Author: Pavowski

I am a teacher, runner, father, and husband. I am an author-in-progress. I'm bad at jiu-jitsu. I know just enough about a lot of things to get me into a lot of trouble.

Star Wars Owes You Nothing

Pavowski6 Comments

There’s been a lot said about the new Star Wars movie. (Sidenote: Star Wars: TFA originally stood for Totally Fargoing Awesome) And, by the way, it’s been out in the ecosystem chomping down lesser films and records and pooping out money for almost three weeks, so, here’s your SPOILER ALERT: Go see the movie. There are spoilers below. Not big ones. But they exist. Seriously. See the movie.

I will happily place myself in the “loved it” category along with the millions of people out there who don’t have sticks up their butts about movies. Hell, I often have sticks (plural) up my butts (plural) about movies, and I still loved the movie. But, man oh man, the criticisms keep coming. And then the whiners. And then the haters. Even George Lucas has said he felt like he sold the film to “white slavers,” in a WTF moment that seriously just makes me want to sit down and wonder when the man was visited with an involuntary lobotomy. (The comment, of course, indicates that he does not approve of the new direction of SW7, which is fine, except that the mouth speaking the words is the mouth that gave us Jar-Jar, and … yep, sitting down.)

And look, critique is okay. It’s fine. Opinions are like funny uncles and all that. You’re entitled to dislike the movie! Rey’s too capable, too quickly. Poe isn’t featured enough. Starkiller Base is lame. Kylo Ren is too whiny. All this is fine, and maybe valid.

So much of the critique, however, takes on a different flavor than simple pro/con. Many critiques look far beyond what the film is and venture into the murky waters and unexplored jungles of what it could or should be. The plot is too derivative; it should have been more original. Star Wars has already shown us this father/son conflict, it needs to show us some totally new conflict instead. SW7 feels like a remake; we were expecting a sequel.

To any and all critiques in this vein, I say BOLLOCKS.

Finn

All thoughts in this vein share something in common: that is, they bring to bear the viewer’s expectations for the thing, and not just the thing itself. They presuppose that Star Wars, as a film franchise, as a part of their childhood experience, as a story in any shape whatsoever, OWES them something.

But Star Wars owes us nothing. It does not belong to us.

Sure, our experience with it belongs to us. My eight-year-old self, having just seen Empire, wanting an AT-AT walker of his very own to stomp across the neighborhood in was all well and good for me, but it doesn’t mean that George Lucas couldn’t, in Episode VI, drop an AT-AT into the middle of the forest for no goldfingered logical reason at all, just because he felt like doing so. (Seriously. How does that thing deal with trees at all? it corners slower than the Titanic.)

The creators of story are in no way beholden to their readers. We like to think they are, because stories matter to us. Stories which affected us, and especially stories which have aged with us, matter to us all the more. And sure, on some level, there’s a trust established between creator and audience; certain things are off-limits, whether due to constraints of the universe of the story, or out of fear of losing the audience. (We can all, after all, simply stop buying books and going to see Star Wars films.)

In short, the owners of Star Wars (and that’s now Disney, for better or for worse — though I’ll argue, especially with the prequels fading into distant memory, that it’s for the better) are free to do with it what they want.

Now, Disney wants to make money. It plans to achieve that goal through making media that draws people in, media that we want to consume over and over again and own tiny little pieces of. Well, just look at their box-office earnings: MISSION BLOODY ACCOMPLISHED.

But look a little deeper. Disney wasn’t in this just to make a film (or films — there will be two more, you know) to scratch the itch that fans have been picking at for thirty years. Why make a film just for the over-thirty crowd? They wanted to hook new viewers, too, while also keeping those older fans on the hook for a new series. Does it rehash old ideas, familiar tropes, well-visited themes of the original trilogy? No doubt. But it does so in a way that I found fresh and compelling, and that (and here I really apologize to any die-hard fan of the original trilogy) makes for a better film than ANY of the originals.

Seriously. Show any teenager Episode IV, and then show them Episode VII. We don’t even have to talk about which one they would enjoy more. Now, I’m not saying that a teenager is the best judge of a film’s quality (though, if you want to make money, teenagers are the ones to target). But a teenager is able to do something you and I can’t do: namely, view the original film(s) without the rose-colored rearview mirror of nostalgia.

I challenge you: go back and watch Episode IV, having recently seen Episode VII. (I did this when I posted about the similarities between the two films.) Cut the predecessor some slack for technology available at the time (notwithstanding the edits made in the 90s), and then — and this is the hard part! — strip out as much of your nostalgia as you can. What you’re left with is a very pretty action film about a whiny kid who goes on a space adventure. It starts off pretty good, but then the pacing drops out and doesn’t really get going again for about thirty or forty minutes. Then it’s fargoing excellent again until the ending, which features a repetitive and entirely-too-protracted battle in space and an abrupt-as-hell ending. On the other hand, you have Episode VII, which features two protagonists, both of whom have compelling backstories right from the gun (and they’re not white dudes, bonus for that), flung into a story which is paced like a chipmunk that’s been greased up and lit on fire. Sure, there’s a lame samey bit with a planet-sized space base that can blow up other planets. And maybe the last shot with Luke leaves a funny taste in your mouth. But there are multiple simultaneous plotlines. There’s a better, more deliberate sense of mystery. Even the villain is more relateable, whether you find him overly whiny or not — he shows weakness, he shows vulnerability, he has depth (and yeah, sure Vader has depth, but not in Episode IV).

I’ll argue that if you complete that exercise faithfully, you’ll find that SW7 is a better all-around movie than the original.

Kylo Ren

In my mind, the folks arguing about what SW7 should’ve or could’ve been are not so different from the blowhards railing against gay marriage (even after the book has been closed on it). You’ve got this nebulous thing which means something to you and which you probably feel strongly about, but the true meaning of which is flexing and adapting to fit the world we actually live in. The tide is inevitable. Star Wars owes you nothing, just as the institution of marriage owes you nothing. These things are just changing to stay viable for the times we live in. You can either go along for the ride or get trampled by the literal hordes of people getting on the ride without you.

Personally, I’m on board with the new Star Wars, and I can’t wait to see where it takes us … even if we’ve been there before.

 

 

The Weekly Re-Motivator: Unpause

Pavowski6 Comments

*Coughs a little*

*Turns the lights back on*

Man, did I really let over a week pass without posting something around here? I don’t think that’s happened since I started the blarg almost two years ago.

Back then, a lapse like that would have scared the hell out of me. To be honest, it still scares the hell out of me, a little bit. Having started so many things in my life — running, writing, keeping a clean house, staying organized at work, keeping good financial records, NOT leaving evidence of my victims out in plain sight — only to have them grind to a halt a few days, weeks, months later when the initial push wears off, I know the importance of momentum. As a good friend of mine once told me (and I think it may have been a quote from somebody else, but I always attribute it to my friend Dorian), “the more you do, the more you can do.”

Writing 1000 words a day on the first draft of a novel only works if you’re doing it every day. If it’s just something you try to do when you have time, well, you’ll never have time. If going for a thirty-minute run is something you do when you have the energy, you will find yourself suddenly devoid of energy most of the time. If you clean the house only when it gets dirty as opposed to cleaning up little things as they happen, well, the sharknado gets overwhelming pretty fast, dunnit?

So to take a break of over a week from writing (anything, really, not just the daily-ish drivel I spew around here) sorta scares me. I’ve had the feeling more than once over the past week of “gee, I should really write something, just a quick little post about something the kids did, or maybe one more rant on the new Star Wars movie (both of those are coming, by the way).” But I let it slide, consciously so.

Partly to make sure I was spending the time with my family that they deserved. Partly to give my thoughts time to settle. (It’s been a good long while since I just kicked back and let my thoughts ferment a bit, and I’m feeling lots of ideas — for books, for stories, for the blarg — taking shape as a result). Partly, though, just for the break itself.

We work so hard in our day-to-day. Some harder than others, but everybody believes that they are working hard, and it’s true to some degree. Whether it’s the CEO working from dawn til dusk, the teacher taking home reams of papers to grade outside of work (HAHAHA not that that’s me, but those teachers exist), the stay-at-home mom who waits hand-and-foot upon the tiny humans she must teach to be good people… even the unemployed guy who hangs around and plays video games works hard in his own way. These things take stamina. These things tax the spirit.

I’m fortunate that I work in a profession with these built-in respites from the grind, that I get two weeks off for the holidays to spend time with family, to forget about work for a while, to recharge. Which is what it’s been all about for the last couple of weeks.

A big, giant pause button. Which I was glad to hit.

But I think, now, I’m even more glad to unpause and get back to work. I’ve got novels to edit. Short stories to draft. Other things to do stuff to.

Starting with cleaning these spiders out of the corners around here. Where is John Goodman when you need him?

This weekly remotivational post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Every weekend, I use Linda G. Hill’s prompt to refocus my efforts and evaluate my process, sometimes with productive results.

71 Ways The New Star Wars is Exactly Like the Original Star Wars

Pavowski5 Comments

My wife and I went to see Star Wars VII again the other day. (It holds up just as well on the second viewing. In fact, it’s maybe even more enjoyable, because you start to pick up on things you missed on the first go-round; like the training droid Luke used in Episode IV that Finn tosses aside while hunting for parts in the Millenium Falcon.) We went specifically to give the film a close viewing to see if we could discern any more about what’s going on with Rey, what’s going on with Kylo Ren, and — well, honestly, it was just so good we both wanted to see it again.

We noticed on first viewing that the new film is very much an homage to the first film, sharing not just similar themes and plot arcs, but often very specific details in common. So we came home and watched episode IV again, just to contrast and compare. And because we’re both that guy when it comes to movies and stories and nerd stuff, we took notes.

20151224_073604.jpg

Seriously, a lot of notes.

Here, then, are 71 ways that Star Wars IV: A New Hope and Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens are basically the same movie.

There are spoilers below. These things are not necessarily in order (but a surprising number of them are).

  1. Opening shot of a ridiculously big starship flying over an alien planet.
  2. A robot that talks only in bleeps is prominent, especially in the opening scenes.
  3. The robot is given a super-secret map by its owner.
  4. The bad guys invade. They wear masks and believe in a shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy.
  5. The bad guys pretty much rout the rebels they’re attacking.
  6. The Big Bad Guy (henceforth BBG) shows up, intimidates a ton of people, but doesn’t actually do any fighting himself.
  7. BBG straight-up murders a defenseless man because he doesn’t like what the guy has to say.
  8. The robot narrowly escapes capture by the faceless bad guys.
  9. The robot is separated from its owner.
  10. The robot becomes stranded alone on a desert planet
  11. This desert planet should, by all accounts, cripple the robot’s wheel-based propulsion, but doesn’t, because movies.
  12. The bad guys begin a hunt for the robot on the desert planet. You’d think they’d be able to use scanners or scopes to find it, but movies.
  13. The robot’s first encounter is with a scavenging alien critter who wants to sell the robot (maybe for parts).
  14. A young, somewhat dashing hero-type liberates the robot from its captors.
  15. This hero is exceptionally dusty, because he/she does dirty, manual labor to scrape out a meager existence.
  16. The robot follows the hero home like a little lost puppy.
  17. This hero’s parents are absent.
  18. The hero discovers that the robot is involved in the rebellion and gets hyped.
  19. The robot’s secret cargo points the hero toward an ancient, long-lost Jedi Master.
  20. C3PO slaps R2D2 around, perhaps a little more than is necessary.
  21. C3PO thanks the Maker, and it feels a little forced and weird.
  22. The hero drives a red, hovering vehicle.
  23. The hero gets attacked by local brutes.
  24. The hero is revealed to have a convenient set of piloting skills.
  25. The hero is presented with Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber by a mentor figure.
  26. The BBG is revealed to have once been a good man who was later seduced by evil.
  27. The BBG is a little more consumed than his cohorts with finding the robot.
  28. The BBG force-chokes a subordinate officer over losing the robot.
  29. Extreme and gratuitous violence by the bad guys drives the hero to leave the home planet.
  30. The BBG personally tortures a captive from the earlier raid for information.
  31. The hero escapes from danger by Jedi mind-tricking a hapless stormtrooper.
  32. There is a bar full of weird aliens of dubious persuasion.
  33. A hero seeks passage off the planet and away from the Empire with a pair of shady guys.
  34. Han Solo’s debts catch up with him.
  35. Han straight-up murders a dude to escape capture or death himself.
  36. The female lead finds herself in the hands of the enemy.
  37. The interrogated female has “considerable resistance” to the BBG’s mind probe.
  38. The bad guys reveal that their newest base of operation is also a weapon capable of blowing up entire planets.
  39. The bad guys blow up entire planets, partly out of revenge, partly as a show of force.
  40. Shady aliens in the bar rat the hero’s presence out to the bad guys.
  41. The Millenium Falcon is where the Band of Heroes comes together.
  42. The Millenium Falcon, on first sight, is described by the hero as, basically, garbage.
  43. Han Solo bristles at the heroes’ unrecognition of the Millenium Falcon’s awesomeness.
  44. The hero escapes the desert planet aboard the Millenium Falcon.
  45. The Millenium Falcon, soon after escaping the desert planet, is caught by hostiles in a tractor beam, and the heroes find themselves in an unfriendly situation.
  46. The captured prisoner sasses the BBG interrogating him/her, and pays a price for it.
  47. Chewbacca punches out a bad guy captain to gain access to a restricted area on the enemy base.
  48. The Band of Heroes goes looking for the captured female on the enemy base.
  49. The BBG “senses the presence” of the mentor/father figure in the Band of Heroes.
  50. The captured female turns out to be just as capable of kicking ass as her “rescuers”.
  51. Han Solo has a bad feeling about this.
  52. A Stormtrooper, probably named Wilhelm, dies to the sound of a well-known film scream.
  53. The mentor/father figure separates himself from the Band of Heroes to disable a critical part of the enemy base.
  54. Heroes shoot the controls to a mechanical door; this causes the door to operate in their favor.
  55. The mentor/father figure engages in dialog with the BBG about his wicked ways.
  56. The mentor/father figure deliberately lowers his guard to the BBG.
  57. The BBG then straight-up murders the mentor/father figure.
  58. The Millenium Falcon goes to pieces inside (circuitry bursting into flames etc) during an escape attempt.
  59. A high-ranking bad guy doesn’t entirely trust the BBG.
  60. The rebel base is disguised in a series of caves and ruins on a forest planet.
  61. The rebels hold a big-ass strategy meeting to figure out how to destroy the bad guys base/weapon.
  62. Han Solo offers the hero a job as an alternative to going on the quest.
  63. A member of the Band of Heroes bails out of the quest to save his own skin.
  64. The rebels attack the bad guys’ base/weapon in tiny fighter ships as opposed to bringing in heavy artillery.
  65. The attack is focused on a video game weak point in the base’s construction.
  66. There is a minute-to-minute countdown all through the final sequences as the big bad enemy weapon prepares to fire.
  67. The BBG points out to his cohorts (and himself) that the Force is strong with the hero.
  68. In the final skirmish, the villain is neutralized for this battle — but not killed.
  69. The ally who left for selfish reasons comes back to aid the hero at the enemy base.
  70. The enemy base/weapon is struck by a few strategically well-placed shots from an ace pilot.
  71. The enemy base/weapon explodes in dramatic fashion.

So, this is all good fun. Of course, the films are also very different. The hero is not a whiny teenager but rather an ass-kicking desert girl. The villain is dark and terrifying, but is also incredibly vulnerable. The plot lines are more layered, more intertwined. And, my god, the film and its special effects are absolutely gorgeous.

It’s clear to me that this film is a sort of love letter to fans of the original series who were disillusioned with the prequels. “Look,” Episode VII says, “We see and respect the source material that you love so much, and we’re going to treat it lovingly and with respect.”

Only a year and a half until the next one.

See something we missed? Something we got wrong? Let me know below.

*Runs away making lightsaber noises*

The Holiday Lay-Low

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The next several days will feature lots of driving around, lots of doing things, lots of holiday cheer, possibly lots of drinking. It seems as good a time as any to take a few days off from trying to be creative. I may post here during that time, but probably not at length, and certainly not with regularity.

In the meantime:

Happy Festivus.

 

A Non-Review Rave on Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Pavowski8 Comments

I’ve just seen the new Star Wars movie, and waiting the two days after the opening to see it was … difficult. I’ve been avoiding social media pretty carefully to make sure I didn’t ruin any of the movie for myself. (Spoiler alert: there are no spoilers in this post.)

But anyway, I’ve seen it. And … I’m not going to write a full review right now, or maybe ever, because I have a feeling more talented people than I will surely have that covered.

What I will say is that this guy:

Kylo Ren
Image lifted from starwars.com.

has just absolutely taken the heart of me.

I thought I knew what good and evil were in the Star Wars universe. I thought I knew what I could expect from a villain. But I did not.

Upon the first viewing, Kylo Ren strikes me as certainly the most interesting villain in the Star Wars universe so far (including good ol’ Darth Vader, though that’s maybe Lucas’s fault for making the prequels so … weird), and possibly one of the most interesting villains in recent blockbustery cinematic history. He has a terrifying, yet imperfect, control over the Force. He’s bad, but not in the way you expect him to be bad.

He’s vulnerable. Which is something no Star Wars villain has ever been, really. They tend to be invincible, until they’re not. Not so, Kylo. His quest leaves him scarred inside and out. And while his identity is not a mystery — we learn about halfway through the film who he is — what is a delightful mystery is what has happened to him to make him who he is.

A mystery for the future films to explain, no doubt.

But let me dispense with any possible spoilerating. The movie is as good as advertised. I suspected this about five minutes into the film, but knew it to be true beyond a shadow of a doubt thanks to my wife: my wife, who is as much a Star Wars fan as a cat is a fan of trying to murder you on the stairs (not so much seeking it out, really, but if the opportunity is there — well, why not). She leaned over to me about twenty minutes into the film and whispered, “I think I’m really into this.”

Me, too.

Now, having just come in from seeing the movie, I hope you’ll excuse me. I just … I just need a minute.