A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

The Galactic Empire's Death Star 1 battle station in its final stages of construction. © 2016 Lucasfilm Ltd. Why wasn’t the Death Star re-engineered after the Rebels exploited the flaw with the thermal exhaust port? Actually, the Death Star  was  modified heavily after the destruction of Grand Moff Tarkin’s DS-1 at the Battle of Yavin. Although the movies don’t address this - there’s a three-year time jump between  A New Hope  and  The Empire Strikes Back -  it’s extremely likely that the Emperor called his most senior advisors and formed an Imperial Death Star Investigative Committee to discover how a single Incom T-65 X-wing fighter was able to destroy the Empire’s ultimate weapon with two proton torpedoes. Such an investigative body would have had access to archival copies of the DS-1 plans, perhaps provided by the Emperor himself. The original plans were destroyed along with the Imperial Citadel on Scarif shortly before the Battle of Yavi...

© 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation Ben Kenobi  and  Obi-Wan Kenobi  are the same individual. “Ben Kenobi” is an alias that the former Jedi Master and General of the Grand Army of the Republic adopted soon after arriving on Tatooine 19 years before the events depicted in  Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.  Due to the fall of the Republic and the rise of Sheev Palpatine’s First Galactic Empire, the once-respected Obi-Wan must go into self-imposed exile on the desert planet of Tatooine and assume the role of a “crazy old hermit” to (a) keep an eye on Anakin Skywalker’s son, Luke, and to escape the attention of the Empire and its sinister agents, including Palpatine’s enforcer Darth Vader. Lucas, of course, is not trying very hard to keep that fact hidden from the audience. I mean, if his intention was to mislead anyone but the in-universe Luke Skywalker, he’d have picked an alias that didn’t include Kenobi’s surname. The ruse might fool, oh, I don’t ...

Publicity photo (a rare space battle one, at that) from 1977. © 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation As an original fan has the mainstreaming of  Star Wars  caused you to lose any passion for it? Star Wars  has always been a mainstream franchise. Always. From the day it was conceived as a fun, exciting, fit-for-the-whole-family space-fantasy by a 29-year-old filmmaker just off his first hit film,  American Graffiti,  to this very moment,  Star Wars  was never a small niche film meant to be seen as a “cult” hit aimed at a tiny percentage of the moviegoing audience in 1977. While it is true that George Lucas never imagined that his space-fantasy set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” would be a huge blockbuster, he and his creative team set out to make a film that, in Lucas’ own words, would have the broadest, i.e. “mainstream,” audience appeal. I think that anyone who goes to the movies loves to have an emotional experience. It...

Do you think Mace Windu is alive? Let’s see: When we last saw Mace Windu in 2005’s  Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith , his lightsaber hand had been amputated at the wrist, Darth Sidious was shocking him with Force lightning, and he was plummeting down from a skyscraper on Coruscant, courtesy of a mighty Force shove by the aforementioned Darth Sidious. Now, I know that  Star Wars  is a space fantasy. I also understand that the amputation of his hand was not fatal; lightsabers cauterize wounds, so Mace would not have bled out from that injury. Still, it’s not likely that Mace could have survived the double-whammy of being electrocuted  and  pushed off a high building that’s at least two miles high. In the 14 years that have elapsed since  Revenge of the Sith,  Mace Windu has only appeared in books, comics, and one TV series set between  Star Wars Episode II  and  Episode III.  Samuel L. Jackson reprised ...

Photo Credit and © 2018 Hasbro, Inc. and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  Hi, there, Dear Reader! It's Thursday, March 28, 2019, and it's a nice spring day in my corner of Florida. And, as you can see, it's time for another Star Wars action figure review. In this installment of A Certain Point of View, I'll be talking about the Star Wars Black Series 6-inch scale action figure based on Grand Moff Tarkin, the Governor of the Imperial Outlands and commander of the Galactic Empire's ultimate weapon - the Death Star. Released early last year as part of a consignment that included Death Star Trooper, Han Solo, Jawa, Range Trooper, and Lando Calrissian, Grand Moff Tarkin (Black Series figure #60) marked the debut as a 6-inch figure of the fearsome Imperial villain from Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope. Hasbro intended it as an April release to whet fans' appetite for Solo: A Star Wars Story and related merchandise, but many retailers put this wave of figures on store ...

Someone on Quora actually asked this question recently: Why do I encounter many people that seem to hate Star Trek: The Next Generation so vehemently? As Mr. Spock would say in response to a question of this nature, it is difficult to answer such a query without any empirical data. First, when you say that you encounter “many people that hate  Star Trek: The Next Generation,  where do these encounters occur? The farmland in rural Wisconsin? A bar in Milwaukee? The halls of a high school campus? A Facebook  Star Trek  discussion group? Second, do you go around asking random strangers “Excuse me, but what are your personal feelings about  Star Trek: The Next Generation ?” So, without having any relevant information to go on, I can only say this: I have  no  idea why you, the question writer, encounter many people that seem to hate  Star Trek: The Next Generation. Here are some theories, though: You run into young science fiction f...

Why is  Star Trek: The Animated Series  not often spoken of or given the same recognition as the other  Star Trek  shows? Star Trek: The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek,  as it was officially marketed, has a complex history as to its canonicity within the  Star Trek  franchise. When it was created in the mid-1970s, most of the people involved in its creation treated the series as a continuation of  Star Trek: The Original Series. (TOS).  After all, it was created and executive produced by Gene Roddenberry, it featured the voices of  most  of the main cast members (including William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley) except Walter Koenig (Ensign Pavel Chekov), who wasn’t hired due to budget issues. (Koenig  did  participate on the writing end; he penned the script for  The Infinite Vulcan. )  Most of the scripts were written by men and women who had written episodes for the l...

How long will the current Star Trek movie franchise continue? If you’re referring to the Kelvin timeline films ( Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness,  and  Star Trek Beyond,  the “current  Star Trek  movie franchise” is - for all intents and purposes - dead and buried. There are several reasons for this, but it all boils down to this: even though the cast was pretty good, the special effects well-done, and the  initial concept  was interesting (how to tell a “prequel’ story without the usual problems that prequels have), the Kelvin Trilogy just didn’t jive with the rest of the  Star Trek  franchise. Although I liked the basic idea that Nero and his monstrous ship, the  Narada,  travel back in time to the 23rd Century and alter the destinies of James T. Kirk and Crew, the execution was, to put it simply, problematic. In the Prime Timeline (aka  Star Trek  prior to 2009), Kirk is older than most of the bridge cre...

Photo credit and © 2017 Hasbro, Inc. and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Well, Dear Reader , it's Tuesday, March 26, 2018, and I'm back with another Star Wars Black Series action figure review. This time around I'll be talking about another figure I received for my recent birthday: Hasbro's Star Wars Black Series: Maz Kanata from director J.J. Abrams' 2015 film, Star Wars - Episode VII: The Force Awakens.  Hasbro released its 49th Star Wars Black Series on September 1, 2017 in the same "wave" or shipment that included the following figures:  #50: Elite Praetorian Guard #51: Finn (First Order Disguise) #52: General Leia Organa #53: Captain Poe Dameron #31: AT-AT Driver #35: Snowtrooper #45: Kylo Ren Of the eight figures in this consignment, five (49-53) were new releases, while the other three were re-releases, as you can see from their ordinal number identifiers.  The destruction of her castle has forced Maz to become more mobile and take a ...