A Star Wars Retrospective: Star Wars: A New Hope

What can you say about the original Star Wars movie?  It's a film that is so beloved and was such a phenomenon upon its release and is such a classic with an amazing legacy that it is easy to forget George Lucas' somewhat quaint movie amidst a host of trilogies and spin offs.  But, at the time of its release, Star Wars nestled itself into world consciousness and the imaginations of a generation of people. It's easy for people to forget that there is a movie in the middle of the maelstrom that is the larger Star Wars phenomenon.

One of the remarkable things about Lucas' first trip to the Galaxy Far, Far Away is how it succeeds as an effortless bit of world building. Modern movies tend to feature clunky world building in service to profitable "shared universes" and "connected franchises" but the universe of Star Wars seems to have sprung out of George Lucas' weird preoccupations and unexpected genre mash-ups and the result is visionary and compelling and unlike anything before it (despite its clear debts to other movies).  It's a movie that starts in the middle of a larger story, throws you into a credible pre-existing world and trusts you to understand what is going on in a universe that is much more complex and rich than the simple narrative that unfolds.

Of course, much of the uniqueness of Star Wars rests with its bold and unexpected design thanks in large part to people like Ralph McQuarrie who were largely responsible for the movie's look.  We are so used to the imagery now but so much of the Star Wars visual style was just completely weird and unprecedented in 1977.  Ships like the Millennium Falcon, Imperial Star Destroyer or TIE Fighter would not have even been recognizable as spaceships.  Darth Vader is a bizarre asthmatic samurai robot thing who fights with a laser sword.  R2D2?  A trash can robot on wheels,  Jawas? Sandpeople? Space apes? It's no wonder they had a hard time getting this made.  It's a really weird movie with an iconography that is almost completely fresh.  Very few movies achieve this level of clear visual originality.

So it's no wonder that people went crazy for Star Wars when it was released.  It was completely different and therefore compelling.  And the story was fun and fast-paced and sweetly good-natured. Like Rocky the year before, it was the perfect remedy for late 1970's malaise and a contrast to the dark complex movies that dominated the decade. 

How does it hold up now, almost forty years and five movies later?  I'd say pretty well.  It still presents a unique world and for the most part the 1990's Special Edition changes have added to the movie's visual world through opening up some environments and subtly fixing some effects issues. The only addition I find objectionable is the added Jabba scene which presents a weirdly fatherly and mellow Jabba the Hutt.  

Now, the movie has its characteristic George Lucas flaws: poorly directed actors and painful dialogue.  While fans are quick to point these out in the prequel movies they are all over the original trilogy as well.   People tend to look at these movies with nostalgia blinders.  They are classics and wonderful movies but not perfect by any means.

For example, the character of Han Solo has not improved with age.  While many fans are Solo cultists, the character is grating to modern sensibilities.  It's kind of like going back and watching Friends and realizing that Chandler is kind of an awful person.  Han definitely comes off as kind of a douche.  He's basically rude to everyone around him and disrespectful and dismissive.  I mean, he literally refers to Obi Wan as an "old fossil."  He's blatantly sexist to Leia and treats C-3PO with vaguely homophobic disdain.  His wishie-washiness about participating in the Death Star attack also causes Biggs and a bunch of Rebel pilots to be killed. So, yeah, douche.

In terms of its place in the now six-film narrative, A New Hope jumps ahead twenty years after Revenge of the Sith.  The Empire is now ascendant and we hear the the Senate which was such a big part of the prequels has now been disbanded.  While the Emperor is given a shout out, this is the only Star Wars movie in which he does not appear.  

The now-adult daughter of Padme and Anakin, Princess Leia has been dispatched by her father Bail Organa to Tattooine to find Obi Wan Kenobi, who is hiding out there and watching over Luke Skywalker.  Upon her capture, Leia sends R2D2 and 3PO to find Kenobi, who has aged A LOT in twenty years (those suns, though) and doesn't seem to remember either droid despite having important interactions with both of them (although he does give R2 a rather knowing look.) Obi-wan's character is one that I feel is enriched by the prequels.  Watching the movies sequentially it almost seems that Alec Guiness has some of MacGregor's twinkle in his eyes, although obviously it is the other way around.  Anyway, Obi gives Luke a cursory Jedi training aboard the Falcon which is interrupted but their capture at the Death Star, last seen at the end of Sith under construction.  I guess it takes twenty years to build a Death Star.

Leia is rescued and Obi-Wan and Vader engage in what is a strangely low-energy lightsaber duel during which Obi-Wan is killed and vanishes into thin air, the trick to which Yoda referred right at the end of Sith.  Luke and the rebels attack the Death Star, blow it up and Vader escapes.  Chewbacca doesn't get a damn medal.

I was just a baby when Star Wars came out and didn't actually see it until years later on home video after having already seen at least The Empire Strikes Back and possibly Jedi (back before VHS really caught on, you had to see movies in the theater or catch them when they ran on TV).  I didn't have the experience of seeing the movie in the theaters until the Special Edition came out in 1997 but I definitely caught a lot of the Star Wars mania in the ensuing years, I just didn't have any context for it until I saw Empire but like many people my age, Star Wars was a huge part of my childhood even if it took me a while to catch up to the actual movie.

Patrick Garone
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A Star Wars Retrospective: Attack of the Clones

Attack of the Clones is the most schizophrenic of all the Star Wars movies and the one whose flaws most negatively affect its viewing.  While the movie has some really fun and thrilling sequences-the Obi-Wan/Jango fight, Anakin's search for his mother, the Yoda versus Dooku showdown, and the insanely action-packed Geonosis battle, to name a few, it also has a handful of scenes that are astonishingly, jaw-droppingly bad.  These scenes are much worse than anything else in Star Wars including all Jar Jar and Ewok scenes and mar what is otherwise a really fun movie which gleefully embraces its Space Opera elements and which amps up the action and adventure factor considerably from the slower and more plotty Episode I.

Of course, the objectionable scenes I am referring to are the "love story" scenes between Anakin and Padme which are tortuously melodramatic and overwritten. A lot of the blame for this gets placed on Hayden Christensen and he gets unfairly accused of being a bad actor but the real problem is with the script and direction.  That these scenes are even watchable is a testament to Christensen and Natalie Portman's heroic efforts. Christensen seems to have been directed into playing Anakin as some sort of James Dean-in-Space kind of character and it makes Anakin a little goofy at times.  He does however have some really nice moments (mostly when he isn't forced to mouth George Lucas' word salad) particularly when the story takes him and Padme back to Tattooine.  His discovery of his mother and subsequent slaughter of the Sand People is very effective and firmly puts him on the path to Vader-dom.  Unfortunately for Portman, without the stylized character and fun identity switch in The Phantom Menace, she has little to do in this movie other than be an ambivalent love interest.  She also straddles things.  She really straddles a lot of things in this movie.

Despite the awfulness of most of their sceenes, Anakin and Padme do share a couple of worthwhile moments in the movie.  First,  as the two are carted out into the Geonosis area, they share a silent silhouetted kiss.that really tells you all the things about them that a half dozen interminable dialogue scenes could not.  It's odd that a visual maestro like Lucas could not tone back the dialogue and tell more of this story in a purely visual way. Secondly, in the otherwise unwatchable series of Naboo romance scenes, Anakin and Padme talk briefly about politics and Anakin lets it slip that his ideal political system is a kind of dictatorship, which gives Padme a moment's pause while she figures out if he's kidding or not (he's not.)  This is one of the rare scenes between them that is skillfully written and illustrates their points of view and future conflict.  It is very revealing about Anakin and the fact that one of his greatest character flaws is that he sees things in a simplistic way. Our hero is not very bright, and that's okay.

In fact, people are quick to point out all sorts of things about Anakin in the prequels such as his whininess, the fact that he is arrogant, his creepiness, the fact that he's a mama's boy, as though these are problems with the movies.  Those are not problems, those are character traits that doom Anakin Skywalker to his fate. He's not really supposed to be a likable character.  It is more important that you feel for him and understand his downfall than that you like him.

The other half of the movie deals with Obi-Wan's attempts to investigate the attempted murder of Padme and plays like a detective story, which is a new and interesting genre for Star Wars.  This is the more fun half of the movie and takes Obi-Wan (and his space mullet) from the gritty underbelly of the urban world Coruscant, to a mysterious cloning operation on rainy Kamino, to Geonosis where he stumbles upon a plot that threatens to kickstart the Clone Wars.  One thing I will say about these scenes is that perhaps we see a little too much of the Star Wars galaxy which starts to look a little mundane when you are spending time in libraries, sports bars, and diners.  There's a fine line between Star Wars and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Once we get to Geonosis, though,  the movie moves into high gear and Attack of the Clones ends with a half hour of straight action as we witness the first battle of the Clone Wars.  First, we see something that we desperately wanted to see in the Prequels: a full on Jedi Power Battle as Mace Windu leads a squad of Jedi in an all out assault on Geonosis.  The movie keep layering cool stuff  on top of this: Yoda coming to the rescue with an army of clone troopers, Jango Fett battling Mace Windu, an EPIC ground and air assault, Anakin and Obi-Wan teaming up to duel Dooku, and ultimately, we get to see Yoda finally engage in not only a battle of force powers but a lightsaber (!) duel as well in a sequence that was so awesome that essentially the whole after release marketing plant resting on it (Yo-da man!)  While people like to snigger about Yoda's acrobatic lightsaber moves, I remember people watching the movie in the theater went NUTS during the scene when I watched it.

With all of the Star Wars movies there is a distinct brilliant to crappy ratio with which to contend and Attack of the Clones is the most dramatic example of this.  With Clones, one has to wonder if it would have been possible to make it a better movie with some selective editing.  For example, would drastically cutting down the Anakin and Padme Naboo scenes and selectively pruning dialogue throughout, make this a better movie?  It might be worth tracking down one of those turn-of-the-century fan edits to find out.

Join me next time for Episode IV (I had already recently recapped Revenge of the Sith here.)

Patrick Garone
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Westeros Community College: The Secret Targaryens

Spoiler Warning:  This post contains spoilers for all broadcast seasons of HBO's Game of Thrones, all published volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire, references to interviews, set reports, informed by wild speculation, and both fire and greenseer visions. 

Did you know that there are secret Targaryens in A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO's Game of the Thrones?  Well, officially there is one secret Targaryen, young Aegon, who has only shown up in George R. R. Martin's most recent novel, A Dance of Dragons but there is widespread doubt about his legitimacy.  The idea of secret Targaryens in the story is wrapped up in a couple of prophecies, both the foretelling of the "Prince Who Was Promised," which may or may not be related to the return of the mythical hero Azor Azai and also  Rhaegar Targaryen's elaboration on that prophecy that the "dragon will have three heads."  These are widely thought to mean that the end of the story will involve three Targaryens, one for each of Dany's dragons and that the Targaryen trinity will be involved in the  climactic battle against The Others.

So who are these three Targaryens?  Clearly, Dany is one of them.  The books would have you believe that this new Aegon Targaryen is one also but there is good reason to believe that he is an impostor propped up by Varys and Illyrio as part of their conspiracy to restore the Targaryens and competent leadership to the throne with an "even better than the real thing" impostor.  So, it is likely he is the "Mummer's dragon" about which Dany was warned.

For reasons that I have previously described, I believe Jon Snow is the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark.  Given this fact, and his importance to the story, I believe that he is the second dragon.  So, who is the third?

The popular guess is that Tyrion Lannister is, in fact, the third dragon in this scenario.  This is based mostly on sketchy book information such as his fascination with dragons, his light blond hair, and eye color.  Of course, Tyrion, is perhaps the most beloved character on in the series and with Dany and Jon, part of a trio of protagonists so it is natural to want to see them all ride dragons together into the sunset but this feels like wishful thinking to me.  Tyrion as a Targaryen would be a cheap twist that would undermine a lot of what has made the character compelling, namely his relationship to his house and father.

The only solid evidence from which this theory is drawn actually supports another character, or pair of characters.  In the books it is relayed through that incorrigible old gossip, Barristan Selmy that the mad king Aerys Targaryen was taken with Tywin Lannister's wife, Joanna, (the mother of Jamie, Cercei, and Tyrion) and even "took liberties with her" on her wedding night.  Some have speculated a long-standing affair in support of their Tyrion Targaryen theory but we just don't know.  All we do know is of one incident on Tywin and Joanna's wedding night.  It would seem then that it would be more likely that the twins would be secret Targaryens than Tyrion.  Beyond the "evidence," from a character and narrative point of view, this would be a much stronger and more dramatic choice.

For Tywin, it would explain a lot of his actions and attitudes toward the Mad King, which we pick up in bits and pieces throughout the books.  The two had once been close but seemed to have a complicated, antagonistic relationship later in life. According to the books, their conflicts were largely attributed to power struggles over Jamie and Cercei's roles at court. Not only did Arys refuse to marry Cercei to his son, Rhaegar but he drafted Jamie into the King's Guard essentially stealing him away from Tywin and denying the Lannister patriarch his chosen heir.  Ultimately, it was Tywin Lannister's actions at the end of Robert's Rebellion that led to the Mad King's death at Jamie's hand. It's not hard to imagine Tywin arranging things so that Aerys would be killed by his own son as a final response to the Mad King's initial insult of fathering a child on his wife.  This would be the Tywin Lannister version of a mic drop.

If Jamie and Cercei are not Tywin's children (although still Lannisters though their mother) then Tywin's only true born son would be Tyrion.  This explains some Tywin's frustration and anger with his children.  Of the three, the only one that is his trueborn is (in his eyes) unfit to be his heir because he is a dwarf.  Being Tywin, he is forced to put on a good face and present them as his own children.  Instead of undermining the Tyrion/Tywin relationship, this choice would actually enrich it with depth and dramatic irony.

Throughout the books, characters comment on how much Tyrion resembles his father in skill and intellect.  His aunt, Genna, even goes as far as to point out to Jamie that Tyrion is Tywin's "true son." In an offhand way, Tywin comments on his children's parentage on a couple of memorable occasions. He grudgingly tells Tyrion that he "cannot prove" that Tyrion is not his son.  On the surface, this simply means that as much as he would like it not to be the case, Tyrion is trueborn son.  It is interesting that this is something that he would even say.  Can he prove that his other children are not his own?  Tywin's famous last words to Tyrion, "You're no son of mine" are often interpreted as a confession that Tywin is not actually Tyrion's father but these words take on more power if Tyrion is Tywin's only trueborn son.

For Jamie, in particular, this theory  changes things.  He would have unknowingly killed his own father. He and Tyrion would have that experience in common.  He becomes Kinslayer as well and Kingslayer and his story takes on a new depth.  He and Cercei already share some Targaryen qualities such as a penchant for arrogance, incest, and madness.  Certainly, Joffrey would have fit right in with Aerys and the worst of the Targaryens.

This also means that for all of Robert's efforts to destroy the Targaryen line, there was one sleeping next to him every night, and Targaryens would sit on the Iron Throne after his death.  It also means that Cercei and Dany-two women who seem to be on a collision course in the story-are actually sisters.  Much more than the Tyrion as a Targaryen theorgy, the Targaryen Twins theory, infuse Martin's work with a sense of  the epic old-school Tragedy that is already part of the eclectic mix of ingredients that make up A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones.

Patrick Garone
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The Force Awakens Has Me Worried

Can you feel it?  There has been an awakening.

Last night a new trailer dropped for the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens.  Most people seem really psyched about it but it actually has me less excited than I was after the previous ones.  I have a nagging feeling that this movie is going to be a long fan-wank for middle-aged Star Wars fans (a group which includes myself.)

There are several things that stand out to me.  First, the villain, Kylo Ren, is apparently obsessed with Darth Vader and collects Vader memorabilia, including his charred helmet and talks to his Star Wars collection.  Not only that, be he seems to be a Darth Vader cosplay enthusiast.  To put it mildly, this is very dumb.  Look, I love Vader, everyone loves Vader but he's dead, move on and create new villains, not wannabes. Especially not wannbes who are in-universe Star Wars collectors.

This new trailer also tells us a little bit about the world that has developed in the wake of Return of the Jedi.  Apparently the events of the Star Wars Original Trilogy have passed into legend and are spoken of in hushed tones by the people of the galaxy.  The heroes of the Rebellion are legendary and probably also have fans.  The subtext of this movie seems to be, "Star Wars is awesome, let's Star Wars!"  There is something annoyingly meta about it all.  

Also, there seems to be a new Death Star on the poster, which, ugh.

Mostly, I'm worried because of Super 8 the 2011 J. J. Abrams movie that was a "love letter" to the Amblin movies of the 1970's and '80's but was really just a self-indulgent hodgepodge of all the things you liked about those movies and little new and original.  Abrams loves Star Wars but I don't want to watch a movie about how great Star Wars is, I want to watch a great Star Wars movie with new and original ideas.  This is precisely why Abrams did such a great job on his two Star Trek  movies: he wasn't a fan.  He approached it as an outsider with a fresh take on the world and characters unburdened by fandom.

I hope I'm wrong.  I hope, The Force Awakens is great but I have concerns.

Patrick Garone
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Retro Review: To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar

In retrospect, it is obvious that the 1990's were a weird and transitional time to be gay.  Back then, a lot of us thought that we were living in a progressive socially cutting-edge era, certainly compared to how it had been in the prior decades for gay rights and visibility.  Very few of us imagined how far we would come in two decades.  For example, I don't think any of us expected there to be legal gay marriage in all fifty states in our lifetimes.

Naturally, the gay movie landscape has changed with the cultural landscape and while there were a number of big gay Hollywood movies in the 1990's some of them are really only interesting as cultural artifacts of a bygone time.  The 1995 comedy To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar straddles being entertaining on its own and being a weird relic of 1990's attitudes about gay life.  Not only is it a gay movie starring ostensibly heterosexual actors but a movie about drag queens, a subculture within the gay community that a lot of gay men are not even familiar with. Certainly, it is a movie that would not be made the same way today.

It's actually puzzling that the movie was even made at all.  Certainly it was a response to the success of the earlier Australian movie The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert  to which Wong Foo  is often unfavorably compared.  (One way Wong Foo is superior to Priscilla  is in it's appealingly diverse cast, whereas Priscilla is jarringly and aggressively racist).

It is as though a Hollywood producer decided that they wanted to jump on some non-existent drag queen movie bandwagon but also went to great pains to keep the movie light and accessible to general audiences.  Whereas Priscilla also features a heterosexual cast, the movie still feels very courageous and authentic in its story and the way it treats its characters.  In comparison, To Wong Foo maintains a sitcom feel throughout much of the movie but often awkwardly and abruptly switches to a dark or "serious" tone, like a Very Special Episode.

Also, with the exception of the opening sequence, we don't ever see any of these drag queens out of drag.  They are on a cross country car trip and they are in drag the whole time.  This movie should be rated D for Day Drag.  In that way, To Wong Foo seems to confuse being a drag queen with being transgendered (despite expositional dialogue to the contrary) or it is too scared and or lazy to deal with the fact that the movie is about three gay men on a cross country road trip.

There is also some weird gender politics going on with the Patrick Swayze character.  Well into the movie he is accused of being a drag queen because he "couldn't cut it as a man," and we see by his reaction to this statement that he believes that it is true.  This, combined with the fact that the three characters are always in drag sends a confusing message about drag queens and gay men.  For most drag queens, being in drag is a job (and a physically exhausting and uncomfortable one) and as soon as they can, they get out of drag.  Most don't do drag because of gender issues but because drag is their chosen method of performance and artistic expression.

I harp on the fact that the actors are all outsiders to the community that they are portraying on screen because of the way that the movie briefly features and sidelines actual notable drag performers such as Lady Bunny and Candace Kane in its opening sequence at the ceremony for the Drag Queen of the Year (Ugh) pageant.  Even RuPaul, who brought drag into the mainstream for the first time in the '90's is given a small speaking part.  This is a shame for a number of reasons, not the least of which is if not for RuPaul's popularity at the time, Hollywood would not have even dared to make this movie. So, I can't help but think that there is a little bit of a diss in the way that the movie treats actual drag performers.  Especially since RuPaul is genuinely funny and could have easily nailed either Swayze's or Snipes' role.

If they made the movie today, of course, it would be a very different story.  Not only are filmmakers a little more savvy about how they portray minority communities but America has been exposed to a lot more drag, again thanks to RuPaul and his hit competition show RuPaul's Drag Race which has been running for seven seasons and seems to get more popular every year.  Not only has the show exposed us to what it is that drag queens actually do and how much work goes into their artform but we have seen a huge variety of drag styles, approaches, and performers.  If they were making a movie like this today, the main casting problem would be choosing three performers from all of the talented candidates.

To Wong Foo, imperfect as it is, was an important stepping stone in both gay movies and movies about drag,   Despite the movie's flawed portrayal of drag and drag queens there is a lot of fun to be had with the transformations of the three actors and transformation is part of what makes drag such a compelling and fun art form.  Wesley Snipes, in particular, seems to be having a ball and really commits to his character in a fun and surprising way.  John Leguizamo was no stranger to drag having turned in some memorable and fearless performances of female and trans characters in his early one-man shows and his character in the movie feels like an extension of those characters. And that's a really good thing.  These performances and some good one-liners really help to salvage the movie from the weak script and generic direction.

Patrick Garone
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How To Make A Good Terminator Movie

The Terminator Franchise is in danger of termination.  Prior to the release of this summer's Terminator: Genisys there were big plans for a trilogy of new Terminator movies featuring a new cast and a rebooted story but after dismal US box office performance (but impressive foreign grosses) the studio is now re-evaluating it's plans.  After two beloved movies, a good but too-quickly cancelled TV show, and three unsatisfying sequels, where is there to even go with Terminator as a franchise?

The only way to go is back.  The best of all the Terminators was the original 1984 movie, a wonderfully stripped down low-budget flick that straddled Sci-Fi and Action.  With the success of Terminator 2, the franchise was irrevocably moved into action/blockbuster territory much to its detriment.  The subsequent movies have been trying to ape the T2 formula ever since and have all failed miserably at it resulting in overly long, bloated, action movies.

The way to save Terminator is to go back to its roots with a small to mid-budget movie that gets at what made the first movie so successful: horror.  Despite the gun play  and Sci-Fi plot, the original Terminator was a movie that tapped into a very universal and primal fear: being stalked by an unstoppable pursuer, the idea that something is out there and it is looking for you.
This idea is the heart of what made the original movie so great and while it was explored in the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show, it has been largely abandoned by the movies in favor of noisy action, convoluted plots, and burdensome mythology.  The only hope for the series is to let all of that stuff go and go back to basics with another simple, lean and mean Terminator movie, something in the spirit of Mad Max Fury Road,  another back-to-basics entry from a left-for-dead franchise.

What would this movie look like?  For one, it leaves behind the things that have holding the franchise back: no Sarah or John Connor, no Arnold, and no time-travel shenanigans.  This new Terminator should be laser focused on the experience of surviving an unstoppable killing machine.  It probably should be set in the present, although the idea of a gritty Terminator set in the Old West or the Middle Ages could be interesting side stories, too.  Since so many Game of Thrones actors have been in Terminator projects, it would only be fair to bring Terminator to a GOT-type setting.

But for the sake of our mission to make a roots Terminator movie, lets set it in the present.  There is a Terminator and a target.  Following the formula of the series the Terminator makes and attempt to kill the target but fails.  The target escapes into the city or country and the rest of the movie exists with this fear that the thing is out there and going to find you.  This is a point in the story that the later movies gloss over in favor of detours into "mythology" but it is interesting area for storytelling. 

One of the things the new Terminator movie has to do is to make the Terminator scary again.  He's not cool, he's not your buddy who understands "why you cry."  He's a terrifying Other.  The best recent example of a character rehab like this is not actually with a movie but a video game.  The recent Alien Isolation game took Giger's Alien which had been exploited and watered down over the years and brought it back to its scary roots delivering an experience that was in the spirit of the first Alien movie.  We need to do that with a Terminator. 

Our number one rule in this endeavor:  No good Terminators.  The idea of reprogrammed "good" Terminators was just a way to keep Arnold involved in the franchise.  This idea muddles the Man against Machine theme that is central to the franchise.  I know people love T2 and it is not a bad movie but I can't help feeling that it jumped the shark a bit with the way that it treated the Terminator.

We need to see some new scary behaviors from our Terminator that we haven't seen before.  What if after the Terminator fails to find its quarry it allows itself to be arrested and sent to jail in order to draw it's target back.  I'd like to see the police involved in the story where they are not just getting in the way.  Perhaps one of the protagonists can be a police detective and the story is largely from his or her point of view.  Maybe we don't get all of the context that we get from Kyle Reese in the first movie and the Terminator and his targets activities are treated like crimes until the Terminator's true nature is revealed.  Maybe the Terminator and its quarry are put in the same facility and the film is partially a prison movie and the last act has the protagonist evading the Terminator in a high security detention facility.  The point is, let's see some things we haven't seen before and maybe explore some fun sub-genres in the movie.

These are just a few examples of new and interesting things you can do with the series on a low budget and in keeping with the spirit of the first and best Terminator movie.  What they shouldn't make is another big bloated movie that rehashes the same action movie elements as T2.  More than another blockbuster, if this series is ever going to be credible again, it needs to deliver a really good movie. Most importantly, this is a series that needs to re-engage its fans and generate excitement for another movie.

Patrick Garone
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A Star Wars Retrospective: The Phantom Menace (1999)

The Force Awakens is a couple of months away, so like any dutiful nerd, I have pulled out my Star Wars Blurays and decided to revisit the two Star Wars Trilogies, starting with Episode I: The Phantom Menace.  Never before had a movie been so eagerly and desperately anticipated.  The trailer for Episode I was literally the first thing to ever break the Internet.  Not only did fans use the Internet see the trailer and get news about the movie but they later turned to this new medium to engage in a bit of heated group think about the film and its merits.  It is important to note that while the movie got great reviews upon release and was a huge hit, "fans" turned on the movie in the weeks and months after its release and it has garnered somewhat of a bad reputation in the years since.

While, The Phantom Menace is clearly flawed in several important ways, it is far from the worst Star Wars movie (hello Return of the Jedi and Attack of the Clones).  In a measured, and realistic assessment,it is clear that the movie has some serious problems, the most glaring one being that it is about twenty minutes too long.  Secondly, Jar Jar is an annoying and problematic character.  Thirdly, Jake Lloyd is poorly directed.  Finally, there are some alien character choices that are questionable.  None of these performance problems are the fault of the actors but of George Lucas who has always been less than interested in directing actors.  For me, none of these flaws really sink the movie.  The Phantom Menace is still a fun, imaginative, visionary, adventure that greatly expands the Star Wars universe.

Perhaps one of the movie's greatest strengths is what doomed it with fans: it dares to be very different from the Original Trilogy.  It is a very plot heavy movie; there's no smart alec Han Solo character; it depicts a galaxy that is shiny and new as opposed to the grungy aesthetic of classic Star Wars; much of it takes place in the halls of power and there is a lot of talking, etc.  Lucas was never interested in making another Star Wars just to make it and repeat what he had already done.  He was interested in telling his story and it was by necessity different than the movies that had come before.

Because the movie is so much maligned, let's take a look at ten reasons The Phantom Menace is a great addition to the Star Wars Saga.


10. The Special Effects

I was rewatching this movie and it occurred to me during the big Gungans/Droid ground battle how good the effects looked even after sixteen years.  While it was obviously all CGI and impossible and the blocking was a bit cartoony, the droids and Gungans all had a real weight and reality to them which is more than you can say for certain shots in recent movies like Avengers: Age of Ultron. Also, as annoying as Jar Jar was, that character and Ahmed Best's work on him helped to create the art of performance capture for CGI characters and without him there would not have been any Gollum or Ceasar.

9. Ewan McGregor

Another great casting choice and one that paid dividends in later movies.  McGregor did a great job of inhabiting a much younger version of one of the most beloved Star Wars characters.  The movie does a good job of showing Obi-Wan as both a product of the stuffy Jedi culture and his more freewheeling Jedi Master, Qui-Gon Jinn.  The movie is also not afraid to make him a little callow and unlikeable with his snarky comments about picking up "pathetic lifeforms."  Here we see him starting the journey to becoming the wise and compassionate Jedi of Star Wars.  For a whole generation of Star Wars fans, Ewan MacGregor is their Obi-Wan and lets hope we get to see him in some more movies now that Disney is making spinoffs.

8.  The Story

While Lucas lacks skills in directing actors and writing human dialogue, he is a genius at the broad strokes of storytelling. In Episode I, begins his tale of both the corruption and decay of Galactic society and of the Jedi Order.  It's pretty dark stuff for a kids adventure movie.   In Palpatine, he has created a wonderful scheming villain who orchestrates a crisis in order to get himself into a position to be able to create a war that will tear the Galaxy apart so that he can rebuild it the way he likes.  People criticized the movie for not telling the Clone Wars story that they had been waiting for but The Phantom Menace sets up the Clone Wars in a very elegant way.



7. Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman is a very talented actress as her larger body of work and Academy Award winning performance in Black Swan proves but her work in the latter two Star Wars prequels is saddled with some of the worst dialogue and scenes in the whole saga.  In The Phantom Menace however she turns in a fun performance as both the very stylized and formal Queen Amidala and her alter ego, the plucky handmaiden Padme.  This is dual identity is a fun subplot of the movie that not even the Jedi pick up on.  Which brings us to...

6. Costumes

While there are a handful of simple iconic costumes that the movies are known for, Episode I  is really the one Star Wars movie where the filmmakers got really adventurous with their costume, hair, and make-up.  While there are some interesting costumes throughout, Queen Amidala wears some truly weird, wonderful, and beautiful outfits throughout the The Phantom Menace.  Like much of Star Wars, they are wonderful for being a interesting hodgepodge of various world styles and influences.

5. Design

Design is an area that people seem to have issues with this movie.  Whereas the OT mostly featured Imperial ships and bases, grungy Rebel outposts, and a few industrial and frontier areas, The Phantom Menace really showed you a much more expansive look at the Star Wars world and one that was set in a more elegant time.  That being the case, Episode I features a lot of designs that were sleeker and hearkened back to classic sci-fi such as the chromed Art-Deco looking ships, the Baroque Naboo architecture and design, the glimmering underwater Gungan city, or the dizzying futuropolis that Coruscant.  The Phantom Menace not only showed us a lot things that we had never seen in a Star Wars  movie but a lot of visuals we had not seen before, period.


4.  Liam Neeson

It is a testament to the actors in this movie that some of them were able to turn in good performances despite being directed by George Lucas.  Neeson's wise and earthy Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn helps ground the movie in the same way that Alec Guiness did in Star Wars.  In the world of the movie, he is an interesting character, one who stands apart from the other Jedi for his worldliness and compassion.  The great tragedy of Anakin's story, is that Qui-Gon might have been the mentor who would have been able to guide him through his later difficulties and help him avoid his dark fate.

3.  Light Saber Battles

This movie was out first chance to see fully trained Jedi Knights in their prime and Lucas really upped the ante in making the light saber battles dynamic and active.  The climatic three-on-one battle between Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Maul is possibly the finest fight in the series (with the Luke/Vader Empire fight edging it out for dramatic impact).  I challenge even the most ardent Prequel hater not to get goosebumps at the start of this sequence.

While largely lacking the "banter" that characterized the OT saber battles, this fight is beautifully choreographed and full of revealing character moments, such as when Qui-Gon meditating and Maul prowling during the quick moment they are separated by the ray shield in the Naboo reactor core.  All of this featuring a terrific piece of music...

2. The Duel of the Fates

This section of John Williams score plays during the film's climax, accompanying the dramatic light saber/space/ground battle and stands among the greatest pieces of Star Wars music, period.    While it is showcased most prominently in The Phantom Menace is is present throughout the Prequels.  Even the title is perfect as it poetically sums up Anakin's complicated path.

1. Darth Maul

The star villain role in the new Star Wars movie was always going to be a challenge to George Lucas. After all, how do you follow up what is the most iconic villain in movie history?  Instead of rehashing a Vader-like design (ahem, The Force Awakens), the filmmakers decided to do something completely different with an unforgettable and very organic design that seems to have sprung out of the fevered imagination of some far Eastern demonologist.  While Maul could have used a bit more character development in the The Phantom Menace, he lives on in The Clone Wars series (literally) and has taken his place in the Pantheon of Star Wars Badasses along side Darth Vader and Boba Fett.

Pic Profile: Magic Hour By Jon Demartin

A few years ago, Lucas Books released Star Wars: Visions which, unlike the typical "Art Of" books, presents works of "fine" art inspired by Star Wars both in and out of universe.  My favorite piece is the one pictured above, the wonderfully nostalgic Magic Hour by Jon Demartin. Magic Hour depicts a scene from The Empire Strikes Back seen as many people at the time would have seen it: in a drive-in.

I love this painting because it so beautifully captures the socio-economic context of the original Star Wars trilogy, a very different America from the one in which exists now.  One needs only look at some of the other popular movies of the 1970's to see that Star Wars with it's light-hearted tone and optimistic story sticks out like a sore thumb.  One of the reasons the first movie took off the way that it did was that is was fun piece of escapism during dark and gloomy times.  

I grew up in Chicago and the industrial background behind the movie screen is one that could have been the steel mills of the South Side of Chicago or anywhere in the industrial Miswestern Rust Belt with its beautiful and terrible glimmering towers and belching smokestacks.  Part of the nostalgia of the piece is that it pictures a world that is lost. Not only is the drive-in mostly extinct as a phenomenon but with the decline of manufacturing in the U.S. the communities it once supported are mostly gone as well and many of the large-scale facilities have been torn down or stand as ruins.  I like to think the people in their cars are enjoying some time off from their rough but good-paying manufacturing jobs.

The great thing about the drive-in as a subject is that unlike the normal cinematic experience which is purposefully sealed off from the world, the drive-in is open and movie's contents are free to be compared to the surrounding world. Notice the juxtaposition of hardscrabble industrial life and clean cinematic fantasy which speaks to the role of movies as escapism and inspiration in our lives.  The painting's title, Magic Hour, implies that the other hours of the day are less than magical.  

The artist's use of color is a clever nod to Ralph McQuarrie, the concept artist who is largely responsible for the look of the original trilogy and whose painted skies often featured electric blues and rich oranges like the background sky in Magic Hour.  In fact, Demartin's industrial landscape strongly recalls McQuarrie's concept art for Bespin, the floating city in The Empire Strikes Back and the location depicted on the movie screen in the painting.

For all its exotic location and beauty, Cloud City is an industrial "Tibanna" mining station and for all way know, could be the Gary, Indiana of the Galaxy Far Far Away.  

Patrick Garone,

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Westeros Community College: The Adventures of Schrödinger's Crow

Spoiler Warning:  This post contains spoilers for all broadcast seasons of HBO's Game of Thrones, all published volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire, references to interviews, set reports, informed by wild speculation, and both fire and greenseer visions.



Aside from the many reasons why Jon Snow can't be permanently dead in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO's Game of Thrones, there has been a mountain of circumstantial evidence that Jon Snow and the actor who portrays him, Kit Harington, will be back for season six of the hit show.  We know this from our little birds abroad and Twitter's Kit Harington Hair Watch.     This is despite the many official denials to the contrary from the actor himself and the producers (even to the President of the United States).  Most importantly, Harington has been spending A LOT of time around the Game of Thrones "Northern" shooting zone in and around Belfast for someone who's character is dead and gone.  Most intriguing is a recent report that has him on set for a giant battle that pits various Stark-loyal Northern armies and Wildlings against the armies of House Bolton, presumably for control of Winterfell.  As far as I know, this is the first actual report of Harington witnessed seen on set.  So, the crow is now out of the bag.

Let's assume for a moment that Jon Snow is coming back and participate in the that time-honored past time of A Song of Ice and Fire fans: speculation.  On a side note, has any other major property been subject to as much fierce theorization and speculation as this one?  The richness of Martin's imagined world, the slow pace of his output, and the advent of the Internet has meant that his books have been picked apart and analyzed in an unprecedented way.  The only twist or surprise in the remaining books would be if they included anything that hasn't already been generated by his collective readers.  After all, there are more of us than there are George R. R. Martins and we've been at it for almost twenty years.  So, let's speculate about Jon Snow's motives and actions once he does come back to us and how that may tie in with some of our other characters who are up North.

Let's check in for a moment with some of our characters at the Wall at the end of last season.  As you may recall, at the end of season five of Game of Thrones, Jon Snow was murdered by his Night's Watch brothers for his Wildling sympathies and for bringing the Free Folk through the Wall.  We also have two important characters who are now free from the Stannis story: Melisandre and Davos. Both are conveniently at the Wall in a position to join the Jon Snow story should there be one.  Moreover, if Snow does not come back, what exactly are these characters doing at the Wall?  If Jon Snow is actually dead, narratively speaking, the Wall is filled with characters with which we have little investment in themselves.  Are we going to spend a season with Dolorous Edd? We've spent a lot of time with Davos and Melisandre but neither one of them are characters that have agency of their own or can anchor a storyline.  Without a Jon Snow resurrection they are both rudderless.

Melisandre is frankly the most likely source of Jon Snow's resurrection given both the fact that followers of the Lord of Light CAN do this as we have seen previously on the show and given her strange fascination with Jon Snow.  This interest in Snow is important because as much as Melisandre is considered the show's sexpot (due to her habit of constantly bringing the girls out), her character is only ever shown to be interested in sex when it is the context of using sorcery to achieve some tactical goal and only ever with someone of "royal blood."

The show makes implicit that she had a late realization that it was not actually Stannis who was her prophesied Azor Azai which is why she so unceremoniously abandoned him and headed for the Wall of all places.  While the books have not made it past this point in the story, they do underscore this idea as Melisandre finds herself unable to see Stannis in her fire visions but instead Jon, or "Snow."  It is important to note that in the show, Winterfell seems to loom large in her visions of the future.  She has foreseen herself walking along it's battlements with the Bolton flag lowered into the dirt.  I'm convinced this will happen by the end of next season.

Davos' role in the Jon Snow story is a little more difficult to predict as his prime motivation has been serving Stannis throughout the series and he would have little reason to team up with a fire-resurrected and Melisandre-aligned Jon Snow.  It is worth noting that in the books, Davos is at a very different point in the story.  He had been dispatched by Stannis on a diplomatic mission to one of the Bolton-opposed Northern Lords and ultimately on a mission to locate Rickon Stark who has been said to be hiding out with the Stark loyalists of House Umber.  The actors playing Rickon and Osha are apparently returning this season and the Umbers are said to be participants in the big Northern battle against the Boltons, so it is possible Davos may embark on this mission in the show possibly on behalf of Jon Snow.  Davos may align himself with the Stark-loyal Northern houses as a way to get revenge on the Boltons for defeating Stannis.  It's the kind of fudge that they do on the show from time to time to get all the pieces in place.

And what about Snow himself?  You've been murdered by your brothers in the Night's Watch and brought back by a red-headed zealot, what are you going to do?  The good news for the character is that "now his watch has ended." His murder and resurrection frees him from his vows and allows him a lot of room to get involved in the larger story.   Narratively, Martin had to kill him to get him out of his vows and set him loose.   So, if Jon Snow can do whatever he wants, what does he do?

Does he go on a rampage, killing his former Night's Watch brothers?  Probably not.  He may be resurrected but he is not immortal, and will still see the value in the organization.  Melisandre would likely spirit him out under the cover of night perhaps to his Wildling allies.

The books offer some clues but the murder of Jon Snow in A Dance of Dragons is motivated a little differently.  Not only is book Snow killed for his Wildling plan, but for the fact that he is willing to abandon his position and waste Watch men and resources on a personal mission to free his sister from Ramsey Bolton's clutches after receiving a raven supposedly from the former Bastard of Bolton.  This is an interesting difference in the two interpretations of the character.  HBO Jon Snow does not have this knowledge but it probably won't be long before he gets it and when he does, he won't have any Night's Watch vows to stop him from rallying the North against the hated Boltons.  As far as most Northerners are concerned, he will be the last adult male Stark. He also has an army of Wildlings who will have grown to like and respect him for his honor and his actions at Hardhome.   Jon Snow will be powerfully motivated to retake Winterfell in his "brother" Rickon's name.  It looks like we may see a little scouring of the Shire next season.  According to the report from Watcher on the Wall, this great Northern battle takes place in episode nine, so Melisandre's Winterfell stroll could be one of the last moments of the season, proving her power and foresight.

Then what does Snow do once he has reclaimed Winterfell for his brother?  Perhaps he sets his sights south toward the other house that betrayed the Starks: the Freys.  Now, in the books, another character is exacting a campaign of vengeance on the Freys: Lady Stoneheart.  For those who don't know, Lady Stoneheart is Catelyn Stark, who was resurrected by another Lord of Light follower, Thoros of Myr.  She takes over the band of outlaws known as the Brothers Without Borders and uses them to terrorize the Freys.  She's been often rumored for the show but has never appeared and frankly, resurrecting two major characters in the same manner in the same season seems unlikely.  I doubt we will get her if we get Jon Snow back.  But perhaps Snow can fulfill some of her role in the larger story.

Let's not forget that Sansa and Theon are also in the outskirts of Winterfell at the end of last season. We know from set photos that Theon ends up in the Iron Islands but Sansa's location is a mystery. Does she end up back at the Eyrie like book Sansa?  That journey would be a major plot to add and unlikely unless somehow she connects with Brienne and Pod, who would seem to be heading south to reconnect with their book stories.  Is it too much to hope that Sansa reconnects with Jon and Rikkon and gets to return to Winterfell?  If we do have a big Stark Reunion, will something horrifying happen immediately after?  Either way, I'm excited as Game of Thrones moves into an exciting phase of the story and it looks like the Starks are on their way back up after years and years of suffering and torment.  I think we, as the audience, have earned something heartwarming, at least until the White Walkers come and destroy everything.


Patrick Garone
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Ranking Marvel

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, is there anything else like it out there?  Never before has a studio attempted such an ambitious series of interconnected shared universe movies (and TV shows). What's more, most of them are actually  pretty good and all of them are at least fun and enjoyable.  Marvel imbues its movies with a true sense of fun, a love for the material, and a definite sense of humor. As I write this, Marvel is twelve movies in with no signs of slowing down.

Once we got to double digits, people began ranking them because, Internet.  Here's my take on how they stack up to one another.  You may find it a little different than most.

Iron Man 2

Widely considered to be "the worst" of Marvel's movies, Iron Man 2 is not really that bad and the worst Marvel movie is still better than most of the other popcorn movies out there.  I mean, it's certainly miles better than any of the Transformers movies.  While it suffers from being a little overstuffed (a sin shared by some of the later Marvel movies) Iron Man 2  still features some great action sequences like the Grand Prix showdown with Whiplash and the debuts of Black Widow and War Machine.  In the overall narrative of the MCU, Iron Man 2 does a lot of heavy lifting that pays off in later movies.  It not only develops a lot of backstory for the Starks, SHIELD, and the Avengers Initiative, vibranium,  but it also establishes an evolution and lineage of the Iron Man tech, for example Vanko's drones are clear predecessors to the Iron Legion from Age of Ultron.

The Incredible Hulk

The Incredible Hulk is treated like the red-headed stepchild of the MCU.  It was overshadowed by Iron Man  when it was first released and Edward Norton was quickly replaced by Mark Ruffalo in subsequent movies. Since there has not been another solo Hulk movie, most of the characters introduced have not reappeared, such as the Hulk villain the Leader, who was introduced in this movie never to be seen again.  The Incredible Hulk almost feels a little disconnected from the rest of the series because of this but the movie is a lot of fun and definitely has an important place in the franchise.  I mean, it's about as good as you can expect a movie based on the Hulk to be.  It also features Tim Roth as a mercenary who is given a bootleg version of the Captain America super soldier serum and who later becomes The Abomination. Unfortunately, this character has not been seen in any other Marvel projects which is a pity because he's one of the better MCU villains.

Thor

Thor  was a risky proposition for Marvel.  The Asgardian alien/god and his world was always going to be a tricky proposition on screen but director Kenneth Branaugh does a great job bringing the Asgardian world and its relationships to life.  Thor has a satisfying arc from warrior bro to worthy wielder of Mjolnir.  Nathalie Portman, Idris Elba, and Anthony Hopkins round out the fantastic cast. Tom Hiddleston makes his debut as Loki, Marvel's most compelling villain to-date.

Iron Man 3

While Iron Man 3  is wildly overrated, it does feature a great performance from Robert Downey, Jr and although its idiosyncratic take on the genre grows a little thin, you have to admire the fact that it is so different from its predecessors and from superhero movies in general. Iron Man 3 takes the series into a definite buddy action movie territory with some interesting noire elements.  However the movie seems a bit enchanted with its own stylistic wanderings and is bit too long as a result. It also badly fumbles its villains.  Not only is the Mandarin squandered in an admittedly ballsy fake-out but the Extremis "fire people" are pretty silly. Also, in terms of the whole MCU, it feels like all of the resolutions and conclusions of this movie end up being forgotten by the time we see Tony Stark again.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron

There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.  Age of Ultron  is overstuffed with characters and goings-on to be a really satisfying movie which is really too bad because it has a lot of good stuff happening in it.  Ultron is a genuinely interesting and compelling villain (although one with a truly stupid plot) and the movie crackles with that trademark Whedon dialogue.  But instead of really developing characters and relationships, the movie introduces characters and doesn't give them their proper space to breathe.  We never really get to know Scarlett Witch, Quicksilver or Vision and one of the primary Avengers, Thor, is MIA throughout much of the movie while Hawkeye-the least interesting Avenger-gets an extended amount of screentime.

Thor: The Dark World

While Thor: The Dark World suffers from perhaps the MCU's least developed villain (which is saying something) the sequel to Thor is kind of an underrated movie that went a long way to broaden the scope of the MCU.    Before Guardians of the Galaxy  Thor: The Dark World, took the Marvel movies into a distinctly space opera direction, much of this movie feels more Star Wars than superhero.  What's more, this movie features a truly fun and clever action sequence at the end involving wormholes and multiple planets and a compelling performance from Tom Hiddleston that keeps you guessing until the end and elevates the whole movie.

Ant-Man

Especially coming right after Ultron,  Ant-Man is a refreshingly focused superhero movie about an unlikely hero who can shrink in size and control ants.  It has a small cast and few connections to the larger MCU, which is a nice change.  It actually reminds me quite a bit of the original Iron Man movie in that it is a redemption story about a flawed hero and his relationship to a mentor character. It also features a nice pair of father/daughter story lines that feel fresh in the context of a MCU movie and it is anchored by a nice performance from Michael Douglas and the best digital de-aging I have ever seen.  Visually, Ant-Man has a lot of fun with its hero's shrinking ability and it has some really memorable small-scale action sequences.  It's not every adventure movie that features its climactic battle on a toy Thomas the Train set.

Captain America: The First Avenger

In their welcome attempts to mix up genres, Marvel envisioned their first Captain America movie as a legit Golden Age comic book movie set during World War II and it's a lot of fun.  Thankfully, a lot of time is spent developing Cap's as a skinny, bullied New York kid and you get a good sense of his character and point of view as opposed to him just being a lab experiment or jingoistic superman. Hugo Weaving is great as Red Skull, a villain many of us would like to see return to the MCU.  This movie also introduces Peggy Carter, who would go on to be a mainstay of the MCU movies and TV shows.


The Avengers

In my mind, The Avengers is Marvel's most impressive (although not necessarily best) movie.   Given the difficulty of doing a movie like this and all of the potential pitfalls, how did this movie end up being so damn good?  Writer/Director Joss Whedon deftly manages a large group of characters in a movie that never feels overstuffed.  He manages a large urban alien invasion sequence at the film's climax that avoids becoming the dreary disaster porn that you see in contemporary movies like Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  Importantly, this team of superhero misfits actually manages to save people  unlike the impression left from Man of Steel.  Perhaps best of all, The Avengers never really looses its focus on the fact that despite the special effects and action, the most interesting thing are these characters and their relationships and interactions with one another.


Captain America: The Winter Soldier

While the first Cap movie was a period war movie, its sequel is in the style of a 1970's conspiracy thriller and has Captain America teaming up with Black Widow to take on a SHIELD agency that has long been infiltrated by Hydra.  Needless to say, this a monumentally consequential story for the MCU.  Despite the big scope, Winter Soldier is sharply focused and features some great action such as Cap's elevator encounter with a group of would-be assassins.


Iron Man

The movie that started it.  Prior to the release of Iron Man in 2008 it was far certain the movie would even be a hit let alone spawn a monster franchise of eleven other movies and (so far) three TV shows but thanks to a career defining performance from Robert Downey, Jr, a cool and fun tone, and surprisingly photogenic armor suit, Iron Man  was a big hit and the foundation on which the entire MCU rests.  You can't really overestimate how much of RDJ's performance contributed to the success of the movie as he really turned Tony Stark into a funny and unforgettable character and I think the success of Iron Man helped Marvel learn what their live action brand would be: interestingly flawed characters and a sharp sense of humor.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Fun, delightfully idiosyncratic, warm, and weird, Guardians of the Galaxy was Marvel's biggest gamble and became a runaway success, considered by many to be the best MCU movie to date. It might be a lesson to Marvel that one its best-loved and most successful movies was one with only a tangential connection to rest of the Earth-bound movies.   Free to be its own spacey, weird thing and largely unencumbered by connectivity to other movies, Guardians has a genuinely different feel from the rest of the MCU movies.  Although, despite a movie full of vivid and interesting characters, it has one of the dullest villains to date.

The First Republican Debate

Last night was the first debate of the 2016 election.  In fact, there are so many Republicans running that there were actually two debates.  The prime time debate featured the top ten candidates a mix of former and current governors, iconoclastic senators, and Donald Trump.  So, let's look at it through a Trumpian lens of Winnahs and Loosahs.

WINNERS

Donald Trump.  The Donald went into this the race's improbable front-runner and, much to the Republican establishment's chagrin, he didn't do anything to endanger his position.  I'm sure they were hoping for a meltdown or a storm-off but Trump delivered more of his trademark dickishness that is so popular with a chunk of Republican primary voters.

The most remarkable thing was his casual revelation that he buys and sells politicians in exchange for personal "favors" regardless of their party essentially admitting that he is corrupt and that his allegiance is more to his own interests than to conservative values.  Amazingly, no one called him out on it.  He also bragged about using legal loopholes to his advantage in his business dealings.  Again, no one followed up on this.  Normally, these would be candidate-ruining revelations but Trump's unconventional campaign seems immune to the normal political rules.

John Kasich.  Ohio Governor Kasich went into the debate with a fairly low national profile and toward the bottom of the top tier of candidates polling but he gave a remarkably good debate performance.  He came off positive, compassionate, and touted a solid record of achievements in his two terms as Governor and he is clearly popular in his state which is critical to win in the election. What's more, Kasich seemed the most electable out of the bunch.  He came off as man more practical than ideological as evidenced by his logical decision to implement the Affordable Care Act in Ohio which he correctly saw as benefiting his state.  He is also the only candidate from a swing state who would be able to pull off an easy victory in his state.  That said, he may be perceived as too soft and moderate to make it through the primaries.  If he were to become the nominee, though, the Democrats would be very very afraid.

MEH

Scott Walker.    The union-busting Conservative superstar from Wisconsin turned in an okay debate performance but never really hit it out of the park.

Mike Huckabee.  Huckabee is a skilled politician who was essentially the runner up in 2008 but probably missed his calling in 2012.  He didn't do much to justify his space on the stage last night.

Rand Paul.  Rand Paul would be a stronger candidate if he weren't trying to be so conventional.  He can't seem to make up his mind whether or not he wants to embrace his Libertarian leanings or temper them for the election for fear of being too far out of synch with the Republican party.  This compromises his whole political identity.

Ted Cruz.  Cruz seems thrown off by being only the second craziest person in the room.

LOSERS

Jeb Bush.  Bush is widely considered to be the true front-runner and likely eventual nominee and he had a lot to lose and, unfortunately, he turned in a debate performance that was dull and uninspiring. Combined with his family baggage it may cause some of his supporters to take another look at some of his competitors.  He also may be perceived as another centrist candidate that is forced to tie himself in knots to win the nomination to the point where he is fatally compromised in the general election.  After McCain and Romney there is a real desire to have the nominee be a "real" Conservative.

Ben Carson.  Dr. Carson is another leading candidate for the nomination but turned in a debate performance that was strangely low-key.

Chris Christie. While some will say that Christie missed the boat last election, I maintain that his brand of belligerent East Coast conservatism has always had limited geographic appeal.  He did score some good points on Rand Paul but he also came off as kind of a jerk.  And, while invoking 911 in a political context may have played better right after the attacks, it now seems tasteless and opportunistic.

Marco Rubio.  Rubio seemed waaay out of his league at the debate.  He comes off as far too young and green to be on the stage.  Not only did he not seem presidential but he didn't even seem vice-presidential.