TV Reviews

Snoke clones? Palpatine? "The Mandalorian" | Season 2, Episode 4

Carl Weathers directs Season 2's most revealing chapter yet

The Mandalorian | Season 2 Official Trailer | Disney+

"Chapter 12: The Siege" premiered Friday, November 20 on Disney+.

Before getting into spoilers, let's discuss the episode's set up. Din Djarin, the titular Mandalorian, and Baby Yoda are en route to the forest planet of Corvus to find Ahsoka Tano. Their ship remains badly damaged from the events of the previous two episodes, so they decide to take a detour for repairs. Okay, it's spoiler time!

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Satire

The Only Problem with "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" Is the Lesbian Kiss at the End

And this has nothing to do with my personal hang-ups, so stop thinking that

Horrifying

Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash

People will tell you a lot of bad things about Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker.

They'll say things like, "The pacing is jarring. It spends too much time undoing the events of the last movie, and has to cram its own action into rushed exposition that dominates the dialogue, and the sandwiching of multiple connected MacGuffins does not provide enough of a framework for a satisfying plot." Wrong.

The people who tell you this are allowing themselves to be distracted from the real issue. Yes, when I was watching the movie I thought many of the same things that you will read in these foolish reviews. What they are overlooking is that all of these problems—even the way J.J. Abrams erases death, undermining the stakes of the film entirely—could have been easily resolved in the mind of the audience if only we had not been distracted, in the film's final moments, by the lingering site of two women lovingly sharing a kiss. Disgusting.

This is what is ruining Star Wars! I've been saying it since 2015, along with every other cool guy on the internet. Not the way insane new force powers are magically introduced so that none of the strictures of storytelling apply anymore; the problem is the feminist SJW culture wars.

Imagine what amazing insights I would have had to come up with in order to reconcile the confusing mess I just watched with the conviction that it all actually makes sense and is a great movie. I probably would have uncovered hidden significance in the endless mundanity of moments that comprised The Rise of Skywalker's runtime. But instead I spent my whole night distracted and obsessing over the sight of two mouths mashing into each other, with a lady attached to each end. The horror of it kept me up all night, researching on dark corners of the internet.



If it had just been a flash on the screen, perhaps I could have chalked it up to a figment of my overactive imagination. I could have told myself that they had kissed each other by mistake, while attempting to walk past each other, toward their strong important husbands. Or maybe it was just a slender man with long hair kissing his teenage son. But no, they lingered on the shot of this lesbonic couple's physical manifestation of unholy lust for a full three seconds. That's longer than even Tom Brady kisses his children on the mouth.

How am I supposed to remove this image from where it's seared in my memory. Each time I close my eyes in the shower, I see it again. These are images too graphically sinful to watch in a room with the lights on or the door unlocked, yet I was watching them in a theater with children who probably intend to one day engage in kissing of their own. How are their parents supposed to explain what they witnessed?

And if they're fixated on that formidable task, how are they supposed to also explain why beads and helmets can teleport through space? How the force can heal all wounds and conjure spaceships from nothing? Or why normal people now have very convenient force hunches that arrive just in time to save the entire galaxy? If it weren't for that kiss, we all could have done it. But now we all have no choice but to be swallowed up by the hideous sarlacc mouth of two women's lips smooshing all over each other. Cruel fate.

CULTURE

Deepfake George Lucas Is More Convincing Than Actual George Lucas

Baudrillard was right, and I have lost all sense of what's real.

George LucasLACMA: Art and Film Gala, Los Angeles, USA - 03 Nov 2018

Photo by Matt Baron/Shutterstock

A video purporting to show George Lucas camping out for the premiere of Rise of Skywalker was unleashed upon the world yesterday, and has thrown reality into turmoil.

We have been warned that Deepfakes have the potential to undermine democracy by casting doubt on the veracity of video evidence. If the alleged "pee tape" came out tomorrow, is there any doubt that Donald Trump and his defenders would shout fake? Even if the footage was clear and unmistakable, the existence of technology that can seamlessly meld a famous face onto a stranger's speech and mannerisms can throw any video into contention. But this new George Lucas video has done something much deeper, and much more troubling.

George Lucas Camps Out & Reacts to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - Deepfake Sagawww.youtube.com

Having watched George Lucas being sarcastic and self-aggrandizing in a bad George Lucas wig and a cheap fat suit, I don't know if I believe in the real George Lucas anymore. You can tell me that it's actually an actor and impersonator named Josh Robert Thompson, but when he rolls his eyes at Baby Yoda with perfect contempt, I know that he's the real deal. The essence of George Lucas lives in this video more purely than any footage of the man himself, and I am no longer convinced that George "it's like poetry" Lucas was ever anything other than a character embodied by Josh Robert Thompson.

He seems certain that American culture leaving him behind can only be a damning sign for society. Couple that with the sigh of a disaffected boomer billionaire—pining for Woodstock while he contemplates buying a movie theater to simplify his schedule—and you have enacted George Lucas' entire being since 2005. Skywalker Ranch has been officially relocated to the Uncanny Valley, and I'm now convinced that the original George Lucas, in all his pompous glory, was the first CGI creation of Industrial Light & Magic.

If you haven't watched the video yet, save yourself from the existential dread. It's too late for me. The map has subsumed the territory. All that remains is the simulacrum, and I am left to wonder, if George Lucas is nothing more than this basic character study in a beard and glasses, who actually created Star Wars? I do not have the answer, but If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably Hatsune Miku.

FILM

Why "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" Is Breaking All the Ticket Pre-Sale Records

Unpacking the phenomenon of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Recently, the final trailer for the final movie in the final trilogy of the mainline Star Wars franchise dropped, and fans are taking out their wallets en masse.

Per Atom Tickets, pre-sale movie tickets for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker have been flying off virtual shelves faster than a womp rat in an X-Wing, or some other Star Wars reference. First hour sales broke the previous record holder, Avengers: Endgame's sale numbers by 45 percent. So what's all the fuss about?

To be honest, as a die-hard Star Wars fan, I was a bit disappointed by the trailer. I watched the entire thing wondering when the porgs would show up, but there were none. Believe me, I checked three times, and I can sadly confirm that there are zero porgs in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (at least if the trailer is to be believed).

No doubt, other hardcore fans will be devastated when they discover the lack of porgs for themselves. Us lifelong Starheads (that's what I call everyone in my Star Wars group chat) who have been watching since Star Wars: The Last Jedi understand that porgs––the cute little alien bird things that I bought a life-size plush of––are the lifeblood of the long-running franchise.

Sure, this new movie has C-3PO, a big lightsaber battle, and the hairy monster guy who screams a lot, but where are the porgs? I'm betting that most of the people clamoring to buy tickets right now are filthy casuals who don't know the first thing about Star Wars, because if they did, they'd be holding off until we have some sort of official statement on why porgs have been cut from this film. #NoPorgsNoTicket