The Day The Star Wars Died

The Quest for a New Hope is Fading

There once was something magical and special that resonated exponentially to many fans from all corners of the globe. Spawned from the imagination and influences from Akira Kurosawa, George Lucas created this epic saga of a world, a galaxy of characters including three good guys and one bad guy and two who would influence multiple generations. Star Wars, debuting in a pre-technology, pre-Internet age in May of 1977, was done on a mere $11,000,000 budget, a seemingly respectable amount that earned it a worldwide accumulative total of $775,512,064. And so it began, a franchise was born.

Two more films followed Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of The Jedi, excellent films that became the benchmark and canon for all of the geeks in the universal fandom. These films were huge and it changed the financial models to the movie industry. It made superstars out of the main characters. The merchandising of toys became part of the equation. The sci-fi fantasy inspired scientist to make some elements of Star Wars science reality. The fandom wanted more Star Wars and they were bestowed with a second trilogy, prequels to the original that gave us the origin story to Darth Vader. But then came the inevitable. The first trilogy gave the fandom the false sense of security that George Lucas could do no wrong. The second trilogy in the Star Wars series gave us an off-putting Anakin Skywalker and Jar Jar Binks. Jar Jar grew to legendary proportions in becoming an icon of what not to do with Star Wars characters. The second trilogy did not have Luke, Han or Leia Organa in it. That sense of purpose just wasn’t there. But just when you think things couldn’t have got anymore stranger, Star Wars was bought out by Disney.

The Disney purchase was seen by some as a feather in the cap for Disney but for others, this was not as good as one would think. Star Wars would now have that Disney-esque seasoning to it. What that would be was nobody’s guess. We would see Disney’s take on Star Wars when it was announced that the Force Awakens would be in theaters in December of 2015. We would soon be introduced to new characters while our principal leads would take a decidedly backseat to the fresh-faced newbies. There was no Luke Skywalker until the last scene of the movie. Han was killed off and Leia was regulated to babysitting the troops. She wasn’t proactive like she was in the past. This wasn’t sitting well with the fandom. Compounding this chain of the foolish meandering decision was the fact that the story arc was nothing more than copious elements from Episode IV: A New Hope. I don’t know if you could call it copyright infringement as it’s in the same family. Be that as it may, the rumblings had begun. The fandom was becoming mobilized.

Groups had begun to coalesce around the canons of all that is Star Wars. They went through the Force Awakens dissecting it down to its DNA. Why did they allow the Rey character to surpass Luke’s evolution with the force? She wasn’t even a novice with the force and yet she manipulates a stormtrooper with her Jedi mind trickery, she handles a lightsaber with ease, she defeats Kylo Ren in the mind game challenge and she defeats him in a lightsaber duel. She had become known in geek parlance as a ‘Mary Sue’. Where was her training? She knows how to make repairs to the Millennium Falcon, she even knows how to fly it on the same level as Han. Luke used the force to help him fly the X-wing in his destruction of the Death Star. Rey uses no such entity in her escape from the TIE fighters. In her first-ever flight in any type of airship, she flew like a seasoned pro.

This would not be the only wrinkle with the fandom as identity politics soon began to creep into the Star Wars lore. The Last Jedi entered the canons that sealed the fate of Star Wars fandom. It was perhaps the most divisive Star Wars ever to be released under the Disney banner. Now there had been pushback from The Force Awakens as the director, J.J. Abrams, did not mince words on where he placed blame on the negative reaction to the film. It was the trolls, those negative naysayers bent on causing mayhem and destruction in the Star Wars universe. Abrams could not accept the fact that there was legitimate criticism of his product. Rian Johnson, the director to The Last Jedi, found himself in that same camp and his response to the criticism was ten times as worse than Abrams. He weaponized social media to the fullest extent where he took no prisoners much like a Death Star obliterating the planets. He attacked the core audience, those fans who unflinchingly supported his mess of a film. The Mary Sue known as Rey meets Luke on a planet where he abruptly tosses away his lightsaber. What the hell? Rey gets no training other than doing some perfunctory light saber parrying with herself. We eventually get a scene that’s straight from Return of the Jedi where this time it’s Rey in a cave mind tripping over herself instead of Luke. In the end though, Luke fights Kylo but he’s an apparition and Rey saves Leia and the bunch because Rey now has the ability to move boulders even though she still wasn’t trained to do such a thing. Luke’s battle with Kylo comes to an end when Luke decides to give up the ghost and decides life is too much and he dies. Seriously, this is what you’re giving us?


Now Episode IX will be here in December. There were reported leaks to the script and from what was gleaned, this isn’t Star Wars you’re looking for. Rey has a dual head lightsaber that looks like an oversized nutcracker plus they once again dipped back into a Star Wars episode and picked this scenario from an old vine. This is a dream sequence of dark Rey. Luke is a force ghost and on and on.

The release of plot points to Episode IX is just more to heap on Disney as the once hyped Star Wars theme park has not lived up to their expectations. Galaxy Edge, the over-hyped, overpriced theme park is not drawing the massive crowds the planners had originally expected. Now come reports that someone in the Disney camp has started downplaying the projected financial forecast to Episode IX. Disney had been humble bragging about the billion-dollar film stable it had run-up this year. The Star Wars franchise, save for Solo: A Star Wars Story, had made over a billion dollars. This may not be the case this time out. There are the chickens that have come home to roost with Star Wars. Comments that were made against the fan base from J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson is still fresh in their minds. Identity politics with Star Wars is another strike against it. There is the Rose Tico conundrum that’s orbiting the franchise. Finn is a character that had promise but now is a lost opportunity as they never worked on him and Rey getting closer. Instead, identity politics had been pairing him and Poe Dameron that wasn’t on anybody’s radar.

There is a sense that the actors portraying these characters have no vested interest in these characters and only see a paycheck. Mark Hamill saw his character becoming as he calls it, Jake Skywalker because this surely wasn’t Luke anymore. His discontent went unaddressed. The Last Jedi was a punch to the gut for many die-hard fans. How could Rian Johnson do this to Luke, to the fans? If you are taking the pulse from the potential audience, you have no feelings towards this film, Episode IX, as a carved out appointment in December. There has been growing discontent with Disney’s tent-pole movies more so in this year. Avenger’s Endgame was signaling that the carnival ride was over. Anything that comes out afterward won’t be making those billion dollars coffers. Captain Marvel was shoehorned in between two blockbusters plus the rumors that Disney propped up the movie financially to make that billion-dollar club. Brie Larson didn’t help the film any by creating controversy prior to the release and subsequent press interviews that weren’t so stellar, Thank You VEERRRYY Much! This adds to the list of the pile on for Disney as it endures headaches because the fans have very lasting long memories as witnessed in a series of YouTube videos from content creators like That Star Wars Girl, Geeks and Gamers, MechaRandom42, Nerdrotic, Mindless Entertainment, and on and on. Their voices have exploded over the years with hundreds of thousands of followers who have spent hours upon hours listening to them effectively critique the lore of Star Wars. In many cases, they know more about Star Wars than do some of the directors.

For some of us, we have grown up with this Star Wars saga. We’ve ridden that emotional roller coaster with Luke and his astonishing look on his face with Darth Vader revealed that he was Luke’s father. We were surprised that Leia was Luke’s sister. The love story between Han and Leia was epic and worthy of the road getting there. It’s too bad that they wrote their son as some defect and their union was no more. Was it really necessary to do this considering the journey these two have been through? This was part of the problem with marginal writing and no sense of direction. Let’s just separate the two and make them less dynamic. Together they were unstoppable. Han is dead, Luke is dead and Leia is really dead but her image will be pimped for Episode IX.

Star Wars was a majestic slow-moving glacier until it met the climate changing Disney. The ice caps have been burned off on Star Wars mountain. There is nothing but barren land as the ice has fallen into the sea. The supposed upcoming trilogy to be helm by Rian Johnson is no longer being talked about as he was ordered not to talk about it any longer. I suppose all good things must eventually come to an end. Cheers, Friends, Breaking Bad, all ended with folks wanting more. Star Wars must be placed out of its misery. It has run for over 40 years but now this faithful dog must be put to sleep, no thanks to its handlers.


(To The Tune of American Pie by Don McLean)

Bye-Bye Princess Leia Goodbye

A long long time ago
In a galaxy far far away
I can still remember how
I made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those stormtroopers dance
And maybe they’d be happy for a while

But December made me quiver
The Fandom Menace threw me in the river
Bad news on social media
Got trashed on Wookiepedia
I can’t remember if I lied
What I said about Luke and I sighed
Somebody flush the toilet inside
The day the Star Wars died

So Bye, bye Princess Leia Goodbye
Flew the Falcon in 12 parsecs till the engines ran dry
And the wookies and droids were drinking Tauntaun ale
Singin’ this was the day Star Wars died
This is the day Star Wars died

Did you fly the Kessel Run
Did you fire that Death Star gun
If Darth Vader tells you so?
Do you believe C3-PO?
Can R2 Save the Ewoks soul?
 Can you teach them how to chant really slow?

Well, I know you said, I love you, to him
 And he responded, I know, with a grin
 You both were each other's muse
 And in the end, we suffered to lose

I was a space pirate traveling buck
 With a hairy fella who brought me luck
 But pirate life it really sucks
 The day that Star Wars died
 I started singin’

Bye, bye Princess Leia Goodbye
 Flew the Falcon in 12 parsecs till the engines ran dry
 And the wookies and droids were drinking Tauntaun ale
 Singin’ this was the day Star Wars died
 This was the day Star Wars died

Rambo 5: Last Blood Film Review

A Dysfunctional Anti-Hero in a World of SJW’s

Rambo 5: Last Blood, is not a Disney-esque happy-ever-after film. It’s a hard and stark film as it skirts along with the fabric of a snippet into the world of human sex trafficking by a Mexican cartel outfit. John Rambo, the post-traumatic stress disorder Vietnam vet has finally found the life for him, as a rancher languishing a peaceful life wrangling horses somewhere in Arizona. He’s enjoying this bliss with a makeshift family, Maria, his in-home caretaker played by Adriana Barraza and 17-year-old Gabrielle played by Yvette Monreal. This is a slow-paced film. It takes a while to lead up to what I call, “Time for some killing!”. The type of violence that is addressed is slowly justified but the violence is not as severe as one would think.

What leads up to this violence is 17-year-old Gabrielle. She is being raised by John Rambo and her grandmother, Maria. Life has no hiccups but Gabrielle is on a quest to find out why her father left her and her late mother. This is bolstered by a phone call Gabrielle receives from her friend in Mexico. She makes her intentions known to John that she wants to go to Mexico to get answers from her father on why he left. Prior to him leaving, John kicked his ass for abusing Gabrielle’s mother. Their history is evident in John’s response to Gabrielle that seeking any information from her father will only lead to knowing that a father like him has only a black heart. Gabrielle is surprised by John’s reaction and worries that she may have triggered a PTSD episode.

John has outfitted his property with a series of tunnels. No explanation is given as to why he set up such an elaborate network but it does play a significant role in the climatic end. Gabrielle abandons the idea of seeking out her father but on her way to some destination, she gets a hair up her ass and decides to go to Mexico on a spur of the moment. We recognize, of course, that this is a bad thing. She gets to Mexico, finds her so-called friend, who directs her to her father. The reunion is not Father Knows Best as he tells her that he never wanted her as a prelude to other harsh truths facing Gabrielle. Her heart is torn up as she realizes that what John said turned out to be true. Gabrielle's naivete is profound. Her friend convinces her to go with her to some club to get her father off her mind. Of course, we know where this is going.

Once at the club, she is abducted by members of the cartel and is placed in some rundown hostel where other abducted girls are staying. Word gets back to Maria and John that she’s gone missing and John heads out to Mexico to get Gabrielle. He finds Gabrielle’s friend and as he is talking to her, John spots Gabrielle’s bracelet on her friend’s wrist. He knows Gabrielle didn’t give it away because it belonged to her mother. Her friend takes John back to the club and he spots the man responsible for taking Gabrielle. We get to see the first level of violence as John confronts the man in the parking lot. John gets the man to talk by plunging his Bowie knife into his shoulder and his thigh. But this is mild. Compared to John Wick, this is downright passive.

John locates the place where Gabrielle is kept but he is met with a small army of henchmen protecting the cartel stronghold. They surround John and nearly kills him but one of the leaders want John to suffer as he decides that Gabrielle will have to suffer for his actions and he, John, would have to live with the consequences of his interference. The cartel leader describes how little the kidnapped women mean to him, that they are not worth anything to them.

John is rescued by Carmen Delgado, a reporter, played by an unrecognizable Paz Vega. He’s nursed back to near health after four days. Now we see the second level of violence as John goes back to rescue Gabrielle but this time his military training kicks in hard as he quietly takes out the cartel soldiers with a knife in a brutal fashion. At this point, a quick shot of a half-naked Gabrielle is seen and you begin to wonder if they harmed her? When John gets to her, she’s left with a massive cut on her face, the same kind that John received from the cartel leader. She’s been sexually assaulted and she’s been shot up multiple times with drugs, perhaps heroin. This was a twist that I wasn’t expecting.

Perhaps a little truth about the plight of women abducted was addressed in this film. In reality, I’ve seen actual footage of young girls and women being hacked to death by some factions of the Mexican cartel. While driving back to his home, Gabrielle tells John she’s sorry. Those were her last words as she dies in the truck. I wasn’t expecting that twist either. There will be no happy-ever-after.

John takes out the cartel leaders brother by decapitating him in the next level of violence. This sets the war off as they travel across the border to Arizona through their underground tunnel system. John has prepared himself for the ensuing war. He’s rigged up several traps around his property to inflict the most damage on an enemy that doesn’t play by any rules. When they arrive, hell is set upon them. There are at least 50 cartel members who are annihilated in varying degrees. But again, this isn’t anywhere near the level of carnage John Wick inflicted on his adversaries. This was a more pedestrian cause, in the end, they all die and you’re left no more satiated with the violence than you did when you started.

Still, I would say that the film is still needed if nothing more than to poke the SJW’s in the eye. Some critics have blasted Rambo as an outdated farce not worthy of review. They have said that there was no balance to the human trafficking story and that Paz Vega’s role was a nothing role. I’ve met with a woman who was trafficked as a young girl who now runs a program to get girls out of that life. There were some truths in Rambo about trafficking but there is only so much that they could address given the length of the film. Perhaps they should have added some more elements to it but you don’t know what went into production? Some critics called out the supposed racism in showing Mexicans as cartel members and probably wanting to tie it with the Trump administration. That’s a stretch and there are Mexicans who run cartels.

To paraphrase Brie Larson, maybe this film wasn't made for certain groups of people? If it does well at the box office, maybe it found the target audience? Will this be Rambo’s final song? In some scene that was shot, it reminded me of Logan. That was an excellent film. We got to see our hero go from a self-centered truculent bastard to a person who realized that life was more than he ever knew now that he was a father. John Rambo was a surrogate father who became a father to a young girl who found out too late that she was already loved.

Rating: Three out of four Stars

Deconstructing Dave Chappelle’s Sticks & Stones

How the Critics and SJW’s Are Missing the Point

Comedy is a science, a theory and a hypothesis all rolled into one. For those who grew up on Johnny Carson, the longtime host of The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, he was a student at The University of Nebraska where he performed his thesis on comedy. In the most deadpan of deliveries, Carson broke down the mechanics of comedy, for example, the three-roll, where he performed a joke with the subject of two straight setup lines and the third line being the joke. Throughout his career, Carson adhered to that principle as well as other comedians who watched and followed his career. For the most part, the structure of comedy has remained the same based on the Carson Thesis. You can see that every comic has taken Carson’s Thesis and applied it to their actions whether they knew it or not because other comics copy other comics but the structural Carson elements remain in place.

Dave Chappelle is no exception. His comedy is rooted in Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin. At his height, Chappelle was serious real estate. He had a very popular show, commanded unheard of salary prices but then he walked away from it all, shocking his fans and the populous as a whole. No explanation was given although burnout seemed to be the consensus. The Dave Chappelle Show ran from 2003 to 2006. The absence of his comedy was truly felt and the hole couldn’t be filled.


Slowly though, time must have healed Dave as he made his way back into the view of his audience. A little venue here and a little venue there and Dave was getting his sea legs back. Then one day, he popped up a Saturday Night Live as host. Okay, this is going to be fun. What you saw on that night was just a precursor to what he did with his show Sticks & Stones. He told the truth. It was the kind of truth that didn’t necessarily make you feel guilty or ashamed but more of the brutal honesty and slap in the face that you need because you are going down a path that is beseeching with pitfalls and landmines.

If you are to believe the Rotten Tomatoes critics, Netflix’s Dave Chappelle’s Sticks & Stone is an unmitigated flop. Some say he’s tired, some say he’s low-bar and disappointing. Currently, the critics score on Rotten Tomatoes is 30%. But here is the thing, his audience score sits at 99%. Why the huge disparity? Rotten Tomatoes is not without controversy as I profiled during the Captain Marvel debacle. There have been only a small handful of critics who have reviewed Sticks & Stone as opposed to the thousands of audience members who have seen his special.

Chappelle isn’t some novice, he’s honed his skill on years of stand-up and observation. To a point, if you want to really assess his comedy, let’s take a much more exploratory look into Sticks & Stone. Let’s deconstruct Dave Chappelle. As the show opens up, the camera fades in from black as we hear Chappelle singing Prince’s 1999. It’s a bit haunting because we don’t know what is happening because Chappelle has never done this before. The lights fade up and Dave is on stage and the topic turns to the suicide of Anthony Bourdain, the celebrity chef. How can you get humor out of a subject like that? But Chappelle does because Bourdain is not the punchline, he is the catalyst to another story that pivots to an old schoolmate of his who was talented and gifted and destined to become rich but instead wind up marrying a woman who subsequently divorced him which led him to wind up working at a Footlocker store dressed like a referee and living with his mother in her basement for the past 10 years. Chappelle had even extolled some advice to his friend, “Save that bitch for later in your life.” His friend didn’t listen. But there was a moral to this story, his friend never thought about killing himself and he believed and held out hope that his situation was only temporary. Was Chappelle telling us that no matter your situation, no matter your station in life, you must always believe in yourself and that things will get better when you give yourself hope?

Chappelle then turns his attention to the audience when he says he has some impressions to do and the crowd claps with approval. He says, who is this, “Duh, if you do anything in your life… you’re finished.” He asks, “Who is that?” Some of the audience respond with Trump but Chappelle surprises them with “No, it’s you.” What he is about to do is open up the topic with this emerging cancel culture before it became so toxic.

Chappelle moves into the molestation claims against Michael Jackson based on the recent documentary on Jackson with two of his accusers. Chappelle has doubts about their claim and points to MacCauley Culkin as a counterpoint. Culkin states that he saw nothing and had no inappropriate interactions with Jackson. For Chappelle’s point of view, Culkin should have been the prize catch if you’re a molester. If there were anyone put off by the topic, he counterpunches with R. Kelly, whom Chappelle figures that he is guilty based on the number of sex-tapes Kelly has produced. Chappelle encourages Kelly to swap out the age of his victim from 14 to 36. This, of course, leads to a punchline that is stellar in its delivery.

He discusses the Kevin Hart hosting debacle with the Oscars. Hart had made a joke about if his son was turning gay how he would respond. This was a ten-year-old joke. But now it became a lightning rod to the gay community as they wanted Hart to apologize for the joke as well as a pound of flesh. Hart said F you and F the Oscars. Hart subsequently went on the talk show circuit and apologized but in Chappelle’s mind, he shouldn’t have. Chappelle told his audience that you are the worst people he tries to entertain in his life. The take away from this exchange is that certain people have made it much harder to do jokes about anything anymore that faves a litmus test now. Nobody is safe and judging by the reaction from critics and SJW’s, Chappelle is not immune.

Here is where his showmanship exudes with confidence as he gets into the topic of the N-Word versus the F word as it depicts the gay community. Chappelle discusses his old show where he was called into Standards & Practices, the censorship wings for the network. Rene, the woman over Standards & Practices, tells Chappelle that he couldn’t use the F-word in the act. He asks why and she responds that he was not gay. He says okay and thinks for a second and says, “But Rene, I’m also not an N-Word.” The takeaway, we have accepted the depiction of blacks in this country as one thing and it still remains the same after 400 years of oppression. No matter how well you do in your station of life, they still see you as the N-Word.

Chappelle now ventures into a field of landmines as he strides into the Alphabet community of LGBTQ-WXYZ. This is no straight man’s land and any hint of derision is met with extreme retribution, just ask Kevin Hart. What Chappelle is highlighting is the splintering of our society where even he sees division within this community.

The #MeToo Movement is also on the radar of Chappelle. He talks about the masturbatory prowess of Louis C.K. that had some measure of that makes sense as Louis did tell the women that he was going to do it and they watched him do it. Chappelle describing it as pancake dripping off the stomach just had me choking with laughter. The takeaway, Louis outed himself on that but he did let them know upfront first and those who stayed and watched, like Sarah Silverman, didn’t seem to mind.

Chappelle brushed on the shooting epidemic in schools and that white parents more than any group should watch their kids closely. He discussed the opioid crisis and brought it back to the crack cocaine scourge and how opioid had affected the white community where crack had effected the black community and how opioids are being treated as a medical epidemic for whites while crack cocaine was a crime for blacks when in truth, they were seen as the same in Chappelle’s mirror. Just say no said Chappelle as a dig to Nancy Reagan’s catch-all slogan for crack cocaine and how ineffectual it was then and is now for the heroin and opioid victims.

Chappelle saved the best for nearly last as he began the discussion with the disgraced actor, Jussie Smollett, that he described as French. Chappelle described how Smollett made claims that he was accosted by two white men wearing MAGA hats and had called him the N-word and F-word, Chappelle said that that doesn’t sound like something two white men would say at 2 in the morning, that sounds like something that he would say. He dug deeper into Smollett’s fabrication when he questioned the notion that these “white” men had a rope. He also made note that the gay community was upset with the black community being homophobic and oddly quiet on this subject. Chappelle points out most astutely and that is because the black community believed he was lying. Yeah, that was consensus because, from the very start, things just didn’t add up or make sense. One, you go out at 2 in the morning in -16-degree weather. Two, you have a hankering for Subway sandwiches. Three, white guys are out at 2 in the morning wearing MAGA hats, have bleach and a rope and know that you’re on Empire, a black show white people tune in by the millions to see. Really, Jussie? Even I don’t watch this show. The take away from this is how social media has turned some of us into desperate attention whores at any cost. Smollett was on a national show but that wasn’t enough to satisfy his need for status. He wanted more fame, more attention, to be a new young voice on social causes as he was given some platforms with his association with Michelle Obama. We haven’t heard the last from all of this.

Chappelle closes out his set with a discussion of his poor childhood and upbringing. He was made fun of in school. There wasn’t enough money for him to go on school field trips. He was so angry that Chappelle exclaimed, “If I had a gun, I’d kill everyone at school.” And so it ends. That last joke was a throwback to an earlier joke on kids and guns in school.

While Chappelle may not be a critic’s choice, his fans have clamored for his material for a long time. One critic calls him a dinosaur. Well, this comic-saurous used some of the techniques discussed in Carson’s Thesis while deploying some elements from Lenny, George, and Richard. The ingredients worked that served up a nice humble pie.