A promise to keep with an old friend

Sorry about the delay in getting something new up here; I actually had the beginnings of something written that would have sufficed well, if only I hadn’t tried to drag it out into another topic, and gotten irretrievably bogged down. Live and learn, as they say. Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with short and to the point, a lesson I mean to put into action immediately.

Tonight, I finally made good on my threat, and saw The Clone Wars, some two weeks after opening night. For a “real” Star Wars movie, this would be unforgivable foot-dragging, but given what this film is, I’m happy to have managed the enthusiasm to have seen it in the theater at all.

What I am about to say is not colored by any opinions other than my own. I saw the film alone (my wife wanted to see Babylon A.D., I wanted to see Clone Wars, so we decided to have an anti-date), and have scrupulously avoided reading any film reviews since coming out of the theater.

I liked it. I did not love it, but I liked it.

For me Clone Wars fulfilled the First Commandment of all Star Wars films, and yea, all action movies: Thou Shalt Be Fun. For those of you who were expecting it to be a key part of The Saga, capital T, capital S, you will be disappointed. If you want great character development and background to the Prequel characters, look elsewhere. If you want a great lightsaber duel, don’t bother — computer animated characters just don’t have the oomph that real people do in a saber duel. And if you want an intricate plot, you should definitely stay home.

But, if you just want to buy another hour and a half in that world, if you want to get a glimpse at some pretty impressive 3d animation — at least from a texturing standpoint — and if you want to watch some pretty nifty action sequences, particularly in the realm of Star Wars land battles, then by all means saddle up and go forth.

Let me elaborate on the good points briefly, in a spoiler-free kind of way. For one thing, many of the environments felt like Star Wars. There was a great attention to detail in things like lighting and texture. The environments were fairly realistic looking, and that gave it the feel of a real place. That’s one thing that I loved about Star Wars. I can practically smell the dawn air when the Falcon lands on Bespin, and a few of the landing pad sequences in the prequels were similarly evocative — not bad for something done with a blue screen set and a room full of computers, in the case of the latter, or with a masterfully-done matte painting, in the former case. Clone Wars also has that sort of attention to detail, on more than one occassion.

The animation wasn’t just evocative; it was almost artistic in a few places. Granted, what they’ve shown us in the trailers hasn’t seemed that impressive. Despite that, I found there to be an incredible attention to detail when it comes to texturing. I was counting facial pores in some of the close-ups, which I wasn’t expecting. The starships and backgrounds were spot-on; so much so they would have passed muster as live-action visuals if they’d been rendered photo-realistically. In fact, we may find out one day that much of it was taken from the database of CGI animation prepared for the Prequels, and “dumbed down” visually for this film. 

In contrast to this were the characters themselves. As realistic as the ships and skylines were, the characters looked as if they were carved wooden marionettes. It’s okay once you get used to it, and I know they were going with that style largely because they wanted to tie-in stylistically with the earlier Clone Wars cartoons. But I couldn’t get over the exquisite irony that these crudely-formed characitures were interacting with these incredibly detailed starships, backgrounds and props. In short, it was the sort of thing George is usually guilty of, times ten: give a quick once-over to the characters and story, then spend two years trying to get the backgrounds just so.

I won’t waste words on the plot, particularly since it exists in this film merely as a device to hang action sequences on. That’s okay, though, because a few of the action sequences are really cool. There’s one land battle that has a very innovative and visually exciting twist. And as someone drawn to the hardware and engineering in the Star Wars films, it’s really cool to see all of those tanks and weapons that were designed for the Prequels that we only saw for a few seconds finally getting a good workout. 

At the end of the day, nobody should expect Clone Wars to win any fan favorite polls. But it is new Star Wars — a topic I have preached on before. And it is moderately fun to watch, yea, even enjoyable. It’s purpose was to whet our appetites for the 100-episode animated series that will follow from it.

Guess what? The bait worked. When the series finally debuts, I’ll be watching.

"I am feeling very Olympic today"

This post will be all over the place, I’m afraid. I don’t have long to post this morning, so I should just wait, I suppose. But my internal calendar seems to have selected Saturday mornings as my blogging time, since that’s when I get the strongest urge to update. And after all, who am I to argue with the voices?

First, the Olympics. Last night, my wife and I indulged in our regular Olympic ritual of celebrating the start of the Olympic Games. Typically, this involves nothing more elaborate than having a good meal, and watching the opening ceremonies. Last night was no exception. We indulged in a family tradition known as a “floor picnic,” wherein we prepare a bunch of finger food, spread out a blanket on the floor, and eat in front of the TV. Last night was special because we welcomed a new member to our Olympic Appreciation Society — our 11-year-old daughter, who found the opening ceremonies just as fascinating and wondrous as we did. Of course, this was aided by the fact that China’s opening ceremonies last night were without a doubt, the best that have ever been done. Period.

There’s a lot that I love about the Olympics. I know there are ugly bits; it is, after all, a massive sports competition, and sports can be a very nasty affair. And I know all about the doping scandals, the over-commercialization, the corruption, “… et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.” Wherever there are shiny prizes, there are men and women who will cheat to win them.

But one of the main things I love is the fact that the Games give us just a little taste of world unity. For two weeks every two years (counting both Winter and Summer games), the world gets a little bit smaller. There are few things that capture the attention of the entire planet at one time the way that the Olympic Games do. We’re a long way from the ideal of an Olympic truce, as the events in Georgia clearly demonstrate. But even a little glimpse of the nations of the world peacefully co-existing, competing, and even co-operating, is intoxicating.

I want to throw out a quick, two-sentence movie review. My wife and I saw “The Dark Knight” on Thursday. Words cannot express how excellent this film is. The late and lamented Heath Ledger will own the Joker character for a very, very long time indeed. And it definitely exceeds it most worthy parent film, “Batman Begins.” 

Okay, that was three sentences. Sorry.

By the Way, I am back to being indifferent about “The Clone Wars” release. I still plan on seeing the film, but I have very low expectations for it.

Finally, you may have noticed a few changes in the appearance of this blog. I was growing to dislike the green theme, and wanted to add some graphics. I find graphic design fun, when I have the time to indulge in it, so expect tweaks and changes for some time to come. By the way, the sunrise photo is my own, taken from a car as I travelled in Eastern Colorado.

I’m also already starting to fall out of love with the blog’s title. It doesn’t have quite the feel that I want. Also, there’s no way I can confine myself to blogging just about Star Wars. So, I’m open to suggestions on a suitable replacement.

Let me know if you agree or disagree about the Olympics, whether or not you liked “The Dark Knight,” or if you think I should drop the title in favor of a less fandom-specific one.

A brave new world, and a somewhat flawed older one

Well, here we are two weeks later, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the response I’ve gotten. I don’t know if it’s a case of encouraging the new guy, but I’ve been gratified that people have actually commented. I’m starting to see how this whole blogging thing works — people leave comments on your sight, and you leave comments on theirs. Kind of like e-mail, only slower, less personal and open to lots of people.

By the way, I want to publicly thank Thora, who’s partially responsible for getting me into blogging in the first place, for listing my blog on her blog. I promise to return the favor as soon as I figure out how.

A while back, I got a free audio book copy of Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Betrayal. Now anything that has three titles should be treated with some suspicion, and any book named Betrayal is pretty much guaranteed to be a downer. Also, I’ve done some research — Legacy of the Force is a nine-volume series, of which Betrayal is the first of the series. My guess is that Legacy was made available for free as a way to pull you into buying the other eight. Clearly, George is now employing a former crack dealer as his marketing director.

Nevertheless, a free audiobook is a free audiobook, and I do spend a lot of time in the car. I spent the weekend doing technical things with my iBook (I’m a rabid Mac junkie, by the way), trying to convert and combine the various MP3 files into a single file for my iPod (yep — total iPod geek, too. Had one before I had my Mac). I succeeded, and by this posting, have listened to about an hour and a half out of six.

To my chagrin, I haven’t had the time or desire to read much of anything lately. So I suppose there’s some little bit of embarrassment that the first thing I pick up in months is a Star Wars novel. After all, when you have a limited time to read, you should make your time count. There are limitless volumes from the wellsprings of human wisdom that should be occupying my attention. Instead, I pick up a space opera pastiche.

But at the same time, I am a firm believer that while expanding your tastes is a noble goal, you should also not turn your back on that which is merely fun. And, at the moment, Star Wars is very fun for me. I only wish Star Wars fiction were of a better quality.

The book I’m “reading” now is deep in the established canon of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Now, I don’t care for the EU canon, and never have. I know that Timothy Zahn’s novels, which are the cornerstone of the EU, have Clone Army-sized legions of fans, and reports I’ve read have said he is a terribly nice man; a very good thing in my book. But that does not alter the fact that I dislike his creation intensely, and rue the fact that it has come to dominate the EU.

There are, to my knowledge, few if any EU novels that don’t have Zahn’s fingerprints on them, and Betrayal is no exception. I intensely dislike the character of Mara Jade, yet she is Luke’s wife. I am indifferent to the Solo children, and to Luke and Mara’s own progeny, yet the Legacy series seems to largely be about them. As a side note, Leia is still protected by the Noghri bodyguards, another of Zahn’s creations, although they play little part in the story so far.

In fact, I have recently learned that Zahn had originally conceived the Noghri as the Sith race, and Vader’s breath mask was to be a stylized representation of the Noghri’s general facial features. Thankfully, Lucas had more in mind for the Sith than this, and shut the idea down cold.

This lamentable tendency among some of the early EU authors to try and carve off huge slices of the film’s canon to serve their own creations is one symptom of what I dislike the most about the Star Wars EU novels — many have an overly exaggerated opinion of their own importance. For instance, I realize that, dramatically, a great hero requires a great villain, and that a new ancillary character needs to at least be on a par with our heros for them. But I was never able to make myself that Prince Xizor, painted as one of the most powerful men in the galaxy, was anywhere near in the same class as his supposed rival, Vader; or that Zahn’s Grand Admiral Thrawn was remotely as nigh-omniscient as his creator made him out to be. And I resented the way that Steve Perry kept inventing ways to make Dash Rendar vitally important to the established Star Wars characters in Shadows of the Empire.

I could go on about my objections to the EUs, but it would quickly become as tiresome as I find some criticisms of the prequel trilogies. The fact is that millions of fans love the EU books. While I am not one of them, you shouldn’t lightly slam someone else’s tastes.

There seems to be a growing tendency among Star Wars fans to complain about any new story in our chosen universe, even when it comes from Lucas himself. I unabashedly plead guilty to that. Sturgeon’s law, created (or at least popularized) by science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, holds that “ninety percent of everything is crap.” While I think that’s an overly harsh exaggeration, it makes the point that not everything can or should be expected to be at the same level as the best of its breed.

That sounds like a rationalization, and probably, it is. The bottom line is that I’d rather enjoy Star Wars than not enjoy it. By the same token, I'd rather enjoy life than not enjoy it. My natural tendency is to pick something apart until I reach the point where I wondered what I ever saw in it in the first place. There comes a time when you have to overlook the flaws, glaring as some may be, and try to find the good things. This holds true for movies, music, books, painting, sculpture, dance, television shows, and most especially, people. 

Well, that was fast

I hadn’t even put up the last post when I got an e-mail from starwars.com urging me to check out the complete new look for the Official Site. Sure enough, the collecting stuff has been de-emphasized, and the site is back to giving you things to read and look at. In short, it no longer looks like an online catalog of Star War kitsch.

Now, I’d love to take credit for showing George the error of his ways, but since the new site went live before my last post even left my computer, I can only assume the collective non-traffic of my fellow fans to the existing website caused the change.

Of course, I’ve seen George fix websites that I thought were perfectly fine, so maybe this is just a case of him fixing something whether he thinks it is broken or not. You know how much he loves to tinker.

So what's the consensus? Does anybody like the new site?