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krpalmerMarking the calendar built into this journal on distinctive days can be enough of a temptation to get me scraping posts together, and the 29th of February is one of the more distinctive. The first time I was conspicuous enough to proclaim an “unpopular fandom opinion” was before I’d made it to a leap year here, but since then I’ve been linking them together. When I do, the majority of my thoughts have turned towards Star Wars. (As for the one opinion not in that specific category, in the eight years since admitting my “shipping glands” seem underdeveloped I might be a little better able to suppose particular fictional characters will have other people jumping at the chance to proclaim them romantic partners, and yet those realisations are still sort of abstract for me.)
As for the last time I just tagged a post here in my Star Wars category, I’d admitted the possibility of being drenched by another wave of praise for “a real crowd pleaser” and proclamations the ship had been righted that would then fade into insistences it had never listed at all. Things may not have worked out quite that way. Now, perhaps The Rise of Skywalker’s own “so what was the point of that beloved Original Trilogy beyond having been made with particular kinds of special effects and lots of snappy one-liners?” questions didn’t seem quite as obtrusive with The Force Awakens having already declared so many things had gone awry with so little explanation or exploration and that concluding movie feeling livelier than the relentless undercutting of The Last Jedi. Still, I wasn’t left at last in the mood to try and find “a nine-episode Skywalker Saga” more satisfying than the “six-movie saga” I’d seemed quite content with thinking complete.
That might be “unpopular” in itself for all that I very much want to avoid the thoroughly repellant resentments a distinct number of online complainers exude. (Some sequel-critical fans have made their own stands against that, although without noticing it I wound up blocked from liking the Tumblr posts of one of them.) However, a thought seemed to hit me late last year that might stand out far more. It’s not a conviction I’ve kept to myself for years, but at most the sudden articulation of someting that might have been a vague impression before. Still, it was a bit of a jolt when watching The Empire Strikes Back last year to wonder all of a sudden if its original Yoda puppet in sometimes just didn’t seem to “look consistent” with other scenes in the movie, perhaps most noticeable in the “hut” scenes. The most explanation I could think of was being “held differently.” That’s not the same as the “off-model Yoda” in The Last Jedi (or the puppet made for The Phantom Menace that wound up replaced with computer animation), but the thought does clash with certain loud proclamations about the wondrousness of things on set. The lone small way to defuse this I can think of is that if the impression only came to me now, it might go away in the future; I may only be interested in watching six movies, but I am interested in watching them again. Too, where once simultaneous “prequel dismissal” and “original exaltation” had brought out an unfortunate contrariness in me, current proclamations of fault with the originals for the sake of propping up the sequels may have done a bit to balance my feelings towards the six, something of a “silver lining” however unfortunate its cloud may be.
As for the last time I just tagged a post here in my Star Wars category, I’d admitted the possibility of being drenched by another wave of praise for “a real crowd pleaser” and proclamations the ship had been righted that would then fade into insistences it had never listed at all. Things may not have worked out quite that way. Now, perhaps The Rise of Skywalker’s own “so what was the point of that beloved Original Trilogy beyond having been made with particular kinds of special effects and lots of snappy one-liners?” questions didn’t seem quite as obtrusive with The Force Awakens having already declared so many things had gone awry with so little explanation or exploration and that concluding movie feeling livelier than the relentless undercutting of The Last Jedi. Still, I wasn’t left at last in the mood to try and find “a nine-episode Skywalker Saga” more satisfying than the “six-movie saga” I’d seemed quite content with thinking complete.
That might be “unpopular” in itself for all that I very much want to avoid the thoroughly repellant resentments a distinct number of online complainers exude. (Some sequel-critical fans have made their own stands against that, although without noticing it I wound up blocked from liking the Tumblr posts of one of them.) However, a thought seemed to hit me late last year that might stand out far more. It’s not a conviction I’ve kept to myself for years, but at most the sudden articulation of someting that might have been a vague impression before. Still, it was a bit of a jolt when watching The Empire Strikes Back last year to wonder all of a sudden if its original Yoda puppet in sometimes just didn’t seem to “look consistent” with other scenes in the movie, perhaps most noticeable in the “hut” scenes. The most explanation I could think of was being “held differently.” That’s not the same as the “off-model Yoda” in The Last Jedi (or the puppet made for The Phantom Menace that wound up replaced with computer animation), but the thought does clash with certain loud proclamations about the wondrousness of things on set. The lone small way to defuse this I can think of is that if the impression only came to me now, it might go away in the future; I may only be interested in watching six movies, but I am interested in watching them again. Too, where once simultaneous “prequel dismissal” and “original exaltation” had brought out an unfortunate contrariness in me, current proclamations of fault with the originals for the sake of propping up the sequels may have done a bit to balance my feelings towards the six, something of a “silver lining” however unfortunate its cloud may be.