A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 2017 Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Why was Luke Skywalker made to look so weak and cowardly in Star Wars: The Last Jedi and is it possible to bring him back? Luke Skywalker was neither weak nor cowardly in  Star Wars - Episode VIII: The Last Jedi.  Only those viewers who either don’t understand human nature or invested much of their devotion to the “lore” of the  Star Wars  Expanded Universe like to think that the Luke they see in  The Last Jedi  is a coward or weak. As a matter of fact, the old EU (now wisely called Legends) Luke Skywalker was  never portrayed in a way that was either believable or consistent . Only a few writers, including Hugo Award-winning Timothy Zahn, ever wrote stories or plot lines that showed Luke as a realistic character with human flaws or weaknesses. In those stories and specifically Zahn’s  Thrawn Trilogy,  EU Luke was so faithful to Original Trilogy Luke that I could hear actor Mark Hamill’s voice in my head whenever I read his dialogue. (I could also s

First hardcover edition. © 1989 Presidio Press On August 1, 1989. Novato, California-based Presidio Press (now owned by Ballantine Books) published Joe Weber's DEFCON One, a techno-thriller that imagined what would happen if Soviet hardliners "disposed of" then-General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Mikhail Gorbachev and reversed his liberalization policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika  (restructuring). Judging from the novel's title (a reference to the Pentagon's Defense Readiness Conditions - DEFCONs - highest level) and the stark silhouette of a U.S. Navy carrier on the dust jacket art, such a development in the Soviet Union's internal affairs is not going to be a pleasant one. Weber, a retired Marine Corps aviator and - before becoming a full-time author - corporate jet captain based in Colorado, had no illusions about the CPSU, its conservative (in Soviet terms) "old guard," or the notion that a mor

British cover of Normandy '44: D-Day and the Epic 77-Day Battle for France. Note the shorter subtitle.     © 2019 Griffon Merlin Ltd On June 4, 2019, Grove Atlantic's Atlantic Press Monthly published James Holland's Normandy '44: D-Day and the Epic 77-Day Battle for France (published by Griffon Merlin Ltd in Britain as  Normandy '44: D-Day and the Battle for France ), a new history of what the late Stephen E. Ambrose called "the climactic battle of World War II." The timing of the book's publication was. as the British expression puts it, "bang on." Two days after the book hit bookstore shelves or was sent to customers who bought it on Amazon and other online stores as pre-orders, most of the West (including the U.S., Canada,  France, Great Britain, and their former enemy, Germany) observed the 75th Anniversary of D-Day and the beginning of the end for Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Holland, who produces, writes, and narrates BBC

On Quora, I recently replied to this question by conservative Michael Chaplan: Why don't liberals understand Trump? Actually, most wide-eyed, rational, and intelligent Americans from both sides of the aisle understand Donald John Trump. All too well, as it turns out. We understand, for instance, that Trump is a shameless opportunist who changes his party affiliation to suit his financial and personal needs. It’s no secret that he was once registered as a Democratic Party voter and cozied up to New York City’s mostly Democratic establishment. It’s also a matter of record that Trump also made campaign contributions to politicians from both parties, including his current nemesis du jour, Hillary Clinton (during her successful bid for a U.S. Senate seat from New York). His party affiliation track record goes like this: 1987: Registered as a Republican 1999: Registered as a Reform Party member and briefly ran for President against George W. Bush and Al Gore 2001: Regi

What was the worst Star Trek movie, and how would you have made it better? As a  Star Trek  fan who has every  Star Trek  film (six with The Original Series cast, four with The Next Generation cast, and the three Kelvin Timeline movies), I’d have to say it’s a three-way tie between: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Star Trek: Nemesis Star Trek Into Darkness How would I have made them better? With  Star Trek V,  the fault is not in who directed the film - William Shatner - but rather the story that Harve Bennett, David Loughery, and Shatner chose to tell. Clearly, pitting the  Enterprise-A  against a heretical Vulcan who is on a quest to literally meet God was a horrible idea; maybe having Kirk and his crew go off on a deep-space mission of exploration and discovering that the Organians have mysteriously vanished and a Klingon warlord is preparing the Empire for a second war against the Federation would have been better. Another thing I would have done to make  Star

Is Star Wars: Episode IX just an excuse for Disney to make a bunch of money? All things being equal, all movies (except those small movies made solely by independent “artsy” production companies that hardly anyone sees), are made with the goal of making someone - usually a studio and its stockholders - “a bunch of money.” That’s why  movie studios  exist: they invest (read “risk”) millions of dollars in a movie - in this case,  Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker -  with a certain expectation of making a profit. The Walt Disney Company and its film division, Walt Disney Motion Picture Studios, are of course also making  Star Wars - Episode IX  to fulfill George Lucas’s on-again, off-again aspiration of creating a three-Trilogy Skywalker Saga, plus they have to finish the story that Lucasfilm began with 2015’s  The Force Awakens  and continued in  The Last Jedi.  Everyone involved in the creation of  Star Wars  (or any movie, for that matter),  hopes  that many peop

Will a boyfriend seem over-possessive and controlling if he politely tells his girlfriend to not wear mini skirts when going out? Before I answer, I’m going to make an assumption about the person who wrote the question. I’m betting that he’s not from a Western, i.e. European/North American socially liberal culture, even though he may be living in Western Europe (the United Kingdom included), the U.S., or Canada. I say this because this is the sort of question that someone from a patriarchal, hierarchical, and socially conservative culture would feel at ease asking. Well, sweet summer child, yes, a boyfriend or even a husband  will  indeed “seem over-possessive and controlling if he politely tells his girlfriend to not wear mini skirts when going out.” You see, in a healthy, loving relationship in a modern, pluralistic, non-theocratic society, the ideal scenario does not involve having one partner “politely telling” the other what not to wear when going out, except in situ