You Have Saved This City - The End of "Arrow"

Recently Watched:

Arrow

(TV-14; 43 min; 2012-2020)

(Stephen Amell, Emily Bett Rickard

“My name is Oliver Queen. For five years, I was stranded on an island with only one goal: survive. Now I will fulfill my father's dying wish - to use the list of names he left me and bring down those who are poisoning my city. To do this, I must become someone else. I must become something else.”

A year after “Smallville” ended, a new super hero show premiered on the CW. A show about Green Arrow, a character I had never been terribly interested in, and had just watched a lot of on “Smallville”. But being who I am (someone who gives pretty much every super hero show a shot at least), I gave it a shot.

And I fell in love.

Green Arrow started as a Batman rip off (he had an Arrowcar and an Arrowcave, which, in more recent days, Harley Quinn told him should be called “The Quiver”). So it was appropriate that this show said and showed us “Yeah, we totes want to do Batman but they won’t let us.”

And for 8 years now, “Arrow” has been my favorite show on TV. I’ve followed the ups, the downs, the YEAH MOTHER FUCKER! And the ALRIGHT FOLKS LET’S MOVE ON FROM THIS STORY with fanaticism.

I was hesitant when I realized that the guy playing Green Arrow was known only to me as the Punisher’s boy whore competition on “Hung”, but he quickly sold me. More so after I read about his approach to taking on the show. And then the man himself came to impress me as a human being. So that’s pretty cool.

One of the things that I love and will miss the most about “Arrow” is the fight choreography. For 8 years, it’s had easily the best fights on TV, week after week. I mean, the fight team was just fucking amazing. The only completion it had was the first season of “Person of Interest”.

Even “Daredevil” with its once per season HUGE AWESOME FIGHT couldn’t compete, because they had weeks to do that, and the “Arrow” team did it week in, week out, often with way, way more characters involved.

I’ve pretty much know how “Arrow” was going to end since the end of the “Elseworlds” crossover, because I remember how “Crisis on Infinite Earths” went and which role(s) from the comic that Oliver was taking. And I accepted that it was probably time for “Arrow” to end. I didn’t want it to end up like ”Stargate: SG-1”, “Supernatural” and so many other shows that overstayed their welcome.

But accepting that didn’t mean I wasn't heartbroken and weepy for the entire 10 episodes and 5 crossover episodes of the last season.

I love “Arrow”. I love the cast, the crew, the fans, the entire Arrowverse that it spawned. Something I never thought I would see on TV. I am pretty hyped about Amell’s new project ( a show about wrestling called “Heels”). I really hope they follow up on Diggle’s end scene (Boy, I couldn’t figure it out and then I was struck silent when it hit me!)

Thank you for 8 years and a whole new multiverse of adventure.

“My name is Oliver Queen. For seven years I have fought with only one goal: to save my city. But now a new threat has emerged. A danger so severe that it has forced me to leave my family in order to face it. And it won't be enough for me to just be the Green Arrow. To prevent the crisis that's coming, I'm gonna have to become someone else. I'm gonna have to become something else.”

You have saved this city 9/10

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2193021/?ref_=ttqt_qt_tt

"Worlds will live, worlds will die and nothing will ever be the same". -Crisis on Infinite Earths Thoughts

Recently Watched:

Crisis on Infinite Earths

(2019-2020)

"Worlds will live, worlds will die and nothing will ever be the same".

In 1985, I was 12 years old, and a comic book reader. At that time, I mostly read DC (Batman was my favorite DC character and had been since I started comics). The first issue of whopping 12-part mini-series came out, called Crisis on Infinite Earths. For the next year, I, and countless others, was engrossed, waiting anxiously every month for the next part to come out. This was new, this was unprecedented.

"Worlds will live, worlds will die and nothing will ever be the same".

I don’t know how to explain this to younger folks. Maybe like what you felt when you saw the first trailer for The Avengers (I felt pretty excited too at that).

Eventually, I moved to Marvel (it was more “mature”), and then largely out of comics. But I never stopped loving the heroes. I watched all the movies (until Batman Begins – I wasn’t interested in that after having been burned by the previous 2 Bat flicks, but I did eventually watch and love that trilogy). The 1978 Superman set the characters of Clark Kent, Superman, and Lois Lane in my tiny 5-year old brain. It’s 42 years later, and Christopher Reeve is still *my* Superman.  

In 2001, a little show appeared on a second-tier network. You might know it as Smallville. I was excited at the prospect of a new Superman show, even if it was young Clark and not Reeve. And I really loved Smallville even if I had numerous issues with it (my favorite part is the back third, when they really embraced the comic book nature of the setting).

In 2002, that same network premiered Birds of Prey. I didn’t fall instantly in love with it (well, I fell instantly in love with Dina Meyer as Barbara Gordon), but I thought it had a lot of potential, and I was tickled pink when one of the characters mentioned some weird things going on in Smallville. I didn’t think anything would come from it, but there was always the faintest hope that the two shows would crossover.

Of course, they didn’t, because BoP lasted only one season against the 10 that Smallville got.

By the end of Smallville, Michael Rosenbaum was my Lex Luthor. And surprisingly, Tom Welling had become my Clark Kent. Not my Superman, that was still Reeve, but he was entrenched as Clark. I desperately wanted them to cast him as Superman when I heard they were making a new Superman movie (Man of Steel which, by the way, I didn’t like at all).

Not too long after Smallville ended (you can find my review of the end of this show here) I started hearing news of a new super hero about Green Arrow. Except not starring Justin Hartley (Green Arrow on Smallville), but some guy I had never heard of. I wasn’t super excited about this, because I had never been that familiar with or a fan of GA. But I’m me, so I knew I would give it a chance at least.

And I fell in love from the start. This was, in all but the superficial trappings, the Batman show I had always wanted. Which is appropriate, since GA was just a rip-off of Batman in the first place. Arrow became must-watch TV. And eventually, on Arrow, we met Barry Allen. And I was like “Is it possible?” Are they going to try The Flash again? No. Maybe?”

And then we got The Flash. And at the end of the very first episode, we saw it, the newspaper headline:

"Flash Missing, Vanishes in Crisis"

Ho. Ly. Shit. What a teaser. But the date was years off from the date in the show, so I didn’t think there was any way we’d ever see the Crisis, that it was just a nice little Easter egg for the older comics fans watching the show.

But I still had that little spine tingle.

The show would revisit that headline occasionally. Which felt like a cruel parking lot tease.

Then, after many years and previous crossovers between the now expansive CW “Arrowverse”, we got the Elseworlds crossover (my God, it was magnificent). And how did that end?

“Don't worry, Doctor. Everything is as it should be. The stage is set. Worlds will live. Worlds will die. And the universe will never be the same.”

My entire body shivered when those words were spoken. I nearly lost the ability to form coherent words.

And then, the title cards

Coming Fall 2019

CRISIS on Infinite Earths

And I lost the ability to speak for a minute.

The only other times I’ve been that excited were when I learned that there were Star Wars prequels coming out, and new Babylon 5 D2D stories. I wasn’t even that excited for Infinity War. Because I knew something like that was going to happen. I never thought I would get more SW movies or B5. And I never, truly believed I would get Crisis.

Understand, at this point in time, Arrow is my favorite show on TV. Even when it’s bogged down mid-season, I love that show. I love all the Arrowverse shows (except Black Lightning), but Arrow is the one I don’t want to miss at all.

Then I learned that coinciding with Crisis would be the last season of my favorite show on the air. Because Arrow was ending with a 10-ep season 8. And my heart broke. I knew it was time. Oliver’s story was about done. But I wasn’t any less saddened by understanding that.

But in knowing that, I also figured out how things might go on Crisis. And they largely went as I expected (note, I still haven’t watched the finale of Arrow, have to stock up on tissues first!).

While there are a handful of things I might have done a little differently, I can honestly say that I absolutely loved Crisis. It was just about as perfect as it could have been lacking the expansive cast of the entire comic book series and tie-ins.

I mean. . . jeez. . .

I was super jazzed when we saw Hawk and Robin from Titans. I don’t even love “Titans” but it meant that show was officially part of the MultiArrowverse. They weren't just limited this to the CW shows. So was Burton’s Batman. Adam West’s Batman. The Christopher Reeve Superman, carried on via Brandon Routh was a part of this multiverse.

I thought for sure we were only going to get the CW people with maybe one or 2 surprising cameos.

I was wrong.

By the end of Crisis, we touched on just about everything. The only things that jumped out at me were nothing that I noticed (but admit I may have missed) from the Superboy tv show (and I admit, somehow I missed that it even existed until like 20 years later), Lois and Clark, and the Dark Knight trilogy.

I was disappointed that they couldn’t work things out with Michael Rosenbaum to appear as Lex Luthor. MY Lex Luthor. Because I figured that meant no Smallville representation, because I figured there was *no* way they’d ever get Tom Welling, Because somehow, I completely and utterly missed the news that they did, in fact, get Tom Welling. Both the SO and I squeed when we saw him show up. Especially since right now we’re in the middle of re-watching Smallville.

I’m mildly disappointed that we didn’t get to see Amell’s Green Arrow meet Justin Hartley’s Green Arrow.

At the same time, holy shit! Green Lanterns! They even connected the new crop of DC movies! God damn! It was much bigger and so much smaller than I ever thought they could manage.

12-year old me was emotionally eviscerated and uplifted by a comic book mini-series.

46-year old me was emotionally eviscerated and uplifted by this magnificent live action adaptation.

This was a beautiful love letter to the DC universe, to the CW Arrowverse, and to Arrow, which got us to this point.

  

The Multiverse is dead, long live the Multiverse.

DC Titans - A Small Review

Recently Watched:

Titans
(Season 1)
(Brenton Thwaites, Anna Diop; TV-MA; 45 min; 2018 - ???)

There might be minor spoilers even though I'll try to avoid spoiling much. 

The Bad: 
1. Color: Starfire isn't orange-ish. 

2. Color: Gar isn't green (and is so far limited in what he changes into). 

3. Color: Robin's costume might as well be grey. Even the super hero shows and movies that I love still darken the colors (except for the Reeve movies) and it drives me crazy. 

4. Grim, Gritty, Edgy, Grimdark: Especially in the first few episodes, this suffers from trying to hard to emulate the Snyder-verse (thus far). It slowly eases off of this in some of the later eps, but even in the finale, it's still trying to damn hard. And it's crazy that they can't get this right, because Daredevil and Jessica Jones provided great pre-existing examples of how you can do grim & gritty supers without going Edgelord Grimdark (ooo, I might have a new album title there). 

5. The Casting: I'm not yet sold on Brenton Thwaites as broody moody why did Bruce do this to me Dick Grayson or Anna Diop's Starfire. It's not that they suck, they just aren't hitting quite the right buttons for me. 

6. Fight Choreography: The truth is simply that 2 excellent seasons of Person of Interest, 3 seasons of Dardedevil and 7 years of Arrow have spoiled me when it comes to street level superhero fight choreography, and Titans just doesn't compare. It's more akin to, say, Buffy fighting (which was solid for a low-budget TV show of the time but that time was . . . sheesh, 23 years ago!) with a dash of the Bourne movie still tossed in. Arrow manages to stage and execute multiple awesome fights every week for 23 weeks a year. And I'm reasonably certain that Titans has at *least* an Arrow budget. 

7. Blood! Blood Everywhere!!  Part of being Edgy & Grimdark is that there has to be a gratuitous use of blood. And at the core, I don't have a problem with that. Street level heroes should see some blood even if they aren't lethal terminating machines. The blood problem in Titans is that there is simply *too* much of it, it's done digitally and poorly, and the people doing it have no fucking clue how blood works. Robin can punch someone in the mouth and the resulting blood splatter is like what you see in a murder mystery when someone is dismembering a body. 

8. Power Levels: One thing that Snyder got right in Man of Steel is the power levels of the characters he was dealing with. But through 11 eps of this, the power levels are just dropped *WAY* too much. I mean, Starfire is supposed to be a fucking powerhouse. Like, go toe-to-toe with Wonder Woman for a bit kind of powerhouse. Donna Troy is a Wonder Woman-level powerhouse. Hell, even Hawk of Hawk and Dove is pretty solid on the scale (yet, here, Hawk and Dove are street-level seemingly unpowered vigilantes). On this, so far, they aren't even CW Supergirl powerhouses. What little we've seen is more akin to Jessica Jones' power level on Netflix. 


The Good: 

1. The Casting: Young Teagan Croft is doing a solid job as Raven. Curran Walters is nailing the asshole that is Jason Todd's Robin. Alan Ritchson (whom you may remember as Aquaman on Smallville is a solid Hawk, and even Minka Kelly doesn't suck as Dove. The stand-out is easily Ryan Potter as superhero fanboy Beast Boy though. He has what I think they call an "easy charm". The best parts of the show featured him. 

2. The Premise of the Dick Grayson Character: The show is not afraid of talking about, and in fact, focuses heavily on, how being a pre-teen boy taken in by and taught the ways of the Batman would probably leave you pretty fucked up in the head. Not only does it address it, it gives up two first-hand perspectives of it. That of Dick Grayson, suffering the mental trauma, maybe even the PTSD of years with the Bat and the exultation of such a life in a kid who has only been doing it for like, a year, and without the initial baggage that Grayson had. 

3. Potential: If the show can move away from the Snyderisms and find it's own voice, I think it has a lot of potential. But right now, when compared to other young people superhero shows like The Gifted, Cloak and Dagger, and Runaways, it's at the tail end of the pack. 

Right now, Titans is rough. It doesn't suck but it could be so, so much more. 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1043813/?ref_=tt_ov_inf

9/11

So. . . today is another anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States. A day on which we remember and honor the victims and the heroes of that day, and *rightly so*.

It's a day on which we throw up hashtags like #NeverForget and we use phrases like "on that day, we were united" or "our hearts beat as one".

But we *have* to stop romanticizing that "unity". Because that day doesn’t exist in a vacuum, suspended in time, away from everything. That day changed every day that came after it. If we are truly going to honor the victims and heroes of 9/11, we must do *honestly*, which requires that we examine how we honored them and progressed as a nation after that day.

And we did a poor mother fucking job of honoring them. We continue to do a poor job of honoring them even now, 17 years later.

How have we paid tribute to them?

America’s longest military action, spanning *three* (3) Presidential administrations so far?

Thousands of dead soldiers and civilians?

Direct attacks on our civil rights in the name of security?

Ongoing denial of aid for the surviving heroes, who we largely ignore except on the anniversary and when a politician needs to campaign?

A dramatic increase in public bigotry?

The normalization of jingoism in place of true patriotism?

If you ask me, that’s not honor.

Even Billy Graham asked us “not to implode and disintegrate emotionally and spiritually as a people and a nation”, but we didn’t listen.

Within a week of the attack, we got to hear

“What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve." – Jerry Falwell

"Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population." – Pat Robertson

"The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularise America, I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' " – Jerry Falwell

That’s not honor. That’s *hate*.

In the first week and a half after the attack, there were around 600 documented incidents of attacks on Arab and Muslim people in the U.S.  Nearly 600 in *10* days. A *Sikh* was murdered because of hate and stupidity.

We claim to honor the victims. Yet we consistently fail to mention that this wasn’t just an attack on America. Citizens from at least 78 nations were killed in the attack. This was an attack on *everyone*. But we don’t really talk about them.

On the anniversary, we remember the victims. We remember the heroes. But we consistently fail to *honor* them.

The simple fact is, 9/11 *broke* us and as a result, we’ve failed the dead and the living.

We should try to figure out how to fix it.

Stop the Hate?

So. . . hate.

What is it? Is it bad? Good? Do we need to stop all the hate? What do we mean when we say “hate”?

Fuck if I know.

I have a friend, a person whom I genuinely respect. They’ve earned it. They’re smart (far more intelligent than I am), thoughtful, considerate, involved, pretty fair-minded. When I say not all opinions are equal, they’re one of the people I’m thinking of. I know they put a lot more thought into things than most people, so when they decide to say something, I’m going to listen, even if I end up disagreeing.

Recently, they were pushed to angrily rant about something (and yes, it’s a real possibility that I unknowingly contributed to what pushed them to actually rant about this). And as angry as it was indicated to be, certainly I had to pay attention.

Long story short, the idea was stop the hate, because we’re all human beings and should try treating each as such.

Which is a fine philosophy. I’m sure it works tremendously well for some people.

I mean, shit, the greatest thinkers, doers, heroes, the best of the best, they were *all* humans, like you, like me, like the guy across the street who was murdered in cold blood a couple years ago.

Of course, the worst of the worst in human history were *also* humans beings. As far as I know, Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, Genghis, whomever created the reality show, they were all humans beings, like you, like me, like the guy who murdered the guy across the street a couple years ago.

So what does it mean that maybe we should try treating each other like humans beings, especially on the internet?

People have been asking this kind of question since people. Typically, there is an appeal to a common experience or denominator. Are you working hard to provide for your family? Well, maybe that woman who supports Trump is working hard to provide for *her* family and thinks Trump will make that easier, or more likely?  Shit, right there is a common, shared experience. If you have that in common, maybe you have other things in common, so let’s explore those!

Of course, this position has one pretty severe flaw as typically expressed. It’s asking you to overlook, ignore, or (and god damn do I hate this one) agree to disagree on certain other beliefs and positions held in order to focus on the commonalities.

I like tacos. Despite the possible origins of tacos, there are Nazis that like tacos. Our shared appreciation of delicious tacos is simply not enough of a commonality for me to accept their Nazism.

What am I driving at here? The basic idea is that we should treat each other with respect, at least basic respect. At the same time, you more than likely grew up being repeatedly told that “respect is earned”. And it is. People confuse “respect” and “basic courtesy” ALL. THE. FUCKING. TIME.

People are, in my incredibly humble opinion, absolutely entitled to basic courtesy. Until they demonstrate that they are no longer deserving of that courtesy. And I think *that* is what we’re talking about when someone says we need to “stop the hate”.

The simple fact is that, despite our commonalities, when you support inhumane actions, inhumane positions, as far as I’m concerned YOU ARE FUCKED. You’ve abdicated the right to basic courtesy. I can even understand someone being conned for a while, if they later realize that they stupidly supported some heinous shit.

But when they *keep* supporting it, despite knowing (and often willfully ignoring) the truth? Fuck them.

Because we are all human beings. And some humans beings are piece of shit scumbags who do nothing but make the world a worse place. And I will continue to point this out to them. I will continue to support the people who point this out to them, in the most uncivil ways possible.

Some folk will ask “do you think the hate is helping”?

Yeah, yeah it is. Fighting against injustice isn’t clean, it isn’t civil. As Good Old J.R. would say, “it ain’t ballet” (though every time he says that, I’m like “You go do some damn ballet and see how easy you think that shit is afterwards, son!”) They’ll be all “What about changing hearts and minds?” or “You’re never going to change their minds acting like that!”. Except changing the minds of scumfucks really isn’t the goal.

This actually ties into the recent “civility” smokescreens. See, for as long as people have been fighting injustice, other people have screamed and cried about the lack of civility in the fight. See, these people understand something about fights against being doing scummy shit:

You’re not really going to change the minds of most people. Because most people DO. NOT. GIVE. A. FUCK. About the cause. What they *do* care about is being bothered by, constantly reminded of, or annoyed by the cause, constantly hearing about it, over and over and over. Especially in ways that are uncivil or lacking in basic courtesy.

Because if things are civil, it’s not intrusive, it’s not important, it’s not interfering with their daily lives.

You change things not by changing the minds of the majority or a plurality. You change them by making the majority so fucking tired of the shit that *they* demand change just so they can go back to daily lives. You target the comfort and/or mundane apathy. It’s how women got the vote. It’s how the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came about. It’s what drove the Klan into the shadows for years. It’s what sparked acceptance of the fact that gay people were, in fact, entitled to the same basic rights as everyone else, it’s what’s ever so slowly pushing trans acceptance.

It’s simply how it is.

Anyway. . .

My basic point is that the blanket cry to “stop the hate” is a close cousin to the paradox of tolerance.

“The hate” is a tool, a weapon. Like a firearm or politics.

Should you call someone a racist when you haven’t seen overt racism from them? Probably not. But you can call them conned morons supporting a Nazi-sympathizing scumfuck, so they’re just as bad if not worse than an actual racist, because they’re supporting it simply because they (falsely) believe they’re gaining something from that support.

Stop the hate?

Fuck no.

That shit is useful. But do try to aim it correctly. We’re not burning down Vietnam here. Though if necessary, some folk who didn’t have the sense to step to the fucking side might get caught in the effect.

Marsupial, Our Puppy, One Year Later, R.I.P.

So, about 15 years ago, the SO and I were talking – JUST TALKING – about maybe getting a dog for the family. We both missed the dogs we used to have, and I think they’re good for kids to. So, one day, the phone rings, and the SO tells me that someone had some Boxer Beagle puppies, and she was in love with them and so then we had a dog.

He was an absolutely *adorable* little puppy. He was also a jerk with *tremendously* sharp teeth. How do I know his teeth were tremendously sharp? Because I still carry scars all over my lower legs from when he thought I was his chew toy, or he was trying to establish dominance over me. Still not sure what his goal was.

Now, the SO had more patience and discipline than I did, so she handled the primary training (sit, stay, etc.) which he took to pretty quick. He was a smart little puppy. I, on the other hand, was engaged in a one man, one dog war with him over who was boss and who got to chew on whose legs.

Eventually, I won that war.

I don’t think I did it the way the books say to do it, and don’t worry, I never beat or hit him (I did hold him by the scruff of his neck with my teeth once), but I did spend a lot of time on all fours acting like a bigger dog.

Me and him? We developed our own relationship, rough housing loving, like stereotypical boys for the most part.

One thing we couldn’t seem to train out of him was his primal need to bark at non-family members like he was a savage marauder who lived only to taste the blood of humans. That behavior, combined with people often mistaking him for a Pit Bull, eventually got us evicted from our townhouse apartment. Which lead to us renting a house, which was cool, because we finally had a back yard he could run around in.

He ended up smashing out two windows (on two different occasions) while fiercely letting people know he was in the house. He was a Boxer, so if there was a window or door in his way, he beat on it with his paws. Which proved to be stronger than glass.

We ended up moving into a house that we were buying, and for a couple more years, we had to put him in the back of the house or outside whenever company came over, because, again, jerk ass. I ran a weekly RPG so I had the same people coming over and *eventually* we got him to accept those guys, and then he was meek as could be with them, wanting the occasionally loving, and then ignoring him.

After a few years, when the game fell apart, he grew less used to people being over and started to revert a little but not much when people came in the house. However, he *never* stopped trying to be a fierce beast when he saw people walking outside or coming up onto the porch. I had to strategically place things in-between our annoyingly expansive front windows and him to stop him from smashing those out.

In his last couple of years, he got real sick one time (first time he was every actually ill), and stopped eating. We think he may have gotten into some chocolate, but were never quite sure. So, after more than a decade, we had to take him to the vet (we’re poor, so it was a big hit on our monthly income). They helped, and he started eating again, but he *never* forgot being sick, and became obsessed with food. Any food that was around was even less safe than before (you couldn’t leave anything unguarded), and he became far more bold when it came to getting in your face while you were eating, to the point where we had to put him up during dinner time.

But outside of food, he was still the same obnoxious jerk. Just with ever-dwindling energy. Then he started to have weird fugue spells. Those were creepy.

And then one day, he kept trying to burrow, hide? Under whatever furniture was nearby, with little energy.

And when we woke up the next morning, he was laying in the floor like normal, but when I went to pet him, he was unresponsive.

He had died sometime in the night.

I’m not prone to deluding myself, so of course, I always knew that he would eventually die. And towards the end, I think I knew it was coming up on the end. I tried to spend extra time with him because of that.

When I realized he wasn’t breathing, I called the SO to make sure (my brain isn’t 100% trustworthy). I put on my stoic face and with my middle child, wrapped him up in a blanket that we had possessed even longer than we had him, so that we could take him up to the vet so they could handle his body.

Moving him from house to car to vet to holding him while waiting was one of the most difficult mental things I’ve ever done.

When we got him, the SO agreed to let me name him, and I picked “Marsupial”, because when I was about 17-18, I lived with someone and we had one of the puppies that my family dog had given birth to. That puppy was named “Platypus”. He died early (worms, before we were able to get his vaccinations). When he died, I always knew I would name my next dog “Marsupial”. The SO added the middle name “Jones”.

They say that pets and owners come to resemble each other. I don’t think that ever happened with us, but Marsupial was undeniably one of us. When I say he was a loud, obnoxious, seemingly fierce but not really, jerk ass. . . well, I would largely apply that to myself as well. I don’t mean it as an insult, but rather a descriptor of myself and our dog.

He was ours, and we were his.

He died this day in 2017.

We miss him.

Rest in . . . peace? No, that’s not right. I’d rather think he’s barking at every intangible spirit that crosses his senses, letting them know that he’s there, watching them and they shouldn’t forget that.

I put together a little Flickr album with some pictures of him, spanning about 10 years or so.

"Star Wars: The Last Jedi" - Some Thoughts

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

(Daisy Ridley, John Boyega; PG-13; 152 min; 2017)

YAY! I finally got to watch this! Not in a cool theater like I hoped to do, but hey, WOOT anyway!

This is my least favorite Star Wars movie.

I AM JUST KIDDING!!!!!!!! That's still Rogue One.

I'm actually still processing this one, about 14 hours later. There was so much to take in. One of the most common of the few complaints I saw about The Force Awakens is that it was basically just A New Hope remake, and that's a fair cop. It was a wonderfully done remake that I loved.

The Last Jedi is not a remake of The Empire Strikes Back, which I know was something I thought might happen. Make no mistake; TLJ very much revisits situations and elements from both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but it takes those elements and twists or subverts them. It very much felt like what Rian Johnson (director, writer) would have liked to have seen in those originals, and it does it extremely well.

Visually, this film is just beautiful. The battle between Kylo, Rey, and the Praetorian Guard was terrific. It was vicious and brutal, while being done in more the style of the Original Trilogy saber fights. Don’t get me wrong, I absolute LOV* the saber fights in the prequels. Those will always be my favorites, but I also understand that those were Jedi who were immediately post-peak of power, so their fights would be different.

Luke, Kylo, Rey, none of these people had the full training of the Jedi Order, so they all had to learn to fight differently. I don’t think any of them ever made the full connection with the Force in melee combat that the Jedi of old had, so the battles in this new trilogy so far are exactly what they should be.

The battle on the salt plains was a brilliant choice. Not just in the vibrant contrast of the red earth against the glaring white salt, but in how the movements of the Rebel forces left delicate, almost artistic streaks and patterns, while the war machine of the First Order left what looked like swaths of smeared blood on the ground.

Adam Driver (Kylo Ren), who I wasn’t super impressed with in TFA, was much improved here. I think with this one, the actor has become a little more comfortable with the character, reflected nicely in the story telling, when he smashed his mask. Both Driver and Ren stopped trying to be Darth Vader 2.0 in this one, and embraced being Kylo Ren, Emo Asshole Supreme.

Young Daisy Ridley continues to impress. She manages to convey the best and worst qualities of the Jedi simultaneously.

The story of Finn and Rose was very compelling. Remember that this movie follows immediately on TFA, and so far, Finn’s not really a hero. Finn doesn’t know who he is yet. Hell, it wasn’t that long ago at all that he was a Stormtrooper. At this point, he’s impulsive and reactionary (a bit like, I don’t know, Luke Skywalker when he was young). And here’s this young fan girl (because, like Luke, Finn’s suddenly a hero to a lot of people), who finds herself suddenly disillusioned, then thrust into an adventure she probably never expected, and unintentionally teaching someone what it means to truly be a hero.

I was not impressed with Laura Dern. They could have put anyone in that part, she brought nothing special to the table.

Anyway. . .

From the time I first watched Star Wars back when I was, like, 4, Luke Skywalker has been my favorite character. And while I know people up to and including Mark Hamill don't necessarily agree with Johnson's choices for Luke in this movie, I thought it made perfect sense for the character's arc. In the original trilogy, we see Luke go from zero to hero, his Hero's Journey. But at the end of the day, he was still only a Jedi Master by default, by being the last of the Jedi. Through three movies, we see that despite his maturation, he still retains the impulsive nature that he has back on the dustball where he grew up.

Luke gained some wisdom over time, but always remained close to that edge, plagued by self-doubt. Recall that in RotJ, he nearly succumbed to the Dark Side, and while he pulled himself back, he couldn’t get the job done; that was Anakin Skywalker.

TLJ touches on the post-RotJ life of Skywalker, in which, as the Jedi who vanquished Vader and ended the Empire, he became a legend. And he essentially admits that he kind of bought into his own press, thinking that he could rebuild the Jedi order. And that makes perfect sense, because look at who trained him initially: Obi-Wan Kenobi. Who thought he had what it took to train Vader.

And we know how that turned out.

We learned that once again, Luke almost succumbed to the Dark Side, but pulled back. Because almost succumbing to the Dark Side is in Luke’s very nature as a person. And him retreating and hiding when everything goes catastrophically wrong is also in Luke’s nature. Because despite the passage of decades, he never stopped being that desert-dwelling angsty, self-pitying teenager who dreamed of something bigger, but had no idea of how to react when those dreams manifested differently.

In the books, Luke meets Mary Sue, I mean Mara Jade blah blah blah, but I never thought the character arc in the novels was appropriate. This arc? This is pretty much exactly what I always pictured for Luke, because Luke was always going to be a tragic hero at best. And in the end, he was still a hero. He pulled himself back one last time to do the right thing. Not the thing that fixed everything and saved the day, but the thing that helped others.

Now, Star Wars has always been the saga of the Skywalker family. So does this change with Ren’s “revelation” that Rey’s parents were nobodies? Certainly, it appears that she’s not a Skywalker, so is this still the saga of the Skywalkers?

Sure. Kylo Ren is a Skywalker.

And he’s also a manipulative, unreliable narrator. We never saw his alleged vision of Rey’s parents. It’s entirely possible that he made it up in order to help sway her to his side. It’s also entirely possible that he didn’t, knowing that she would sense the truth when he spoke it.

I’m not entirely sure that Rey’s parentage or ancestry is terrible important. Given her raw power level, one is inclined to think that she must have some connection to the Skywalker family, but do we need to know what that is? Heck if I know. For all I know, she was incubated from some remnant of Darth Vader’s DNA. We might find out, we might not, we might already have found out.

I enjoyed this so much (and am looking forward to re-watching it to see what I missed the first time around in my mesmerized state; same thing happened with TFA), that I’m disappointed to learn that Rian Johnson isn’t writing and directing the next one. In fact, I have some trepidation about the next one, since it’s being directed by Arbams and written by Abrams and Chris Terrio, co-writer of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (you all know how I feel about that film) and writer of Justice League (which I haven’t seen yet, and haven’t decided if I’m going to even bother with).

On the other hand, Rian Johnson is getting an entire Star Wars trilogy to play with, and after this, I’m pretty jazzed about that.

Overall, Star Wars: The Last Jedi is an excellent ending to the story of Luke Skywalker (and ensures that his legend will live on in universe), and a very solid entry in the American Mythos that is Star Wars.