difficult to track down the whole series. According to Wikipedia:
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released the entire series on DVD in Region 1 on November 3, 2009, under their Walt Disney Treasures banner featuring several bonus features.[7] however like many other Disney releases it was available for a limited time, before entering moratorium and put back in the Disney Vault along with the other Walt Disney Treasures DVD sets.
But nevertheless, watching the whole Zorro series all the way through is one of my someday projects.
I watched a lot of Zorro as a kid, but of course the nature of TV back then is that you just tuned in when you could, and you could catch the odd episode, but it was very difficult to follow the whole storyline.
You see, the old Zorro TV series had storylines. Each episode was independent in that each episode had its own mini-conflict, and it's own climax (there was always a fight at the end in which Zorro won), but it was also part of a larger story-arc which (if memory serves) was typically about 6 episodes long.
[Sidenote 1: Conventional wisdom is that television couldn't get away with serialized storylines until DVDs and streaming services emerged, which allowed viewers to catch up on the back-episodes that they had missed, and keep up with the story. Which is why TV shows were always episodic in my childhood in the 1980s, but nowadays every TV episode is always part of a longer story arc. But I wonder... was there a brief window at the beginning of television in the 1950s when serialized storylines were more common? Or was Zorro just ahead of its time?]
Now, the storylines at the beginning of the Zorro series were relatively simple. An evil Comandante would oppress the townsfolk. Zorro would foil the Comandante's evil plans for about 6 episodes. Then eventually the Comandante would be killed. Then a new Comandante would take his place. There would be a brief period of optimism in which the townspeople hoped that this Comandante would be good. But then, he would turn out to be just as oppressive as his predecessor, and Zorro would have to fight the new Comandante.
I actually saw the first several story arcs in order. You see, during the 1980s, the Disney channel was mostly using Zorro as filler during the weekdays. But then, at one point, they moved it to their prime-time slot on Friday nights, and they made a big deal about how they were going to start at episode, one, and show the series in order, one episode a week.
I think I saw the first 4 story arcs in order this way (which equals about 24 episodes). But I never made it through the whole series.
I'm not sure if I got distracted and stopped watching, or if the Disney channel might have given up on the idea, and gone back to just showing Zorro in the afternoons. I think it was the latter, but I don't remember. It could also have been that there was some sort of change in my schedule, and I wasn't able to watch Zorro on Friday nights. (As a child, it was hard to be dedicated to watching any TV show, because my mother had this crazy idea that life was not to be arranged around TV schedules. There were real-life events, like school, soccer games, church, youth group, family gatherings, etc, and all of them were to be given priority over TV schedules. If a family gathering was scheduled for a night when Zorro was on TV, so much the worse for Zorro.)
So anyways, I made it through roughly the first 3 or 4 story arcs in the Zorro series in order. But the other episodes, I just caught on weekday afternoons at random when I could.
And despite only running for 2 seasons, there were a lot of episodes. According to Wikipedia, 39 episodes per season. So, about 80 episodes. Plus the follow-up specials.
[Sidenote 2: Boy, they sure did crank out the TV episodes back in the day, didn't they? Strange to think about nowadays when we're so used to thinking about a season of a TV series being 10 episodes. (Of course, that's prestige TV I'm thinking off. Maybe the regular sitcoms are still being cranked out weekly. I don't know, I've been abroad for so long I'm out of touch with regular TV schedules.) But still, 39 episodes a season is quite a schedule, isn't it? And I know they didn't spend a lot of money on special effects, but all those fight scenes must have taken time to choreograph, right?
Actually speaking of fights, that brings me to Sidenote 3: Whatever happened to all those great stage fight scenes that used to be in old TV shows? Is it just me, or is the action in TV shows nowadays really boring? As I noted in my retrospective on Star Trek, I really like the choreography of the big stage fight scenes, that used to be so common in TV shows in the 50s and 60s. Why did this go out of style?]
...where was I?
Ah, yes, the point being that as a kid I never saw the whole series straight through, and so would just pick up bits and pieces of random storylines. And although the early storylines were very simple (there's a new Comandante in town, Zorro has to fight him), somewhere along the line things must have started to get more complex.
For example, I remember in second grade tuning into an episode of Zorro one afternoon, and watching An Eye for an Eye (Season 2 Episode 7), in which the viewer is dropped into a storyline about a little civil war going on between Governor Luis Rico and his men and the bandit Joaquin Castenada and his men. Zorro is caught in the middle of this little war, and tries to keep the peace between both sides.
It's clear from the beginning of the episode that this is a conflict that had already been established in previous episodes. But where did Joaquin Castenada and his gang come from? How did this little war get started? What episodes had I missed?
I suppose some people would be frustrated by this, but as a child I was fascinated by this. I was captivated by the idea that there was this larger, richer story out there somewhere, and that I could only get little glimpses of it, but that by digging around a bit, I could hope to gradually uncover more of it. (That is, if I kept watching Zorro episodes, maybe someday I'd discover more about who Joaquin Castenada was, and how this whole conflict got started in the first place.)
...although, that being said, I still to this day have not yet watched the whole storyline of Joaquin Castenada and his gang. But someday I'll track down and watch the whole series!
[Sidenote 4: I've been googling it now, and it's hard to find a lot of information on the Internet about this storyline. Although I did find this article HERE which claims that the storyline was based off of real-life outlaw Joaquin Murrieta, but seen through the conservative lens of 1950s Hollywood:
In the late 1950s, the hero of Walt Disney’s TV series Zorro, played by Guy Williams, was often seen as the “good” rebel while Joaquin Castaneda, clearly modeled on Joaquin Murieta, was presented as the example of the irresponsible “bad” rebel who Zorro constantly had to lecture to and keep in line.
...the same article goes on to say that Joaquin Murieta was also a character in 2005's The Mask of Zorro:
In an ingenious touch, the screenwriters of The Mask of Zorro had Joaquin Murieta’s brother, Alejandro, played by Antonio Banderas, become the new Zorro after Joaquin’s death.
But all of that is simply a digression. The point of this post is that I wanted to talk about a failed 1983 TV series called Zorro and Son which was supposed to Disney's follow up to the 1958 Zorro series.
In 1983 a comedy follow-up, Zorro and Son, aired on CBS. The series was shot in color on many of the same studio lots where the original was filmed. Featuring none of the original cast (Gene Sheldon and Henry Calvin had passed away by then, while Guy Williams walked out after a script dispute), the show performed poorly in the ratings.
1983 was actually during my lifetime, but I was still young and don't really have any memories of this show being a thing. (Although, this was only a few years before I got really into Disney's Zorro. And I think I do vaguely recall my dad or somebody saying to me that there had been a sequel to Zorro about Zorro's son, that it was supposed to be a comedy, and that it wasn't very good. So I guess I was vaguely aware of it.
Episodes of the show can be found on Youtube. Of course.
I've just watched the first one now, and I've got to say, it's not very good.
The general concept is okay, but the problem is that it's just not funny. Like, really not funny. Like, the jokes are so cringe!
Well, that's the problem with writing comedy, huh? You can have a really good idea for a sitcom, but actually making it funny is a difficult business.
Part of me thinks it's too bad that Guy Williams couldn't be convinced to come back for this role. (It would've been nice to see him as Zorro one last time.) But part of me recognizes it's probably for the best he didn't come back for this.
(Plus, I don't really need to see him one last time as Zorro. I still have 80 episodes of the original TV show I need to catch up on first!)
Despite good ratings (#30 in Season 1 with a 26.6 rating), the series ended after two seasons due to a financial dispute between Disney and the network over ownership of Zorro, Mickey Mouse Club, and the Disney anthology television series (at the time titled Disneyland). During the legal battle, Disney produced four new hour-long Zorro adventures of the franchise, aired on the anthology series: Zorro: El Bandido (October 30, 1960); Zorro: Adios El Cuchillo (November 6, 1960); Zorro: The Postponed Wedding (January 1, 1961); and Zorro: Auld Acquaintance (April 2, 1961). Guy Williams was kept on full salary during this period. But by the time Disney and ABC resolved their differences, Walt Disney decided that public interest in the character had flagged. Disney continued to pay $3,500 per year until 1967 to retain the television rights.[5]
As a kid, I had always assumed the character of Zorro had a legacy in books and folklore. I was surprised, when I looked on Wikipedia, to see how scanty his legacy really is.
Zorro is not some old folk legend that dates back to colonial times, but a rather recent pulp fiction character created in 1919. And he only appeared in one novel before he started getting adapted to screen (although more short stories did come afterwards):
Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, on their honeymoon, selected the story as the inaugural picture for their new studio, United Artists, beginning the character's cinematic tradition.[citation needed] The novel was adapted as the film The Mark of Zorro (1920), which Fairbanks produced, co-wrote and starred in as Diego/Zorro. The movie was a commercial success,[2] and the 1924 reprint of McCulley's story by publisher Grosset & Dunlap used the same title, capitalizing on the movie's popularity. The novel has since been reprinted using both titles.
In response to public demand fueled by the film, McCulley wrote more than sixty more Zorro stories, beginning in 1922 with The Further Adventures of Zorro, which was also serialized in Argosy All-Story Weekly.
Given my childhood interest in Zorro, it's on my someday reading list to read the original novel. It's on project Gutenberg now, and I did buy a Kindle for precisely this kind of thing. Maybe I could even squeeze it in this year for Garbaugust? We'll see.
Well, as long as I've started allowing Steve to get me to reminisce about old Star Trek books I read in 5th and 6th grade, I might as well continue.
Steve mentions Diane Carey again (although the specific Diane Carey titles he mentions were ones I haven't read.)
But other than Diane Carey, the only other titles and authors I recognize in this video were Yesterday's Son and Time for Yesterday, both by A.C. Crispin, which I read back in the day.
Like the Diane Carey books, this was yet another series I read out of order because I didn't know any better. I read Time for Yesterday first because that was the book that I found in the bookstore. And only realized as I was reading it that it was a sequel to another book called Yesterday's Son. So once I finished Time for Yesterday, I ordered Yesterday's Son through the mail.
As Steve mentions, these books were really good. (Steve doesn't care for the sequel as much, but I remember enjoying them both when I was in 5th grade.)
As Steve explains in the video, Time for Yesterday is a sequel to Yesterday's Son, and Yesterday's Son is in turn a sequel to the original Star Trek episode All Our Yesterdays, which was also really good.
As I mentioned in my long post on Star Trek years ago, for much of my late teens and 20s (when I was desperately trying to be cool) I was ashamed of how much time I had wasted on Star Trek in my adolescence. But I also acknowledged in that post that it was the perfect entertainment for a young boy.
And you know what, looking back on this stuff, I'm going to double down on that statement. This kind of stuff hits the sensibilities of a 5th and 6th grade boy exactly right. And intellectually, I think it's just about the perfect level for that age as well. I shouldn't be ashamed of my young Star Trek obsession. This is exactly the kind of stuff you should be reading and watching when you're that age.
What caught my ear on this video in particular was the mention of Diane Carey. Watch the video from 5:36, when Steve is talking about his favorite Star Trek writers:
of course Diane Carrey who I consider to be the best Star Trek writer, a writer who never phones it in and who never insults the the intelligence of her readers and who also understands nautical matters which almost no other Star Trek writers do, has spent time on the open ocean
Diane Carey was my favorite Star Trek writer when I was in 5th grade. I read Battlestations! and absolutely loved it. Then I read Dreadnought! next. (Dreadnought! was actually the first book in the series and Battlestations! the sequel, but I read Battlestations! first because I didn't know any better initially, and then circled back to read Dreadnought! once I realized Battlestations! was a sequel.)
I actually did my 5th grade oral book report on Dreadnought! I had to make a poster and talk about the plot of the book. I must have done a good job of selling it, because afterwards several of my classmates were looking for the book in our school library, and I had to explain that our school library didn't actually have it, and I had gotten the book from a bookstore. "What, did you just choose a book outside of the library just to frustrate us, so nobody could find it?" one of the girls said to me (only half-jokingly).
My memories is that I liked Diane Carey for her plots, and not for her prose. I found her prose hard going back in 5th grade, but I loved the way the action of the book kept steadily escalating and escalating and the screws kept getting tighter and tighter on the main characters.
I want to say I've read one or two other Diane Carey books back in my adolescence, but I can't remember which ones they were. Looking at her Wikipedia Bio, I don't recognize anything else. Possibly I read Ghost Ship, although I don't have any clear memories of it.
Update:
Steve Donoghue was kind enough to respond on Twitter:
These two are very, very enjoyable - if you can overlook the 800-pound Mary Sue in the room!
I was just looking this up on Wikipedia, and apparently even the cover art is based on Diane Carrey and her husband. But I am 100% willing to forgive it all. https://t.co/hpOwxHg3pj
Anyone up for a trip down nostalgia lane for Christian children's records from the early 1980s?
The toddler was having a temper-tantrum the other day, and I found myself singing to her the "Have Patience" song from Music Machine. Which of course then immediately caused me to think, "Hey, remember Music Machine? Was that actually a big thing, or was that just me?"
[Sidenote: I've often noticed that a lot of the Christian songs and other media I remember from childhood is not well documented on Wikipedia. Would it surprise you to learn that there's only a skeleton article on Wikipedia about Psalty the Singing Songbook? And there's no Wikipedia entry for the Sunday School standby "Rise and Shine (Arky, Arky)". And a lot of other Christian children's songs and media. I don't know if this is because of an oversight on Wikipedia's part, or maybe it just goes to show how provincial my own upbringing was. I assumed everyone knew those songs, but maybe it was just my community?]
Anyway, Music Machine is on Wikipedia. Wikipedia links it to a whole series of albums about Agapeland, which include Bullfrogs and Butterflies.
...and I thought, "Oh yeah! I'd forgotten all about Bullfrogs and Butterflies. I used to have that album as a kid. We played it all the time.
It's a strange thing re-discovering something from your childhood, isn't it? I think we've all had this experience with something or other. Maybe it wasn't Bullfrogs or Butterflies in your particular case, but we've definitely all had this experience. Listening to it, and thinking "Oh yeah! I remember this. I had completely forgotten this exists, but now that I'm listening to it, all the memories are flooding back. I remember how I used to feel as a child when I listened to this song."
There are a lot of slow songs on this album which I didn't like as a kid, and which try my patience even now. But I really loved the upbeat songs when I was a kid. There's a real sense of polished presentation. (These aren't so much campfire songs as they are professional media--it wouldn't be entirely out of place in a Disney cartoon.) Combined with the cartoon pictures on the record, it always made me feel like it was part of a magical world.
What's really interesting is listening to the song Noah. I used to love this song as a kid, and I still like its bouncy feeling now. Bullfrogs And Butterflys - Noah
...but man, is the upbeat tune of this song ever at odds with the actual story! The story of God wiping out almost all life on earth is told with such a happy bouncy song.
I mean, I guess the same is true for Arky, Arky, but at least Arky, Arky skips over the parts where everyone dies. Not this song: "As the rain came tumbling down, everything around was drown"
The assumption seems to be that because the story is in the Bible, it is therefore a happy story suitable for kids. An assumption in much of Christian children's media. (I'm reminded of what Yale Professor Christine Hayes says in her lectures on the Old Testament: "The Bible is not for children. Those Bible stories for kids book? They scare me.")
And guess who is singing on this album? According to Wikipedia, none other than Barry McGuire--the Eve of Destruction guy.
Todd in the Shadows has a brilliant video on Barry McGuire's career (worth watching, if you haven't seen it already)
At the end of the video, he mentions that Barry McGuire turned his career into singing Christian kids music. But I hadn't realized it was the exact same Christian kids music I grew up with.
I don't have a Disney+ subscription, but I did grow up on the Disney Channel in the 1980s. (Back in the 1980s, the Disney Channel had a different format. It was largely just a place to re-run old Disney content.) And I have TONS of nostalgia for these old Disney movies.
So, here are my thoughts on io9.gizmodo's list:
1. The Black Hole (1979)
Oh, man! I love The Black Hole! I remember this got played on the Disney channel when I was in second grade, and I was so obsessed with it!
2. Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959)
I totally remember watching this off the Disney channel when I was young. I love Darby O'Gill and the Little People 3. Escape to Witch Mountain (1975)
Loved this movie when I was a kid. This one and the sequel as well!
4. The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969)
Absolutely loved this movie when I was a kid. Still love it. I love the whole Dexter Riley trilogy.
5. Return to Oz (1985)
This is a bit of strange one, but I do remember seeing it as a kid on the Disney channel and have fond memories of it.
7. The Black Cauldron (1985)
I've got tons of nostalgia for this movie. As I mentioned here.
8. Flight of the Navigator (1986)
Oh man! I remember my grandma taking me to see this in the theatres back in 1986. I absolutely loved this movie!
9. Fuzzbucket (1986)
Hmmm.... I don't think I remember this one actually...
10. The Cat From Outer Space (1978)
I've got vague memories of seeing this on the Disney channel when I was younger, but I don't remember anything about it. It must not have made much of an impression on me.
Why I Read This Book / My History with this Book
This book has been on my list of "books to read someday" for years.
I don't remember where I first heard about it. I must have stumbled across a review or read about it somehwhere on Wikipedia years ago. But I've been vaguely interested in it for years now.
More recently. earlier this year Extra Credits did a 3 part series on this book, which re-kindled my interest.
See first part below:
This pushed The Martian Chronicles back to the front of my brain, and made me remember it when we had our next book club meeting.
We had all been exhausted by Don Quixote. (A book none of us finished--Whisky was right!) And we wanted to do something lighter and easier. So I proposed The Martian Chronicles.
The rule of our bookclub is that we have to stick to the classics. But... "classic" is an elastic term, and there are lots of modern 20th century classics. And this is arguably one of them.
Ray Bradbury is, after all, one of the most famous authors of the 20th Century.
I'm ashamed to admit I've never read his most famous book--Fahrenheit 451--which probably should have been the first Ray Bradbury book I tackled. (I actually proposed Fahrenheit 451 to our bookclub, but some of the other members had already read it.)
Anyway, we all agreed to do The Martian Chronicles next, so here I am with my review.
The Review--Some Spoilers
This book originated as a series of short stories about Mars that Ray Bradbury had written and published individually between 1946 and 1950. The short stories were later published as a book in 1950, with some attempts to weave them together. And although there is a general chronology to these stories, for the most part they still read like unconnected individual short stories. (A few of the stories do reference characters and events from previous stories, but these are the exception. Most of them are self-contained).
In other words, this book reads more like a short story anthology than it does a novel. And it presents much the same reading experience as a short story anthology. At the beginning of every story, there are new characters and new situations. The first couple pages I always read skeptically, wondering why I should care about these new characters, and wondering if this story will be worth investing in. Then, once I get a couple pages in, I'm usually hooked on the story. And I feel like I can't put the book down until I find out what happens. And several pages later, I get to the end of the story, and have to begin a new story all over again. And once again I'm skeptical about the new characters and new situations.
I think most of us are like that. We prefer to read one long story than a series of short stories. It does feel slightly exhausting to have to go through the work of getting yourself acquainted with new characters and new situations every few pages. (There's a reason why novels have always sold better than short story collections.)
But, the good news here is that once I actually got past the first couple pages, I almost always got hooked on the story, and felt like I couldn't put the book down until I had read it to the end. (Because this book was so enjoyable to read, I actually finished it a couple weeks before our book club meeting--a rarity for me. And it turned out that most of the people in our book club finished it ahead of schedule.)
Because Ray Bradbury had published a lot of short stories about Mars, there are various versions of this book floating around. Some later editions are more complete, and include more stories. Other modern editions have removed certain stories for reasons of political correctness.
For our bookclub, we tracked down an online version, which I believe contains the same stories as the original 1950 publication. (I've double-checked this on Wikipedia). One member of the bookclub did this book as an audiobook, and when we met up, we discovered that some of the stories we read were different. (Actually, since finishing this book on May 30th, I actually re-read it as an audio book while I was writing this review--available on Youtube HERE--and it was interesting to hear a few different stories.)
In general terms, this book tells the story of the fall of Martian Civilization, and then the rise and fall of human civilization on Mars.
That general outline was all I really knew about the book going in, and I was expecting something like Isaac Asimov's Foundation--an epic novel about the rise and fall of a civilization.
But once you get into the book, the tone is a lot different. It's true that the over-arching narrative is about the rise and fall of civilizations, but the individual stories themselves are much more fantastical and satirical in tone. There's a lot of dark humor in this book. (Many of the characters meet a gruesome end, but it's usually in a way that's ironic more than it is horrific).
Additionally, there's a strong element of sentimentality running through this book, as many of the stories deal with past memories and losses, and also feelings of longing.
Showing one example may be a good way to give an idea of the tone. So I'm going to spoil one of the stories.
The story "The Earth Men", tells of some of the first astronauts to land on Mars. They are expecting a big reception from the Martians befitting of the momentousness of the occasion, but instead are surprised and annoyed to find that nobody cares that they are from Earth. They walk up to the first Martian house they see, and tell the Martian housewife that they are from Earth. She doesn't care and wonders why they are bothering her. They try to explain that they are from Earth, and that this is the first time Earthmen have ever travelled to Mars. She gets upset that they are wasting her time. They continue to several different houses, where the same thing happens.
Eventually, they are put in an insane asylum, where they eventually discover that claiming to be from other planets is a common mental disease on Mars. And, because Martians can telepathically alter their appearance, nobody on Mars was surprised to see what appeared to be real Earthmen.
The earth astronauts try and try to convince the Martian doctors that they are not insane, and that they really are from earth. All in vain, and they are eventually deemed to be beyond help by the Martian doctors, and euthanized as a mercy killing.
This is the tone for most of the stories--weird, fantastical, bizarre, darkly humorous, and often with a macabre ending.
That being said, it's hard to generalize too much, because each story is its own separate thing. Many of the stories are similar in tone to what I described above, but some are not.
The other theme that runs through many (but not all) of the stories is sentimentality. Characters in these short stories spend a lot of time longing for the past, and also dealing with the emotions left over from losing loved ones in the past.
...it can be somewhat depressing at times. If you're looking for light escapist entertainment, this isn't always it. But it is well written, and the stories are suspenseful and interesting.
Also, you wouldn't have expected it in a book called "The Martian Chronicles" but surprisingly enough a lot of the stories deal with a nostalgia for small town American life. It's a theme through several stories, but comes up most prominently in "The Third Expedition". To quote from part of it:
Their boots were deadened of all sound in the thick green grass. It smelled from a fresh mowing. In spite of himself, Captain John Black felt a great peace come over him. It had been thirty years since he had been in a small town, and the buzzing of spring bees on the air lulled and quieted him, and the fresh look of things was a balm to his soul.
Of course, back in the 1940s there was still a small town America to feel nostalgic for. Nowadays, the mass industrialization of agriculture and the subsequent migration to cities has pretty much killed small towns.
So, ironically, a book about futuristic space travel now reads as something more old-timey and less futuristic. (Actually, I shouldn't make that sound like it was an unintended irony. I think that was Ray Bradbury's intention all along).
That's all I have to say about this book in general. I do have a few comments on individual stories.
My Own Nostalgia
This is probably of interest to nobody else but me, but since this is my blog, I'm going to indulge myself.
I was reading through one of the stories about robots who mimicked human emotion. And the tone of the story reminded me of a similar story I had read in a science fiction anthology in my childhood. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of it, but the tone of the stories was so similar, I began to suspect that maybe this book wasn't my first exposure to Ray Bradbury after all. Maybe I had read some of his short stories in my youth.
...and then I got to "There Will Come Soft Rains". And I realized I had read this story once before, almost 30 years ago, when I was about 12.
It had been included in a science fiction anthology I had gotten from the library. (Like most of the stories in The Martian Chronicles, the story fits into the broader chronology, but can also easily stand independently as its own thing.)
Memory is a funny thing. I couldn't have actually recalled any of "There Will Come Soft Rain". But I could recognize it. As I started reading it, I started remembering where I was and how I was feeling when I first read it. I remember reading it on a hot summer afternoon while I was sunbathing outside in the backyard next to the pool. I remember feeling right on the boarder between comfortably hot and uncomfortably hot--slightly annoyed by the heat, but at the same time too lazy to move inside.
(I've blogged about this before, but every now and again we have one of these experiences which jars a memory that we had previously thought forgotten. And it makes you wonder what else is hidden away in your memory banks, just waiting for the right trigger to release it again.)
It also made me feel very nostalgic for my childhood 30 years ago. But then, I'm easily sentimental.
Sidenote: "There Will Come Soft Rains" is about a futuristic automated house left empty after a nuclear war.
It's no surprise, then, that it was originally published in 1950, when nuclear bombs were something new, and fears about nuclear war were on everyone's mind.
In a sane world, we wouldn't have stopped worrying about nuclear bombs until we got rid of the problem. But what happened instead is that we just got tired of worrying about it, and after 70 years these stories are no longer topical. Even even though the threat of nuclear warfare has never gone away.
Way in the Middle of the Air
I've never actually read the 1965 play The Day of Absence by Douglas Turner Ward, but I'm familiar with it by reputation. (You'll remember it was the inspiration for the protests which caused all the trouble at Evergreen College last year (W)).
There's a story in The Martian Chronicles with a similar premise, Way in the Middle of the Air, which was originally published in 1950. (So it actually predates The Day of Absence by 15 years.)
In the story, all the black people leave a Southern town to go to Mars.
The white racists in the town, who had spent their whole lives hating and harassing the black people, suddenly realize too late how dependent they actually are on the black people. Without black people performing all the necessary labor, the town can't actually function.
It struck me as a very clever story, and an anti-racist one.
Unfortunately, though, it's been omitted from a lot of recent editions of this book.
This turned out to be an issue at our bookclub meeting, because someone who had done this book by audio book had actually missed out on this story.
Apparently one reason the story is often omitted from later editions is because of political correctness. In the story, the white racists make repeated use of the word "nigger".
Personally I think this is unfortunate. (I don't approve of using the n-word myself, but in the context of the story it makes sense. This is the word that white racist people would have used in the 1940s.)
However, I did a Google search on this story, and found out from this blogpost HERE that another reason it was omitted was because of continuity. Ray Bradbury wrote these stories out of order, so this story was one of the last stories he wrote, even though it falls earlier in the continuity. But it then created continuity problems, because there were no other references to black colonialists on Mars. So apparently it was omitted from some of the later re-printings at the request of Bradbury himself.
Usher II
As I mentioned above, I've never read Fahrenheit 451 (ashamed to say). But I know the general premise of it by reputation.
The short story Usher II --one of the stories in The Martian Chronicles--contains many of the same elements as Fahrenheit 451. Both take place in a futuristic world where books are banned.
I wondered if perhaps The Martian Chronicles took place in the same universe as Fahrenheit 451. So I googled it.
It turns out that Fahrenheit 451 was written many years later, So it isn't connected to The Martian Chronicles. But Usher II was one of Ray Bradbury's first experiments with the idea. So Usher II is one of the precursors to what would later become Fahrenheit 451. Connections to Other Books I've Read
In The Martian Chronicles , the Martian race is wiped out by the chicken pox. I'm fairly sure this is meant to be an overt nod to War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.
Mentioned briefly in Usher II are Alice in Wonderland and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Video Review
Video Review HERE and embedded below:
Subtitle: My Review of Cinemassacre's Reviews of Classic Horror Movies
For some time now, I've been noticing that a difference in interest between me and my adolescent students.
My students are obsessed with horror movies.
But me, I'm mostly apathetic about horror movies. You might even say I'm bored with the genre. I don't keep up with any of the latest horror movies that come out, which causes me to frequently be out of touch with my students.
A frequent conversation, one that I've been having for years now, usually goes like this.
Student: Teacher, have you seen____ (name of some new horror movie)________?
Me: What? What's that? Is that the name of a movie? I've never heard of it.
Then they proceed to tell me all about the horror movie, and I proceed to completely lose interest in the conversation.
It didn't use to be like this. In my own adolescence, I was just as obsessed with horror movies as they are now. But I guess I've grown out of it.
Which (correct me if I'm wrong) is pretty much the common trajectory, isn't it? Most of us are fascinated by horror movies when we're young, and most of us get bored with it by the time we reach middle age.
(Strange that. For so long I regarded horror movies as part of the "adult world" that I never realized they were in fact actually juvenile entertainment.)
It's an interesting phenomena. I'm tempted to try to puzzle out why this is exactly, but the question is probably too big for me.
I mean, first I would have to ask: why are young people so fascinated with horror movies in the first place?
And as far as I know, there's no logical reason for any of our primal fascinations.
I'm sure there are plenty of essays out there already analyzing this question from a Freudian perspective or from a evolutionary psychological perspective, but none of those are my field, so I won't waste your time with my sophomoric attempts at psycho-analysis.
...well, okay, I will waste your time with at least one of my sophomoric observations.
Part of the reason I've lost interest in horror movies, and in movies in general, is that as you get older movies lose their magic.
When I was younger, movies seemed real to me.
It's not that I ever confused movies with reality.
My mother used to be very concerned about this when I was a child, and constantly made sure we understood the movies we were watching weren't "real". And I knew they weren't "real" in the sense that I knew they weren't part of our real physical world. But they did seem to exist in their own world, which was real in its own terms.
Nowadays, when I watch a movie, I can't help but see the hand of the screenwriter--the tired old hacks who are writing in cliches, throwing around deus ex machinas, and creating flat one-dimensional characters. I know some characters are written purely to be killed off in order to increase tension, and I know some characters will never be killed off because they are too important to the plot. I know some characters are written to be unlikable just for the sake of being unlikable, and that none of their malice will ever make any logical sense or come from realistic motivation.
But as a child, you can't yet see behind the curtain. Intellectually, of course, I knew that these were all actors, and that the story was written by a screen writer. But as soon as the movie started, you forgot all that and were transported into another world.
This ability to lose yourself in the world of the movie increases the horror of it. And, from a child's perspective, also increases the fascination of it.
I was at the same time both simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by horror movies (much like every child). At the one hand, I felt like I was too scared to watch them. On the other hand, precisely because these movies seemed real to me, I felt like I just had to know what happened to the characters. Who would survive, and who would die? These were important questions back when movies seemed to be actually real. If you didn't actually see the movie, the curiosity would consume you.
Growing up in a conservative Christian family, for a long time I wasn't allowed to watch the horror movies that I was fascinated by. At least not at first.
I think my fascination with monster movies started around 3rd grade. I wasn't allowed to watch the old black and white horror movies until I was in 6th grade.
And although time rushes by so fast now, when you're a child, those 3 years were like a lifetime. A lifetime in which those movies built themselves up in my imagination.
I read books about the old universal monsters. I imagined the movies several times over before I ever saw them.
The old universal monster movies have become so much a part of our collective culture that even someone who has never seem them knows about the conventions--the graveyard surrounded by fog, the old spooky castle up on the mountain, the clouds covering up the moon. I had dreams about these set pieces long before I actually saw the movies.
...And when I did actually see these old monster movies, I was disappointed that they were nowhere near as scary as I had imagined.
I guess after having being built up in my mind for so long, nothing could really have equaled my anticipation.
But there is also the strange and fascinating phenomenon of collective media desensitization. By all contemporary reports, these movies legitimately scared audiences in the 1930s. (People were so upset by the original 1931 Frankenstein that the movie theatres eventually started including warnings before movie). Eventually, though, audiences became desensitized to these scares, and the the movie theatres had to go more and more extreme to get the same reaction.
This filtered down into all sorts of other media, so that by the time I saw these movies in the 1990s, there was scarier stuff on afternoon TV than there were in these old horror movies.
Therefore to this day my fondness for these movies is more in the idea of them than the actual movies themselves. I'm more fond of the image I built up in my head when I was between 8-12. I still like the creepy atmosphere, the fog machines, the clouded sky, and the spooky graveyards.
However I was still young enough to be somewhat sucked in by the story of the movies. When characters died, it felt like someone really died. When characters were in peril, it felt like someone was really in trouble. I felt for the tragedy of Lawrence Talbot, and was fascinated by the moral ambiguity of Doctor Frankenstein.
And because of my nostalgia for these movies, I still maintain a fondness for them, even though I should have long ago outgrown their appeal, and even though I no longer find modern horror films interesting. (Nostalgia is another funny thing...but that's another subject for another post.)
Anyway, all of that is a long pre-amble just to say I've really enjoyed cinemassacre's review of these classic monster movies.
With the later reviews especially, Cinemassacre goes into great detail about the plot--he covers the plot holes, the continuity errors between movies, and some of the behind the scenes production issues.
As Cinemassacre details in his reviews, the series starts out great, with some genuine classic movies. (Not necessarily scary by today's standards, but still well-done pieces of cinema). The series then eventually degenerates into camp, but if you are interested in the history of pulp fiction (and I am), then it's gloriously pulpy camp, with all the great cliches.
* Dracula (1931) here. (Dracula was the first of universal's monster movies, and, unfortunately, the fact that the craft was still in its infancy is apparent. It moves painfully slowly for a modern audience. The first time I tried to watch it, I stayed up late to see it on TV, and then ended up struggling to stay awake for the whole thing.)
* Frankenstein (1931) here . (And an overview of the whole series here).
* The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) here. (As with any long running movie series, the Universal Monster series started out with great films that are still recognized by the critics today, and then degenerated into terrible films. But The Bride of Frankenstein is usually recognized by even respectable critics as a great piece of cinema art. See Roger Ebert's essay on the movie here.)
* Dracula's Daughter (1936) here. (A direct sequel to Dracula, featuring many of the same characters. But, unfortunately, not including Dracula himself. Unfortunately there would only ever be one Dracula movie starring Bela Lugosi.)
* The Wolf Man (1941) here. (The Wolfman was always my favorite movie monster, because it was the perfect intersection of my childhood love for wolves with my childhood love for monster movies. But even more than that, I always thought Lawrence Talbot's tragic story made the character much more interesting than Frankenstein or Dracula.)
* Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) here. (Actually, Ghost of Frankenstein is the only movie in this series I never got around to seeing as a kid. Not that I didn't want to see it, it just never happened to be re-run on TV when I was going through my monster movie phase. I still haven't seen this movie to date.)
* Son of Dracula (1943). Hmmm, strange, Cinemassacre hasn't reviewed this movie. The only one in the series that he's missing. Well, for the record, I saw this as well back in my adolescence.
* Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943) here . (I think this is my favorite movie in the whole series).
* House of Frankenstein (1944) here. (This was the first movie to include Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman all in the same movie. Unfortunately, the screen writers never really figured out a way to combine all three monsters on screen at the same time, so although all three monsters are in the movie, Dracula never appears with Frankenstein and the Wolfman.)
* House of Dracula (1945) here. (The second movie including all three monsters. This movie was never on TV when I was a kid. I spent years trying to track it down, and finally found it at a VHS rental store some time when I was in college. It was pretty terrible, as you would expect from a movie this late in the series. But at least it still had all 3 monsters in it.)
* Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) here. (The swan song for the series. Despite the title, this was yet another movie in which all three monsters appeared--Frankenstein and the Wolfman and Dracula. It's kind of official--it had many of the original actors--but also kind of not. I've already written about my fondness for this movie once before on this blog.)
* Wolfman Versus Dracula (unfilmed script) here. (Cinemassacre does a nice job about talking about this never-filmed movie, and why he's pretty sure it isn't a hoax. This was the video that got me hooked in, and made me re-watch all this other videos.)
Happy Halloween everyone.
Various Addenda
I've written once before about my adolescent fascination with horror films here.
I've once before mentioned my fondness for watching these the old style horror movies on Halloween here.
I've noted my teenage students' fascination with horror films once before here. (That was in Cambodia. I'm in Vietnam now, but my young students are still equally fascinated with horror. I'm pretty sure it's true the world over among young people).
After trying, and failing, to keep to my shorter review format, I've decided to just write this up as a long review.
To paraphrase Blaise Pascal, I would have written a shorter review, but I didn't have the time.
My Background With Star Wars
My Star Wars story is the same story as every other person my age.
I was 5 years old when Return of the Jedi hit theaters in 1983. And it absolutely blew my 5 year-old little mind. (As was the experience of watching Star Wars on TV, also when I was 5 years old.)
I have since that time achieved cognitive maturity, but because of the power of nostalgia I will never be able to view Star Wars with any sort of objectivity. Whenever I see these movies, I'm not seeing them through adult eyes. Instead, I am remembering how they made me feel at 5 years old.
In other words, these movies are not just ordinary movies to me. And these characters are not just ordinary characters.
I haven't conducted any sort of scientific poll, but if anecdotal evidence is anything to go by, and if the huge anticipation of this movie is anything to go by, most people of my generation feel exactly the same way.
I've always thought it was a mistake to identify Star Wars as geek culture in the media. Granted, I personally am a huge geek, but I know many people of my generation who aren't, and they're all huge Star Wars fans too. Everyone in my elementary school playground was obsessed with Star Wars. Everyone. (Fredrik deBoer also recently made this point [LINK HERE] . Star Wars was a huge cultural behemoth which swept over everyone's childhood in the early 1980s. The bullies as well as the nerds all loved Star Wars. )
All this being said, there do seem to be limits to the appeal of Star Wars. At one point in my life, I thought everyone liked Star Wars. But then I began to notice that people who saw Star Wars for the first time as adults never really got the appeal of it. This confused me at first, but then I tried to view the movie through adult eyes. Maybe it wasn't as good as I thought.
"Okay," I began saying. "Maybe you have to see these movies when your 5 years old, or you can never really truly understand their impact on childhood."
I had to revise my opinion still further when I began getting reports from friends of mine, teachers, that kids these days just weren't that into Star Wars. And I began to realize that maybe the special effects were dated. And maybe the action scenes, which had seemed so amazing in 1983, were ordinary nowadays. And maybe the whole pacing of the movie (the first Star Wars especially) was completely different to modern movies.
So, I revised my opinion yet again: "Okay, in order to truly understand how great these movies are, you had to see them when you were 5, and it had to be in the early 1980s," I said.
I've had in mind this year to write a post analyzing the original Star Wars trilogy, and discussing what about it exactly so captivated us as kids. (I've made promises to write that post here, here and here), but it was impossible to write. I found myself trying to either put my finger on something that probably couldn't be pinned down exactly (why Star Wars was such a huge hit, but none of it's many imitators could ever duplicate it's success) or I found myself repeating what had already been said about Star Wars a million times already on the Internet (talking about the character arcs in the first Star Wars movie, for example).
And then, these movies were on TV the other day, and I was watching them, and I thought: You know, it's just self-evident that these movies would appeal to young kids in the early 1980s. You don't need to write 1,000 words trying to explain it. It's just obvious by looking at it that kids would love this movie.
I mean, you could write that post, if you were a real cinephile, and wanted to dissect exactly what makes a good movie good. But you don't really need to explain it's appeal. It's appeal is self-evident. Five minutes into the movie, and I was like, "Oh yeah. It's no wonder we all went nuts for these movies as children. This is exactly the kind of movie kids would love."
This was especially true in the 1980s, when there really were no other movies like this around. Admittedly, nowadays when big budget fantasy/action films are much more common, Star Wars wouldn't have made the same impact on today's generation. But back in 1983, there were no other movie like this.
So, yeah, duh, no wonder everyone went nuts for them. There's no more to be said.
There are a couple of lingering questions:
"Okay," you might say, "I'll grant that nostalgia can make you feel fondly for childhood movies. Fair enough. But come on! There's being nostalgic for something, and then there's being completely obsessed with something."
This obsession with nostalgia seems to be unique to our generation. I mean, when our parents were our age, they weren't obsessing about the movies from their childhood, were they? (Or were they?) [This cartoon (LINK HERE) does a good job of pointing out the differences between adults of generations past, and adults of our generation.] As I said in my previous post on generation blaming, there's no sense trying to blame generations for their unique characteristics. The only thing you can do is look at the causes. Is our generation obsessed with movie nostalgia because we were the first generation to be raised largely indoors? Or is it just that there was never any phenomenon like Star Wars in our parents' generation to compare with? Or is every generation nostalgic, and it's just that there just never was a big industry to cater to before now?
I don't know.
The other lingering question is exactly when the cut-off dates are for the Star Wars generation. I'm pretty sure you have to see it in childhood, or you'll never be able to fully understand it's appeal. This newspaper columnist [Link Here] for instance, was already an adult when Star Wars hits theaters, and writes intelligently on the generation gap between those who saw Star Wars as children, and those who were already cognitively mature when it first arrived. For a while, I posited that 5 years old was the perfect age to see Star Wars, but Whisky Prajer was 12 when Star Wars hit theaters in 1977, and was also completely blown away by it [LINK HERE]. (I've also heard similar stories from some of my co-workers who are about 10 years older than me.) So when is the cut off date? Did you have to see it before you were 10? 12? 15?
And then there's also probably a cut-off date going the other direction as well: the younger generation, spoiled by movies with much better effects and much more adrenaline action sequences, might not understand the appeal these movies had in the early 1980s. But again, the exact where cut-off age is, is difficult to pin down. My younger co-workers (21 years old, some of them) were just as excited for this new Star Wars movie as I was.
Anyways, enough of my musings on nostalgia. On to the main review:
Setting Expectations
Remember how excited you were when you heard that the whole cast of the original Star Wars had agreed to come back for the movie?
This was a minor miracle. For years in interviews Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher had all consistently expressed reluctance to do another movie. I didn't think it was possible to re-unite the old gang. But they did it! And we were all over the moon. Another Star Wars movie featuring our childhood heroes? This was too good to be true.
And then, gradually, we found out that the original cast would just be in supporting roles or cameo roles. And our excitement began to die down again.
Look, I know the torch had to be passed to a new generation at some point. The original cast is all in their 60s and 70s, after all. But I would have loved just one last movie focusing on the original cast. In the first movie, you could have had all the new characters in supporting roles, and the original cast in the main role, and then gradually switched the focus over the course of the trilogy.
That's really the movie I wanted to see.
Instead, most of the original cast gets reduced to supporting roles, or brief cameo appearances.
Han Solo and Chewbacca being the exceptions of course. Those two admittedly get a lot of screen time. But Luke, Leia, C3P0, and R2D2 are barely in the thing.
I mean, if you couldn't get all the original cast to agree to come back, I would have understood. But having accomplished the miracle of getting everyone to agree to come back....well, it just seems like a waste to have them all in the movie, but not get to do much.
That's obviously not the direction J.J. Abrams decided to go in, however, so there's no sense harping on it. As Roger Ebert used to say: "Review the movie you saw, not the movie you wanted to see."
And to be fair, once I accept that, I have to admit that this is a pretty amazing movie.
The Review
Absolutely wonderful. J.J. Abrams really hit the ball out of the park with this one.
As much as I would have loved to spend more time with the original cast, I have to admit that the all of the new characters are completely charming. I loved Finn, loved Poe, and loved Rey.
(I hate to kick Lucas when he's down, but...but it's hard to avoid comparisons with the prequel trilogy, and how wonderful and interesting and charming all these new characters are in a way that absolutely none of the prequels characters ever were.)
This movie has the perfect mix of action, mystery, and humor.
Also, how great was Harrison Ford? He gave a spectacular performance as Han Solo, in which both he and the screenwriters perfectly re-captured his humor from the original movies.
There are certain movies where you are so thrilled by the experience that you don't really care about any of the flaws. You know the flaws are there, but you just don't care--you're enjoying the movie too much to be bothered by them.
This was one of those movies for me.
For example, before I went into this movie, I had heard that J.J. Abrams basically repeated all the same plot points from the original Star Wars movies. (This Salon.com reviewer [LINK HERE], among others, tipped me off to what I was about to see.) And I was all set to really hate this.
This repetitiveness has long been my least favorite thing about the Star Wars franchise. I really hated that in the Star Wars prequels many scenes were just there purely for the purpose of reminding us of previous scenes. And in my review of Star Trek Into Darkness, I wrote about how stupid I thought the whole idea of repetitive history was, and how I really hoped J.J. Abrams wouldn't do it in the new Star Wars.
Well, J.J. Abrams did exactly what I was hoping he wouldn't do, and yet...and yet I was so charmed by the overall movie experience, that I'm largely willing to forgive it. Who cares if we've seen this same story before. It was exciting, it was fun, it was thrilling, it was tense and suspenseful and funny in all the right places.
I don't know, maybe it should have bothered me more, but the movie was just so much fun I am willing to forgive a lot.
Similarly with the plot holes, coincidences, and macguffins--I know they're all there, but it this movie was so much fun, it didn't really bother me that much.
Well, okay, I do have a couple nitpicks:
I'm willing to forgive a lot of repetition if you can give me a fun movie, but that last part about blowing up the Death Star again was just a bit too on the nose.
If that part had been left out, I think most of the critics would have forgiven all the other repetitions.
And the pity is, the movie didn't need it. You could have just canned that whole "blowing up the death star" bit, and it wouldn't really have affected the other plot lines that much.
Furthermore, the blowing up the Death Star scenes were perhaps the one part of this movie that suffered by comparison. In both Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, there was a fair amount of suspense created in the space battles around the Death Star. In Star Wars, for example, we could see the faces of all of the fighter pilots. There was building tension as they all got picked off one by one.
Unfortunately, there was none of that in this movie. J.J. Abrams generally did a good job of creating interest and suspense in all of his other scenes, but the space battle scenes are the one part of the movie where he really dropped the ball. All the more reason why this whole part of the movie should have been cut, and nothing would have been lost.
And One More Big Complaint...
So, everyone knows Han Solo had to die at some point.
All Star Wars geeks know the history--Harrison Ford had wanted Han Solo to die since the original trilogy. He reportedly thought it would add a sense of sacrifice and loss which would heighten the drama and reality of the series. And he reportedly argued bitterly with George Lucas about this, but ended up getting over-ruled by Lucas.
I strongly suspect that Harrison Ford only agreed to come back for new Star Wars movies on the condition that they finally give him that Han Solo death scene he'd always wanted.
So as much as I hated to see Han die, I knew it had to happen.
But here's the thing though--it shouldn't have happened the first movie back. This scene should have been pushed back to the second movie. (Assuming, that is, Harrison Ford could have been talked into delaying it for one more movie.)
For one thing, I think fans kind of deserved one movie just enjoying Han Solo again before they had to say good-bye to him.
I mean, I want to enjoy all that classic Han Solo wit and one-liners that are fully on display in this movie, but it's so bittersweet now, knowing that this is also the movie where I have to say good-bye to him.
Secondly, and more importantly, this movie can't handle the emotional impact of Han's death. There's just no room in the movie for the impact of the death to register. No sooner has Han died, then Rey and Finn rush out into the woods for the climatic scene with Kilo Ren. And don't get me wrong, that final climatic scene is great--it's very emotionally strong in its own right, but the emotions of that scene over-shadow what happened in the previous scene.
Come on! This is Han Solo. HAN SOLO. You don't just kill him off and then rush on with the rest of the movie. If you're going to kill him off, at least give him the full scene. Let the camera linger. Have a scene where the characters (and the audience) get to absorb what has happened before rushing off to the next scene.
And that's the one thing that really bugs me about this movie. This is what brings the movie down from a solid 10 out of 10 to a 9.
Other Notes
* So, by all reports, Billy Dee Williams would have been perfectly happy to come back for this movie if someone had just phoned him up and asked him.
I'm a little bit puzzled as to why he's not in it. Granted, there wouldn't have been much for him to do in this script. He would only have been a cameo character--but then C3P0, R2D2, and Leia were also pretty much also reduced to cameos, so why not have Lando Calrissian also just hanging around at the rebel base?
For the moment, I'm going to put this as another negative on the film's score card. But if it turns out in episode 8 that they were saving Lando's reveal for something really cool (and there are hints of this on the Internet rumor board) then I'll go back and remove this negative.
* According to this Wired.com article, Disney not only has plans to do this trilogy, but to release one Star Wars film a year forever. (Or as long as people keep buying tickets).
I was so charmed by this film that I'm giving it a complete pass on its recycled plot. But going forward, I think there is now a real question of how many stories Star Wars is capable of telling. Are we just going to get the same movie over and over again 40 times over the next 40 years? Because if we are, at some point I'm going to stop forgiving that.
* I've already linked before to this Charlie Jane Anders piece on the confused politics of Star Wars. Lucas was of the generation that was traumatized by the Vietnam War, and originally the evil Galactic Empire and its scorched earth policies were supposed to represent how the United States had acted in Vietnam. But because of the confused messages of Star Wars, and because it represented a Manichean (W) universe in which there is little room for moral ambiguity, the film was perceived by many Americans as a message about the importance of keeping a strong military so as to continue the fight against evil. Matt Zoller Seitz (writing on Roger Ebert's old site) thinks he sees a continuation of the Vietnam War's influence on Star Wars in the new movie, and I don't think he's wrong. He talks about the "My Lai-style massacre" in the beginning of the film, and also says:
Many film historians have noted the way Lucas's first film, which came out two years after the end of US involvement in Vietnam, flipped that war's script upside-down, making defeated Americans identify with “rebels” who were essentially Vietcong-like guerrillas, and root against an industrialized military whose literally-scorched-earth tactics were all too Western. A shot of a storm trooper roasting a hut with a flamethrower brings the original trilogy’s Vietnam obsession full-circle
I'm not entirely sure the Vietnamese appreciate this part of their history being played out for science-fiction fantasy on the big screen.
As it happens, I saw this movie at a theater in Vietnam, and when this scene was playing, it seemed to me that a ripple of discomfort went through the theater.
(Or I don't know--possibly I was just projecting out my own discomfort at being the only white guy in the theater during this scene. But I thought I could feel something in the air.)
