Nam Nguyen

(Heavy spoiler review) The beginning of Solo on Corellia and especially on Mimban had great atmosphere and design sensibility that felt continuous with the original trilogy. Aside from some dialogue that was needlessly expositional or on-the-nose the beginning worked, especially Han and Chewie’s first meeting. The middle with Dryden Vos and the Kessle run got sloppy in terms of atmosphere and design but was still fun. The end was a total mess with multiple plot reversals all happening in rapid succession: a totally unconvincing reveal of Enfys Nest where she immediately states her backstory and gives a speech, Darth Maul coming back to life (I hate when they resurrect characters) and many more plot points, none of which were evocative in any way and none of which seemed to interest the filmmakers enough to zero in on. Both Alden Erenreich and Donald Glover did a wonderful job but, yes, just the fact of them not being Harrison Ford and Billy D. Williams robbed the movie of the sense of continuity with the originals that I look for as a fan who primarily wants to deepen and enrich his sense of the original trilogy universe.

Objectively I would give Kenobi 3.5 stars but as a SW fan who greatly appreciates seeing Ewan Mcgregor’s Kenobi unfettered by bad prequel scripts I give this show a 4 stars (Spoilers below) The main character arc and final duel are wonderful. Kenobi, Leia, Owen and Vader are especially well written and acted. Ben and Leia’s chemistry is magic. I loved seeing Ben go from hurting his hand punching to awkwardly killing stormtroopers with three lightsaber blows to his full virtuosity coinciding with his psyche being re-centered Minus a star for characters surviving when killed, melodramatic TVish soundtrack, stagey low budget feel of some parts, all four inquisitors looking and behaving in a corny cartoonish way, and for not being ruthless enough in editing down some shots, story beats, and dialogue that showed too much, spoiled the mystery, or that didn’t fully land in the execution (Flea chase, Leia interrogation, lingering shots of prosthetics in plain light, verbalized backstories etc) The above would normally be deal breakers for me but the stuff I liked I REALLY liked. 6 episodes would spread any director too thin but I look forward to seeing more of Deborah Chow’s work. She and Rick Famuyiwa are my favorite directors from The Mandalorian.

I’m a HUGE original trilogy fan and I think Andor is the best Star Wars show so far. Leading up to its premiere I wasn’t interested in it because I found Rogue One to have a forgettable mass-produced feel, I don't like spy thrillers and I thought a new show that leaned into the revolutionary politics side of Star Wars was a bad fit for our time of Kremlin funded polarization. But now I'm obsessed. I can’t resist the shows grounded tactile realism and purposeful storytelling. If a Star Wars series mixed Andor’s sheer writer-driven quality with The Mandalorian’s stretches of wordless storytelling and love of large alien animals it would be perfect. (Spoilers below) I knew the show was excellent the moment the first speaking character, a bouncer, yelled after Andor "The upstairs lounge is closed!" because the line's total irrelevance to the plot told me that characters would have their own everyday motives outside of the plot and that dialogue would not be laden with the responsibility of exposition. The line also created a whole new mysterious room in my imagination without them having to build a set. Some have said Andor doesn’t feel like star Wars but to me it feels more Star Wars than Star Wars (aside from it’s conversation-driven nature) because it takes the deeply tactile weathered future feel that distinguished Star Wars from other 70s and 80s kids entertainment and deepens it. Coruscant has never looked as Star Wars as in Andor The show's diversity is far more convincingly executed than in any other Disney Star Wars. It never feels self-congratulatory, forced or demographically stylized (It’s never like the moment in Solo when Enfys Nest reveals her face and gives a speech about oppression in general that feels like Disney is presenting a somber philanthropic award to itself for a diverse casting choice). In Andor there’s no fanfare and no question about whether any of these characters belong. If anyone mighty be an interloper it’s the audience and that is how it should feel. Andor's slow pace makes it more exciting not less because the time is well used to build tension, delve deeply into the underlying themes, build characters and show the true stakes of even small scale events. Tony Gilroy's main contribution to Star Wars via this show may be that he has built a better workflow than past Star Wars shows had. The format of Andor is that the writer is the show runner but doesn’t direct and each director gets a three episode chunk. This avoids The Mandalorians baffling inconsistency in quality that comes from having a different director for each episode but also avoids Kenobi's overstretched quality that comes from a single person directing six episodes and also being the showrunner. The main challenge of this series going forward will be the anticlimax of the fact that it’s leading up to Rogue One, a movie far far inferior to the Andor series. I hope they somehow have a “postscript episode” that retells the events of Rogue One (like what was going on in the adjoining room) in a way that’s on par with the quality of Andor even if it’s just a ten minute sequence. Actually now that Tony Gilroy has shown us some humanity among imperials I want him to make a season long follow up to Andor that takes place right after the fall of the Galactic Empire where former imperials and former rebels can have some face to face hang out time and where Mon Mothma’s fledgling democracy faces a coup de’tat by rebel factions with totalitarian aspirations (I’m looking at you Luthen, to lead the October revolution to Mothma’s February revolution). They could even have deepfake Leia and Wedge.

Half of the Book of Boba Fett is ecstatically wonderful and half of it is shockingly low quality and cheapens the cannon as a whole.(Spoilers ahead) The wonderful parts are the entire flashback timeline (especially Fett getting his ship and returning and camping by the sarlac) as well as the Mandalorian digressions. The fatal flaw in the show is the non-flashbacks eg: every scene with Fett in the role of Jabba the Hutt (including the entire final episode which sank the whole series for me by making it all a lead up to nothing). To be clear, the problem is not the CONCEPT of Fett as the new crime lord (which I think is cool) but rather the consistently poor quality and unplanned sitcom-like feel of those scenes and episodes most of which were done by Rodriguez himself. As far as Morrison’s acting as Fett, I think he does a great job (perfect balance of emotion and stoicism when he encounters tragedy) but is the wrong age and physique to play Fett on the very day he fell into the Sarlac. I think they should have digitally de-aged and slimmed him down at least for the flashbacks (He’s fit but just has a different physique than Fett!) On the positive end this series does illustrate how effectively deep digressions can cut right to what is interesting (full episodes that are flashbacks or that follow an unexpected character). I would like to see more of that.

I wrote this positive review before The Rise of Skywalker made the whole sequel trilogy defunct for me personally. Mild spoilers ahead: Like many franchise films including Revenge of the Sith and The Hobbit, The Last Jedi is essentially two separate movies of drastically unequal quality inter-spliced with one another, what we’ll call an “A unit” movie and a “B unit” movie. The A unit movie follows the simple story of Luke and his two students, Rey and Kylo, and it contains all the famously divisive major plot points of the film. It is precisely these divisive plot points that make the A movie my favorite of the sequel trilogy. The A movie’s story threatens and thereby deepens the philosophical underpinnings of past Star Wars films just like each sequel in the classic trilogy did to the one before it and because of this, The Last Jedi’s A movie, with it’s late Kurosawa inspired cinematography and it’s rainy druidic Irish nature cult vibe, feels like our first real visit to the Star Wars universe since the original trilogy (the blue milk and crushed wheelbarrow scenes notwithstanding). This A movie casts off the spirit of the prequels and even The Force Awakens in order to return to the theme-driven, self questioning, and irrevocably forward moving form of the original trilogy. The B unit movie, which follows the other characters; Poe, Rose, Finn, and Leah is less good and seriously detracts from the film as a whole. While the A movie brings Star Wars fans to a vulnerable place and is humbling enough to require great trust between film maker and audience, the B movie undermines that trust by feeling under-considered with it’s stagey lighting and blocking, sitcom-like moral sensibility, jarring over-the-top moments, and Avenger’s-like cinematic style whose only modes seem to be CGI battles alternating with head-and-shoulders exposition shots (contrast that with the truly visual story telling in the first twenty minutes of ANH). I believe it is this combination of the A movie’s heightened requirement of audience trust and the B movie’s undermining of that trust that led to such a strong backlash to this film (Especially in the context of the recent emotional distrust that has grown between demographic groups in the U.S. it’s easy to see how some would have interpreted Luke’s compromised state as a flogging of white males and the elderly rather than a deeper and more universally human self questioning). All in all, as a Star Wars mega fan and original trilogy purist, I find this movie to be of interest. I think much of the fan criticism about tonal inconsistency and distracting subplots is valid and significant, there's still the insurmountable problem of The First Order being a rehash of The Galactic Empire, and I'm going to have to agree with those who say that Rey's story arc was crippled by her being too powerful right out of the starting gate and having nowhere to go from there, but I liked the bold world-shattering story points in this film and its healing way of processing disillusionment and the finite imperfect nature of one's entire life legacy. I especially like the way The Last Jedi redeems Mark Hamill’s acting in Return of the Jedi with a career-topping performance that makes Luke Skywalker’s everyman schtick into something more interesting and shows Luke's wit and humanity while providing a rare meditation on aging that was made possible by the unique pan-generational phenomenon of Star Wars.

Bob Igor killed the goose for the golden egg by demanding this first Disney Star Wars film be completed on a predetermined timeline regardless of whether they had a real story. The result goes far beyond this flawed but somewhat entertaining movie. The fatal flaw of The Force Awakens is so big that it tends to drag down the entire post Return of the Jedi section of the Star Wars timeline including The Mandalorian. That fatal flaw is the existence of The First Order itself. Setting aside the already egregious fact of it being an almost exact rehash of the Empire from the previous installments, The First Order doesn’t resonate with anything in reality. The Empire, grew as real dictatorships do with the dictator taking control (in this case, by being elected) of a pre-existing governing body, military, tax base, trade mechanisms etc while The First Order seems more like Cobra in G.I. Joe, a stateless disembodied Military industrial complex that somehow has limitless resources. In addition The Force Awakens trilogy misses an amazing opportunity for a harrowing and politically well rounded story. The first trilogy is about the rise of a dictatorship and the second trilogy is about the overthrow of a dictatorship. Using the third trilogy to bask in the underdog glory of revolution once again is as philosophically stunted as it is unimaginative. It would be far more interesting and groundbreaking if the third trilogy had the courage to explore real post revolutionary concerns like the need to defend the new imperfect but workable status quo from the threat of coup d’etat by Feudal war lords and above all by the kind of oppressive second wave splinter revolutionary group that tends to take over after the first wave of a revolution has removed the old regime (former allies of convenience who hated the Empire but who only wanted power and revenge, those who would benefit from a revolution that never ends). I understand that Lucasfilm wouldn’t want to retcon The First Order but what I’d be interested in stories in the post Imperial era that simply avoid the first order either by taking place after The First Order’s fall but not specifying that it was The First order that recently fell as opposed to The Empire or by taking place before The First Order with no reference to its beginnings.

Strengths: Jon Fav cracked the code of what makes something feel like the original trilogy: A non-dialogue-dependent story thats simple enough to unfold slowly and slow enough (despite the high velocity of the fighting) for the audience to relish the aged future atmosphere. Weaknesses: The more they focus on the second rise of the Empire the less believable and compelling the show becomes. I don’t want to see people fighting clean organized stormtroopers in halls. The Empire made sense in the OT where a tyrant had been elected and thus had the vast power of the state at his command. But the First Order and Moff Gideon’s forces are some kind of stateless military industrial complex. It’s as implausible as Cobra in GI Joe or a scenario where secret Nazi aircraft carriers take over a small country in the 1950s. As a story element the First Order shows a lack of philosophical maturity and demonstrates that the filmmakers had to inject a forced underdog-ness to their heroes and the beliefs they represent, that the writers shrank from envisioning a world where the heroes were defending a hard won status quo even though that would be the natural thing to explore post ROTJ. The US faces a potential adversary-backed coup but we’ve all been conditioned to never defend or maintain what exists because being a revolutionary (even after the revolution) is a more well established look. I know John Fav didn’t create the first order but it’s existence will be a major obstacle to the Mandalorian’s quality going forward. They can’t retcon the first order but I think they aught to avoid focusing stories on it wherever possible. Most of the show’s other weaknesses could be corrected with more discriminating editing down of dialogue. Some characters such as the Mos Eisley mechanic, the blue Mythral alien, and the rookie bounty hunter in episode 5, as well as many characters in episode 4 have greatly overextended closeup time and a good deal of unnecessary head-and-shoulders dialogue of the kind that depletes dramatic tension, narrative focus, and the general mystique of the Star Wars world. One exception to this is the speeder driver in the beginning of episode one who has just enough lines to establish that he has a life outside of the plot but few enough that our imagination eagerly fills out the rest. Yes, editing down the dialogue and acting would shorten the show even more but that would make it stylistically closer to Lucas’s Buck Rodgers roots while putting the show even further above Buck Rodgers in terms of quality. Overall. I’m over the moon about this show so far and can’t wait for each episode