Six Weeks Are Enough(?)
Dec. 6th, 2019 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWith all the diversions that chew up my free time, blocking out enough of a weekend to watch a movie can feel the sort of “accomplishment” that requires quotes around it. However, doing that six times in a row late in the year to go through my Star Wars saga Blu-Ray set once again never seems hard (even if I can remember fitting all six movies into a weekend some years ago; if not the “one-day marathon” I saw fellow fans report achieving, it did seem to increase the emotional impact). A few questions building on “how much discussion of ‘pop culture’ is ostensibly grown adults still dwelling on the things they took in as children?” do swim to mind. That, however, might be a distraction from a further complication of just the past few years.
“Six weekends” might be a long stretch of time compared to other personal movie-viewing efforts, but I kept it to that by not following up with any of the Disney productions supposed to reach a major point this very month. That’s a choice or two I can envision others not making, not to mention hurling an accusation on the lines of “you somehow convinced yourself you’re not offended by the prequels, but keep turning away from just a second viewing of The Force Awakens?” It is a juxtaposition. I’m stuck admitting the pre-release insinuations the movie would excel just for having a lot of workshop products right in front of the cameras put me on the wrong foot even before “everyone” else’s ecstatic first reactions. Seeing it myself some days after opening night meant a barrage of “snappy dialogue,” but at its very end I might have been poised on an edge of “let yourself yield; it wasn’t smilingly hostile to half its predecessors.” Just a few hours after that, though, the thought had snuck up on me the returning main characters of the old movies presumably venerated to the point of reproduction didn’t seem that well off...
It is weaselly to claim “I’m not opposed to questioning heroism and seeking out its weak points to build something more profound in every case”; that much might seem implied by the Star Wars movies I did watch. Still, along with the idea “an unhappy ending for that first generation was baked in from the beginning, but there a better resolution was already set up,” I do find myself contemplating Luke’s own “wise mentors” were open to “why didn’t they tell him?” questions at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, three years after the original Star Wars (with explanations just beginning about “Episode IV: A New Hope” now being attached to it). More than thirty years passed before Return of the Jedi and its predecessors now had to be interpreted as “whatever they did learn, it wasn’t enough.”
As for “just wait to put everything together” (given I’m quite willing to “watch in numerical order”), I am able to suppose The Rise of Skywalker will be more of a crowd-pleaser than The Last Jedi, which could seem to me insistent on undercutting its action sequences as “worse than foolish” while pushing off any real development of alternatives to “elsewhere.” At the same time, this time I intend to look in advance at the judgments of people whose previous evaluations I’ve noted. The odds that’ll have me go to the movie are one thing; the odds I’ll then manage my own “how I learned to stop worrying and love the Disney trilogy” explanation are another.
Anyway, so far as “looking at a work considered complete” goes, this year I had a sudden new idea about that ever-controversial scene in The Phantom Menace where Qui-Gon takes “a midichlorian count” of Anakin. Accusations of “demystification” (and insinuations connection to the Force is just “in the blood”) have been countered before, but there’s a perhaps-subtler complaint about “quantifying strength in the Force” (without actually doing anything like, say, lifting an X-wing fighter out of mucky water). I’ve considered “it was a weakness of the Jedi by this point; if Obi-Wan and Yoda’s more mystical explanations are ‘correct,’ they were come to later in the story.” However, this still puts Qui-Gon on that hook of weakness where at most other points he seems to have as much “faith in the Force” as anyone. What I thought this time, though, was that he takes the count after hearing about Anakin’s enigmatic origin from Shmi. (I’ve looked at Joseph Campbell’s writings enough to understand the instantaneous connection a Western audience makes can be found in other places including world mythology, even if that audience isn’t altogether at fault for not knowing anything more.) He then connects the high number not to “great strength in the Force” but to “conceived by the midichlorians,” to which Mace Windu brings up “the prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the Force.” That now has me thinking Qui-Gon wasn’t “quantifying strength” but “seeking further evidence of an enigmatic origin,” something already included in “the prophecy” rather than just “a powerful Jedi.” Comparing the number to Yoda’s, of course, let people probably already offended by the comedy relief jump to a conclusion, but I’ll admit to already thinking Yoda’s own high count might have just been because he’s been around longer than anyone else. (It might also have been a trait of his species considering what I’ve heard about “The Mandalorian,” although I haven’t watched it. As with Amazon Prime Video, I’m stuck thinking “that company’s vast enough already to not get my further mite.” Of course, both Crunchyroll and Funimation are subsidiaries of multinational corporations by this point...)
“Six weekends” might be a long stretch of time compared to other personal movie-viewing efforts, but I kept it to that by not following up with any of the Disney productions supposed to reach a major point this very month. That’s a choice or two I can envision others not making, not to mention hurling an accusation on the lines of “you somehow convinced yourself you’re not offended by the prequels, but keep turning away from just a second viewing of The Force Awakens?” It is a juxtaposition. I’m stuck admitting the pre-release insinuations the movie would excel just for having a lot of workshop products right in front of the cameras put me on the wrong foot even before “everyone” else’s ecstatic first reactions. Seeing it myself some days after opening night meant a barrage of “snappy dialogue,” but at its very end I might have been poised on an edge of “let yourself yield; it wasn’t smilingly hostile to half its predecessors.” Just a few hours after that, though, the thought had snuck up on me the returning main characters of the old movies presumably venerated to the point of reproduction didn’t seem that well off...
It is weaselly to claim “I’m not opposed to questioning heroism and seeking out its weak points to build something more profound in every case”; that much might seem implied by the Star Wars movies I did watch. Still, along with the idea “an unhappy ending for that first generation was baked in from the beginning, but there a better resolution was already set up,” I do find myself contemplating Luke’s own “wise mentors” were open to “why didn’t they tell him?” questions at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, three years after the original Star Wars (with explanations just beginning about “Episode IV: A New Hope” now being attached to it). More than thirty years passed before Return of the Jedi and its predecessors now had to be interpreted as “whatever they did learn, it wasn’t enough.”
As for “just wait to put everything together” (given I’m quite willing to “watch in numerical order”), I am able to suppose The Rise of Skywalker will be more of a crowd-pleaser than The Last Jedi, which could seem to me insistent on undercutting its action sequences as “worse than foolish” while pushing off any real development of alternatives to “elsewhere.” At the same time, this time I intend to look in advance at the judgments of people whose previous evaluations I’ve noted. The odds that’ll have me go to the movie are one thing; the odds I’ll then manage my own “how I learned to stop worrying and love the Disney trilogy” explanation are another.
Anyway, so far as “looking at a work considered complete” goes, this year I had a sudden new idea about that ever-controversial scene in The Phantom Menace where Qui-Gon takes “a midichlorian count” of Anakin. Accusations of “demystification” (and insinuations connection to the Force is just “in the blood”) have been countered before, but there’s a perhaps-subtler complaint about “quantifying strength in the Force” (without actually doing anything like, say, lifting an X-wing fighter out of mucky water). I’ve considered “it was a weakness of the Jedi by this point; if Obi-Wan and Yoda’s more mystical explanations are ‘correct,’ they were come to later in the story.” However, this still puts Qui-Gon on that hook of weakness where at most other points he seems to have as much “faith in the Force” as anyone. What I thought this time, though, was that he takes the count after hearing about Anakin’s enigmatic origin from Shmi. (I’ve looked at Joseph Campbell’s writings enough to understand the instantaneous connection a Western audience makes can be found in other places including world mythology, even if that audience isn’t altogether at fault for not knowing anything more.) He then connects the high number not to “great strength in the Force” but to “conceived by the midichlorians,” to which Mace Windu brings up “the prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the Force.” That now has me thinking Qui-Gon wasn’t “quantifying strength” but “seeking further evidence of an enigmatic origin,” something already included in “the prophecy” rather than just “a powerful Jedi.” Comparing the number to Yoda’s, of course, let people probably already offended by the comedy relief jump to a conclusion, but I’ll admit to already thinking Yoda’s own high count might have just been because he’s been around longer than anyone else. (It might also have been a trait of his species considering what I’ve heard about “The Mandalorian,” although I haven’t watched it. As with Amazon Prime Video, I’m stuck thinking “that company’s vast enough already to not get my further mite.” Of course, both Crunchyroll and Funimation are subsidiaries of multinational corporations by this point...)