Category: Opinion

Lightsaber Combat, Sequel Edition

Posted on January 20, 2016by The Holocron

Finn_duels_Kylo_RenAfter I watched The Force Awakens for the second time, one of the many things my friends and I brought up was lightsaber combat. The iconic weapon of Jedi, Sith, and many other Force-users was featured prominently, and of course I had a few feelings about just how the combat was depicted. Like pretty much every other piece about TFA, this is not spoiler-free. You have been warned.

My interest in lightsaber combat and just how realistic it is has led me to some interesting places, like the time when I tried to recreate Jaina’s pose on the cover of Invincible and fell into a bookshelf. At least once while watching the prequels and doing the usual making fun of them, I have commented on how much I love the fight choreography. And one of my first thoughts on TFA’s combat was just how much it suited each of the characters. Three viewings later, I found myself muttering about lightsaber combat and about how good fight choreography can be very good characterization.

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The Symbolism of The Force Awakens

Posted on January 15, 2016by Guest Editorials

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One of the best aspects of literature is ambiguity; ambiguity that leaves important scenes up for speculation and exploration that causes discussion for years to come. At the end of the novelization of The Force Awakens, the narration tells us “Remembering, Rey reached into her pack and removed [Luke’s] lightsaber. Taking several steps forward, she held it out to him. An offer. A plea. The galaxy’s only hope.” In context, I think the narration makes it seem that Luke is the galaxy’s only hope. But how is he the galaxy’s hope? Does Rey imagine that Luke is going to bring the galaxy together under the Resistance? Does she want Luke to come out of hiding and kill Kylo? I think the direction of the plot subtly moves us into accepting a different ending: that Rey, fully trained by Luke as a Jedi, is the galaxy’s only hope.

What makes me think this? The symbolism in Star Wars. The franchise is not afraid of stretching its visuals to their furthest capacity, leading to some rich storytelling that doesn’t rely solely on the narration to tell every part of the story. But how does The Force Awakens’ symbolism specifically point to Rey as the galaxy’s only hope? It’s too easy to point out Rey’s similarities to Luke, as many have already done. No, the way forward is to look at some of the differences between the two. I think there’s an unexplored area of the movie that we should look at: the symbol of ascent. The symbol of ascent is all over the movie, as the movie starts in the night, in the middle of a desert world and ends on top of a mountainous island in the middle of the day. In many ancient worldviews, “ascension” meant many things: it symbolized a movement from death to life, it symbolized the ritual practitioner’s ascent into heaven, or maturity. Ascension was necessary in many worldviews because the ground was death: to descend was to enter Hades or Sheol, and to stay on the ground was to be tied to the material world rather than the spiritual world. Kosignas, the priest-king of a town in Greece, builds a ladder to Hera to leave the world; the prophet Jonah descends into the sea and into the fish to escape God, comparing it to living in Sheol; the Rig Veda shows the first man who died climbing mountains to show people about life after death; early Gnostics wanted to ascend to heaven to escape the evil material world. Read More

The Shadow of Anakin Part II: A Legacy of Hope

Posted on January 13, 2016by A Certain Point of View

kylo and anakin

At its heart, the Star Wars saga has always been about Anakin Skywalker in some form or another. If the prequel trilogy is about Anakin’s rise and subsequent fall, and the original trilogy is about his redemption, then the sequel trilogy is about his legacy. Though Anakin is dead, his story continues to play a key role in the narrative of a galaxy far, far away.

On Monday I discussed the differences between Vader and Kylo, both in their backgrounds and in their falls to the dark side, and what that might mean in terms of redemption arcs. If Anakin was a Jedi whose path to the dark side was paved with good intentions, Kylo (as best we can tell from The Force Awakens) willfully chose to embrace the dark and is still fighting the light inside him. Very different interpretations of dark side power. Kylo is determined to follow the Vader side of his heritage…but he would do well to remember that Vader is only part of the legacy that Anakin leaves behind.

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The Shadow of Anakin Part I: Why Kylo and Anakin are Nothing Alike

Posted on January 11, 2016by A Certain Point of View

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Though Anakin Skywalker has been dead for thirty years, the specter of his memory still looms over the Star Wars universe. His shadow is most obviously personified by his grandson: Kylo Ren, a young fanatic seduced by the dark side, obsessed with Vader’s exploits, and striving to live up to Vader’s legacy. A Skywalker, powerful in the Force, and obsessed with power and willing to hurt those he loves to get it. It seems like Kylo is well on his way to filling Vader’s boots.

The comparison between Vader and Kylo is an interesting one because while their narratives seem alike on the surface, a deeper look reveals that not to be the case at all. Sure, they both crave power from the dark side, they’re both angsty, they have scary masks, and they both see no problem in hurting those they care about in their quest for power and glory. But, for all Kylo’s Vader fanboyism and desire to emulate his grandfather, the two characters actually share very few similarities when it comes to their pursuit of power. And that is going to play a key role in how their redemption narratives play out.

Obviously we know very little about the details of Ben’s backstory, so a significant part of this is based on speculation drawn from context clues present in The Force Awakens. But based on what we see of Kylo and what we can surmise about the state of the galaxy, it’s clear that Vader and Kylo are actually quite different in how they fell to the dark side. And that difference is due to a couple key aspects of their pre-dark side selves, Anakin and Ben.

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Fleeing the End: Why I’ve Chosen Not to See The Force Awakens—Yet

Posted on January 6, 2016by Obiwomble's Outlook

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I can already see the questions running through your mind – why not see it now? Why wait? Well, one answer is I know what happens and I’m not 100% in favour of it. Why opt for spoiler info? The last decade of Star Wars product, in terms of what happened a few decades later, is not a pretty story. It’s certainly a tale from which the conclusion to draw is not to trust those supplying it. As a general rule, if I need spoiler info it denotes a lack of confidence. At the same time, it seems abundantly clear that The Force Awakens differs from its predecessors in that it may actually be a planned trilogy. The significance? I’ll get to that, keep reading.

The reason not to see it now is a protective one. You can find info on what goes down in TFA easily, so let’s just say I’m not exactly enthused over what they decided to do with Luke, Han and Leia. I can be fine with it for now, but I suspect there’s a chance seeing the film could have a detrimental effect on my liking for SW. And yet…there’s a sense of déjà vu about all this. About fifteen years ago, I started posting over at Jedi Council Literature, and three months after I joined a book called Vector Prime came out and the forum ended up in a months long conflagration!

VP was the beginning of the New Jedi Order series that saw the galaxy invaded by a bunch of sadomasochistic, biotech-wielding religious fanatics – the Yuuzhan Vong. The threat isn’t taken seriously by the New Republic, even after the Vong have killed Chewbacca, which ultimately leads to the fall of Coruscant two years later. The short story is I wasn’t a fan, despite lots of other people being so – starting to see the pattern here? The big problem with any continuation is how to create a new enemy, without undermining or diminishing the previous victories – in this case, the Battle of Endor. The initial solution for 1991-1999 was to have new enemies but who were not an existential threat. Sure, for a book or two they might be on the edge of victory, but then there’d be a turnaround and, as all villains must, they lose. VP did not so much stick to that template as set it on fire. Read More