Breaking Down The New Star Wars Trailer

Because it’s Friday, Congress is out of session, and not everything needs to be political, now seems as good a time as any to offer a brief analysis of the latest Star Wars trailer, which was released last week.

This teaser is similar in style to the first trailer for 2015’s The Force Awakens—brief, disjointed clips of only a few seconds each, promising a grand new story but offering little in the way of plot details. We know more now about the Episode VIII plot than we did at the same point for VII, based on both the trailer and public statements by the cast and crew, but not much. Rey will train as a Jedi under Luke Skywalker. The First Order will grow in strength, and there will be a massive space battle at some point in the movie. Not exactly a lot to go on, which only heightens the anticipation even further.

The trailer raises plenty of questions—What’s with the salt-flat planet and the speeders kicking up red dust? Does the shot of a large burning structure mean we’ll get a flashback depicting Kylo Ren’s destruction of the new Jedi Order?—but the biggest is undoubtedly in the last few seconds, when a voiceover of someone who sounds a lot like Luke Skywalker intones, “It’s time for the Jedi to end.” What?

Does that mean Luke has strayed to the dark side over the course of his long seclusion from the galaxy? Is he just dejected and discouraged by the endless wars, and the failure of the Jedi to do anything to stop them? Or does he mean that it’s time for the old Jedi, the old methods of teaching, to end, and for the Jedi Order to become something new and different? Of course, that last possibility assumes that the Order Luke rebuilt after Episode VI was exactly the same as the Order in the time of the Old Republic. We don’t have any evidence from The Force Awakens to suggest that, and the Jedi Order founded by Luke in the old Expanded Universe stories (now branded as non-canon Legends) is quite different from that which served the Old Republic, which—if those aspects are carried over into the new canon—would make another “rebirth” seem rather pointless.

Episode VIII: The Last Jedi comes out in December. It can’t get here soon enough.

Movie Review: Rogue One

Spoilers ahead

Yesterday I was finally able to see the latest Star Wars movie, Rogue One. I’ll go into more detail below, but it would be dishonest to start with anything other than this advice: If you haven’t seen it, go now. You’re missing out.

The movie is the first standalone in the Star Wars universe, not connected with the core, episodic storyline or the Skywalker story, and there are a number of differences that make it feel unlike any other movie in the franchise. There is no opening crawl. The music was not composed by John Williams, and therefore was oddly forgettable for a franchise that has some of the most iconic music in cinema history. And, most importantly, this was the first movie in which a Skywalker was not among the main characters (though more than one make appearances over the course of the movie).

The movie is, in a sense, one about the forgotten men and women of the Star Wars universe, ironic coming so close coming after an election season that was all about the “forgotten man” in the end. The Jedi and the Force are mentioned often, but this movie is about the soldiers, the ordinary people who struggle against the Empire.

It is also darker and more gritty than the average Star Wars movie, and more adult oriented (though not a gore-fest by any means). Death is constant, even more than in regular Star Wars movies—if you’ve seen it already, you know what I mean. And even seemingly clear-cut sides—the good Rebels versus the evil Empire—become less fairy-tale, more real life. A good example comes early in the movie. In the scene which first introduces one of the main Rebel characters, we see him shoot a Rebel informant in the back, in order to allow the main character to more easily escape pursuing stormtroopers. With seemingly no remorse. The action serves to make the character’s later evolution more compelling, but again, this is supposed to be one of the good guys.

As far as the plot, I largely agreed with many of the other reviews around the Internet. The movie starts out slowly but begins to hit its stride about midway through, and the last twenty minutes…wow. There’s plenty for casual viewers and Star Wars fans alike to enjoy, and for all of the cameos sprinkled throughout the film, it rarely feels forced. This is the bridge between the prequels and the original trilogy that has been desperately needed.

Overall, the tone and theme are welcome additions to a universe that might often seem narrow and familiar, making it richer and more layered. If Disney is going to stick to their plan of making one Star Wars movie a year, it will have to try different things. And if Rogue One—and The Force Awakens before it—are signs of things to come, then the future of Star Wars has never looked brighter.

Trump Supporters, You Have Become The Very Thing You Swore to Destroy

I love Star Wars. I think its structure as a modern myth, an epic written for today’s world just as the Iliad and Odyssey were for the world of the ancient Greeks, gives it a staying power unique among modern blockbusters, and is at least part of the reason why hype is now so high for the eighth installment, forty years after the release of the original movie.

The third movie, Revenge of the Sith, is by far the darkest, seeing the temptation and fall of Anakin Skywalker to evil, the near-total extermination of the Jedi, and the transformation of the Republic into the Empire. Towards the end of the movie, Anakin (now Darth Vader) confronts his wife Padme and his Jedi teacher, Obi-Wan Kenobi, both of whom try one last time to turn him away from the dark side.

Darth Vader: You turned her against me!

Obi-Wan Kenobi: You have done that yourself.

          Darth Vader: You will not take her from me!

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Your anger and your lust for power have already done that. You have allowed this "Dark Lord" to twist your mind until now... until now you have become the very thing you swore to destroy.

Blinded and seduced by anger—at the Jedi for denying him the rank and position on the Jedi Council he believed he deserved; at himself for not being powerful enough to save the life of his mother; at his wife for going behind his back and, he believed, having an affair with Obi-Wan—Anakin took the darker and easier road, joining the Sith, the ancient enemies of the Jedi Order.

And in the real world? The reasons for anger are different, but the anger is still there, still luring people who may once have been friends and allies into supporting a loud, crude New York liberal whose positions change by the day. In both temperament and governing philosophy he embodies virtually everything conservatives have long argued against when coming from those on the Left, but now tolerate in return for a promise to destroy the old order, the Establishment, who have betrayed conservatives time and again.

Is some, even much, of that anger justified? Absolutely. Republican leadership should have listened to conservatives more, just as the Jedi Council maybe should have given Anakin the rank of Master and given him a truly equal seat at the table. But blame also falls on those who give in to their bitterness, and vote for someone even many Trump supporters acknowledge is unfit for the Presidency. The stakes—the future of the country and the survival of the conservative movement—have always been too high.

In everything from their bullying tactics to their enthusiastic acceptance of an anti-Constitutionalist candidate, self-proclaimed conservative followers of Trump have embraced the very attitudes they swore to destroy.