Tag: Star Wars

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Andor Season 2

I almost want to put Andor ahead of Rogue One on my list of favorite Star Wars projects, but as I still leave the original 1977 film at the top because everything afterwards came from it, we don’t get the Andor show without Rogue One.

That said, Andor‘s two seasons was an amazing piece of Star Wars storytelling.

And as awesome as the third arc (Episodes 7-9) was, this fourth arc was quieter but told as good a story.

The backstory of Luthen, the rescue of Kleya, the final chapter all hold up to the rest of the series.  And while I expected some bittersweet endings, there were some moments of satisfaction with the fate of certain characters we’ve followed since Season 1.

As for that final shot, that was probably the most satisfying of them all, as a couple of characters who I was most concerned about were shown to be at peace and safe.

When the series ended, Disney+ popped up ‘You may also like: Rogue One‘ and I immediately pressed play to start watching what’s jokingly referred to as the 2 hour 13 minute post credits scene to Andor.

I got about a third of the way through before it was about bedtime for me, but I also decided that instead of finishing the film soon, I’m going to watch the entire Andor Saga from Season 1 to Rogue One, probably over the rest of the month, and then celebrate the anniversary of Star Wars on the 25th with a viewing of the first film.

As for my overall review of Andor Season 2, I’ll just say that it joins Season 1 as the best Star Wars content since The Empire Strikes Back.

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Episode 6

As I type this, it’s been maybe a couple of hours since I finished watching Tales of the Underworld, the latest animated offering from Star Wars.

And I’m still a bit of a wreck.

The first three episodes featured fan-favorite Asajj Ventriss, while the last three episodes featured another fan-favorite, Cad Bane.

All the episodes were good, but when I got to the final episode and realized what they were doing, I simply could not believe it.

Minor spoiler here, but basically they were paying tribute to High Noon.

Which is one of my Dad’s favorite movies.  The one that both of us would stop what we were doing and watch if we found it playing on some TV channel.

There so many scenes in the episode that echoed the movie.

By the end, I was tearing up, but smiling, and about an hour later, thinking back on the episode, I began to sob and totally lost it.

Dad’s death anniversary is a week away, a day before Mother’s Day this year, so that combo would inevitably do me in emotionally, but of course it triggered a week early because of Star Wars.

While watching a reactor’s first viewing of the original Star Wars today, I was reminded of something I asked my Dad when I was 10:

“What was your favorite part of Star Wars?”

Dad told me that he liked the part where Luke blew up the Death Star.

I think he would have liked this episode of Tales of the Underworld, even though he didn’t watch much of the animated shows.

And to be totally honest, I felt him there, watching that episode with me, as we always did with High Noon.

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The Bad Batch Finale – Spoilers Abound

I hate endings of stuff I enjoy watching.

Monarch, Ted Lasso, even recently, Shogun.

But when it’s something Star Wars related, like Ahsoka or Rebels, it hurts when it ends.

The Bad Batch was no exception.

For me, Omega grew as a character this past season.  I was less annoyed with her as I was in previous seasons.  Heck, I was happy to see where her journey seems to be headed, with that final scene.

I’m still upset that Tech is (still) dead, but relieved that he wasn’t revealed to be one of Hemlock’s shadow operatives.

Speaking of Hemlock, I didn’t know until I checked the cast credits that Hemlock was voiced by the guy (Jimmi Simpson) who played Logan Pierce in a couple of episodes of Person of Interest.

I was genuinely sad to see the end of Nala Se, but glad it caused the demise of Rampart and Hemlock’s database.

It was a nice touch to see Tarkin divert Project Necromancer’s funding to Project Stardust.

I’m also kicking myself for not remembering that (Mount) Tantiss was originally from Heir to the Empire.  It never occured to me to look that up when they first mentioned/showed the planet.

Overall, I thought it was good finale with a satisfying ending.  Clone Force 99 is still around at the time of the Rebellion, and that’s good enough for me.

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Fett

Everyone knows that Han Solo is my favorite Star Wars character, period.

And everyone knows that a close second is Boba Fett.  So much so that I’ve always seen him as a hero, not a villain.  The guy is just trying to get paid by whoever hires him.

Even though he was paid to capture favorite character number one in The Empire Strikes Back.

Anyways, when Return of the Jedi came out, even I thought that Fett went out stupidly, knocked into the sarlacc by a blind scoundrel a.k.a. favorite character number one.

But I never thought he was dead.

I always believed that his armor would protect him and somehow he’d escape the sarlacc.

And for 37 years I never waivered from that belief, even when so many people would try to convince me otherwise.

Then came The Mandalorian.

The show featured a character dressed like favorite character number two; indeed, he did everything that I always thought that character would be capable of doing, Baby Yoda aside.

This season, however, they took a turn toward rewarding my belief in that character, first by casting the last person to voice him in the revised Special Editions, and who played his Dad in Attack of the Clones, in a cameo in the first episode of the season that featured his iconic armor.

And then they revealed that that was indeed him, first by showing his goddamn awesome spaceship, Slave 1, and then showing him off as a badass warrior without the armor.

And then, he was back in the armor.

And they showed him to be that badass that I always knew him to be, even if just in Expanded Universe stories and my own imagination.

A couple of episodes later, at the end of the season, the biggest surprise of all came, a Christmas present to me as far as I’m concerned.

A separate series on favorite character number two.  I’m extremely excited about this.  Probably more than I was when the Solo movie was announced, or when The Mandalorian was announced.

Thank you, Jon Favreau.

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Keep On Trekkin’

I think I figured out why I liked Star Trek The Motion Picture so much when I was 12 years old, and continue to enjoy it to this day.

I’ve been a Star Trek fan since as far back as I can remember.  It was a staple of my childhood, alongside The Six Million Dollar Man and Underdog.

In 1977, a movie called Star Wars came out, and I was not interested in seeing it, mainly because it wasn’t Star Trek.  Reluctantly, I went to see it with my immediate family and a couple of my aunts.

It fucking changed my life.

But that’s another story.

For two years I was more gung ho for Star Wars than Star Trek, though Trek was more readily available to watch because of syndicated television.  All we got for Star Wars on TV was a Holiday Special, which, incidentally, introduced my favorite Star Wars character of all time. 

But that’s another story.

When The Motion Picture finally premiered, it seemed to ‘make things right’ in my mind.  Star Trek made it to the big screen.

And it’s not like there was ever a competition between the two franchises in my mind, I just seemed to shift focus from one to the other over time.  Nowadays I watch both equally, whether it’s a episode of TOS or TNG or one of the films, or introducing my niece to the Clone Wars and Rebels animated series, or the latest episode of The Mandalorian.

But back to The Motion Picture.

Sure, it can be a boring film, but to me it’s as captivating as 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Depending on your mindset.

And as I’ve gotten older, I seem to be in that mindset more and more.

But that’s another story.

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Celebration Weekend

In a normal world, Nelson and I would probably be heading back to the Bay Area from Anaheim, on the last day of Star Wars Celebration.

Instead, I made a Target run to see if I could get anything from the new Galaxy’s Edge Trading Post items that went on sale today.

I went to one Target and they had no such items out.  I saw another customer with a basket of figures, asking an employee if they had a particular figure in back.  I asked the customer if they had put up their display anywhere, and he said no, he found the figures in the regular Star Wars display in the toy section.  I told him that other Targets had end cap displays for the new stuff.

I then went to the other nearby Target, where I was greeted with this:

That same customer from the other Target came up behind me and asked if this was what I was looking for, and I said yeah.

To be honest, the sight of this made me feel sad that I wasn’t in Anaheim, because I had planned to visit Baatu and Black Spire Outpost and even build my own lightsaber.  But it wasn’t meant to be this year.

I almost bought the cheap Jedi Blade Builders saber that they had, but decided not to.  I’ll build mine at Galaxy’s Edge, someday.

Instead, a porg and a LOTH CAT jumped in my basket.

They brought along a deck of Sabacc-shaped cards to keep themselves busy.

The majority of the other merchandise was rebranded Blade Builders sets, Q’ira’s blaster from Solo rebranded and recolored as a Mandalorian blaster (Double barreled?  No.), droid factory action figures and plush droids, and some masks and books.

And yeah, I’m wearing yet another Star Wars shirt today.

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Justified: A Celebration

It started with a news article saying that Timothy Olyphant was going to play Cobb Vanth in The Mandalorian, Season 2.  Vanth, according to the Star Wars Aftermath books, is the man who found Boba Fett’s armor some time after Return of the Jedi.

I had heard of Olyphant, but never watched his show, Justified.  My friends on Facebook suggested that I watch as soon as possible, and that I’d love it, and that they couldn’t believe that I had never watched it.

I binge watched it over 8 weeks.

Five years late to the game, but I now consider it one of my all-time favorite television series.

From the first episode, I felt that I related to the main character, Raylan Givens, in a few ways.

Raylan Givens: I guess I never thought of myself as an angry man.

Winona Hawkins: Well, you do a good job of hiding it, and I suppose most folks don’t see it, but honestly, you’re the angriest man I have ever known.

The show itself was well written, with snappy dialogue.  It reminded me of Firefly in some ways, probably because of the music and the fact that Raylan reminded me of Malcolm Reynolds in many situations.

This is a rare show that I can say had few, if any, bad episodes.  That said, season 5 was probably my least favorite, but only because of a weaker plot that other seasons.

Plus, Dewey Crowe is probably the stupidest character on TV in recent history.

How about some top 5(ish) lists?

Favorite Characters:

  1. Raylan Givens
  2. Boyd Crowder
  3. Art Mullen
  4. Rachel Brooks
  5. Tim Gutterson

Favorite Recurring Characters

  1. Ellstin Limehouse
  2. Dickie Bennett
  3. Bob Sweeney
  4. Winn Duffy
  5. Mike “The Hammer” Reardon

Least Favorite Characters

  1. Dewey Crowe
  2. Boon
  3. David Vasquez
  4. Wendy Crowe
  5. Danny Crowe

Yeah, I really didn’t like Season 5…

Favorite Big Bad (Season) Villains

  1. Mags Bennett
  2. Avery Markham
  3. Robert Quarles

The series finale ended the show better than most other series finales.  Better than Game of Thrones, LOST and Battlestar Galactica, even though I enjoyed the last two shows finales.

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Pause

After this next print job is done on my 3D printer, I’m going to try to take a break from printing anything in order to work on the stuff that I HAVE printed already, mainly Poe’s blaster.

And then I’ll work on the Darksaber, which still needs to be reprinted.

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Chris Explains Stuff: Be With Me

The fallen Jedi didn’t communicate with Rey at the beginning of The Rise of Skywalker because they all knew that she was a Palpatine.  They were not sure if she could be ‘trusted’.

Once they saw her save Ben and fight off the Emperor’s minions, they deemed her worthy of their help.

Thank you for attending my TED Talk.