My illustrious cohost Stefan Sasse and I have posted not one but two Patreon-exclusive new podcasts, one on the most recent episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and one focused on the three-part series premiere of Andor! We’ve got a very ambitious schedule going on right now so there’s no guarantee of future Andor episodes, although at the rate TRoP is going we might decide to switch, who knows. Subscribe and listen! And hey, they’re at two different tiers, so you can select one that’s right for your budget!

And we can talk about how the villains of the piece are, unambiguously, cops — not even stormtroopers or Imperial officers, but literal boys in blue. They trash homes, they bully civilians, they beat a female suspect, they shoot an unarmed man to death for failing to comply. Sure, they work for a corporation rather than “protecting and serving” on behalf of the people. What else is new?

The point I’m trying to make is this: When George Lucas envisioned the original Star Wars trilogy as a story of rebellion against an empire, he was thinking of Vietnam and the American war machine. But that hard-to-miss metaphor kind of slipped into subliminal range because the Imperials were hard to see as American analogues; their overall vibe owed too much to Nazi Germany (“stormtroopers,” for god’s sake) and, honestly, their awesome white armor was too cool-looking in a faceless sort of way. 

Not so here. So far, Andor’s rebellion is one of normal people banding together to fight law enforcement. It’s shootouts with corporate security forces. It’s hidden nexuses of resistance to the everyday depredations of forces that seem too big to fight against, until someone does it. Success is not guaranteed, and will not entail a big award ceremony in a temple on Yavin IV. At best it might make some small part of the galaxy a bit more livable for the people in it, for a moment or too. Is that worth fighting for? Is it worth dying for? Is it worth killing for? The show, crafted so skillfully in so many ways by creator/writer/showrunner Tony Gilroy and director Toby Haynes, is on Disney+, so its radicalism only takes you so far, but still, it has its answer. What’s yours?

I reviewed the third episode of Andor for Decider.

The Disney Star Wars Universe is a fictional world in which plot is privileged over all, in which fanservice and Easter eggs are held up as superior artistic achievements to virtually any other aesthetic consideration. With that in mind, it’s worth saluting the fellow who did nothing else but bang a metallic drum that signals the end of the work day for the working stiffs who populate Andor.

Why is he there? Why does the show repeatedly take time out of its already truncated running time to show us his routine? Because it adds something, dammit. Because little details that are unnecessary for plot movement are, outside the auspices of major franchise properties anyway, the stuff that good drama is made from. They’re like the huge, very un-Star Wars drums that hit on the soundtrack just prior to the end of the episode: They stick out, and insist that you experience them. I don’t want to make too much of the guy myself — it’s just a couple of little moments, that’s all — but those little moments linger.

I reviewed the second episode of Andor for Decider.

As a score that’s more John Carpenter than John Williams plays in the background, out-of-focus lights pass by overhead. A man walks in the rain through a red-light district of an alien city, in which various life-forms attempt to entice passers-by through Amsterdam-style show windows. The man enters a brothel — later referred to as such, by name — where an exotic-dancer hologram cavorts and employees attempt to entice him to try various wares from various exotic locales. 

The man refuses; he’s looking for his long-lost sister, not a good time. In the process, he makes enemies of two corporate rent-a-cops, who follow him out of the establishment into a dark alley and stick him up for money. 

The man fights back, accidentally killing one of his muggers before getting the drop on the other. Rather than report the death to the authorities together, as the remaining assailant begs him to do, he simply shoots the other guy to death in cold blood. More moody synths play on the soundtrack. 

So ends the first ten minutes of Andor, Disney+’s new serialized Star Wars drama. It’s true that my knowledge of the material is not exhaustive. But it’s safe to say that based on what I’ve seen, these ten minutes are more interesting than everything I’ve seen from the Disney Star Wars machine since Rogue One — combined. 

I reviewed the excellent first episode of Andor for Decider.

Stefan Sasse and I take on Obi-Wan Kenobi in the latest episode of BLAH, available here or wherever you get your podcasts!

Which leads to a larger concern I have about the show: Why, exactly, does it exist? As with so many Star Wars tie-in projects, it dances between the raindrops of existing continuity, while occasionally shifting that continuity to its own ends. Like, we kind of knew Obi-Wan had to whip Darth Vader’s ass, because in A New HopeVader tells Obi-Wan he was “a learner” the last time they met. 

But establishing a pre-existing relationship between Obi-Wan and Leia—and in this episode, even Obi-Wan and Luke—adds a whole lot to the existing canon. And for what? A six-episode show with all the visual flair and emotional heft of a Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order cut scene? I don’t think the game is worth the candle. (This is why stuff like “Why didn’t he just kill him when he had the chance?” is popping up in my mind—not because I’m some CinemaSins-style pedant, but because the project’s overall sense of mild aimlessness gave my brain a chance to question plot holes I’d otherwise overlook.)

I reviewed the finale of Obi-Wan Kenobi for Decider.

Overall, it’s hard to look at the episode as a success from a suspense perspective, though when you think about it, that’s nothing new. Star Wars has always been about characters we know aren’t gonna die anytime soon, with rare exceptions; its great trick was in constructing action set pieces so gripping that they make you forget. (Seriously: No one on the planet thought Luke Skywalker was going to get shot down during the attack run on the first Death Star, but if your knuckles don’t still whiten at least a little bit every time you watch it, I don’t wanna know you.) 

But a prequel show that features Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, and Princess Leia as main characters faces an extra challenge, just as the prequel movies did: We know, for a fact, that these characters survive, since we’ve seen their future adventures. For that reason, the action must be doubly exciting and inventive to maintain audience investment. 

Does the show deliver on that score? No, I don’t think it does. It’s true that there are occasional moments of menace or awe, like when the Grand Inquisitor sweeps back in to gloat, or when Darth Vader uses his incredible Force powers to stop an entire transport from taking off. (It’s a decoy transport, but still.) And of course there’s that nostalgic duel between Obi-Wan and pre-Vader Anakin.

But the battle between the Path folks and the stormtroopers is indifferently blocked and shot—it’s just a bunch of people shooting guns at each other and somehow missing despite the fact that they’re like four feet apart. The Imperials are so bad at this that Obi-Wan’s lightsaber-twirling presence on the side of the good guys is barely needed. The fight between Vader and Reva, at least, is supposed to be a one-sided affair, driving home Vader’s superior power, and on that count it succeeds. 

I reviewed today’s episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi for Decider.

All in all, it’s a brisk little episode that reminds me of nothing so much as a cut-scene sequence from a Star Wars video game like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. (It doesn’t hurt that the game features a Fortress Inqusitorius break-in/break-out sequence of its own.) It utilizes the spartan Imperial aesthetic to create an illusion of impregnability, then shows our characters shattering that illusion. It’s a tried-and-true method of Star Wars storytelling that goes all the way back to Obi-Wan, Luke, Han, Chewbacca, R2-D2, and C-3PO’s adventures on the first Death Star. And there are interesting glimpses of how the Empire has handled Force-sensitives since its establishment, namely a hallway full of Jedi bodies in suspended animation that Obi-Wan stumbles across. Entombing the Force sensitive is at least part of the Fortress’s true purpose, and that’s some good Dark Side storytelling.

But the episode brushes past some of the series’ most momentous moments to date. Take that confrontation between Vader and Obi-Wan in the previous episode. That scene was already burdened by the filmmakers decision to wedge in a new face-to-face between the two old frenemies that had little of the mythic power of Anakin and Obi-Wan’s confrontation on Mustafar in Revenge of the Sith or their final battle on the Death Star in A New Hope. Now, its one moment of real urgency, Vader using the Force to push Obi-Wan into a fire so as to mimic Vader’s own injuries, gets brushed away with a quick dunk in a bacta tank. Hell, Obi-Wan doesn’t even stay in the tank for the doctor-recommended length of time! If this was all that was gonna come of that confrontation, why have it happen in the first place, given how it short-circuits the “circle-is-now-complete” loop between Mustafar and the Death Star?

I reviewed today’s episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi for Decider.

What we’ve got in this episode amounts to a fairly serious retcon of the relationship between Princess Leia and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Previously, he was simply the legendary warrior to whom a desperate Leia reached out for help as Darth Vader’s forces attacked her ship. Thanks to the event of this episode, though, he’s now a person she would remember, recognize, and most likely treasure for rescuing her as a kid. You can probably square this away with how Leia reacts to his presence in A New Hope—her excited cry of “Ben Kenobi?!?” when Luke tells her the old Jedi is on the Death Star with them now feels more justified, for example—but speaking personally, I’d have kept him an aloof and mysterious figure. This feels a little like how the prequels randomly made C-3PO a creation of Anakin Skywalker. Like, okay, but…why?

I reviewed episode two of Obi-Wan Kenobi for Decider.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a school shooting. Armed gunmen burst into an academy for children and began firing at anything that moved. A teacher sacrificed her own life to protect her students, dying so that they might live.

If you came in search of escapism, look elsewhere: This is the painfully timely way in which Obi-Wan Kenobi begins. At this early stage in the series—the most ambitious live-action Star Wars project that Disney+ has yet unveiled—it’s hard to tell if this awful coincidence is for the better or for the worse. Driving home the horror wrought by the Empire and its architects gives this project an emotional heft that predecessors sometimes lacked. (In the very first Star Wars film, an entire planet—which we see in some detail here—gets blown up, and it’s barely a blip on the emotional radar.) But does the show’s story of a Jedi Master’s time in the literal wilderness merit this kind of seriousness?

I’ll be covering Obi-Wan Kenobi for Decider, starting with my review of the series premiere.

Ever since he strolled across the landing bay of the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi, ever since I held him in my five-year-old hands as a hefty hunk of Kenner-manufactured plastic, I have adored the Emperor. I’ve tried the other Dark Lords, and much as I might enjoy them, they’re just not the one: Sauron is a giant flaming eyeball, Voldemort is just Ralph Fiennes with no nose, Thanos is a finger-snappin’ Genocide Fonzie. But Star Wars’ Emperor Palpatine, the ruler of his galaxy and the series’ ultimate villain, is a star — pure evil in the form of a weird, wrinkly old fart who can shoot lightning from his fingers.

The Emperor rules. Figuratively, I mean, not just literally. And I didn’t need JJ Abrams to resurrect him in The Rise of Skywalker — now disappointing fans in a theater near you! — to convince me.

Why? Because he’s not just evil. He’s a dick about it. And that’s an evil I recognize.

I’m very excited to announce I’m now a columnist for the Outline! I kicked things off with an essay on why the Emperor rules and why, in The Rise of Skywalker, he rules less.

44. The Return of the Sith (Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker)

Much of director J.J. Abrams’s course-correction of a final installment in the sequel trilogy aims for a grandeur and scale that came much more naturally to George Lucas & Co. a long time ago. But there’s definitely one place he nailed it: in the depths of the temple beneath the surface of Exogol, the Sith home planet. When Rey arrives to confront the reemergent Emperor Palpatine before the Sith throne, the camera whirls to reveal that she’s standing in the center of an entire arena, filled with the emperor’s black-robed acolytes. Much like the absolutely massive fleet of planet-killing Star Destroyers hovering above, it’s a vivid demonstration of the power and reach of the dark side.

I’ve once again revised and ranked my list of the 50 Best Star Wars Moments for Vulture, this time taking The Rise of Skywalker into consideration.

I was thrilled to return to the terrific left-wing podcast Delete Your Account for another wide-ranging chat about pop culture in a Patreon-exclusive bonus episode! I joined co-hosts Roqayah Chamseddine and Kumars Salehi to talk about Janelle Monae, Westworld, Kanye West, Game of Thrones, Beyoncé & Jay Z, Solo & Star Wars, Roseanne, Drake vs. Pusha T, and much more. Go and subscribe and listen!

Solo: A Star Wars Podcast

A long time ago, in a theater near you, a movie named Solo: A Star Wars Story came out. It feels like an eternity has passed since then and now, but what better time to listen to Sean & Stefan discuss the movie that seemed to shatter the Star Wars franchise into a million weird pieces? In this episode recorded a week after the film’s release, we talk about director Ron Howard’s Han Solo origin story — the action, the acting, what worked and didn’t, how it stacks up against the other post-Lucas SW movies and the larger series in general, its place in the bizarre post-Last Jedi debate among fans and critics, how Disney-Lucasfilm screwed up its release and the future of the franchise, and more. If you’re sick to death of the state of the Star Wars discourse, we think you’ll dig what we do in this one. Enjoy!

DOWNLOAD EPISODE 76

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All of Sean’s recent-ish Star Wars writing.

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Our PayPal donation page (also accessible via boiledleather.com).

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi mind-tricked its audience. As if in homage to the galaxy in which the film is set—divided as it is between the Dark Side and the Light—Rian Johnson’s 2017 installment in the saga sparked the most preposterously binary set of responses to a franchise film in recent memory. Read about this continuation of the Disney-owned sequel trilogy (begun and soon to be ended by J.J. Abrams) and you’ll quickly feel the pull of two opposing Forces, demanding allegiance. Broadly speaking: Is it a heartbreaking work of staggering genius that redeems the Star Wars concept by having the courage to toss it aside, or is it a million childhoods suddenly crying out in terror and then suddenly silenced…by incipient white genocide?

I say it’s neither, and man am I tired of having to say it, but before I see Solo I’ll give it one last shot. The Last Jedi is my least favorite Star Wars movie by far, but not for any of the reasons most of its detractors cite, nor for those against which its champions array their defenses. The misogynistic bigots whose response to the film is essentially “Why isn’t there a White History Month” will have to settle for running all three branches of government; they won’t get me to agree that a story driven by vivid and charismatic characters played by natural-born movie stars Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, and Domnhall Gleeson—the best things either TLJ or its immediate predecessor The Force Awakens have going for them—represent the collapse of the West. Nor am I going to agree to their terms of debate the way so many proponents of the film have, acting as though hidebound nostalgia at best and bald-faced reactionary fury at worst are the only reasons to take issue with this movie. The Last Jedi has its moments, but its faults are many—and too often obscured by the Sith vs. Jedi nature of the debate surrounding it.

Right up front, let’s forget the idea that TLJ represents some bold act of iconoclasm—a creatively courageous attempt to unmoor the franchise from nostalgia. There’s a substratum of angry nerds who think believe this and hate it, and a separate group of critics and critic-adjacent people online who believe this and love it. I really don’t know how either group comes to this conclusion about what is, after all, the ninth Star Wars movie. It’s got dark lords and chosen ones, lightsabers and Star Destroyers, cute aliens and cute droids, you name it. Rey’s parentage may have been rendered a non-issue (in a desultory rip-off of the mirror sequence from The Never-ending Story, but whatever), but Kylo Ren is still the biological descendent of the main characters from both of the previous trilogies. And this is the guy—the bad guy, might I add—who utters the “let the past die” mantra so many critics and detractors alike seem to have taken to heart as the film’s mission statement. Again, this is the ninth Star Wars movie. If you want to let the past die, go watch or make a film that doesn’t co-star characters who debuted 40 years earlier.

To the extent that writer-director Rian Johnson did wipe the slate clean, the effect was not a healthy one. Dispensing with the pattern established by all the other movies, Johnson resumes the action right where The Force Awakens leaves off. Leia, Poe, Finn, C-3PO, BB-8, and the rest of the Resistance core are still on their home base from the previous film; so little time has elapsed that they’re still waiting for the First Order to show up and chase them out of there when the movie begins. Elsewhere, Rey and Luke’s storyline resumes mid-conversation. Because of this, our first images of our heroes take place in places we’ve already seen, rather than dropping us head-first into new ones—not even the familiar desert/forest/ice archetypes of The Force Awakens, which were at least different planets than the ones from the original trilogy, if not different types of planets.

The bulk of the story takes place on Luke’s island, a couple of spaceships, and finally a single patch of a desert planet that simply substitutes salt for sand and adds a little red dust for flair. The plot concerns Rey trying and failing to convince Luke to get up off his ass and Kylo Ren and General Hux picking off Resistance ships one by one, Battlestar Galactica–style (to put the resemblance kindly, though if you called it a knockoff I wouldn’t object). Mysteries aren’t so much solved as canceled: Rey’s parents are nobodies (a theoretically interesting idea delivered in perfunctory fashion) and the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke gets jobbed out before displaying a single interesting characteristic except being unusually tall and having cool red wallpaper. The film ends with the characters hiding in an abandoned garage some guy’s trying to break into, pretty much.

In short, this is the first Star Wars movie in which the world feels smaller at the end of the movie than it did at the beginning. It’s an attritional film, one that whittles away until only a tiny fragment remains. The manic thrill of discovery and creation that made the original trilogy so culture-changingly compelling—and which makes the much-maligned prequel trilogy, which you can read persuasive defenses of here and here, a gloriously weird work of art on the Speed Racer level if nothing else—is almost entirely absent. (Almost: the trip made by Finn and his new ally Rose to that casino planet has that wild and woolly feeling to it, which paradoxically may be why people dislike it; Leia’s Force-enabled spacewalk is a poor substitute for getting to see her with a lightsaber in her hand but it’s still good audience-rousing fun; the Porgs, of course, are perfection. But that’s thin gruel to spread across two and a half hours of running time.)

This is the first half of my lengthy essay for Decider on why I don’t like The Last Jedi. I just got so sick of seeing the debate, both pro and con sides, framed entirely in terms set by bigots or “my childhood!!!” types, and wanted to open up other lines of criticism and inquiry. Click here to read the rest.

33. Han shot first (Episode IV: A New Hope)

Look, does my self-conception as a nerd depend on this? No, it does not. I’m secure in myself as a person, as a cineast, and as a huge dorkus malorkus to not be all that bothered by the older, more moralistic George Lucas’s revision of Han Solo’s cantina confrontation with a green-skinned mercenary. That said, I truly don’t care what subsequent releases of the first Star Wars movie attempt to portray as reality: Han saw the threat from the snout-nosed bounty hunter Greedo coming in that Mos Eisley drinking hole, and plugged the goon before the goon could plug him. End of story. It is what it is.

32. Han shot first (Solo: A Star Wars Story)

At first glance, Han Solo’s climactic killing of his partner turned betrayer Tobias Beckett at the end of his origin-story spinoff feels like pure fanservice — a guilty pleasure derived from the message-board complaints of Star Wars smarks, just a few notches above X-Men: The Last Stand’s “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!” But there’s more to this moment than merely correcting the record after George Lucas got cold feet about Han’s cold blood in the cantina 30-plus years ago. Immediately after shooting Beckett mid-monologue, thus saving his own skin, Solo immediately rushes to the man’s side, cradling and caring for him as he dies. You don’t shoot first because you’re the coolest guy in the galaxy, you shoot first because you’re desperate not to get shot yourself. Han may be more hardboiled when he plugs Greedo an unspecified number of years later, but for now both he and the audience get a bitter taste of what a blaster is really for.

I updated my list of the 50 Best Star Wars Moments for Vulture, too.

29. Enfys Nest

Looking like a cross between Kylo Ren and a crazed buzzard, the black-clad marauder called Enfys Nest is a terrifying presence as Solo picks up steam, leading a clan of Cloud-Rider sky pirates in daring, deadly raids against Han’s criminal crew. But this fascinating character is more than he – or rather, she  – seems at first glance. Nest is actually a teenage girl (played by newcomer Erin Kellyman) who’s assembled her own rebel alliance of aliens, all of whom have been victimized by the crime syndicates Solo and his comrades have been forced to serve. Under her leadership, they’ve started to fight back. Han’s decision to help her out rather than sell her out is a major step on his road to the Rebellion – and, hopefully, just our first glimpse of an incredibly cool new character.

I updated Rolling Stone’s list of the 50 Best Star Wars Characters of All Time to include Solo and The Last Jedi. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself at eight, or eighteen, that this would be my job someday.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Sean. Stefan. Star Wars. ’Nuff said! Discover why Sean rates The Last Jedi as his least favorite Star Wars movie and learn what Stefan thinks it has in its favor as we go in-depth about Rian Johnson’s peculiarly divisive film in our longest episode ever!

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Mirror.

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Podcast RSS feed.

Sean’s blog.

Stefan’s blog.

30. Porgs! (Episode VIII: The Last Jedi)

What’s a four-letter word for “cute little calico penguin puffin pug owl cat hamster Ewok Mogwai Tribble Furby Pikachu hybrid thing”? Ask literally any child you know and you’ll get the answer. These preposterously adorable critters, designed by Jake Lunt Davies, are so insanely marketable and merchandisable that Disney may as well have fired them via drone strike under every Christmas tree in the country (for a fee, of course). Even so, it’s hard to begrudge these island dwellers, several of whom take up residence in the Millennium Falcon, since they really are as delightful as advertised. The scene where Chewie can’t bring himself to chow down on roast porg will do more for vegetarianism than a million naked PETA ads.

With Star Wars: The Last Jedi now in theaters, I revisited and revised my list of the greatest Star Wars moments for Vulture, incorporating the new movie and cutting it down to a nice round 50 entries.

Just for fun, here’s how the list breaks down, movie by movie:

20th Century Fox theme for Episodes I-VI 1

The Phantom Menace 3

Attack of the Clones 2

Revenge of the Sith 6

Rogue One 3

A New Hope 10

The Empire Strikes Back 9

Return of the Jedi 10

The Force Awakens 4

The Last Jedi 2

Does the number for The Last Jedi tell you anything about how I felt about the movie? Hmmmmmmm.