In the words of Master Yoda, there is another. Star Wars– retroactively subtitled as A New Hope – was and is a cultural phenomenon that made so many people (especially writer/director George Lucas) incredibly rich and redefined the blockbuster in ways we’re still feeling today. And of all the SW works that have been made and continue to be made, this often ranks up the top, with only Andor managing to topple it for fan-favourite. And the number one reason I see for people preferring this film over any other, even in the trilogy, is its darkness. Famously, Dante in Clerks would argue the dark ending made it more realistic and relatable, and this is usually how I see people describe the film.
I’m far from the first person to remark that this is an interesting perspective on a children’s film, and unlike other people who say something like that, I promise I’m not saying that to be mean. There’s a certain kind of fiction I would describe as perfect teenager fiction – something in genre that earnestly deconstructs the morality of children’s fiction. Buffy The Vampire Slayer would have to be in the top tier of teenager fiction, perfectly capturing how they see the world and how they often develop through it, but you could also count Watchmen or Metal Gear Solid under this umbrella. If you want to be mean, you can observe that it’s just as childish as the thing it’s reacting to – and this kind of thing often is, but when it works, it works.
Empire Strikes Back is going to be interesting from that perspective. Star Wars was already pretty dark when you get right down to it – not just in terms of blowing up planets or cutting a dude’s arm off, but in its presentation and its grimy used future aesthetic – but it is also, ya know, a children’s story (or if you prefer, a family film). To me, it’s less about the aesthetic of darkness and more about the intensity of emotional identification, which I do remember the film having.
You see, this was and continues to be a weird film. Part of that weirdness comes from the continuing positive qualities of a Star Wars film – the spectacular imagination, the goofy-assed dialogue, the go-for-broke incidents like Obi-Wan coming back, the muppets running around – but it also comes from the films continuing to commit to Story. Luke, Han, and Leia aren’t the people they were at the start of the first film; their relationships genuinely build on what came before, so that Han isn’t quite the selfish rogue he was, and Luke definitely isn’t the whiny naive farmboy he was (Leia’s change is a bit harder to describe offhand).
This is what excites me about moving onto this film; it’s new, uncharted territory, still unlike anything made today. I hope you enjoy this deep-dive into it. This will work exactly like last year – I will post one essay a day until my demands are met, posting the very last on May the 4th, or Star Wars Day.
May the Force be with you.
I’m not gonna write two hundred words on the opening title this time. I don’t think even I could do that. The opening crawl, on the other hand, is easy pickings. You may recall that I described Andor as finishing just before the second act of a tragedy, and obviously that’s because, as it’s a prequel, this movie and its sequel serve as those acts in a way. The Death Star was an all-encompassing goal in the first film, but we see it was just one step in the war here; in fact, from the Empire’s perspective, the Death Star very effectively slowed down the war effort for the Rebellion. After all, the Rebels lost the secrecy of their home base regardless.
Interestingly, when you look at it, the Rebels have a clear Win Condition – end the Empire – but no clear, practical way of expressing that at the moment. The opening crawl, on the other hand, goes out of its way to give Darth Vader a specific goal: find Luke Skywalker. A naive viewer who didn’t have decades of this trilogy and its history would have reason to believe Vader was purely motivated by revenge as opposed to, say, some personal connection.
This opening scene already gives us some clear opposite decisions to the opening of the first film. Rather than allow a Star Destroyer to pass over us, the camera instead tilts down to a Star Destroyer cruising towards us. It’s much less iconic than the opening shot of Star Wars, but frankly, I’m glad they didn’t try to either recreate it or top it. It feels more respectful to the audience to jump into the story. It throws out drones, which brings us to the other great Opposite Decision creative choice, where we’re starting on a freezing cold planet of ice as opposed to the deserts of Tattooine. I’d be incredibly surprised if this was an intentional choice to break up monotony; rather, I think it’s an intuitive, perhaps musical understanding that novelty is pleasurable, especially when you’re making wall-to-wall spectacle.
We find Luke riding a tauntaun, clearly out on patrol. His outfit manages to sell that he’s part of an organised military force immediately; we understand he’s patrolling the area without a word being spoken. The dialogue between him and Han is a rare case of technobabble that’s actually militarybabble – I love dialogue that goes past meaning entirely and just has a rhythm to it, where it intentionally obscures meaning rather than revealing something, just to convey a plot point without having to convey it. It also lets us know that Han knows at least vaguely where Luke when he goes after him later.
We also get the efficient storytelling of the 80’s. There’s no languid shots of Luke exploring as he’s stalked by a creature, no breakup of action across scenes – just boom, the tauntaun panics and Luke is hit out of nowhere by a fuckin’ yeti thing. One thing that bothers me about modern films is how many of them manage to simultaneously draw out the action but shorten the emotional affect (we’ll see more of the opposite of this much later in the film). This film isn’t even five minutes in and it’s already powering through plot to get to the important emotional core.
Han gets back to the Rebel Base and gets a short, downplayed hero shot, dramatically taking off his hat and goggles to reveal his face but not getting heroic music to go with it. I like this; we already know who he is, we’re already sentimental about him, and it’s more important that we worry about Luke; indeed, Han himself is clearly thinking about him.
Once again, I must say how cool it is that they have actual actors actually interacting with an actual set with actual models of cool spaceships. The shot is made even more visually interesting with Chewbacca using some kind of welding device on one of the ships. Fun fact: on set, actor Peter Mayhew was saying his lines in English so that Harrison Ford had something to react to, which would be dubbed over later with Chewie’s growls. Mayhew also had a very English accent, making this even funnier.
Han walks in to the action room, and we get a quick shot of Leia spotting him and looking concerned. Again: we are getting a relationship sold in a single shot. She’s concerned about Han, but not actively so. Han meets up with the general – played by Bruce Boa – and informs him that he’s going to leave soon, with the bounty on his head from Jabba the Hutt coming back from last movie. As a kid, I always took the flow of continuity for granted; for me, Star Wars was three movies on VHS that I would watch all together in one day. I can only imagine what this was like in 1980.
This also acts as an explanation for why Leia is concerned about Han – she’s upset that he’s leaving. Look, the relationship drama here ain’t exactly Shakespeare, but I will say one thing I notice with female Star Wars fans is how many enjoy taking Han at face value (as opposed to George Lucas not being able to write people all that convincingly) and find his crude childishness endearing, at least with the distance of fiction. Admittedly, there are a lot of grown men with Han’s exact level of emotional depth, and admittedly Harrison Ford is incredibly funny; I love the way he says “You need me? […] Well what about I need you?”
We stop in with Threepio and Artoo, who are here to stress once again that Luke hasn’t come back; absolutely fantastic beat where Han puts his hand over Threepio’s mouth to stop him talking. There’s gonna be a lot of comedy from these two in this movie; nothing brings out Han’s coolness quite like putting him next to the biggest dork in the movie. Han finally decides to head out; I always loved the weird aggressiveness of his “Then I’ll see you in hell!” before he leaves.
It cannot be overstated how necessary the cool sets are to the success of these movies. Even scenes of people just talking are in these awesome sets; we get a shot of some random gigantic spine in the yeti’s cave before we see Luke hanging, just because it’s awesome. Now, the rule is that story comes first and spectacle is pretty far down the list, but the Star Wars story-intense tone means literally everything is free to be spectacle. It’s also plot-heavy; we’re ten minutes in and Luke’s already in trouble, getting himself out of it with a judicious demonstration of the Force. This is at once story and exposition. It’s also a chance to show off John Williams’s score, as the Force theme pokes its head in.
Artoo and Threepio have a little scene bickering about looking for Luke; part of the reason Artoo is so popular is because he’s a tin can with lights you can project onto, but it’s also because he’s methodical and resilient, and it’s nice to empathize with someone who is trying to get a task done – especially trying to save a character we already like. It also amazes me how good the sound design for Artoo is – alien, impossible to really explain, but also very very clear in its emotion. He makes a sad little ‘woo’ noise to let us know he’s worried and scared.
Between this and the tauntaun, I’m thinking – one thing this series shares with Star Trek is that, if something can be invented, it will. There’s no reason to make up a new animal to ride around in the snow, but they did it, and they gave it weird noises. There was no reason to make up a whole ‘language’ for Artoo, but they did it. This spirit of creativity permeates the movie, and makes its transformation into lore-heavy franchise in which everything is explained both predictable and banal (I say, having enjoyed some EU stuff).
The characters are finally forced to accept that Luke is missing; the more I think about this, the more I realize how well it works at establishing that all these people love each other. Plot has become a big talking point in media discussion these days, with many people complaining works are overplotted; I’m of the opinion that most works are underplotted, which I think comes from other people considering lore exposition to also be plot, whereas I stick with the classical Aristotelian definition of it being action causing effect. This opening act neatly ties both our complaints together; technically, it’s slowing down the action, but aside from it being action, it makes us care when the characters are separated again later.
Also, I laugh at the delivery of “Actually, Artoo has been known to make mistakes. From time to time.”
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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Department of
Conversation
What did we watch? –
Weapons – dragged my heels on this because I didn’t really like Barbarian, but I’m glad I got around to it eventually because this one was way more up my street. The initial premise / mystery is engaging, I liked the “one character at a time” structure and there’s generally a nicely Stephen King-esque vibe to the plotting. Amy Madigan’s Oscar win is a little baffling but in a good way, this isn’t the type of performance I’d expect to see rewarded at all but obviously she’s great, she’s always great.
I Think You Should Leave, season 1 – finally got around to checking this out after loving Friendship last summer sometime. It’s very funny indeed, and I love that the episodes are concise and free from filler. The only sketch I’d seen beforehand was the meme-friendly hot dog guy, but nearly every sketch so far has been a winner. There’s a clear formula to a lot of it (“cringe” scenarios that escalate beyond the point you’d expect) but with enough variation to be consistently surprising. I think maybe my favourite so far was the birthday party sketch (guest-starring Stephen Yeun!), Tim’s character going from “completely unacceptable” to “winning everyone over” to “dead” – chef’s kiss. Also enjoyed the bizarre “t-shirt tugger” sketch which just kept going until it was impossible to resist.
Seinfeld, S7: “The Wig Master” – really good one, there’s a similar level of season-7 zaniness here to some of the other, weaker recent episodes but it all comes together nicely this time. Elaine dating a British person named Craig who pronounces his name in the American way initially concerned me but the writers seem to be aware of this! Kramer gaining more and more ostentatious clothing throughout the episode was consistently funny even if the pay-off was a little obvious.
Live Music – went to see Shaking Hand, a new-ish British band who are kind of a bit post-rock / slowcore, I really enjoyed them last time I saw them and they were pretty good again despite a couple of technical issues. But while last time they were the standout on a weak festival bill, this time they got totally blown away by their own support act, Holly Head, who are hard to describe – “a high-energy blend of shoegaze / post-hardcore / post-punk with an absolutely incredible drummer” is the best I can do. I thought they were stunning, one of the best sets I’ve seen this year.
Woooooooo live music! And will be looking for Holly Head, a great drummer fucking owns live.
I also held off on Weapons because of being cool on Barbarian, I wasn’t totally won over (the whole “only one guy has a Ring camera apparently” aspect of the plot is extremely stupid, the shifting segments didn’t really work for me) but I can’t deny that ending, hilarious stuff. I think Cregger has chops but needs someone to smack him around when he gets too cute. And yeah, Madigan is also fun but this was a make-up Oscar for Streets of Fire.
Despite my gushing praise I haven’t actually listened to Holly Head on record at all, they only have three singles out so far but I’m going to check those out NOW and see if they live up to the live show.
Not sure what bugged on you on the Ring camera thing (there are at least a couple because they triangulate the angle from them, but I’m also sympathetic to people not having Ring cameras because I absolutely do not want a Ring camera) but I can see how the shifting perspectives would be more of a taste thing, I do tend to enjoy that kind of storytelling for some reason. 100% agreed on Streets of Fire, Madigan was also great in a far more conventional role in Rebuilding which was the only other movie I watched last week, thus making it officially Madigan Week.
Oh, I hate Ring cameras too! Evil fucking devices. But this is the burbs, and somehow there being just enough cameras to get a bit of creepy footage and none to actually track the kids (zero on the witch house street apparently!) is half-assery to save a plot point.
Ha, I get you now. I didn’t even consider that cameras from houses other than the ones belonging to the affected families might be helpful, hahaha.
Update on Holly Head: Yeah they’re great recorded too!
For a Few Dollars More – I looked at my Letterboxd review from 2018, and everything I said then still stands: not as good as the other two in the set, but still very good with a great performance by Van Cleef to go with Eastwood. Probably could have stood some editing, but Leone generally knew what he was doing.
Elementary, “A Giant Gun, Filled with Drugs” – The title refers to the great John Hannah as Sherlock’s former dealer, who needs our hero’s help to find his daughter, kidnapped by the druglords Hannah stole from some years back. But of course he’s spent all the money on gambling. The mystery is almost besides the point, as this is pretty much about Sherlock confronting his past and the temptation that goes with it. The show is really starting to hit its stride as one about addiction and recovery as much about detective and mystery. Plus Holmes references two cases from the short stories, and his monograph about 140 types of cigarette ash. Plus Hannah states “I believe in sherlock Holmes,” a reference to a meme from the other Sherlock Holmes show of the time starring Jonny Lee Miller’s former Frankenstein co-star Benedict Cumberbatch. I wonder what happened to him.
MASH, “The Korean Surgeon” – A North Korean army surgeon POW with training in Chicago plots with Hawkeye and BJ to get fake papers and become a Korean-American doctor. The plan doesn’t work, but really it never should have. Meanwhile, Frank is first a jerk to the North Korean doctor, and then fooled by two other North Koreans who trick him into thinking they are South Korean medics in need of supplies. Entertaining if you don’t think very hard about the holes in the logic. Though strictly speaking, it is very possible that an American-educated Korean who came home after WWII would be forced by the North to serve. Soon Tek-Oh makes his third appearance on the show as the doctor, and the North Korean infiltrators are played by Robert Ito (at this point a regular on Quincy) and Larry Hama, at this time still an actor (like Soon Tek-Oh he was in the original cast of Pacific Overtures) but also at the start of his legendary career as a comic book writer and artist.
One of the fun parts of watching the Dollars Trilogy all in one go is seeing Van Cleef effortlessly shift from playing a decent, likeable good guy to a hard villain without missing a beat. He was one of the best to ever do it.
More Bob’s Burgers, getting into season four. One thing I initially found frustrating was that Gene and Louise tended to get very little pushback for their chaos, and that’s definitely fallen away as a problem. I particularly like that the writers recognise that the funniest and sweetest plots to throw Louise into are the ones that threaten her self-image as impenetrably tough; my favourite of all of them has been Bob discovering that Louise looks up to him and intends to take over the restaurant business after him, and he good-naturedly teases her about it (“Are ya gonna call it ‘Louise’s Burgers’?).
I also enjoy how much Tina sticks out from the tone of the show; not that she doesn’t fit at all, but that she expands it slightly, represented even by her voice being very different in tone rather than the rapid-fire back-and-forth (even though she does fit into that). There’s the sense that she really believes in things, which is mostly played for laughs obviously but also is often seen as a character strength – her belief in the Thundergirls thing being part of this, as she sincerely loses faith in it but regains it by the end of the episode. This makes her very different from Louise, who believes only in her own self-gratification, and even Gene, who has no principles at all beyond The Bit, but even Bob, who likes to talk big but can be beaten down by just about anything.
The Running Man, Edgar Wright version — against all odds, an adaptation that is as bad and maybe even worse than Shane Black’s Play Dirty. As expected, Glen Powell is horribly miscast, but he is also just horribly directed and conceived as a character — he’s the world’s angriest man! He’s just a lil goofus! He JUST WANTS HIS KID BACK. And this and pretty much everything is on Wright, who was wrong for the material from the start and spends two very long hours proving it. It’s possible to imagine Wright directing something like the first Running Man adaptation, which emphasized the game show and cut out most of the world-building and politics; a guy whose best work examines the intersection of pop culture consumers with pop culture could have a lot of fun there (Katy O’Brien is the only person to come out unscathed here and she is playing in this mode for much of the movie, and interestingly the one real memorable moment of violence comes for her). But the pop culture Wright pulls from here is soul music and zines, shit he knows nothing about and whose valor he steals because he’s trying to portray revolution, something he knows nothing about.
Every punch is pulled here, in particular the infamous ending that Wright not just sets up only to shy away from, but makes an extremely bullshit feint toward in the beginning, making the Network building have two giant towers. This winking cutesy crap, a nod to just why the book’s ending has been assumed to be verboten for 25 years, is far more offensive than actually filming the ending. Instead Wright adds a scene that can only be called Adult Home Alone, a guy boobytrapping his house for invaders that is shot and edited and scored in Cornetto Wright style, it would be funny in one of those movies and here it is just bafflingly bad, Wright’s instincts to film this show he knows his strengths and decided to work against them in the rest of the movie anyway. There is one interesting conceit here — the breakdown between spectator and subject, how everyone is potentially a “reality TV” star, and there is an effective runner of “stop filming me!” that plays very well today — but in this future of drone cameras and videophones and self-driving cars, there is apparently no internet and clearly no social media, King’s 1970s future (which had a lot of this stuff and is pretty solid as a setting) largely intact. So any satire on this end is toothless and weird, and that’s before the unbelievably dogshit ending, which as mentioned chickens out on the book’s action but also the book’s power, its momentum building to a full stop bang. Here it just goes on and on, phoniness increasing with every minute as the good guys win out with no pain or loss. Wretched, wretched shit, Wright has not only lost his fastball but his sense and sensibility. I will support any dystopian Network that creates an actual director’s jail to throw him in.
No plans to see this – though I heard Cera is good in it, happy to hear O’Brien gets the highlight – but great writeup of a bad movie. Reminds me to read the book.
Hacks, “No New Tricks”
Ava relishing how cool and progressive she is for dating a sex worker—whom she keeps reducing to his job—is already some cringe comedy at its finest, and then throwing in the curveball of her deep boner-killing shame at finding out he’s also an aspiring magician is absolutely brilliant. Deborah’s aborted romance arc leans more into drama than comedy but works very well on that front, and I like that it winds up adding some potential long-term complications in the form of Nico’s outraged fanbase.
It’s great to have more Marcus this season, as he’s staying better-adjusted—at least for now, but hopefully for good—while finding ways to integrate Deb back into his life in a way that works for him; the two of them becoming business partners in restoring a vintage casino is a great move.
Marty is low-key one of my favorite parts of the show, so I was thrilled to have him make another appearance here.
Slow Horses, “Incommunicado” and “Tall Tales”
Roddy is so wrapped in such a thick cotton batting of narcissism and delusion that he’s almost impossible to psychological destabilize or intimidate; this is an inspired move on the show’s part, and Christopher Chung seems like he’s having a blast playing all Roddy’s Roddiness to the hilt.
Really like Lamb’s line about how River’s no good to him still fighting the last war. (Or last series, as it were.)
Love the team springing into surprisingly well-oiled action by picking up on all the clues buried in Lamb’s hinted-to-be-true anecdote and turning an improvised flamethrower on the Dogs to get out of their lockdown. Great, fun sequence, and I love how it makes a monologue into (literal) storytelling action.
Taskmaster, “A creepy bit of advice”
“Well, when I was very young, my dad told me you should be able to wink so that only the person you’re winking at knows you’re winking.”
“Wow. What a creepy bit of advice.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way: it sort of felt like we were watching someone playing a game in an old people’s home.”
“Yeah. I have taken it the wrong way.”
“If I hadn’t consistently eaten pies my whole life, I might be able to run.”
“Skin color?”
“Is that a shape?”
“I haven’t said this in twenty series, but I sort of think you should be removed from the show.”
“What happened to change your mind that this was a bit of you?”
“I realized that when I said, ‘Ah, this is a bit of me,’ it was just … steps.”
“…Wank?”
“I never thought I would say a grown man discard a child’s play letter and say, ‘I,’ and internally go, ‘Ah, he’s so cool.”
“That’s a lovely bit of work. Once you’ve all gone, we’ll re-record that with me saying it.”
Reverse task ownage: Armando and Joanna’s horse drawing. (“The only way that’s a horse is if it were painted seconds after it was hit by a bazooka.”) My wife and I laughed so hard at this that we were in pain.
Near task ownage: Kumail’s oh-so-cool journey up the stairs—only undone by the in-studio realization that he’d accidentally gone up two steps without dropping a letter.
Actual task ownage: Amy Gledhill’s freakishly good snooker cue balancing act.
Betrayal: Kumail’s reaction to Joel’s gleeful theorizing that he might have outdone him.
Favorite callback: Everyone’s enthusiastic reaction to Greg stealing Joel’s wink/wank joke.
Ladybug Ladybug
Precise and powerful, with all the measured lucidity typical of 1960s realism. This mosaic film shows what happens when an ordinary semi-rural school gets an alarm warning them of an imminent nuclear strike. The adults have to contain their own terror and anxiety to try to get the children home safely; though they want to do this without frightening them, inevitably, the strangeness and danger of the situation seeps through. This is about a lot of things, in the low-key way realism often is: about what it’s like to have to prepare for disaster when you are almost but not entirely certain it’s coming, about the delicate surreality of life on the brink, about what the world passes down to its children, about panic, about authority, about empathy. There’s a very brutal turn here that’s much more effective for never showing us a melodramatic reaction to it.
A Photograph
I recently got a region-free Blu-ray player, and I tested it with my BBC Play for Today box set and this low-key but dread-infused bit of folk horror, where John Stride plays a cultural commentator, luxuriantly full of himself, who receives a photograph in the mail. It’s only two girls in front of a caravan, but there’s no message and no obvious explanation, and his wife—already psychologically fragile and aware of how little he truly cares about her—seizes on it, interrogating it from every angle as potential evidence of his adultery. Stride’s character, who has some reason to be nervous, starts investigating too, and it all leads to something that was inevitable from the first frame but remains surprising in execution. Weird, chewy, engaging material, with the folk horror more explicitly grounded in class concerns than usual.
Gotta check out this last one.
Oh, my lack of surprise that Ava would date someone for the coolness pedigree!
Yeah, “the very brutal turn” in Ladybug Ladybug feels a part of, not outside of, the film’s realism. Not an easy feat to pull off, and avoids the melodramatic moments that often lessen the power of similar 1960s films about nuclear anxiety, such as Panic in Year Zero! (1962).
The way she instinctively pulled the sheet up over her chest when she found out was hysterical.
I also cracked up at “The name was fake but I swear the love was real!” and the demand of Ava to find “a new Sunday boy”.
The Last Wave – Nearly as hypnotic and ambivalent in it’s mystical imagery as Picnic at Hanging Rock (though both are on the side of “something is happening and you don’t know what it is”) if not quite as successful. Tricky balance found here of David possibly being Mulkulrul – Chamberlain has the right energy, like Michael York, of an unmacho Englishman whose anima shines across his face – and still having the barrier of whiteness. Another lawyer who works with Aborigines chides him for romanticizing them. One could counter spiritual energy always chooses strange bedfellows, whether carpenters, shoemakers, or barristers. What David does with this energy, however, echoes his ancestors, trying to make sense of what may never be rational, and in fact belongs to a different time and people entirely.
Dust Bunny – Drags a lot in the middle or I’d love it more but COLOR! COSTUMES! THIS IS WHY I WATCH BRYAN FULLER. The fairy tale logic here worked well – the monster will eat whatever is on the wooden floor boards, but only at night, and it’s built out of a combination of stop motion and CGI which feels the right amount of cartoonish and textured – and I liked the very Hannibal messaging here. This is your monster; live with it as best you can.
Hell yeah The Last Wave! I think you’re right that this isn’t as wholly uncanny as Picnic but it’s also coming from a different direction. Picnic is the fundamental lack of understanding from the colonizers, Wave adds guilt to the mix — David knows his people did not see the original inhabitants of the land as people, all the better to destroy them, and thus he overcompensates by trying to include them in his (aka the liberal, rational) definition of people who are all bound by the same law. But this is its own lack of understanding.
David says men must be more important than laws, in his logic, and Charlie and Chris insist that no, the law is the thing. Apparently the two Aborigine actors virtually wrote this scene and it tracks, to see people as bound by law is to see them as valued by it when what’s important especially for Charlie are the codes themselves, protecting them FROM men.
What did we play?
I bought the Monster book for Draw Steel so I can run it as a Director. It’s incredibly well-put together – it seems almost like you can build encounters with plug-and-play. And I’m not much of a lore guy, but there’s some cool lore here; they embrace the tragic origin of Medusa, for one thing, and I enjoy their idea of Shadow Elves as aliens descending to this world to invade it under the (possibly mistaken) belief their world is dying. I also love their distinction between demons and devils; the former are monstrous, whilst the latter are clerks and magistrates and other more Lawful things to go with their lawful nature. It’s pretty much a very well-thought-out system that simplifies the whole process.
Still Slay the Spire 2, now going through multiple Ascension levels with the Defect. I’m working on beating level 6 now, which is higher than I ever got on the original game: is this Early Access sequel a little bit easier, or have I actually gotten slightly better? I should replay some of the original to compare the two. Either way, while the various Ascension challenges hurt–the loss of complete healing after boss fights is probably the biggest problem so far–I’m pleased that I’m mostly grappling with them, even if a run’s success is probably still a little too dependent on getting good luck in terms of cards and relics.
Marvel Cosmic Invasion on Nintendo Switch (demo)
Finished the demo, which consists of the first two levels of the game. I beat them with Wolverine and Spider-Man, guessing correctly that they would play much like in previous Marvel beat ’em ups, but better. Wolverine even looks a lot like he does in the Marvel vs Capcom games, even though this is not a Capcom game. Plays a little like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, but a little slower and more methodical, which is good since I wouldn’t want those two games by the same team with virtually the same art style to play the same. Anyway, this is fun. Looking forward to get the full game down the road.
Hollow Knight on Nintendo Switch
Barely had time to play, but I did find an area I’d overlooked, where I beat the Emraged Guardian. Got an extra health point for my troubles.
Great stuff already. Really like the look at how these relationships are delineated with economy, and it’s especially interesting coming from the last scene of Star Wars, where we ended with these people giving medals to each other — not just cheery and triumphant but conclusive in its aesthetics, maybe the Olympians come down from the podium to practice again but we sure don’t see that. The leap into grunt work here is really well done. And I love the look at Artoo’s sound, the best part in any Star Wars movie is when he gets shot and goes “WEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” but like you say, every noise he makes has character (and huge props to Anthony Daniels’ Bob Newhart work on the other end to help construct this).
Artoo’s weird noises are gonna come again later in the week. It’s interesting just how weird the sounds are in comparison to anything you see today, even in Andor.
And thanks.
I didn’t know that about Mayhew delivering his lines in English! That’s a smart decision, and I’m sure it adds to the rapport we can pick up on between Han and Chewbacca that Ford actually had real dialogue to react to.
I do think the children’s film vs. family film distinction is worth drawing, especially because the diminishing presence of the family film as its own beast feels like a problem for the cinematic landscape; a good family film is a kind of open artistic space for growing up without being specifically focused on the mechanics and emotional experiences of growing up, the way the YA/teenage equivalents are, and it’s unifying rather than atomizing. SW has gotten increasingly atomized as it’s been franchised more and more, and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t, but this was definitely the peak of the opposite approach working.
I genuinely didn’t know until like last month, when I saw videos of it.
https://youtu.be/FD9rlb1QAqM?si=KQs2MdMG9V13vcJd
https://youtu.be/wJY6CzC7JqA?si=CbM9W_c8-9gk6cZa
Re family find: that’s something I often think is underrated in making youth works; I think kids are far more willing and able to identify with adults than they’re given credit for, and indeed it’s probably healthy that they have ‘complete’ models of a person to understand the world through.
As a kid, I was a lot more engaged by stories about adults than by stories about kids. The latter more or less spoke down to me, anyway. Heck, when I was a teen, I read the comic starring Firestorm, who was a composite of a teen and a very stiff adult, and the adult was always my favorite of the two.