Links and Updates

It occurs to me that despite having been out since April, I haven't yet posted the latest Star Wars teaser. Whoopsie.

So there are a lot of things we can infer from this trailer, though one can never forget that such things can be very deceptive in their editing (remember when The Last Jedi made it look like Rey was saying: "I need someone to show me my place in all this," to Kylo when it was actually Luke?)

Yet it would seem - and I cross all my fingers and toes on this - that the focus of the film is FINALLY on the trio of Rey, Finn and Poe. It's apparent that at some point they're all on a desert planet together, and then a cross-country trip occurs when they seek out the remains of the original Death Star.

And I am ALL for that. Give me the dynamic, give me the team-work, give me the camaraderie. I don't know what's going to go down, or how things will pan out, but "the trio go on an adventure together" is really all I could wish for from this film.

As for Kylo... look, I realize that The Discourse (TM) is just unbearable at this stage, but based on what images were selected for the trailer, it would appear he's staying Dark Side. First he kills a man with the cross-guard of his lightsaber, and then there's a shot of his mask being repaired.

Of course, there's no point in discussing this with stans, who have already decided that “Kylo doesn’t kill the guy, he just body slams him” and that he is the Skywalker of the title. (Leading to a truly hilarious GIF set which dramatically interposes the words "Rise of Skywalker" over the shot of him very clearly killing that guy).

Speaking of the title, I'm sure you've all heard the theory that "Skywalker" will refer to a new order of Force-users who will be neither Jedi nor Sith, but rather a group of individuals that rejects the negative aspects of both sects to become a more compassionate, less emotionally-detached organization of peacekeepers.

It would work beautifully, and is so well in keeping with the established themes of the sequel trilogy that I'm confident this theory will pan out as predicted.

But what I'm more interested in is the question of Rey's parentage and how it pertains to her history with Kylo. Reading between the lines of this Vanity Fair article, I'm going out on a limb and theorizing that...

Kylo murdered Rey's parents.

First of all, JJ Abrams has already said that there's more to Rey's backstory than has been revealed. I don't think he'll retcon Rian Johnson's decision to make her a nobody, but I do think Kylo was lying when he said they sold Rey for drinking money. It was a half-truth designed to make her join the Dark Side.

In watching The Force Awakens, it seems pretty clear to me that JJ originally meant for Rey and Kylo to have met previously. From Kylo's "what GIRL?" in response to hearing that the droid had escaped with a girl, to Rey's Force abilities growing stronger in his presence all pointed to her having been in Luke's Academy as a child, only to escape the massacre and subsequently forget the trauma (explaining why her powers came back to her so strongly after they re-met).

Heck, in the fim's novelization, Kylo actually says: "so it IS you," when she pulls the lightsaber out of his reach. (A line that was originally in the script, but cut from the final film).

Of course, that theory went kaput with The Last Jedi, but JJ could still work with Johnson's idea that Rey was born with preternatural Force abilities to balance out Kylo (which I thought was an incredibly daft premise, but we're stuck with it now). In which case, if Snoke and Kylo knew that such a person would come along, a "champion of the Light", it makes sense they would try to find her and kill her as a child.

Then there's Rey's vision, which included the Knights of Ren and Kylo seemingly killing this random guy:

What if that's Rey's father? And apparently this scene made another appearance in the footage at the latest Star Wars convention, suggesting it's important.

If you look at the actual quotes from Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley in the article about their "maybe-bond" and that it "runs deeper than expected" (the writer tries to crouch it in romantic terms, but I still seriously doubt that Disney is going to hook up a teenage girl with the thirty-something year old man-child that's been terrorizing her for the past two movies) then it could be referring to this shared history in which Kylo and the Knights deliberately went out killing Jedi apprentices - including Rey's parents, who presumably managed to hide her on Jakku.

Finally, there's an emphasis on parents in both actors' quotes. I roll my eyes at the idea that we're apparently meant to feel sorry for Kylo for having the coolest people in the galaxy as his mother and father, but this is the second time Daisy has made the claim that Rey is furious at Kylo for having had a loving family and then throwing them away, which is interesting.

If the original trilogy had as its big twist the fact that the murderer of Luke's father was actually his true father, then there's a nice symmetry in Rey realizing that her great nemesis put her on the path she's on by hunting down and killing her parents.

Also, there was a rumour a while back that Rey would see a vision of her parents on a jungle planet. This was very early speculation, and yet the promo pictures have revealed that a jungle environment does come into play at some point. It could take place at the same time Rey tearfully hugs Leia, having learnt the full truth about her parents.

There's nothing to do but wait.

As for the rest of the trailer, it's nice to see Lando again (and in the driver's seat of the Falcon), though I worry about how well the Leia scenes are going to work. I dearly hope they're integrated well into the flow of the film, but it's going to be difficult to forget that they're all cut scenes from The Force Awakens.

As for the return of Emperor Palpatine... look, I can't see him being in this film as anything other than a malevolent Force Ghost that messes with Kylo and Rey's heads for a couple of scenes. Anything bigger than that, and not only are the past efforts of Luke, Leia, Han and Vader rendered completely pointless, but the story itself will be utterly damned by its attempts to recapture the magic of the original trilogy instead of just being its own thing.

***

The MCU used Comic Con to introduce Phase Four to general audiences, and in all honesty, I have no idea what things like the Eternals and the Ten Rings are - but I'm looking forward to finding out!

The stuff that really caught my attention was for the franchise's pre-existing titles, and what the future has in store for its female characters. Regarding this, the biggest shock would have to be that Natalie Portman is returning for Thor 4: Love and Thunder. Past comments had made it appear she was done with the MCU, but she's not only back, but wielding Mjölnir!

My co-worker brought me up to speed with the Lady Thor arc in the comics, so this could be a very interesting development. Wow, along with Peggy and Pepper, the Phase One girlfriends are coming up roses! (Except for poor forgotten Betty).  

Tessa Thompson has also promised us that Valkyrie (now King of Asgard) will be on the hunt for a Queen, and the return of Jane has also made me hopeful that Darcy and Sif will also make their long-awaited comebacks.

Elsewhere, Wanda (aka Scarlet Witch) is heading into the Doctor Strange sequel, which seems a good fit for her. They haven't done much with this character so far, things like the death of her brother and Vision weren't explored, and even her moral ambiguity (absolutely NO ONE held her accountable for triggering the Hulk and sending him on a rampage in Johannesburg) has been largely ignored.

Perhaps this and WandaVision (though I hate that project on principle due to the silly name) will rectify that. Plus, they've described Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness as their first foray into the horror genre, which intrigues me. Just as Ant-Man was a heist film and The Winter Soldier an espionage thriller, I'm quite fascinated by a idea of single genre (superhero) branching into other subgenres (horror, war, heist, fantasy, etc).

It's also been confirmed that Hayley Atwell's Peggy Carter will be guest starring on the final season of Agents of Shield - which probably means we won't get that third season of Agent Carter (I was so hopeful!) but hopefully some more answers as to the time-travelling hi-jinks of Endgame. I suppose this means I'll finally have to watch Agents of Shield.

And of course, Black Widow is out in May next year. It's hard to get very excited about it - if only they had seized the moment of peak interest in the character after The Avengers in 2012, before Wonder Woman, some of Scarlett Johansson's dubious roles/comments, and ya know - the character's actual death. As with Solo, I've always found prequels starring characters that have already been killed off a little baffling.

***

Speaking of Endgame, check out this fantastic 8-bit take on the final battle:

It gets every detail, from Thor's smile when Steve picks up Mjölnir to the way Wasp looks around after she appears on the battleground. Gorgeously done.

***

Since we're on the topic of superheroes, Kara Danvers is getting a new look for Supergirl. Apparently Melissa Benoist was getting cold in the Vancouver weather, so fair enough.

Honestly, I was more shocked that season five is airing in October. I only just finished season four!

***

On the second Disney front, the next wave of live-action versions of classic animated films are on their way, though only two are of any interest to me. Here's the Mulan trailer:

It all looks beautiful, but also quite droll and serious. My favourite thing about the animated version was how much of a dork Mulan was, not to mention the pretty blatant queer subtext. I trust Niki Caro to do right by Chinese culture and the female characters (she did direct The Whale Rider, after all) but I can't help but feel something is missing here.

So says the woman who complains that all the other live-action remakes askew too close their source material. Here, take your mind off it by watching some adorable kids re-enacting Honor to Us All:

Then there's The Little Mermaid, which caused even more of a stir by casting Halle Bailey as Arial. The backlash is as tedious as it is inevitable, even though I was always under the assumption that Disney's Little Mermaid was set in the Mediterranean, and could therefore easily accommodate non-white characters - not that it matters since mermaids aren't actually REAL.

What annoys me most is Bailey getting a hard time because she's not white, and yet compare her singing voice to Emma Watson's auto-tuned performance. Bailey had to be far more talented to land this role, while Belle was handed to an actress who basically performed the whole thing as an extension of herself.

Though honestly, I'm infinitely more excited to watch the TV Musical with Auli’i Cravalho as Arial and Queen Latifah as Ursula. Hell yeah!

***

There's going to be a new Hunger Games book! And right after that Tumblr post went viral that commended Suzanne Collins on taking her cheque and disappearing without dragging out her series interminably!

A rumour is circulating that Lashanna Lynch is going to be 007 in the next James Bond film, though it was quickly ascertained that she was just going to have that moniker, and not be a race-lifted, gender-flipped James Bond. And is in fact, still a rumour at this stage. We shall wait upon events...

More rumours of an Obi-Wan Kenobi show starring Ewan McGregor for Disney's streaming service. Hmm, I think this would have worked better as a film than a show (how exciting could life as a hermit BE?) though my favourite scenario would have had him cameo in someone else's movie - perhaps lending them aid when things are at their darkest point.

In recent weeks I've been revisiting the eighties shlock I read as a pre-teen, and here are some of my favourite websites:

Sweet Valley Revisited, which provides hilarious commentary on the ghost-written work of Francine Pascal. I inherited these books from my cousins back in the day, and these summaries really capture the insanity of Sweet Valley and its inhabitants. Jessica is a full-blown sociopath, Elizabeth an unbearable busybody, and both fully-fledged Mary Sues at a time when that term has become practically meaningless.

But then you've never read Sweet Valley High, in which everyone in town is utterly obsessed with the sparking eyes and blonde tresses of the Wakefield twins, who can (and DO) get away with felonies on account of their dazzling good looks.

A look back on The Babysitters Club: how it was conceived, why it was so popular, and how it's managed to stay relevant for so long. (The fact that it's back in print and being turned into a Netflix show means these girls are going to be back with a vengeance). 

And finally: Fear Street. It may have been Goosebumps that made R.L. Stein a superstar, but Fear Street was what got the ball rolling. I've been listening to the Teen Creeps podcast for the past few years, which regularly discusses Fear Street novels, and this article delves into the gruesome deaths and sheer weirdness of Stein's work.

But what interests me was Stein's concept of choosing a fixed location and then telling a variety of unrelated stories set there. Different protagonists appear in each book, dealing with anything from curses to ghosts to houses that eat the inhabitants, giving the series a centralized "lore" while also allowing new readers to jump in at any point.

Shadyside predates Sunnydale by eight years, yet you can't help but feel that it was also situated on top of a Hellmouth, or that it possibly inspired the premise of Joss Whedon's signature show - at least in terms of its setting. Later books explored the town's history and context, an aspect which would seem to be a part of the upcoming film series.

Yup, everything from the eighties is returning. You can't escape it.