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Monthly Archives: January 2016

There is a disturbance in the force: The “new” Star Wars, The Force Awakens (2015).

13 Jan

When I was 5 Star Wars came out.  I loved the movie so much that I saw it 52 weekends in a row.  My parents had just separated and all I would do with my father is go see Star Wars.  He ended up bringing books with him, sleeping et cetera probably after the 5th or so week.  I had many of the toys, and the Force was almost a religion to me and many of my generation.

Then the Empire Strikes Back came out—arguably the best movie of the entire franchise.  Wow, I even skipped school to go see it with my father.  Then Return of the Jedi.  The first half—great—then the second half with those stupid Ewoks fighting the elite imperial jungle guard with rocks, that broke my heart worse than my first love.

Then the prequels.  I walked out of the first one (I don’t even know the title) and refused to see the rest.  Alas, another total downer.  Pretty disenfranchised I was really hoping for a home run and from what I was hearing this film may have been it.  Nope.

I was really looking forward to seeing the original group hoping against hope that the franchise could be saved.  I was wrong.  It takes a big man to admit he is wrong and I am not a big man.  That said I disagree with many of you in that I think Carrie Fischer has aged very well, and it was Harrison Ford that looked like he had one foot in the grave.  I love Fischer.

The new Star Wars looked to me like an amalgamation of the first three movies.  I almost knew what was going to happen before it happened in the film.  Take the “scavenger” who later turns out to be a Jedi candidate, those 10-15 minutes were right out of the sand people from the original movie.  At least that is what I thought.  Then there was the escape from the new “Death Star” with the deprogrammed storm trooper setting the best pilot free (just like Luke saving the princess) and it goes on and on.

Also the whole evil guy being Han Solo and the Princess’s son was not really that interesting.  What was a surprise was when Solo got run-through by his own child, but their repeated statements that there was still good in him sounded an awful lot like Luke telling Darth Vader that in Return of the Jedi.

The one thing I did like were the sound effects.  I thought they added some much needed grit to the film.  Other than that I was not at all impressed.

 
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Posted by on January 13, 2016 in Movie Reviews

 

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Some of Janeway’s Command Mistakes: Anyone know of Star Trek Voyager?

09 Jan

After watching many Star Trek Voyager episodes over and over again, I began see some pretty major command mistakes Capitan K. Janeway made over the 7 year series run.  Here are some of the highlights:

The geneses of the series. She destroyed the machinery that could get her and her crew back to earth. I understand that the series needs a starting point but she put her own agenda ahead of her crew’s safety.

The way Janeway handled the Borg and Species 8472. During their travels home Janeway et al comes across the Borg on several occasions.  They are a terrifying race of soulless evil drones that “assimilate” anything they believe will add to their “hive” collective.  There is a species (No. 8472 according to the Borg Catalog) that consistently kicks their teeth in.  Species 8472 consistently kicks the shit out of the Borg—the only species that has the ability to do so.  Naturally, Janeway and her team almost instantly come up with the proverbial firing solution to exploit this race’s weakness.  Her haste to get across the Borg expanse (instead of going around it) she makes a deal with the devil himself: the Borg.  Janeway decides to share this deadly technology with the Borg without consideration of the bigger picture.  One of the consequences of her shortsighted policy is that several races are exterminated because they depended on 8472 to keep the Borg at bay and it worked until Janeway’s discovery of their weakness.

When I saw that 2 part episode, I exclaimed to my stepdaughters that Janeway should be paraded before a tribunal in chains for a show trial then locked up to answer for her crimes.  The girls are serious Janeway supporters I think because of the female role model thing—which is OK of course.  Low and behold, a couple of episodes later one survivor of an assimilated race tries to trick Janeway (and almost gets away with it) because 8472 was an effective buffer to keep the Borg at bay.  This alien’s entire species was exterminated so Janeway could shave a couple of years off of her journey.

Every time the character 7 of 9 bitches about Janeway’s various decisions and refuses to comply she is 100% correct. On numerous occasions the former Borg 7 of 9 commits outright mutiny and refuses to comply with some self-righteous Janeway policy.  7 of 9 forcefully argues each time that she is putting the crew at risk without justification.  Naturally Janeway only punishes 7’s disobedience (as is her right as Capitan) with some punishment—like locking 7 in the cargo bay never addressing the merits of 7’s arguments.

I know this is a simplistic overview of theory which would deserves much more examination in order to make a thoroughly convincing case.  However, I realize that putting a show made in the 1990’s on trial is a little too much a little too late.  But for Netflix, frankly, it would not be possible.

Viva la Netflix!!

JPFMovies

 
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Posted by on January 9, 2016 in Movie Reviews

 
 
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