Month: December 2015

(NOTE: no spoilers, but I will be discussing The Force Awakens in general terms that you may not want to read if you want to go into the film completely cold.)

So a few years back, given that Douglas Adams had managed to avoid producing a new installment in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by being conveniently deceased, it was decided that the sixth novel would be handed off to another author. That book, as it turned out, while being entertaining enough, sure felt like someone took elements from the previous novels, threw ’em into a blender, and printed the results. It wasn’t bad by any means, but it all sure felt familiar.

Which brings me to Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Okay, now hold on for just a moment, before you get a bunch of ants in your Corellian Bloodstriped pants and come after me with your torches and lightsaber pitchforks. I really really liked the film. It felt like classic Star Wars, with plenty of action and just enough genuine emotion because one actually cares about the characters.

But that said, I’m certainly not going to be the first person to point out that there are a whole lot of very familiar settings and plot points and character types and so on between The Force Awakens and the Original Trilogy. You can do some one-to-one mapping if you so desired…here’s one of those scenes, here’s that battle, here’s another character like that guy. And so on.

It’s not quite as bad as all that, though. Yes, there are a lot of familiar elements, but it’s what is done with them that’s important, and that we’re given a handful of new characters that we immediately sympathize with certainly helps carry the story. Sure, we’ve seen some of these sorts of scenes before, but we haven’t seen how our new friends deal with them, and that’s enough to grab our interest. Plus, we’ve got our old friends back, too — a bit older, but still pretty much how we remember them — and that sure doesn’t hurt.

I hope I’m not making it sound like it’s nothing but “Star Wars Remix” — there’s plenty of new stuff, too, particularly in character motivations and interactions, and…well, I’m beginning to see the downside of trying to be as spoiler-free as possible. I’d love to shout “CAN YOU BELIEVE _______ DID _______ AND THEN ________” but that’ll have to wait for any eventual spoiler-full review I might do. Suffice to say, even if you do sit through the film ticking off the parallels that exist, it’s its own movie with its own story to tell.

Some of the background aliens are going to make some awesome action figures, too. …Look, I’m only human.

One of the odder responses I had to this film is having to deal with the fact that this is the post-Return of the Jedi continuity now. All that Expanded Universe stuff I’ve been reading for the last 25 years (if you start with Heir to the Empire, or longer if you include the Marvel comics or Splinter of the Mind’s Eye) is now relegated to the Star Wars of Earth-2, never to be seen again until the eventual Crisis of Infinite Star Wars. I mean, not that I was sitting there thinking “but what about Mara Jade?” or anything like that, but there was that small fanboy tickle at the back of my mind reminding me that Things Are Different Now, and as Yoda says:

Another topic that came up in talking with some friends is in regards to The Force Awakens tie-in comics. Unlike A New Hope, which left things up in the air enough to allow for some funnybook adventures to kill time ’til Star Wars II, as we all were calling it, was released, The Force Awakens…well, doesn’t. I expect we’ll see a whole lot of “prequel to the sequel” comics over the next year or two.

But that’s neither here nor there. Today’s topic is the film, and the film is just dandy. It certainly feels very much in line with the Original Trilogy, as well as giving us new characters to enjoy and mysteries that will keep us hanging ’til the next film comes out in a couple of years. Why, y’all have it easy that you only have to wait two years for the next episode, instead of the three like in ye olden times. Of course, the sad part is at my age, those two years will go by like nuthin’.

The good part is that the film made me forget that I am at my age.

…and I thought it was a lot of fun. All killer, no filler, and contained some actual emotion instead of that pretend emotion from the prequels.

I’ve got more to say, but it’s late as I write this and I didn’t want to let another Monday go by without a post. Check back Tuesday…I plan on having some spoiler-free (or, at the very most, spoiler-lite) discussion about it.

If you’ve got spoiler-heavy comments about the film, go ahead and leave ’em on this post, so anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, consider yourself forewarned. I may do a more spoiler-heavy post in the future if I feel the need to respond in excess to what you have to say (and gee, when do I ever do that?).

You may have noticed the reduced schedule this week…a combination of still-recovering-from-illness and prepping-for-Christmas has brought about a dearth of content here, which…well, What Can You Do? But it’s almost a moot point anyway, since everyone is out Star Wars-ing it up and not doing dumb stuff like reading blogs or anything.

Speaking of which: I am pleased to see that reaction from pals of mine upon the Twitter seems to be generally positive to The Force Awakens. I mean, let’s be honest, even if everyone said “hoo boy, what a stinker,” I’d still go because Star Wars got a firm hold in my heart and my brain when I was eight years old and hasn’t let go yet, though the grasp loosed just a tad as I watched Anakin and Padmé roll around in the grassy fields on Naboo in Attack of the Clones. But, people seemed to like it, which makes me anxious to see it even more.

I said on the Twitters that I felt like I was somehow betraying younger me because I wasn’t going to be immediately at a theater the second the film entered general release. Alas, adult responsibility and just plain ol’ scheduling is probably keeping me from catching the film until early next week. In the meantime, the big keywords on social media right now is “NO SPOILERS!” and most decent folks seem to be adhering to that pretty strongly. I, of course, am in the prime danger zone for spoilage, what with running a funnybook store an’ all, but a few times in the recent past customers were discussing other movies, TV shows or comics or whatever that could have involved spoilers were usually preceded by inquiries as to whether or not I would be spoiled by their discussions. So, you know, that’s good. I’d hate to have to do what one store did and ban for life anyone spoiling the film.

The big point of discussion right now is “when are you seeing it?” assuming of course “it” doesn’t refer to the new Alvin and the Chimpmunks flick. I am curious if I’m going to see a “Star Wars dip” in my sales over the weekend, if enough of my clientele decide to head to a local Googol-plex and catch a viewing on one of its twenty-two screens featuring The Force Awakens. The other thing that one or two people asked about is if I think the Star Wars comics are going to hit the same sales wall that other comics with movie adaptations do once the film is actually in release. Like, when, say, Sin City sold really well until the film came out, and then it took years to start approaching its old sales levels again. In the case of Star Wars, I don’t think it’s going to go like that…I’m not the only one Star Wars got its grip on, and Star Wars is more of a widespread cultural thing anyway, not some niche item in which the masses briefly find interest until the film’s come and gone.

If there’s a danger of the Star Wars comics significantly dropping in sales, it’s going to come from oversaturation in the comics marketplace. And hey, when’s Marvel ever done that?

Anyway, I’ll probably have something substantial to say about the actual film once I go and see it. In the meantime, be sure to read blogging brother Tim’s quite-good post on the whole Star Warsian thing.