Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

After “Episode I” had followed “Episode VI” as an “anniversary theatrical re-release” (and scotched a certain residual suspicion the people at Disney would go only so far in acknowledging the Star Wars movies they’d bought as opposed to making themselves), I’d taken note of certain speculations as to what anniversary might be marked next. I’ll admit to once again pondering how two “divisible by five” marks would show up in the same year, even if I’d seen a comment or two about a “fortieth anniversary” re-release of The Empire Strikes Back back when it might only have been able to have been shown at the residue of drive-in theatres that had endured to that point. To be brief, I also have to admit that as we got closer to the next anniversary there were certain troubling thoughts of “the fall of the Republic” being too ominous an event to put on movie screens. However, a “twentieth anniversary” re-release wound up being announced for Revenge of the Sith, and I bought a ticket only to then recall certain dire predictions (not about the movie) from twenty years ago too.
( Revenge of the “sixth” )

Trying to turn off the alarm of my clock-radio for the weekend, quite by accident I snapped the radio on instead. While I was able to turn it off again after a few moments, I had an impression the few notes from the area classical music station I keep the radio turned to sounded familiar. I turned the radio on again, and found it playing the closing of “Parade of the Ewoks” from the Return of the Jedi soundtrack. Maybe it’s unfortunate I wouldn’t be able to recognise many pieces of older and therefore presumably more outright “classical” pieces, but it made for a nice surprise.

Last year I was surprised yet pleased to be offered one more chance to see Return of the Jedi at the movies for its fortieth anniversary. Closing out my post about that, though, I mentioned having “ambiguous thoughts” about just what future anniversaries of different Star Wars movies seemed more likely to be marked in the same way, given four of them paired up when counting anniversaries divisible by five. There was one more movie I didn’t mention at all.
( The bigger surprise )

Once more, I’ve watched my way through my Star Wars Blu-Ray set. The proof I can do this once a year is evident, but the extravagance of it when I think about watching other movies but hardly ever manage that does seem palpable as well. This year, too, I just happened to have seen Return of the Jedi once before.
( That difference aside... )

Several of the animated-in-Japan shorts bundled together as “Star Wars Visions” left me thinking I could watch them again; I haven’t found the time for even that much, though. It still got my attention again anyway when I saw announcements animation studios now from around the world would be contributing shorts to a new Visions series. The thought “man cannot live by anime alone” creeps back to me every so often, in between watching yet more anime anyway. I was conscious again of “animation” remaining what’ll get me to take in even a little bit of the “post-sale stuff” I’ve otherwise checked out on altogether. It took a while for me to get around to it, however. Even if the shorts might not be “canonical,” I was aware some of the previous ones had just happened to reiterate odds and sods tossed into the “Disney Space Movies.”
( The further Visions )

Specific plans for just how to “see a movie at the movies again” had shaped themselves in my mind for some time. After managing that, the impulse to go back to the movies and see the “fortieth anniversary re-release” of Return of the Jedi popped up much more all of a sudden. Not that long ago I’d been thinking more about how, at the end of last year, I’d at last got around to getting my family’s mid-1980s off-the-air videotape recording of the original Star Wars onto a recordable DVD, and how the commercial breaks we hadn’t yet been pausing through and the cuts for running time might have had their own small influence on me over the years. The restored sense that “seeing a movie at the movies” is, in fact, a different experience than watching it on even a largish TV could have made a difference there. So too, possibly, might have the caution that “Disney is just too all-encompassing a media company these days” being somewhat countered by fairly recent news. Beyond that, though, what really counted could have been the thought “by golly, the ‘Disney Space Movies’” (to borrow something from matril) “won’t be the last time I see something with the Star Wars name on it at the movies!”
( The return )

Enough political opinions get pushed into the fray online that I do try and keep my own often-definite preferences to myself beyond possible allusions. Today I do have to admit thoughts came to mind again to the point of my wondering if I could dare an oblique approach, if back to a point I made earlier this year.

Whether or not this has something to do with moping that I don’t feel as if I read science fiction the way I once did, since early in my life I’ve found stories where hereditary nobles wield apparently unconstrained power over interstellar states provoke feelings of resistance and suspicions of “there’s too much of this in the genre; I’d rather see varied and unusual (yet soft-focus?) speculation” in me. At the same time, I don’t seem troubled by real-life constitutional monarchies where the head of state appears to be a figurehead, and there’s one science fiction story where “royal titles” neither bother me nor get me working on suspicious interpretations. Beyond simple acceptance that “Princess Leia and Queen Amidala both seem devoted to public service,” I did start wondering if the fairy-tale overtones of “Star Wars isn’t suggested to be an evolution from here and now” keep me from supposing the Organas “seized control when democracy on Alderaan collapsed under its own weight.” At the same time, I suppose I’ve long been interested by an early suggestion the “election of the queen” on Naboo amounts to “formalized public approval of a ritual or even random selection.” The thought that “political objections to Star Wars” are one more way to distract from showing offence at “corniness instead of uninterrupted coolness” might only provoke as detailed a criticism as overt political content might, of course; there, maybe, I’m just stuck thinking back to how the group of “saga-positive fans” I managed to luck into at last over a decade ago was small enough people with different political opinions (of the time, unfortunately) had to get along with each other.

After quite a while thinking about it, I asked for the “compact edition” of the “Star Wars Archives” book retelling the story of the making of the three oldest movies in the franchise for a Christmas present. I then took six months getting around to mentioning that here, but one other thing did get in the way too. As I picked my way through the Archives (reading it with just a little awkwardness after discovering part of the endpapers is extended and folded around to “make the closed volume more solid” or something), I did happen on a notice of a brief publisher sale on its follow-up, which told the story of the making of the George Lucas trilogy for which I couldn’t tell myself “oh, I’ve already got J.W. Rinzler’s making-of books; I don’t need another expensive, hard-to-handle tome.” Deciding not to wait on the off chance of another “compact edition,” I ordered the “1999-2005” Archives.
( Coffee table book or coffee table? )

After watching my way through “Star Wars Visions” I was intent on returning to my Blu-Ray saga box set. I did, though, pause to take in a Urusei Yatsura movie with the impression I was seeing it alongside the episodes of that series that had been on TV at the time of its premiere; to say more about that will have to wait for my year-end “quarterly review.” As for saying something about the six Star Wars movies I watched again, though, I am a bit conscious of my choices getting squeezed from multiple sides now. It was something to finish the movies just after reading the concluding instalment of matril’s long-running “Star Words” on my reading page, but I do suppose the best I can hope for from other people on that page is polite silence.

As I grappled with all of that and wondered what else I might post about “before too long,” I did happen to see a news item that a rich Japanese man had bought a ticket on a Soyuz launch to the space station. It’s been ten years since I bought my Star Wars Blu-Ray set (and a Blu-Ray player and an HDTV to watch it with), but twenty since this form of commercial spaceflight began. (I did try to allude to it back in a MSTing I wrote.) Maybe that made the news a bit easier to just sort of accept than the other commercial flights this year, although I also fear the relative anonymity of the ticket-buyer might have helped reduce reactions. As for Yusaku Maezawa’s follow-up plans to travel out to the moon, though, I did get to remembering an article in the Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine about plans to send a Soyuz out that far, reprising the Zond missions of the late 1960s with people on board at last, that just seemed to evaporate in the end.

Announcements animation studios in Japan would be making some official Star Wars shorts did raise a particle of interest in me regardless of all the allusions I’ve made to pulling a personal ripcord and dropping away from Disney-stamped movies back to the ones that had been there before, a kettle of complications in itself. New computer-animated shows and “The Mandalorian” hadn’t got me watching, regardless of certain discourses wrapping right back around to “they’re inoffensive and therefore competently done; surely, things will build from there.” The possibility my interest in “Star Wars Visions” amounted to “but it’s anime!” was something to chew on.
( Personal connections and contemplations )
( The nine Visions )