Little Escapes

The world has gone crazy.

I've written that a lot in my journal lately. Every time I think chaos has peaked for the year, a new crisis reveals itself. Nonstop coverage on the news and on social media by those who spend a great deal of time inflaming the situation or who insist on sharing their sudden expert opinion just adds to the turmoil. It seems as if people like to argue so much, they even argue about things they agree on.

Some people feed on it. I don't. As the five deaths this year alone at the church I work at have reminded me, life is too short for this nonsense, so I've been taking little breaks. On the weekends, we visit various Carolina destinations such as Charleston or Kure Beach. During the week, I listen to podcasts.

I'm new to podcasts. Don't ask me why. Even though the app has been on my phone for ages, I never considered podcasts to be an option. What changed? I started following Star Trek:Voyager’s Garrett Wang on Twitter just as he began promoting a new podcast called The Delta Flyers, which he hosts along with his Voyager co-star, Robert Duncan McNeill.

I'm a huge fan of Voyager, so I was thrilled to catch this before it launched. I love it and look forward to future podcasts, including those that cover my favorite episodes (Shattered, Pathfinder, Timeless, Before and After, and Blink of an Eye, to name a few.)

I listen to other podcasts now as well, including one about life in the Smoky Mountains, another on French verbs (yes, I'm still sticking with my French studies.) So far, The Delta Flyers is my favorite. The audio is good, and unlike another podcast I tried to listen to, they stay on-point while still providing interesting tidbits about the cast and filming. It’s a nice little escape from weightier matters that can’t be resolved through all the blame and yelling, and yet they manage to address issues in a respectful way while recapping the shows. They also offer additional content for patrons, so if you’re a Voyager fan, check it out.

Rise of Skywalker

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a Star Wars fan. More a fan of the original stories than the latter ones, I admit, but I did like Rogue One and Last Jedi.

I have mixed feelings about Rise of Skywalker, and I wish I had put those thoughts into words when we saw the movie in the theater in December. But family was visiting, it was Christmas, and I had more important things to do. I decided to wait until after we watched it again on DVD before commenting. 

Second Impressions

The movie was released on video and DVD in mid-March. It's telling that we didn't rush out to buy a copy as we usually do. Even more telling that we decided to rent it, and after we did through Amazon Prime, we waited over a week before we watched it. When we did watch it, we split it up between two nights. A good portion of the scenes simply didn’t hold my attention.

Which scenes were those? Certainly not the scenes between Rey and Kylo (and Ben, each time Rey was able to break through his exterior to the hurting man beneath.) Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley did a fantastic job in their roles. More on that below. But the rest...I've never warmed up to Finn and Po or their storylines. Instead of mirroring the friendship triangle of Luke, Han, and Leia, which appeared to be the goal, they seem to exist solely to cause havoc and destruction to the Resistance. It's difficult to like characters who nearly wiped out everything Leia was working for.

The Real Story

I know I'll watch the movie again in the future, but when I do, I'll likely fast forward to the scenes between Rey and Kylo. I really feel the story between them is misunderstood and largely underappreciated. Driver and Ridley appear to have understood the depth of the bond between the characters--even before the characters found out they were connected in the Force--along with the deep feelings of loneliness and rejection they share, and the subsequent need they have for one another. They are, after all, the only people in the galaxy who truly understands one another. The actors played it well. The ability that Adam Driver has to portray a man in deep emotional pain amazes me, and I love what he's done with Kylo/Ben during the last two movies. When Kylo and Rey talk to one another through the Force bond or when they’re searching for one another, they have my attention. 

The Kiss

I'm not talking about the controversial kiss at the end. I'm talking about the controversial kiss between Rey and Ben. Some people screamed so loud about it on Twitter, I could see their font without my glasses. Why!? They wanted to know. He tortured her! Tried to kill her! Tried to manipulate her! Why have her kiss him? Why not Finn?

My first though was, have they seen the movie? I'll say--and I cannot emphasize this enough--that Rey. wanted. Ben. Solo. For all the reasons I mentioned above. Did you notice her change of clothes? When, in The Last Jedi, she went to face Kylo, she changed her clothes. For the first time, the desert scavenger let her hair down and made herself look attractive.

Photo Credit: Me. You can tell by all the Beanie Babies I had to
place around the TV to keep the cat off the entertainment center.

(It's a terrible photo, but Blogger removed the previous image I'd placed there despite the fact the license was marked All Creative Commons. But to continue....)

Rey changed her clothes for Ben. She was connected to him. In Skywalker, she admitted she’d wanted to take his hand when he offered it, but she wanted to take Ben's hand. (And how do we know it was Ben at the end? Not simply because he seemed to be different man, took off his helmet, and went to rescue her, but because he changed his clothes. It mirrored Rey's actions in the previous movie.) Kylo may have started out pursuing Rey, but it was Rey who ultimately drove the relationship, pushing for change, trying to reach Ben. So much so, she couldn’t handle it when she finally bested him with the lightsaber. That wasn’t just regret at having delivered what would be a killing blow in anger. It was regret at having mortally injured him. So she healed him. And that, I believe, is the real story. Battles aren’t won with anger and revenge killings, but with heart and the determination to stand up for what’s right. 

Rey did both and she won. When she finally got her Ben, she kissed him, the man to whom she would be connected to for the rest of her life. Sadly, in showing the viewer this was indeed the last movie in the Skywalker saga, the powers that be killed him off. We can only hope he'll show up as a Force ghost and spend some time with Rey at the Skywalker homestead.

So that's it. I may not have liked some characters and scenes in Rise of Skywalker, but I still have a lifelong fondness for the Skywalkers themselves, which now includes Rey, and I'll watch the movie again. That’s what fans do. Like Rey, they stick with the object of their affection even when that object seems bent on destroying itself. 

The Mandalorian and Why We Love It

My husband and I are longtime fans of Star Wars. Despite this, we decided not to sign up for the new Disney + streaming service to watch The Mandalorian, no matter how intriguing it looked. After all, we’re huge Star Trek fans as well and we had no plans to sign up for CBS All Access to watch Discovery and Picard. We already pay for costly cable and Amazon Prime. We’re patient people. Some day, we reasoned, we would sign up for a month’s worth of service and watch all the episodes in that time span. But that would be years down the line.

On the first day of its release, my daughter called me. A Disney junkie who bought an annual family pass to Disney World shortly after moving to Florida–and got her money’s worth from it–she’d signed up for Disney + as soon as she found out about it and paid the annual fee (our children did not adopt our spending habits.)

“Mom, did you sign up for Disney? You have to watch The Mandalorian. The ending was great!”

Not only did our children not adopt our spending habits, they also didn’t adopt our love for all things Star. But she loved this show–the quality, the characters and the ending of the first episode. I could no longer resist the urge to see it.

The following contains spoilers, so if you haven’t signed up for Disney +, try the Seven Day Trial, watch The Mandalorian, and come back. 

 I loved it. My husband loved it. Our friends, who we convinced to sign up for Disney + loved it. We even watched an episode during a joint vacation to the mountains of Virginia over the Thanksgiving Holiday. Why do we love it? Here are a few reasons.

First, Baby Yoda. We don’t know if the baby is really Yoda, as the story takes place after the fall of the Empire and the death of the Yoda we all know and love, but we don’t care. Baby Yoda is the cutest thing to hit the screens.

Which leads me to another reason we love the show. Baby Yoda is so cute, he generates a lot of great memes on the internet. My daughter sent one as I typed this.

 I don’t know who who to credit for memes such as this, but thanks.

 As one fan put it. Baby Yoda united the entire Star Wars fandom. I believe it.

Next, it may take place in space, but The Mandalorian is a Western. A Western in the spirit of every Clint Eastwood movie my husband has ever watched. I thought as much during the first episode, and I’m not the only one. A Brazilian friend on Facebook posted a Spaghetti Western Mandalorian Trailer (in Spanish, so I had to get the gist) complete with spaghetti western music. It was great. One episode was even titled, "The Gunslinger." Who could resist a space western?

Another reason we love The Mandalorian is the Mandalorian himself. In an age where masculinity is derided and discouraged, he’s unapologetically masculine. And he has a heart. In episode one, we learn as a child he lost his parents and was taken in by the Mandalorian order. Consequently, he not only feels it’s his duty to watch over “foundlings,” he wants to. Hence his concern for Baby Yoda. He also makes a great dad. A lot of dads are missing from families these days, for a variety of reasons. This one not only protects his charge, risking his life to protect the baby, he does dad stuff, and we can’t get enough of it.

We also love that Disney only releases one show a week. The anticipation adds to the enjoyment.

There you have it. We have no idea if the plot of this show is going anywhere, other than around the galaxy, but we don’t care. It’s a good show, and it’s been a long time since we’ve been a good one. Well done, Disney.

Rogue One

We finally had the opportunity to see Rogue One. Others had told me it was better than the prequels and perhaps better than The Force Awakens, and they were right. It's vintage Star Wars. The costumes and sets were so reminiscent of the originals, I could watch the movie all day for that reason alone. Visuals missing in the prequel-sequels. The tie-in at the end was great. We nearly turned on A New Hope when we got home just to complete the experience.

Having gone in totally unfamiliar with the plot, I was a bit lost at the beginning as one scene switched to another during the introduction of character and worlds. It took a while to get anchored in the story. We finally did, but I noticed a certain disconnect when it came the characters. Comparing notes with my husband after the movie, he sensed the detachment as well. It made sense later, but as a fan and a writer, I struggled with it during the movie. I'll be better prepared the next time we watch it. With that out of the way, I'll be able to pick up more details missed during the first viewing.

I wouldn't say it's my third favorite Star Wars movie, but I may have to watch it a few times to get a better appreciation for it.

Kudos to the writers for the nod to Darksaber (though they used a word other than "dark".) Darksaber was my favorite novel in the extended universe and I enjoyed the tie-in.