Starting Around Again
Oct. 31st, 2018 07:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerReturning to a whole cycle of movies once a year, given I don't often carve out the time to watch other films (although I did get to the nearest cinema to see First Man earlier this month), can seem an extravagance. Even so, I have told myself that since I haven't taken in their spinoff narratives in print for quite a while (and now I'm not doing that in computer animation, either), watching "just" the six Star Wars movies in the saga set isn't that all-consuming. With that, though, does come the ambiguous admission that where just a few years ago I'd wondered about an expanded series finally becoming overwhelming to watch "in full" yearly, now the "Disney productions" aren't on my agenda. Last year I had started off by watching Rogue One on Blu-Ray and then proceeding in "production order," but this year for one reason and another I'm not quite interested in even that. Instead, after watching the saga one rather conventional way last year and trying the "hybrid" or "flashback" order again the year before, I was looking forward to the simple and strict "numerical order."
Being selective that way, though, ought to remind me some people were more selective, and may be selective now in a different way. There seems at least the chance a best-case reply to this very post might be "polite disagreement." Having thought at times "deliberate efforts of will have made or kept me positive, just because the noisiest alternative feels unappealing," I can suppose starting off there's always the chance something could go awry for me this time around. Even when that faded back as it's done before and I started contemplating I may be downright unapologetic, when that conviction isn't "quiet" it's "risky."
Still, the milder question "could someone start from absolute scratch and get up to speed this way?" feels hypothetical enough to me that I don't much dwell on it, even with the possibly positive hypothesis "it might be a surprise, too, for the conflicted protagonist who's emerged over these first three movies to not overcome his problems" (in the three-movie block that surprise hits in, at least). That in itself might not be solid enough to make even this deal of, though, and I did wonder whether if, in just having a pretty good time, I "wasn't hitting on any new insights." (When I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey again earlier this year, I did wonder all of a sudden if I might offer an "in-universe interpretation" of the sudden jumps in place and age of Dave Bowman's final moments before rebirth as him having in fact already ceased to exist physically somewhere along the "Star Gate." His consciousness would then be making the last steps needed before transcendence, even if this began to resemble a "retcon" Arthur C. Clarke had tossed into his last novel in his series where I'd still be perfectly happy to suppose the movie stretching to the point of "genuine interstellar travel, one way or another.") Then, though, in thinking "the polished elegance of Naboo, which isn't the only environment in this film, is a last remnant of a bright day already ending" and "this movie might not have an obvious and conventional central protagonist, but so what?" I got to wondering about "things feeling different in this opening act." Trying to get clear of that simple potential objection "attempts were made at course-trimming," I did consider older, simpler comments about The Empire Strikes Back looking different from the original Star Wars. It's nowhere near as complex as "ring theory," but there did seem something to drawing one parallel between two different starting points.
Being selective that way, though, ought to remind me some people were more selective, and may be selective now in a different way. There seems at least the chance a best-case reply to this very post might be "polite disagreement." Having thought at times "deliberate efforts of will have made or kept me positive, just because the noisiest alternative feels unappealing," I can suppose starting off there's always the chance something could go awry for me this time around. Even when that faded back as it's done before and I started contemplating I may be downright unapologetic, when that conviction isn't "quiet" it's "risky."
Still, the milder question "could someone start from absolute scratch and get up to speed this way?" feels hypothetical enough to me that I don't much dwell on it, even with the possibly positive hypothesis "it might be a surprise, too, for the conflicted protagonist who's emerged over these first three movies to not overcome his problems" (in the three-movie block that surprise hits in, at least). That in itself might not be solid enough to make even this deal of, though, and I did wonder whether if, in just having a pretty good time, I "wasn't hitting on any new insights." (When I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey again earlier this year, I did wonder all of a sudden if I might offer an "in-universe interpretation" of the sudden jumps in place and age of Dave Bowman's final moments before rebirth as him having in fact already ceased to exist physically somewhere along the "Star Gate." His consciousness would then be making the last steps needed before transcendence, even if this began to resemble a "retcon" Arthur C. Clarke had tossed into his last novel in his series where I'd still be perfectly happy to suppose the movie stretching to the point of "genuine interstellar travel, one way or another.") Then, though, in thinking "the polished elegance of Naboo, which isn't the only environment in this film, is a last remnant of a bright day already ending" and "this movie might not have an obvious and conventional central protagonist, but so what?" I got to wondering about "things feeling different in this opening act." Trying to get clear of that simple potential objection "attempts were made at course-trimming," I did consider older, simpler comments about The Empire Strikes Back looking different from the original Star Wars. It's nowhere near as complex as "ring theory," but there did seem something to drawing one parallel between two different starting points.