My New Take On Journaling (Words In Your Mind)

  Throughout my life, I have been anxious about two things in particular:

1.Dwelling on the past (which ranges from little embarrassing moments to much bigger mistakes and regrets)

2.Worrying about the future (including things which I may come to regret down the road)

Over the last year in particular, I’ve begun to journal at a much more frequent rate, as many psychology experts agree that journaling is one of the most effective forms of anxiety-relief. While I’m happy to say that I’m at a much better place mentally now thanks to all the journaling I’ve done, up until very recently, something still felt like it was missing…

Part of my worrying of the future involves dwelling over the possibility that someday I may not be able to journal at all. I often find myself thinking about potential grim scenarios like ending up paralyzed, or something to that effect. I understand that the chances of such a thing ever happening are slim-to-none, but when you have a brain as anxious as mine, even the tiniest of possibilities need to be taken into account…

Because of this, I spent the last several days doing a deep-dive online into the psychology of journaling, to understand why exactly why it’s proven to be effective for so many, including myself. My goal with this was to see if I could “reverse engineer” the psychological effects of journaling from the inside out, so that I could then figure out how to recreate the experience in a purely mental way, without having to worry about any possible physical limitations that the future may bring…

My research ultimately led me to stumbling upon a certain video just a few days ago (which I unfortunately forgot to save and can’t find again now), where the theory was stated that journaling works as well as it does because it allows us to literally and figuratively face our own negative thoughts, rather than constantly trying to distract ourselves from them. Distraction, while healthy in small doses, should never be seen as the ultimate “silver bullet solution” to something. You can only run away from your bad thoughts for so long. Eventually, you have to face them head-on. By transferring those thoughts into something tangible, like words, we are able to finally to “detach” ourselves from said thoughts, and look at them from an outside perspective. With this new angle, we can then “attack” the thoughts, so to speak…

Obviously, certain bad thoughts are still gonna keep coming back in your brain, no matter how often your journal about them, but that’s not the point. Rather, the point is to just simply get yourself into the behavior of constantly turning trauma into something tangible, therefore assigning “meaning” to it, over and over. For what it’s worth, though, I’ve found that the more I “process” something, the less traumatic it feels in the long run, but I understand that there are outliers to this sort of circumstance…

So getting back to my initial question of the day: How do you recreate this experience in purely a mental way? After watching the aforementioned video, the answer became simple to me: You simply turn your thoughts into words in your head. For the last few days in particular, whenever I have a bad thought, I picture a standard word processor in my mind (white background with black ink) and then “type out a sentence” that summarizes whatever bad thought I’m having. Sometimes I just do a bullet point, rather than a complete sentence, or even just a singular word. At times I imagine multiple sentences or bullet points at once (usually like five or so at a time). My style of physical journaling is “bullet journaling” anyways, so envisioning things this way isn’t too far from what I do in reality. Obviously, I’m still in the early days of applying this new technique, but thus far, it has proven to be quite effective.

It’s my belief that, at least on a subconscious level, humans tend to associate the expression of thoughts with words in particular. If you think about, it makes sense. Humanity has been using the act of writing as our primary “expression tool” for so many generations now that it’s practically burned into our DNA/ instinct. So ultimately, the solution to “peace and acceptance” seems to be this: Turn feelings into words, and if you can’t do that in real life, do it in your head. I suppose some people would prefer to use symbols instead of words, depending on their culture, but ultimately, the principle is the same…

When it comes to mental health and self-improvement, I’ve been through this song and dance enough now to know that the journey is never gonna be linear. If my past is any indicator, this new method will probably work for me for a good while, and then I’ll burn out on it, like I do with everything else (I gradually write stories and poems less and less, for instance). That’s fine, though. Life is all about rotating back and forth between different stress-relievers anyways. The more techniques you gain along the way, the better. That said, I still felt the need to make this post cause this whole “literal words in your head” approach is something I don’t really see being talked about anywhere else online, and I feel like it’s a methodology that could probably help a lot of people…

Peace!

PS: Just so it’s clear; even though I’m starting to prioritize mental journaling now, I still do at least a little bit of physical journaling almost every day too. I find that keeping yourself as busy as possible helps to mitigate bad thoughts anyways, and physical journaling is a form of staying busy (don’t overdo it, though!).

The 3 Kinds of Movie Youtubers

  As the title suggests, I believe there are, generally, three different kinds of movie-themed Youtubers. So without wasting anyone’s time, I’m just gonna dive right in and explain what I think those three groups are:

1.The ones who genuinely say what they mean

2.The ones who, in the front of their minds, think they’re being genuine, but are really just subconsciously conforming to some norm and/or playing both sides

3.The ones who exaggerate (or sometimes even just lie) for popularity and/or financial gain

Most famous “movietubers” started out in the first group and then gradually moved on to the second and/or third. Some of the newer ones already started out in the second or third group. I’ll try to avoid naming names, but I have an idea in my head of which tubers fall into which bucket, and I imagine most of you do too…

For those of you still in disbelief of that third group I mentioned; I’m sorry to break it to you, but “grifting,” or whatever you wanna call it, is very much a real thing, in more fields than one. I was recently watching an interview with Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan where he was being asked about the meaning behind his song “Chip Away” (cause Bob Dylan endorsed it) and he revealed that the inspiration came from flipping back and forth between politically-driven news channels and seeing “the grift” in action. In his own words: “All these people wanna keep you pissed off, so that you stay addicted.”

Here’s the question now, though; why do people keep falling for this? Three and a half years ago I blogged about nerds having a bigger tendency than others to conform to mob mentality. Unfortunately, I think it’s only gotten worse. Male virginity is still on the rise, and our post-covid world has only made people more lonely than they already were, with geeks starting out at a bigger disadvantage than most. When you’re in that kind of a position, you’re more likely, be it consciously or subconsciously, to go along with whatever most other people are thinking or saying…

I even see the people who make the films and shows themselves give into this. During the press tour of The Rise of Skywalker, JJ Abrams and the cast were making low-key disses towards The Last Jedi (which is ironic, considering that Rise was arguably a worse movie in the end). And make no mistake, I’m mostly a fan of Abrams, and also the sequel trilogy as a whole. That said, I still feel the need to call this sorta stuff out when I see it. You can tell the initial backlash of Last influenced all their ways of thinking, at least until the same thing happened to Rise. It’s also weird when people act like certain opinions have more authority than others. Marcia Lucas dissed The Force Awakens, for instance, and I even agree with some of the things she said, but that doesn’t mean I have to stop liking that movie. Yet people act like whatever she says goes just because she technically “saved” Star Wars way back in 1977…

Look, it’s fine if you think Disney mostly messed up over this last decade or so with Star Wars. Heck, there’s even a valid argument to be made that they did, at this point. But at least back up your points with your own opinions based on the content itself, instead of just relying on out-of-context quotes parroted to you by some “armchair critic.” And for what it’s worth, I do still think that things will calm down from here on out, at least when it comes to Star Wars. After The Acolyte, the only other live-action shows in the pipeline are Skeleton Crew (which is about a bunch of little kids, so people will probably go a bit easy on them), Andor season 2 (which everyone already knows they like), and Ahsoka season 2 (which has the benefit of Filoni being the closest thing to Lucas, and Anakin likely showing up again). After that, the studio seems determined to pivot back to movies, which are harder to generate hate-content from since those stories won’t be released slowly over a week-to-week basis (on one hand I’m glad this will limit discourse but on the other hand I’ll miss having something sw-related to look forward to weekly).

So, in a sense, The Acolyte is likely the last time all these people who make a literal living off hating Star Wars will have the opportunity to milk it this much (I’ve been wrong before, though). At this point, I almost want to say “let them have their fun.” Furthermore, as twisted as it may sound, a part of me almost can’t help but sympathize with these people. A lot of them make thousands of dollars a week from YouTube ad revenue whenever a new live-action Star Wars comes out that’s easy to hate on. The very popular YouTubers make tens of thousands of dollars a week from this stuff! If you knew you had a big enough of a following to pull in that kinda cash, as long as you act like you hate something enough, wouldn’t you at least be tempted to sell out like that too?

On top of that, I’m sure most of these guys (and girls to a lesser extent) are aware that youth has a lot to do with their influence too. I could be wrong, but I have a hard time believing people are still gonna listen to most of these YouTubers when they’re old and wrinkly. There’s an expiration date to this sorta stuff, and they’re all aware of it. Plus, it’s not like they have enough skill-sets to suddenly transition into other careers. The money is gonna run out at some point, so they might as well make as much of it now while they still can…

So, once again; let them have their fun…

Peace!

PS: Not saying everyone who hates The Acolyte is a troll, bigot, etc. There are valid reasons for disliking it. Even I’m starting to not like it as much anymore.

In Defense (Mostly) of Kathleen Kennedy

  So now that I’m back to doing these “think piece” type of posts (at least for now), I figured I might as well take this opportunity to address a person who has been subject to a lot of scrutiny for the last six years or so: Kathleen Kennedy, the woman whom George Lucas himself handpicked to be his successor at running Lucasfilm (just as he was selling the company to Disney in 2012). Since late 2017 or so, fans have accused Kennedy of the following:

1.Making everything “too woke”

2.Constantly firing writers/directors or delaying/canceling projects

3.Not having a plan for the sequel trilogy

4.Breaking or changing canon

5.Exaggerating the truth (or even just flat-out lying) in interviews

I’d like to take the time to go through each of those things, and discuss what I agree and disagree with… Welp, into the fire I go!

1.Making everything “too woke”

I’m just gonna repeat exactly what I said in my last post: The whole “woke” thing never bothered me. I know this makes me sound pretentious, but seeing a bunch of main characters with different skin color, genitals, or sexual orientation doesn’t make me feel insecure. Besides, I’m old enough to remember when everyone complained that Star Wars (and blockbusters in general) didn’t have enough representation (“there’s only one woman in each trilogy and they both get sidelined!”). So now when I see people now complaining about too much of that stuff, my immediate thought is “What? You wanna go back to everyone complaining about the opposite? How is that any better?” People might read that and go “there should be more of both.” I don’t necessarily disagree. Maybe we’ll get there someday… To add to that, when Kennedy wore that “the Force is female” shirt, it was for a charity event to support an increase of opportunities for women in the workforce, and she only wore that shirt once. Furthermore, the only time Disney made a Star Wars movie about a straight white guy (Solo), you all boycotted it…

2.Constantly firing writers/directors or delaying/canceling projects

As I explained a few posts ago, before Marvel’s “assembly-line model,” as I like to call it now, big movies went through long development cycles all the time, with writers and/or directors constantly coming and going. Remember when James Cameron was gonna do Spider-Man? Remember when Tim Burton and Kevin Smith were gonna do Superman? With Nic Cage in the starring role, no less! At this point, Marvel is the only big franchise still sticking to their own “assembly line” process, and it seems to have done more harm than good for them in the long run, considering how stale their projects seem now. For the record, I know I’ve ragged on Marvel a lot lately. Let me make something clear: I still enjoy their movies for the most part (yes, even the new ones), and I give them credit for how far they’ve been able to take things. Before 2014, nobody took the idea of a talking raccoon and a humanoid tree seriously. Before 2012, nobody thought a magical being like Thor could exist in the same universe as Iron Man. Gotta give credit where credit is due! That said, the Infinity Saga was an exception, not the norm. For better or worse, we’re clearly back to long development cycles for everything else now (except DC, but we’ll see how long that lasts). Gun to my head: I’m still glad the Infinity Saga happened, but it’s time to stop viewing it as some “gold standard” that everyone else needs to adhere to.

3.Not having a plan for the sequel trilogy

This criticism has always frustrated me. It’s not that she or Disney didn’t have a plan, it’s that the plan kept changing. First, Lucas gave them an outline of what he would like to see happen. They kept a few breadcrumbs from said outline (Luke exiling himself to the Jedi homeworld, a girl coming to find him, Han and Leia’s son turning evil, etc.), but threw out what they didn’t like (which was most of it, to be fair). Then JJ Abrams comes in, makes The Force Awakens, and jots down what he would like to see happen in Episodes VIII and IX. Then Rian comes in, decides he doesn’t like JJ’s ideas, and does his own thing with VIII. Then Colin Trevorrow gets fired from IX, so JJ comes back and decides to keep only a few of Colin’s ideas. I understand that this all sounds irritating, but shouldn’t creators be allowed to change ideas between installments if they feel like they could come up with something better? The original trilogy didn’t have a plan either (you don’t need to look any further than Luke and Leia kissing to see that). Before The Empire Strikes Back, Vader wasn’t Luke’s father, and the emperor wasn’t a Force user (go read the original Star Wars novelization and Leigh Brackett’s first draft of Empire if you don’t believe me). And as I’ve said many times before, even the Infinity Saga wasn’t as well planned out as everyone thinks (the other gauntlet full of stones in Thor being the biggest indicator there). Once again, before Marvel, installments were either made one at a time, with ideas being allowed to change in between said installments, or they were made all at once like The Lord of the Rings. There’s an argument to be made that the Star Wars sequel trilogy should’ve been made Lord of the Rings style, but that’s neither here nor there. Besides, let’s face it: No matter who Lucas picked as his successor, and no matter which studio he sold the brand to, the sequel trilogy was always gonna be some kinda “meta remake” of the original trilogy. After the backlash which the prequels got at the time, VII was always gonna be something safe. And if I had to guess, whoever was in charge woulda had the instinct to make VIII something that “shakes things up,” to make up for how safe VII woulda been, and then the backlash to shaking things up woulda lead them to making IX mostly safe again. What we got was always what we were gonna get, more or less… How exactly does having a plan make everything better, anyways? For instance, if Deadpool & Wolverine ends up being as good as everyone thinks it’s gonna be, how does that have any impact (positive or negative) on Agatha All Along, Thunderbolts, etc.?

4.Breaking or changing canon

As I’ve said elsewhere: Canon doesn’t matter cause canon changes all the time. Just because you haven’t seen something yet doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Besides, outside of the MCU, what other long-lasting franchise do you know that adheres to canon so closely? The old X-Men films, the DCEU, Mad Max, Terminator, The Legend of Zelda, etc. all have continuity issues, and all of them prioritize artistic license per installment over continuity across all installments. That said, one thing I think Kennedy dropped the ball on was creating a “Lucasfilm story group” to supposedly maintain continuity across all formats of storytelling, yet whenever fans call out continuity errors, the story group themselves usually just dismiss it as “artistic license.” If they’re not going to bother doing what they were assigned to do, then Kennedy shouldn’t have even created a story group in the first place…

5.Exaggerating the truth (or even just flat-out lying) in interviews

This right here is the only major thing that I think Kathleen Kennedy is actually guilty of. To be fair, Lucas himself used to do this all the time too. Sure, he had vague ideas in his rough drafts of important siblings and whatnot, but would then go on to act like he always knew Luke and Leia specifically would be related. That’s just one of many examples of lying or, at the very least, exaggeration on his part. Unfortunately, with Kennedy, it’s been mostly more of the same. When it was revealed that Palpatine would be back in The Rise of Skywalker, she said “this was always the plan.” Since then, various drafts of the movie have leaked which showed that, while they always intended for a hologram or vision of Palpatine to make a cameo of some kind, the idea of him fully coming back to alive and being the final boss again was not the plan at all until fairly late in the game. Again, not a complete lie, but very much an exaggeration. Similarly, around that same time, she said something to the effect of “Star Wars has no source material.” While it’s true that Star Wars started as a movie franchise first (and not as comics like superheroes or as books like Harry Potter), quite a few ideas from the now-defunct Expanded Universe (since rebranded as Legends) have been used in the sequel trilogy. Palpatine clones, the Republic being reduced back down to just a Rebellion, Han and Leia’s son turning evil (the books had this idea before Lucas), Luke force-projecting himself while standing up to a bunch of AT-AT’s, and so on. Again, not necessarily a lie, but certainly an exaggeration, at the very least…

As I wrap up here, I’d like to highlight one more point: Regardless of who ended up owning or running Star Wars, the only way most people would’ve been happy is if it followed the model of something like Mad Max, where an installment is only made when it’s absolutely ready, no matter how long it takes. But keep in mind that the newest installment of that series took nine years to make, and the one before that took thirty years! You wanna wait thirty years for the next Star Wars movie? Conversely, can you imagine a new Mad Max being made every year, like what Marvel does?

Right now you might be saying “Yeah, but Star Wars is a much bigger universe than Mad Max.” Doesn’t matter. Marvel is a much bigger universe too, and now look where that’s at… Think of it this way: If Lucas himself continued to make Star Wars movies in the 1980’s, instead of stopping at Return of the Jedi, do you seriously think he woulda been able to keep the quality up? Every single time? Food for thought…

Peace!

PS: Just because I like Kennedy way more than most doesn’t mean I love everything about the Disney era of Star Wars. In fact, I think a lot of the things people blame Kennedy for are really the fault of Disney directly. That said, something I forgot to mention is the fact that both Kennedy and Disney clearly have money as their primary incentive, for better or worse. Sometimes that can mean trying to please everyone, instead of doing what’s best for the story.

"The Acolyte" & the Past, Present, Future of Star Wars

 WARNING: Spoilers for The Acolyte below…

Someone asked for my take on the new Star Wars show The Acolyte, since it’s so controversial right now. I originally wasn’t even gonna touch this topic, but since someone asked me directly for a blog post on it, I figured I might as well jump into all the chaos…

So what do I think of the show? Like most of Star Wars… It’s fine. As of this writing, there have only been three out of eight episodes, so there’s still a chance for this to end up as my favorite of the live-action SW shows thus far, or my least-favorite. But really, all these shows have just been blending together for me. None have been great. None have been too unwatchable. They’re all fine. Gun to my head, if I had to “pick a side,” I’d say that I still lean “mostly positive” when it comes to literally all of Star Wars, except the special editions of Return of the Jedi (that new music at Jabba’s Palace is still unwatchable). The universe itself is unique and interesting enough that, for me at least, it’s pretty hard to mess up…

That said, there’s a difference between liking something and loving something. I like all of Star Wars, but I only love a small handful of it. Four entries, to be exact:

STAR WARS (aka A NEW HOPE)

Everything is established here. Sure, some of it is silly, especially by today’s standards, but all of that silliness feels innocent/ sincere.

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

I don’t love it as much as everyone else, as I feel some of the problems the franchise still experiences to this day started as far back as here. That said, the opposite argument that Star Wars would’ve become boring had it just stuck to the same status quo over and over is equally true. As a peer of mine once said, “It’s true that Star Wars started as just the adventures of Luke Skywalker and then ballooned into the Skywalker family soap opera, but it’s also true that Middle-Earth started as just a children’s book with The Hobbit and then ballooned into a war drama epic with The Lord of the Rings.” I don’t want to live in a world without The Lord of the Rings, so by extension, I don’t want to live in a world without The Empire Strikes Back.

THE LAST JEDI (SCORE-ONLY VERSION)

I specify the score-only version because, as much as I like the story of this movie, I think most of the dialogue is too pretentious/ heavy-handed. I think every film should have a music-only option, but if only one of them can, I’m glad it’s this one, cause it certainly benefits the most from it. In hindsight, after The Force Awakens relied so heavily on nostalgia and mystery boxes, something needed to come along to “shake things up.” The Finn subplot took time to grow on me, but looking back, I like that the film gave him his own corner of the story, rather than just having him mimic Poe and/or Rey. The Poe subplot with Holdo is still iffy, I admit. Apparently Poe was originally supposed to follow Finn to Canto Bight, and the characters of Rose and Holdo didn’t exist yet. For a while, I preferred this idea. That said, Rose grew on me over time too. It’s nice to see that even someone as simple as a mechanic can make a difference. Having Poe accompany both Finn AND Rose probably woulda been too many characters all in one “spot.” Furthermore, having three stories all at once instead of two helps to differentiate the film a bit more from The Empire Strikes Back.

SOLO

The only movie outside of the original that fully embraces the “fun, pulpy” roots of the franchise itself.

So outside of the only two movies that everyone universally loves, the only other two I feel the same about are (technically) the one everyone hates and the one that didn’t make any money. Go figure! And again, the rest of it is fine. The theatrical version of Return of the Jedi comes pretty close, but a few things hold it back (I have mixed feelings these days about Leia being Luke’s sibling). The Force Awakens is also close, as the whole “nostalgia and mystery boxes” thing becomes less of a problem as more people continue to grow up with the sequel trilogy as one big story. That said, some things still hold Awakens back for me too (mainly the fact that the movie doesn’t seem to know what to do with Finn, which put him in a tough spot for the rest of the trilogy). I don’t think I need to explain why Rogue One, The Rise of Skywalker, and the prequel trilogy are all just fine, at best. The shows (live action and animation) all have good episodes and bad episodes…

Ultimately, Star Wars is at least still in a slightly better spot for me than Disney’s other big franchise, Marvel. Most Marvel movies have been watchable for me, but most of the shows have been plagued with terrible finales. I would imagine that Disney themselves also consider Star Wars to be in a slightly better position now than Marvel, considering that right now Star Wars only has one financial flop (that being Solo). We’ll see what happens when the movies finally return from hiatus, though…

Back on topic: I enjoyed the first two episodes of The Acolyte a fair bit. Some of the character actions/ choices felt random and out-of character, but that was pretty much the only negative aspect that stood out to me. The third episode is a whole other can of worms, though. Do I agree with the majority that it’s not as good as the first two episodes? Yes. Do I dislike it for the same reasons that they all seem to? No, but to an extent, I understand their concerns…

Regarding my own grievances, my main issue with the third episode is the child actors. Nothing against kids, but I generally just don’t like them. If I didn’t grow up with The Phantom Menace, I probably wouldn’t like that movie as much either. Another issue I had is that the witch culture fell kinda flat for me. That chant was really cringe. Maybe it was off-key on purpose, to make it sound more sinister, but even if that was the intention, I still couldn’t get into it. Lastly, some aspects of the mystery plot went over my head, but I’m more forgiving of that because this whole show is, well, a mystery. Most things won’t make sense until the season (series?) finale, most likely. With that in mind, maybe all eight of these episodes should’ve been released at once, but I can’t see Disney ever doing that with a “flagship” show like this, sadly…

So what was everyone else pissed about? Two things, it seems: The fact that the main witches, or maybe even all of them, are lesbians (“this show is too woke”), and the fact that they used the Force to somehow create the main twins of the series (“this show breaks canon”). A quick note on the second point: Canon doesn’t matter because canon changes all the time. Darth Vader wasn’t a Force-born “chosen one” until The Phantom Menace was made. He wasn’t even Luke’s father until The Empire Strikes Back was made (no matter what George Lucas wants to tell you).

Now, regarding the first point: The whole “woke” thing never bothered me. I know this makes me sound pretentious, but seeing a bunch of main characters with different skin color, genitals, or sexual orientation doesn’t make me feel insecure. Besides, I’m old enough to remember when everyone complained that Star Wars (and blockbusters in general) didn’t have enough representation (“there’s only one woman in each trilogy and they both get sidelined!”). So now when I see people now complaining about too much of that stuff, my immediate thought is “What? You wanna go back to everyone complaining about the opposite? How is that any better?” People might read that and go “there should be more of both.” I don’t necessarily disagree. Maybe we’ll get there someday…

That said, while I’m not personally bothered by “wokeisms,” or whatever you wanna call it, I will admit that Disney most likely had to know that a cult of lesbian witches who use the Force to make babies was gonna piss off a VERY loud portion of the fandom, for more reasons than one. It’s almost as if they’re embracing outrage culture, at this point, and to an extent, I think they kinda are…

Allow me to explain: The Acolyte is the first live-action Star Wars project to take place at least a decade removed from the Skywalker Saga (about 90-100 years before, actually). Unlike all the other shows and spin-off films we’ve gotten so far, this series was unable to rely on humans and/or plot points established in the mainline films (I specify humans because aliens like Yoda and Chewbacca are actually hundreds of years old, but there’s only so much you can do with non-human characters). Even Ahsoka had the benefit of saying “the title character was Anakin’s apprentice between a couple of movies.” Disney knows that, if Star Wars is to survive beyond the Skywalker era, projects like The Acolyte absolutely need to pull in good viewership numbers. While I’m no conspiracy theorist, it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re banking on a bunch of people “hate-watching” the show. As of this writing, The Acolyte has a mere 15% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, but that’s based on ten thousand reviews, more than double of most other entries in the entire franchise. Of course, a good chunk of those are people who haven’t even seen the series (the score was already down to a 45% before the show had even started), but I’m willing to bet that a good chunk of those are also people who wanted to jump on the hate-train and decided to watch the show so that they knew exactly what they were supposed to be hating…

Either the above conspiracy theory is true, or Disney just simply wants to push the diversity boundaries in their stories as far as they can to make it clear where they stand. Either that, or creator Leslie Headland simply felt that a cult of lesbian witches who use the Force to make babies was the best way to explain the origins of Darth Plagueis, and the powers-that-be just simply let her run with it. Maybe it’s two of those three things. Maybe it’s all three. I don’t know and, either way, I don’t care…

For what it’s worth, I do think we will eventually get non-Skywalker-era content that appeals to the “edgier” part of the fandom too. Those people liked Rogue One and Andor, after all, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they end up enjoying that “very first Jedi ever” film that James Mangold is planning to direct, or the inevitable Knights of the Old Republic adaptation (I’m surprised we haven’t gotten that yet, actually, but I guess it’s better in the long run if they take their time to get it right). That said, The Acolyte clearly wanted to appeal to other groups of people, including potential first-time viewers of the franchise who may lean towards the younger side of things. Whether or not you see that as a good or bad thing is up to you, I guess. While I personally prefer Star Wars when it skews “all ages,” there’s an argument to be made now that the franchise would be better off prioritizing adults over children going forward. Nobody wants to admit it, but the main reason for appealing to kids in the first place was to sell toys, but these days, kids would rather watch TikToks on their iPads than play with toys…

For better or worse, the main measures of a franchise’s success now are box office, streaming numbers (which includes subscription upticks), and positive word-of-mouth online. Right now, Star Wars has a massive problem with the last one of those things. As much as I hate to admit it, for that reason alone, the franchise might be better off with more stuff like Rogue One, and less stuff like the sequel trilogy…

In that regard, things now are worse than ever. In fact, the other day I had to purge my YouTube history for the first time, because the amount of videos I was getting saying “The Acolyte has ruined Star Wars forever” or something along those lines was just becoming too much to bare. Thankfully, we might finally be reaching the lowest point of this sort of discourse. All of the Star Wars shows which Disney announced back at their big investors presentation in 2020 have now been released, with the exception of Lando, but only because they’ve decided to develop that project as a movie now instead. After Ahsoka season 2 comes out in 2026, there may be no other big Star Wars shows for the foreseeable future. That same year, the franchise is expected to finally pivot back towards movies. The reason this is important is because, in late 2019, Rotten Tomatoes implemented a new system that forces users to provide ticket serial numbers to prove that they see a movie before they can review it. Unfortunately, the website is unable to prevent the same kind of review-bombing for shows. But at least if Star Wars pivots back towards movies, people can stop using fake numbers as an excuse for outrage. And for those of you who say “the critic scores are always so high because all those critics are paid off,” explain the 51% critic score that The Rise of Skywalker currently has…

Either way, I think an emphasis on movies, with little-to-know shows, is better for the franchise. Disney+ was a mistake. Having an entire streaming service rely on nothing but Star Wars and Marvel was never gonna work longterm. When Disney bought Fox in early 2019, and acquired Hulu as a result, they shoulda cut their losses with the development of D+ and just thrown everything they had into the Hulu basket. It doesn’t matter how “big” these universes are. Fatigue happens no matter what. Imagine if they turned Mad Max into a cinematic universe, with at least one film a year and one show a year, if not more? Imagine if they tried that with Back to the Future, Terminator, etc.? In this regard, Disney harbors all the blame…

Furthermore, in regards to the sequel trilogy specifically (and the Disney era in general), I still think another “generational shift” like the one we experienced with the prequels might be possible. Look at it this way: I was five-years-old when The Phantom Menace came out, and then I was 21 (and entering the workforce) when The Force Awakens came out. Kids who were five when Awakens came out will only be “workforce age” in 2030 or so. On top of that, all the boomers who spent the entire 2000s ranting on message boards about Jar Jar Binks ruining their lives are now spending less time online and more time watching Wheel of Fortune re-runs (or whatever it is old people do). I already feel myself leaving the Reddit mindset, and entering the Wheel of Fortune mindset. Wouldn’t surprise me if others my age or older are starting to go through the same…

Peace!

PS: “Fire in space” has been a thing since that Super Star Destroyer went down in Return of the Jedi…

The Rise & Fall of "Hollywood Jr."

  So the other day I published a think-piece about why I think Star Wars films will continue to get canceled, or at the very least, stay in development hell for long periods of time. In that same article, I mentioned that I further believe this will be the case for other franchises, and Hollywood in general, as this is how things tended to go before Marvel’s “assembly-line model” came into play…

Towards the end of that post, I also provided an example of how, when it was announced a few months ago that The Batman: Part II was getting delayed to 2026, certain Internet personalities acted like the sky was falling… I would like to clarify now that I was alluding to John Campea.

Before I go any further, let me make one thing clear: I’m not bashing John Campea. Out of all the “movie news YouTubers” still around, he’s actually one of the more reasonable ones still. That said, I find myself agreeing with less and less stuff he says these days (he doesn’t seem too bothered about differing opinions, though). When he did his video covering the delay of The Batman: Part II, I couldn’t help but think the entire time “Dude, who cares about some Batman movie getting pushed back a year?” And I’m saying that as someone who considers 2022’s The Batman to be one of their favorite movies of all time…

But after writing my post the other day, I thought about Campea’s rant more, and came to the following conclusion: Delays like that of The Batman: Part II are another nail in the coffin of the “golden age” of blockbusters that we all got so used to in the 2010s. And for people like John, it’s another step towards the possible end of their very livelihood…

Think about it! Guys like Campea make an entire living off of movie news, and movie reviews. But if we go back to a pre-MCU age where franchise films take forever to make and don’t come out as often, people like him won’t be able to cover big movie news as often, nor would they be able to review big movies as often…

If you still don’t believe me, look at it this way: The early 2010s (mainly 2012) saw the rise of “bigger” franchises (MCU, DCEU, Disney buying Star Wars, etc.), as well as the rise of an entire internet culture built around discussing said franchises, and being excited for them. We had Campea leading AMC Movie Talk, which later became Collider Movie Talk, and introduced many of us to such personalities as Jeremy Jahns, Perri Nemiroff, Wendy Lee, Robert Burnett, John Rocha, Jon Schnepp (RIP), Tiffany Smith, Mark Ellis, Kristain Harloff, Marc Fernandez, Ken Napzok, Steve “Frosty” Weintraub, Dennis Tzeng, Mark Reilly, Scott Mantz, Ashley Mova, Roxy Striar… Maybe Collider had too many people…

Collider wasn’t the only game in town, either. There was also Screen Junkies. Most people know them for creating Honest Trailers, but during the peak of pop culture in the 2010s, they also had plenty of other film-related programs (Movie Fights, SJ News, etc.). In fact, at one point they even had their own STREAMING SERVICE, and funny enough, it was titled ScreenJunkies+, long before the likes of Disney+, AppleTV+, and Paramount+ all came into fruition. This service even had a program that involved Kevin Smith, of all people, unboxing toys. That’s how much money all these nerds used to have! And again, Screen Junkies allowed us all to get to know Dan Murrell, Roth Cornett, Danielle Radford, Joe Starr, Spencer Gilbert, Hal Rudnick, Nick Mundy, Billy Business, Eric Goldman, Andy Signore (more on him later), etc.

I like to refer to this whole culture that the likes of Collider and Screen Junkies pioneered as “Hollywood Jr.,” since it’s a culture that really only exists cause of Hollywood itself. So now the question is: What exactly happened to Hollywood Jr.? The first nail in the coffin came in 2017, which saw Campea having a falling out with Collider (leading to his departure), as well as movies becoming more divisive (The Last Jedi), franchises in general collapsing (Justice League), and the MeToo movement impacting Hollywood overall (and Screen Junkies directly).

Things limped on for another two years, and then 2019 saw the Infinity Saga, the Skywalker Saga, Game of Thrones, and Gotham all coming to an end, among other things. That same year also saw the launch of competitive streaming services (Disney+ and AppleTV+ mainly, with Max, Peacock, and Paramount+ all soon to follow). All of which have caused fatigue. Then at the start of 2020, Collider Movie Talk and its related programs were all dissolved, leading its staff to have to find their own individual voices on YouTube or elsewhere. Then Covid happened. Then the strikes. Recently, Screen Junkies was reduced down to nothing but Honest Trailers. And as I mentioned in my previous post, every major franchise is now struggling to get things off the ground as often as they used to, and I don’t see that ending any time soon (Blade just lost another director by the way).

So what does that mean now for people like John Campea? In all honesty, Campea himself will probably be fine, but that doesn’t mean everyone else in his position will. Marc Fernandez has already disappeared from YouTube entirely, whereas others like Andy Signore now sustain themselves by making clickbait videos of celebrity drama/gossip and outrage culture (Andy only has himself to blame for his own situation though, to be fair). Dan Murrell has made box office numbers his entire personality now, but I’m starting to worry that there won’t even be a box office for him to analyze in the near future…

If I had to guess, Campea specifically will probably keep coasting along on “smaller” movie news, in between the bigger events that will continue to become more and more rare (again)…

I’d like to close out by making the following point: If YouTube existed in the 1990s, back when Star Wars was in a coma and frequent superhero films were still a geek’s wet dream, none of the people mentioned in this post would’ve been able to sustain a living doing what they do. If we return to a time like that (which is starting to seem more and more likely), then all these folks should thank their lucky stars that they were able to build a following in the 2010s…

Peace!

Star Wars Films Will Keep Getting Axed, Here's Why

  I haven’t done one of these “think pieces” in awhile, so I’m gonna start with a list:

Star Wars movies either canceled or in limbo:

Obi-Wan Kenobi (reworked as a show)

Boba Fett (reworked as a show)

Rian Johnson Trilogy

Benioff & Weiss Trilogy

Knights of the Old Republic

Kevin Feige Movie

Rogue Squadron

A Droid Story

Lando

Taika Waititi Movie

Damon Lindelof Movie

That’s fifteen movies. Quite a bit, eh? So now the question becomes: Why does this keep happening, and will it ever get better?

I can already answer the second part of the question: No.

But to understand why, we need to dissect the first part of the question…

Back in 1972, George Lucas began working on what would eventually become Star Wars. The movie came out in 1977. That means he had five entire years to work on the movie soup-to-nuts, without having to worry about fan expectations because, surprise, there were no fans yet…

Thankfully, the film received immediate universal praise. The following film, The Empire Strikes Back, was met with some initial criticism, but people quickly came around to it. Since then, each installment has been divisive, at best. Things became even more complex in 2012, when Disney acquired the property. Now, the franchise had to try to please both fans AND shareholders alike. Spoiler alert: both camps want as much content as possible, even if they don’t admit it…

To make matters worse, Disney launched its own streaming service in 2019, just as the mainline Skywalker Saga was coming to end. Similarly to Marvel, Star Wars now had to define a new, post-saga course for its movies, while also justifying the existence of multiple shows a year, all while still having to appeal to both fans and shareholders alike…

Therefore, as one would expect, Lucasfilm is under pressure to keep announcing content on a regular basis. Some of you reading this may go “they should at least write an outline before announcing something.” While I’m not on the inside, I can all but guarantee that every new movie they announce has at least an outline before they announce it. That said, a good outline doesn’t necessarily guarantee a good script, let alone a good movie. Speaking as a writer myself, I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve written an outline, thinking I have a hit on my hands, only to then start expanding said outline into an actual manuscript and realizing what I had was actually shit. In fact, it just happened to me again today…

So now you may be thinking “okay, well then they should write at least one full script draft before they announce something.” I think it’s pretty safe to say that, if it weren’t for having to keep the shareholders happy, that’s exactly what they would do. In fact, they even tried that a few times, but the problem is that scripts take quite a bit of time to write, and when it comes to Star Wars, it’s hard to keep things a secret, especially from scoop-hungry journalists. Keep in mind that the Kevin Feige movie was never officially announced by Disney or Lucasfilm themselves. They were secretly working on the script, and then someone on the inside talked to a journalist, and the rest is history. Same thing happened to the Damon Lindelof film.

This is all to say that, a lot of times, a project is either forced into announcement prematurely by the major studio (Disney, in this case), or its existence is leaked to the press while it’s still in the scripting phase. This even happens to small, non-IP projects that never get finished, let alone something like Star Wars…

Even Marvel’s beloved Infinity Saga hit some bumps in the road along the way (some entries were better than others, plus, remember when Inhumans was supposed to be a movie?). And while the Multiverse Saga continues to chug along, its reception seems to keep declining with each and every new release, and their plans are slowly becoming more “wobbly” now too (remember when Armor Wars was supposed to be a show? Is Kang still gonna be the new final boss?). I’ve also said this before, but even the Infinity Saga itself didn’t become “solidified” until the first Avengers film in 2012 (they didn’t know they were gonna pursue the Thanos story until then, hence why the cartoony-looking gauntlet full of stones in the first Thor film had to be retconned as a decoy). Either way, Marvel will keep chugging along, cause that’s what they’re known for…

Besides, do you think the people running Star Wars want to keep putting out multiple mediocre movies and shows every year, like Marvel does? Especially when Star Wars seems to receive ten times as much scrutiny? As a matter of fact, no other franchise outside of Marvel has managed to pull off the assembly-line model that they themselves pioneered, and can barely still do themselves. I can’t even count on two hands how many abandoned film slates DC has had in the last decade, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole James Gunn thing doesn’t work out now either…

With that all being said, I think it’s time for all of us to accept that the Infinity Saga was a fluke, and that a pre-determined, decade-long film slate like that is never gonna happen ever again. When it comes to any franchise, movies are gonna keep getting announced because shareholders (as well as fans, to a lesser extent) want to keep knowing what’s going on. Some of those plans will happen, some of them won’t. It is what it is. In fact, we now live in a world where an entire movie can be filmed and yet still be canceled (RIP Batgirl). My best advice would be to just not take any of this stuff too seriously until you see a trailer for it…

I’d like to also remind everyone that good art usually takes time. It took Tolkien seventeen years to finally publish all three volumes of The Lord of the Rings, after all. I also think that the days of something getting announced and then being released just a few years later are over. Like I said at the start of this post, Lucas took five whole years to make the original film. Similarly, he announced The Phantom Menace in 1993, and the movie itself only came out six entire years later. On another similar note, the original Spider-Man movie was in development hell for like ten years and went through a few different directors (even James Cameron was supposed to do it, at one point). Terminator 2 and Aliens both took seven years to make (both by Cameron too, funny enough). Pixar sequels take a while too. The list goes on…

I say all this because I’ve noticed movie nerds getting more and more anxious about this stuff. A few months ago, it was announced that the sequel to The Batman would only be released in late 2026 (four and a half years after the first one), and a bunch of people online threw a temper tantrum over it. Unfortunately, it seems that Marvel (and major studio culture in general) has conditioned everyone into thinking that we need content within a few years from announcement. We need to get out of that mindset…

If it’s any consolation, I’m sure all the in-limbo Star Wars projects listed at the top here will eventually get made. Some might mutate into shows (like Kenobi and Fett did). Some might change directors still. Some might only get released like ten or so years after they were originally announced. This was the world before Marvel, and it’s the world again now…

Peace!