Author: Mark Eldridge

Jay: So guys, we’ve had a chance to digest From A Certain Point of View for a little while. This was always an interesting project — a book commemorating the 40th Anniversary of A New Hope, but trying to avoid well-trod ground. It was a huge undertaking to get 43 authors involved, and even more so to accomplish all of that for a charitable cause. Here at Eleven-ThirtyEight, we’ve been extolling the virtues of short stories for a while — both as a way to introduce new authors into the mix and to experiment with different kinds of stories. After all, I think several of us would agree that there is no one right way to tell a Star Wars story — that we can think beyond the expectations of Jedi, space battles, past tense, all of that, and get something different that still feels very much like Star Wars (the original movie was, after all, experimentation based on the familiar).

FACPOV gave us that — and it gave us a large variety of stories, catering to various different perspectives and interests. I’m sure that between all of us, there was at least one story that we knew we’d love as soon as Del Rey announced the story subjects. But what I want to get into first is…what surprised you? We’ll have time to talk about expected favorites later, but for me part of the joy was finding several stories I never expected to be my favorites, but they were. Was it the same for you?

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Since the release of The Last Jedi‘s theatrical trailer last week, two years of theories and speculation have at last begun to collapse into a rough shape of the movie’s plot. Not the overall structure, really, but certain moments are depicted very clearly—Luke in awe of Rey’s strength, Finn versus Phasma on a First Order base that may be the Supremacy—and a couple others strongly suggested: Kylo preparing to fire on Leia, and later offering his hand to Rey. Do those scenes really happen in the film? Lord knows we should be used to the trailers not being 100% indicative of the final films by now, but I’m inclined to believe that the essence of those two scenes does indeed happen—even if the footage used here isn’t quite right.

Kylo working up the nerve to fire on Leia is a pretty logical thing to happen post-The Force Awakens (and not especially suspenseful given that we know Carrie Fisher was meant to have a big role in Episode IX), but the suggestion that Kylo and Rey might be remotely cooperative for any reason whatsoever was like a bomb going off in the fandom: does Rey turn, fed up with Luke’s refusal to train her? Does Kylo turn, unable to follow orders and kill another parent? Or is this more of a détente, a brief setting aside of hostilities in order to reach some common goal? Personally, I don’t know, but I do know that I’ve been hoping for something along those lines to happen and I will gladly seize the thread this trailer offers and hold on tight for the next couple months.

I do think, though, that fans should try to open their minds to a much wider range of options than simply “Rey goes bad” or “Kylo becomes good”. This trilogy may have started with a defection, but I don’t see either Kylo or Rey really operating as members of the militaries they ostensibly represent—Force users rarely do. Kylo may have second thoughts, may even work actively against Snoke, but that hardly means he’d be welcomed with open arms by the Resistance or the New Republic. And Rey may well be tempted by Snoke, but we don’t really know his actual goals, do we? The First Order could simply be a means to an end for him, and if that end involves Rey, her cooperation could change his larger game in ways we can’t begin to guess—but I’m excited to see these lines blur a bit, for the movie to ask questions that the previous saga films haven’t prepared us for.

With the trailer and all its lovely possibilities now swirling around in your heads, what’s one scene, or moment, you particularly want to see in The Last Jedi? Is it a plot event or more of a character beat? And why is it important to you? Read More

I don’t like for this site to do instant-reaction pieces very often because I want us to be measured at all times, and focused on the big picture rather than the heat of the moment. But sometimes an announcement comes along that’s so vaguely detailed that there’s nothing particularly informed or complex we as fans are in a position to say about it—so it’s either offer up our first impressions for what they are, or ignore it entirely.

But how could we possibly ignore something as big as the news that JJ Abrams will be returning to the franchise to direct Episode IX after Colin Trevorrow was put on a bus out of town? With most directors, Trevorrow and even Rian Johnson included, you can speculate a great deal about what their version of a Star Wars film would look like based on their other work, but Abrams is the only working director who has an actual Star Wars film already under their belt that we can pick apart for clues as to what he’ll do next. ^[1]Yes, I’m excluding Lucas—let the guy retire.

That said? I’m reasonably agnostic on this choice. I love The Force Awakens even more two years later than I did when I first saw it, so I’m completely certain he can produce another Star Wars film that I enjoy. But Star Trek Into Darkness (while I don’t hate it as much as many do) wasn’t anywhere near as good as his first Trek film so I’m not quite convinced he’s the kind of director who gets better at a given property with practice—TFA could very well be his high-water mark.

I also wonder how he’ll cooperate with Lucasfilm this time around; Bad Robot had a pretty heavy hand in TFA because LFL was still largely getting their shit together and figuring out how they wanted to do things—their trust in him was rewarded that time, but with a more firmly ensconced Story Group and a president who knows what she wants and isn’t screwing around, is he willing to accept more “outside” input this time around? Is he willing to take chances of his own? I hope so.

Since Abrams is such a known quantity in this fandom, I’ll make this a little more challenging for the rest of you—if you’re generally positive about this news, what’s the thing that most concerns you? And if you’re generally negative, what are you most optimistic about? Read More