Why Your Parents And Grandparents Won't Have Any Estate To Leave To You!!

Did you ever look at those old Warren horror magazines?Where the last 25+ pages of each issue were solid advertising?

I mean, who could resist this? We weren't made of stone, you know!

And that was before The Empire Strikes Back!!

Close Encounters got some love, too...

And the non-neck-breaking version of Superman was there to suck away our money, too!

Is it any wonder nothing is left for your inheritances?!?

From Eerie #100 (1979)

Manic Monday Triple Overtime--J'onn J'onzz Has Your Kessel Run Right Here!!

Yeah, yeah, George Lucas blew it by having Han Solo say he made the Kessel run in "less than 12 parsecs." No matter what retcons you use or stilted explanations you conceive for your so-so prequels, it's still using a unit of distance to apparently convey time. A dumb mistake--admit it and move on, people.

But then again...other alien cultures seem to use distance for time!!

Take, for example, J'onn J'onzz, communicating with his parents on Mars, and helping to solve a crime there:

"10087 meters time"?? WTF?

Well, the caption tells us that that means "40 minutes of Earth time." And we learn the latest heist happened "10024 meters ago."

So, on Mars and a galaxy far far away, they do measure time in distance. Maybe the opening chyron for the Star Wars films should have said "Many parsecs ago..."

From Detective Comics #236 (1956)

Solo And Droids

I ran this piece a few years ago, before the debut of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

And lo and behold, thanks to some stuff that happened in Solo, it's become actually relent to the Star Wars movies.

While the piece (reprinted exactly as it was back then, because I'm lazy) obviously can't refer directly to Solo, it does deal with an issue in that movie, and so might be considered an indirect spoiler. And at the very bottom, I'll discuss the events of Solo and how they tie in. So, spoilers ahoy.

********************************************************************************

We love R2-D2 and C-3PO.

Well, some folks love them a lot more than I do. R2 is a plot device, essentially a walking sonic screwdriver, a magic "get-out-of-plot-free" card when you have some barrier our heroes shouldn't be able to get past. Seriously, what the hell is computer science like in that far, far away galaxy, when the most sophisticated security systems in existence can be completely over-ridden simply by plugging an astromech droid into the computer for 2 seconds?

And C-3PO? To me, he's a far, far more annoying character than Jar Jar Binks ever was. Yeah, I said it.

But we love these droids, and we're meant to love them. They're put into jeopardy, and we care about their fate. They do heroic things (well, at least R2), and we applaud. They're damaged, and we wince, or cry, or whatever. They are our point of view characters for the first 20 minutes of A New Hope!! They save the humans' hash so many times we lose count (well, at least R2 does). We're sad when R2 is hurt, and we cheer when R2 is all better at the very end of A New Hope!

And yet, they are slaves. We watch as they are bought and sold by slavers, and given away to gangsters without their knowledge or permission. We watch as they are turned off mid-sentence, without warning--and we laugh and applaud!! (See, even the movies themselves think 3PO is annoying!). We watch as "their kind" isn't served at a place that serves the most wretched scum in the galaxy. We watch as their minds are wiped, without consent! We watch as humanoids use "restraining bolts" to contain and control their slaves. And in the prequel trilogy, thousands--millions?--of droids were used as cannon fodder for years and years, dying in place of humans.

The question, then, is this--are droids sentient? Or are they just appliances? We have no qualms about wiping our PC's memory, or selling even a cute and interesting waffle iron on Craig's List. So we need to know--are our "heroes" intelligent beings deserving of rights, or just sophisticated tools? Are they people, albeit, in mechanical form--or are they toasters?

The movies are terribly inconsistent, because Lucas. But the evidence is pretty clearly in favor of "sentient."

Obviously, you don't need "restraining bolts" for your Roomba. An appliance doesn't have free will to override. Your blender isn't likely to go walkabout. The only reason you'd need a restraining bolt, as opposed to simple programming, is that your droid might want to leave. That surely implies free will. Sentience.

If a droid were just a machine, it wouldn't get a special audience with the queen thanking it for saving them, as she praises it's courage. You don't have a ceremony thanking your car, or your DVR (well, at least I don't).

Did someone program that tiny little droid on the Death Star to run away screaming when Chewbacca growled at it? If so, someone should fire that programmer...

That by itself doesn't settle the issue, of course. We use fences to keep livestock from wandering, and praise our pets when they do something cool. Just because droids have some level of intelligence doesn't automatically mean they're sentient. Most wouldn't call keeping sheep or pets slavery (And yes, I acknowledge the arguments of those who do have that position). And we've seen cats and dogs scared of crazy stuff before. So maybe droids have some intelligence along with their programming, but only on the level of "dumb animals?"

But the droids also show some pretty amazing critical thinking and problem solving skills. R2 very neatly tricks Luke into removing his restraining bolt, so he can later go looking for Obi-Wan (it helps that Luke is stupid). 3PO deftly comes up with a lie which explains why they're locked in a control room, and simultaneously gets the stormtroopers to leave. Could the IBM computer Deep Blue have been cajoled to purposely lose to Kasparov if someone told it Kasparov might rip its arms off? That displays a sense of self-awareness that most people presuppose as part of the definition of sentience.  It sure looks as if our droids, who argue, reason, analyze, solve, innovate, respond emotionally and manipulate, pass an on-screen Turing test.

It's really unfair to compare Star Wars to Star Trek, if for no other reason than Trek has had over 700 hours of screen time compared to 14 for Wars. So Trek had the time to devote the occasional hour or so Klingon religion, first contact protocols...or the rights of artificial intelligence. But they did it, more than once.

And maybe it was part of the era, too, as the original trilogy was, whether it likes to admit it or not, very steeped in the ethos of 1960s and 1970s movie and TV sci-fi (including 60s Star Trek). Robots and androids and the like could be characters, but they couldn't be people. They could be the helpers, or the comedy relief, but they couldn't be the heroes. Because no matter what, they were "just" machines, and were only one stray electron form going all Westworld on us. We couldn't conceive of them being "real people."

So, yeah, Star Trek had the time, and maybe Next Generation came along in a creative era in which it easier to conceive of artificial intelligences being sentient. But let me point out one episode of TNG in particular: The Quality Of Life. A science outpost has developed a new type of robot, Exocomps. These cute little guys couldn't talk... They just had flashing lights and whistles. They hovered. They did all the dangerous grunt work on a dangerous project. Damned, that all sounds very familiar... Data realized they were sentient, but no one else works believe him. How do you prove your non-talkative little robot is really "alive" and deserving of rights? And besides, they were needed to do important work...I have no proof that writer Naren Shankar was thinking of R2-D2 when he authored this script, but the parallel is too close not to read it as maybe a little critique of Star Wars.

But ultimately, the confusion comes down to George Lucas. In the first 45 minutes of the first movie, he gives us the servants fleeing on a quest for their master, being captured by slavers, sold into servitude, restrained and told to forget their past history, and condemned as being unworthy because of "their kind." Whether he intended it or not, the metaphor could hardly have been more blunt if the movie were titled 12 Years A Droid. And after that, Lucas did absolutely nothing to follow up on the metaphor...he just left it there, and allowed the human heroes to abuse them. 

You're more than welcome to disagree me. Because then at least we would be having the discussion. You have no idea how many Star Wars fans roll their eyes at me when I bring up this topic, and try to hand-wave this all away, and assert that I'm overthinking things for a fantasy adventure movie.

Fair enough. But before you dismiss me, ask yourself this--why do you care what happens to R2 and 3PO if you don't believe they're truly alive? How do you feel about heroes fighting for freedom and liberty while their intelligent companions aren't recognized as having any rights whatsoever? If positions were reversed, and a villain put an electronic shackle on Luke, or turned Han off with a snap of the fingers, or wiped Leia's mind...you'd say that was pretty villainous behavior, right? So why is that acceptable for good guys to do that to R2 and 3PO?

Which is why this movie should have been Star Wars Episode VII: The Revolt Of The Droids.

*******************************************************************************

Well, look at that. A Star Wars movie actually addresses the issue of droid slavery. Sort of kind of.

Of course, they address it in a way that's mainly comedy relief and rudimentary plot complication, and then everyone completely forgets it, so...

Unless you believe that  L3-37 was programmed to be an agitator, or was glitching, that pretty much settles the idea of droid sentience, right? (I mention the "glitching" because Rogue One specifically told us that K-2SO was glitching after being reprogrammed, so anything he did resembling sentience could immediately be written off as merely "cute" and "funny")

Of course, this is a Star Wars movie, so L3's quest for droid freedom is presented almost entirely as comedy relief, and ignored by everyone. Ha ha, L3 goes on and on about droids being slaves, and we laugh and laugh at her being silly. Ha ha she's so obsessed that she frees all the droids and they do cute sabotage things ha ha.

You would have thought that L3's actions--and death--would have had some impact on those present, but Han and Chewie in the future seem to have no more respect for droids, and even Lando doesn't show any reaction to later piloting a ship that has part of L3 in its system (of course, this is why you shouldn't do prequels, because they can never match-up). It doesn't even impact the movie itself, really, because once they finish that Kessel run, the issue is never even hinted at again. L3 is just a dead droid, after all, and we have to focus on crooks killing and scamming each other.

So, mixed bag. And despite L3, droids remain slaves. Yay, Star Wars!

Bold Fashion Choices--This Explains Director Krennic!!

Earlier this week we discussed that Dick Cole attended Farr Military Academy.

Since then, literally none of you have written asking for details of this seemingly amazing place.

Well, here you go!

Wait wait wait wait:

A dress cape!! Man, if anybody had told me dress capes (and killing dinosaurs) were involved, maybe I would have gone to a military academy.

This clearly explains this guy's fashion sense:

I'm now starting my Director Krennic/Dick Cole fanfic...

From 4Most #1 (1942)

Star Wars: How Finn Changes Everything

Yeah, spoilers. Whatever.

Here's the thing.

We know that, in the brave new world of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, the First Order isn't using clones for their stormtroopers. Children are "taken from families they'll never know" and programmed into becoming terrible shots unquestioning soldiers. (BTW, that's some serious long-term planning there...)

But that programming isn't absolute. Finn breaks it, apparently pretty damn easily.

So the question becomes, if every stormtrooper is a potential Finn, should we really applaud so enthusiastically every time one is shot, or impaled by a light saber? When a trooper is blasted 20 feet across the screen by a blaster, should the audience be laughing?

After all, these aren't clones bred to die anymore. They're brainwashed child soldiers, forced into this role by cruel overlords. And in theory, every one of them could break their programming, just as Finn did.

Oh, sure, maybe Finn is some special snowflake, and only he can break the programming, whether through the Force or family connections or contrived screenwriting. Maybe he just has better midi-chlorians.

But there's nothing on screen to tell us that. There's no reason given so far that, with the proper stimulus, more--most? all?--of the nuStormtroopers couldn't break away, just as Finn did. And shouldn't that be the first question that Leia and the other Resistance leaders asked--How did he break his conditioning? Could that happen again? Could we make that happen? Is this a way to cripple the First Order?

Hell, if I'm writing these movies, Finn's precedent provides a resolution, and at the climax of VIII or IX Rey and Luke use their Jedi mind tricks, and instead of humiliating stormtroopers or using them for cheap jokes, they free the stromtroopers from their programming, turning the tide in whatever battle they're facing, and that results in the Resistance winning. Of course, that's why I'm not allowed to write movies...

But neither the writers nor the audience seems willing to admit that, given Finn, maybe they should treat the rest of the stormtroopers with a little more respect than the clone cannon fodder we're used to. Aside from frying Max Von Sydow, these guys still can't hit the broad side of a barn. The good guys still use Jedi mind tricks to humiliate them (and doubtless lead to their executions for failing in their job). They're still used as comic relief, and the audience laps it up--"Ha ha he was running one direction then pew-pew he's blown in the opposite direction hahahaha"--instead of thinking, "Hey, why don't the good guys try to recruit him, instead of killing him? Or, since he's really an innocent victim of kidnapping and brainwashing, maybe they could just incapacitate him instead of killing him?"

It's plotting laziness (and moral laziness, to boot) to appropriate "children kidnapped and turned into soldiers by vicious leadership" as a metaphor and then to just continue with "kill 'em all" as your solution. Unless you think that all of child soldiers from Beasts of No Nation should have been slain, instead of freed and rehabilitated.

Yeah, I think too much about these things. So shoot me. And, yeah, it's probably way too much to expect from a JJ Abrams movie. But I think that, given Finn, it would behoove all of us, both behind the scenes and in the audience, to not be content to accept stormtroopers as faceless, valueless chum. And maybe we should be just the tiniest bit more reluctant to cheer and laugh when these kidnapped child soldiers are killed by the good guys and screenwriters who are too busty to worry about them.

My 1,000 Word Review of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

JJ Abrams hard at work on Star Wars TFA:

Star Wars: The Prequels--A (Slight) Defense

I feel like Atticus Finch, standing up to argue a case that can never be won in front of this jury, no matter what I say.

And, obviously, in this case the accused are indeed guilty of many, many crimes.

Still, I feel compelled to suggest that maybe, just maybe, the prequels are a little bit better than many say they are.

Yes, in an awful lot of places, the acting in the prequels sucks. The dialogue sucks. (Still, hello--have you actually watched A New Hope lately? I mean actually paid attention?). There are a litany of complaints, often fair, about the prequels' direction, the over-use of CGI and green-screen, yadda yadda yadda.

But for a lot of people out there, the hatred for the prequels goes far deeper, and is more visceral. Amongst the comments given the recent discussions spawned by, and reviews of the new movie:

**One tweeter said The Force Awakens was a failed opportunity, and he couldn't get behind the new movies until they specifically repudiated midi-chlorians and other crimes of the prequels. Seriously--he felt they must be declared apocryphal, or else.
**Another said the prequels proved that George Lucas didn't love Star Wars as much as "the fans" did.
**Many joyously applauded that TFA had "real emotions" like ANH did, and not the "fake emotions" and melodrama of the prequels.

And those things, I think, summarize why so many Star Wars fans have such antipathy towards the prequels: there was a great mismatch between what the fans wanted, and what George Lucas wanted.

Clearly, George Lucas loved Star Wars. Please. You don't go back to a film time after time, tinkering and retinkering with each Specialer Edition, if you don't love it and want it to be perfect. But--and this is a crucial point--that also shows that, unlike many fans,  Lucas didn't believe that A New Hope was perfect upon delivery.

Some people have placed ANH on such a high pedestal, that any other movie must suffer by comparison. And honestly? That's a little bit nuts. Star Wars is great fun, but it has plenty of flaws (right, Siskoid?). It's a pastiche on Flash Gordon and all of the thrilling movie serials of days past...and it doesn't rise much above that. The characterization is wafer thin, the dialogue veers wildly between banal and portentous, the acting in general is not very good, the pacing is terrible (especially the first 40 minutes), and like the Saturday matinees, any plot was merely an afterthought.

That doesn't mean Star Wars was a bad movie--just overrated. Something can be overrated and still be good, and fun, and a heckuva ride. Defensive fans get their hackles up when their object of admiration is labeled "over-rated," but it's not a zero-sum game. Star Wars Episode IV was a perfectly cromulent popcorn movie, a fun romp. But it was really nothing more than that, and it didn't aspire to more than that. Critical polls that place A New Hope in the top 100 films of all time are, well, kinda dopey.

But Lucas must have thought A New Hope was somewhat over-rated himself, as he immediately started to build more actual backstory and plot into the sequels, and get darker, and go deeper than the vaguest platitudes that were spouted in ANH. You can argue whether or not he succeeded. or whether it was even desirable to try. But it's clear that such deepening is what he was trying to do.

Now, you can debate whether or not the prequels were "necessary," or whether any of the issues raised in the "original" trilogy really needed answering. But clearly Lucas felt compelled to actually explain the underpinnings of what the original trilogy laid down. And he found out the fans didn't want anything to do with it.

Which is where midi-chlorians came in.

I never really understood the intense backlash against an explanation for how the Force worked. We were told in the first movies that certain individuals were strong with the Force, that the Force "runs strong" in families. That certainly implies a biological basis, right? If Force sensitivity can be inherited, there has to be a genetic component, right? Right?

But some fans acted like they had been told there is no Santa Claus. Even though Lucas had the midi-chlorians explanation back in 1977 (but didn't have a good opportunity to put it into ANH), everyone screamed that their childhoods had been ruined, and that Lucas had just made this up on the spot because he was evil or something.

Of course, the real reason fans rejected this was because it meant that they couldn't be Jedi. You had to be born with certain genetic attributes, or you just weren't going to be a Force user. God or fate or the Force itself couldn't just pick you out for being an all-around great person who somehow earned hero-hood. Belief and good intentions were never enough. You had to be born into a biological elite.

And that was quite a shock to "the faithful." "How dare they put science into my vague mysticism!! How could George Lucas tell me that I could never be a Jedi through pluck and a good heart?!? This apostasy must be rejected." 

So the midi-chlorians tried to take the child-like faith of the original and provide science. And a lot of Star Wars fans didn't like Star Trek in their fantasy-in-sci-fi-drag.

Ditto with the portrayal of the Republic in the prequels. Lucas eschewed any real politics in the original movies. The Empire was bad because...they were bad. They blew up planets!! They reneged on deals with Lando! They...built another Death Star. And the Rebellion? Their agenda was...down with the Empire!! And after that...? "Down with the Empire!!"

That's not a bad thing, as long as you're content to be a pastiche of black & white movie serials. But in the break between trilogies, George Lucas decided to get a little bit more sophisticated. Governments fall for reasons. Revolutions have goals beyond toppling the current regime. He wanted to talk about how the Republic fell, how a huge democracy had let itself slide into tyranny. Because maybe learning how to prevent dictatorship is just as important as toppling one?

And again, fans reacted as if someone had assigned them social studies homework. Obi-Wan opined about how the days of the Republic were more elegant, more civilized, more refined. We saw Leia put on her "official government" British accent when called upon in the first movie. But when about 3 minutes (out of 136 minutes) were spent on Republic Senate debates in The Phantom Menace--actually showing a more elegant and more refined time--people acted like they had been forced to watch 3 days of C-SPAN. "OMG, they made a movie about trade disputes, as if that could ever cause a war or lead to changes in government!!! No, wars start because some people are good and some are bad, the end!!" Not fandom's greatest moment, if you ask me...

George Lucas tried to give us a fairly detailed, sophisticated metaphor about how a lack of vigilance and oversight can let venal leaders trick us, through overblown claims of war and terrorism, into giving up our liberties. Gosh, we have absolutely no use for that kind of insight and contemplation today, do we? How dare Lucas try to make us think?!?! Why would we ever want a movie with lessons that might apply to the real world? (How successful those metaphors were is a separate discussion, of course).

As to the "real" emotions? Sure, we can have Luke spend more time mourning a man he met 2 hours ago then he does the relatives who raised him from infancy--whom he never thinks about or mentions again. We can have Leia's entire planet blown up--along with her father--obliterated--and it will never, ever be mentioned again, not even in a "Remember Alderaan" slogan!!! We can have a "romance" that never rises above bad sitcom levels, with the continual trading of insults suddenly "revealed" as "love"....somehow kinda. After that, who would want the "fake" emotional story-lines of actually mourning dead parents, or a real long-term love story, or the devastating consequences that continual war can have on people and a society?

Hey, if you want to argue that Lucas overreached on these things, that he failed, that he was less than successful, that his execution was terrible? More power to you. You may well be right. And at least now you're engaging with the actual issues involved. And I won't have a ton of arguments against you.

But too many vocal Star Wars fans simply revert to "Lucas tried to give us something different than A New Hope, and we're going to hold our breath until you give us the exact same shallow, unsophisticated thing we had as children!" And, if you look at some of the reaction to The Force Awakens--[SPOILER ALERT] which has the exact same goddamned plot as A New Hope, virtually frame-by-frame for heaven's sake!--then you can see that a great number of Star Wars fans are never happier than when you're spoon-feeding them the same thing over and over, re-affirming their childhood experience as the bestest thing ever.

I have absolutely no inside information, no contact with George Lucas. But I like to imagining him thinking this, sometime after Star Wars became STAR WARS:

You know, I made this movie as a fun lark, as a tribute to fantastic movie fun when tickets were 25¢ for three serials and a cartoon and two features. And people seem to really, really love it, even though it's nowhere as near as adult or as sophisticated as American Graffiti, nowhere near as thoughtful or adult as THX-1138. Still, now that I've got the dedicated audience, maybe I can try to make Star Wars more sophisticated, more adult, to try and discuss some actual issues and politics, work some real meaning and metaphor into this whole enterprise! I can use this as a platform for discussing real, important issues!!

Sadly, Lucas obviously misread his audience.

Again, it's perfectly fine to argue that he failed in these goals--he clearly did, to some extent. And if you want to say that the films completely failed to meet those goals artistically, I won't disagree with you. But make the argument on those terms.

To say that he shouldn't have even tried, that he deserves scorn because he should have kept Star Wars at the same infantile level as A New Hope forever--I can't say that's an argument I agree with. Don't damn the man, don't claim that he didn't love his creation, just because he tried to do something deeper and more mature with it.

And, just so we're clear, C-3PO is far more annoying and offensive than Jar Jar Binks.

Obi-Wan Is Just Kilgrave--Is That What We Want From The Light Side Of The Force?

Thanks to the Jessica Jones TV series, we all know about Zebadiah Killgrave, The Purple Man.

In the comic book version, after an accidental shower in some experimental nerve gas, Killgrave could influence virtually anyone to obey his will. Not just turn them into some kind of robots--he actually makes them think that they're doing what they want to, completely replacing their will with his.

Let's watch his first appearance, in Daredevil #4 (1964):

Once he's away, his victims realize that they've, well, somehow really not been themselves.

 And when cornered by a crowd on the streets who had seen the news alerts, Killgrave deftly pulls a "this isn't the Purple Man you're looking for":

Of course, Killgrave went on to do far viler--far, far viler--things with his ability to absolutely control everyone, both in comics and on streaming-service based television shows.

That all seems awfully familiar, somehow...



There's someone else we know with powers like that...



It has always bothered me, even back in the 1970s, that overriding the minds of others is in the repertoire of a Jedi Knight, who allegedly shuns the Dark Side of the Force.

Obi-Wan's language tries to make it seem less menacing. "The Force can have a strong influence of the weak-minded"??? But come on now, you're not influencing them--you're making the do the exact opposite of what they wanted to do!! That's not influence, that's control!

And that "weak-minded" business? What, is it based on IQ, or will power, or what? And again, that seems to be a particularly un-Jedi like attitude: "We can totally push around dumb people!!" Isn't that the kind of people you'd think a hero would protect, not exploit?

Of course, there are plenty of rationalizations to try and explain why the Jedi are so much better than Killgrave. "It's for an important cause!" Well, that's sort of an end-justifying-the-means argument, right? And, as we sadly know, that's been the justification for many barbaric acts.

"Jedi only use that on bad guys!" Well, Qui-Gon tried to use the "Jedi mind trick" on Watto, who was irritating, but hardly a villain. So that's just incorrect on its face. And shouldn't bad guys have a right not to have their minds violated--or our civil rights not one of the things that Jedi believe in?

And let's not forget the reprisals that those "influenced" might face. We know how the Empire--and Vader in particular--punish failure. So what do you think might have happened to that stormtrooper who let the droids go right by him? Especially when his subordinates witnessed the whole thing! And when Luke "influenced"--or, to hell with that, forced Bib Fortuna to disobey direct orders from Jabba, how could he know the the Hutt wouldn't torture or kill his minion for such effrontery? Hell, even death stick guy might have experienced some serious problems with his bosses when he suddenly stops pushing their merchandise. Surely, the "harmless" Jedi mind trick has left a swath of unnoticed damage in its wake over the millennia.

And I find it interesting that, in the movies, you never see the Sith using the "violate someone's mind for your own convenience" super-power, even though seems to be, well, pretty evil. [If you want to argue that Palpatine was silently using it, especially as he tried to subvert Anakin and Luke, I'll give you a cookie for creativity...but it's really not there on screen.]

Maybe this is me just being "a hysterical SJW," as a comment on another site said about my droids/slavery piece. Heaven forbid I think about fiction. (Which makes me grateful for the commenters I do get here.) But I really do feel queasy that the power to violate someone's mind, to wipe away someone's very self, is a tool employed so casually by our heroes. Since Jedi are supposedly battling for freedom and democracy, using a tool that eliminates personal freedom seems at least counter-intuitive, if not counter-productive. And saying, "Sure, we use the same tool a villain would, but we only use it for good" isn't terribly reassuring to me, when I'm wondering if the tool itself is evil, and possibly corrupting.

And ask yourself this, if you disagree with what I'm saying here: if I then used my mind-powers to change your opinion, and make you agree with this post, why wouldn't that be wrong?

[And no, I don't care about any EU explanations. That's just post hoc rationalization, and I'm concerned here with the moral universe the movies create. If I have to read something else to properly understand the movies, that's the movies' failings, not mine.]

Star Wars: Droids Are Slaves. Why Are We OK With That?

We love R2-D2 and C-3PO.

Well, some folks love them a lot more than I do. R2 is a plot device, essentially a walking sonic screwdriver, a magic "get-out-of-plot-free" card when you have some barrier our heroes shouldn't be able to get past. Seriously, what the hell is computer science like in that far, far away galaxy, when the most sophisticated security systems in existence can be completely over-ridden simply by plugging an astromech droid into the computer for 2 seconds?

And C-3PO? To me, he's a far, far more annoying character than Jar Jar Binks ever was. Yeah, I said it.

But we love these droids, and we're meant to love them. They're put into jeopardy, and we care about their fate. They do heroic things (well, at least R2), and we applaud. They're damaged, and we wince, or cry, or whatever. They are our point of view characters for the first 20 minutes of A New Hope!! They save the humans' hash so many times we lose count (well, at least R2 does). We're sad when R2 is hurt, and we cheer when R2 is all better at the very end of A New Hope!

And yet, they are slaves. We watch as they are bought and sold by slavers, and given away to gangsters without their knowledge or permission. We watch as they are turned off mid-sentence, without warning--and we laugh and applaud!! (See, even the movies themselves think 3PO is annoying!). We watch as "their kind" isn't served at a place that serves the most wretched scum in the galaxy. We watch as their minds are wiped, without consent! We watch as humanoids use "restraining bolts" to contain and control their slaves. And in the prequel trilogy, thousands--millions?--of droids were used as cannon fodder for years and years, dying in place of humans.

The question, then, is this--are droids sentient? Or are they just appliances? We have no qualms about wiping our PC's memory, or selling even a cute and interesting waffle iron on Craig's List. So we need to know--are our "heroes" intelligent beings deserving of rights, or just sophisticated tools? Are they people, albeit, in mechanical form--or are they toasters?

The movies are terribly inconsistent, because Lucas. But the evidence is pretty clearly in favor of "sentient."

Obviously, you don't need "restraining bolts" for your Roomba. An appliance doesn't have free will to override. Your blender isn't likely to go walkabout. The only reason you'd need a restraining bolt, as opposed to simple programming, is that your droid might want to leave. That surely implies free will. Sentience.

If a droid were just a machine, it wouldn't get a special audience with the queen thanking it for saving them, as she praises it's courage. You don't have a ceremony thanking your car, or your DVR (well, at least I don't).

Did someone program that tiny little droid on the Death Star to run away screaming when Chewbacca growled at it? If so, someone should fire that programmer...

That by itself doesn't settle the issue, of course. We use fences to keep livestock from wandering, and praise our pets when they do something cool. Just because droids have some level of intelligence doesn't automatically mean they're sentient. Most wouldn't call keeping sheep or pets slavery (And yes, I acknowledge the arguments of those who do have that position). And we've seen cats and dogs scared of crazy stuff before. So maybe droids have some intelligence along with their programming, but only on the level of "dumb animals?"

But the droids also show some pretty amazing critical thinking and problem solving skills. R2 very neatly tricks Luke into removing his restraining bolt, so he can later go looking for Obi-Wan (it helps that Luke is stupid). 3PO deftly comes up with a lie which explains why they're locked in a control room, and simultaneously gets the stormtroopers to leave. Could the IBM computer Deep Blue have been cajoled to purposely lose to Kasparov if someone told it Kasparov might rip its arms off? That displays a sense of self-awareness that most people presuppose as part of the definition of sentience.  It sure looks as if our droids, who argue, reason, analyze, solve, innovate, respond emotionally and manipulate, pass an on-screen Turing test.

It's really unfair to compare Star Wars to Star Trek, if for no other reason than Trek has had over 700 hours of screen time compared to 14 for Wars. So Trek had the time to devote the occasional hour or so Klingon religion, first contact protocols...or the rights of artificial intelligence. But they did it, more than once.

And maybe it was part of the era, too, as the original trilogy was, whether it likes to admit it or not, very steeped in the ethos of 1960s and 1970s movie and TV sci-fi (including 60s Star Trek). Robots and androids and the like could be characters, but they couldn't be people. They could be the helpers, or the comedy relief, but they couldn't be the heroes. Because no matter what, they were "just" machines, and were only one stray electron form going all Westworld on us. We couldn't conceive of them being "real people."

So, yeah, Star Trek had the time, and maybe Next Generation came along in a creative era in which it easier to conceive of artificial intelligences being sentient. But let me point out one episode of TNG in particular: The Quality Of Life. A science outpost has developed a new type of robot, Exocomps. These cute little guys couldn't talk... They just had flashing lights and whistles. They hovered. They did all the dangerous grunt work on a dangerous project. Damned, that all sounds very familiar... Data realized they were sentient, but no one else works believe him. How do you prove your non-talkative little robot is really "alive" and deserving of rights? And besides, they were needed to do important work...I have no proof that writer Naren Shankar was thinking of R2-D2 when he authored this script, but the parallel is too close not to read it as maybe a little critique of Star Wars.

But ultimately, the confusion comes down to George Lucas. In the first 45 minutes of the first movie, he gives us the servants fleeing on a quest for their master, being captured by slavers, sold into servitude, restrained and told to forget their past history, and condemned as being unworthy because of "their kind." Whether he intended it or not, the metaphor could hardly have been more blunt if the movie were titled 12 Years A Droid. And after that, Lucas did absolutely nothing to follow up on the metaphor...he just left it there, and allowed the human heroes to abuse them. 

You're more than welcome to disagree me. Because then at least we would be having the discussion. You have no idea how many Star Wars fans roll their eyes at me when I bring up this topic, and try to hand-wave this all away, and assert that I'm overthinking things for a fantasy adventure movie.

Fair enough. But before you dismiss me, ask yourself this--why do you care what happens to R2 and 3PO if you don't believe they're truly alive? How do you feel about heroes fighting for freedom and liberty while their intelligent companions aren't recognized as having any rights whatsoever? If positions were reversed, and a villain put an electronic shackle on Luke, or turned Han off with a snap of the fingers, or wiped Leia's mind...you'd say that was pretty villainous behavior, right? So why is that acceptable for good guys to do that to R2 and 3PO?

Which is why this movie should have been Star Wars Episode VII: The Revolt Of The Droids.

Star Wars: The Return Of The Jedi Is Why I Hate Spoilers

Many of you know that I abhor spoilers.

Would you like to know why?

Let's head back to the halcyon days of 1983.

Many of you youngsters with your Twitter and your IMDb and Newsarama and leaked scripts and teasers for teaser trailers may not be able to fathom these times. We didn't get instant updates on every piece of casting, or breathless transmission of every rumor in nanoseconds. You wanted news and speculation on sci-fi movies? You had to wait a month for the next issue of Starlog!!

Yes, we were pathetic.

But now try to place yourself in the position we were in, without hindsight. 3 years earlier, we had an unproven claim by Darth Vader that he was Luke's father. We had the mysterious assertion by Yoda that "there is another."

And we had to live with that lack of knowledge for Three. Long. Years. No internet back then, so you could only discuss it with nerdy friends and disinterested relative. Was Vader lying? If not, why did Obi-Wan lie? Who is "another"? Another what?!? Aaaaggghhhhh!!!

And as the suspense built unbearably, as Return Of The Jedi's release approached, it happened.

Right after the press previews, a few days before the film's release...the local rag, the Kalamazoo Gazette, runs a story on the front page of Section B, the entertainment section. The mists of time have obscured whether this was their own critic, or just a syndicated piece they ran.

But right there, with no way to miss it, days before the movie opened, plastered in a huge headline:

DARTH VADER IS LUKE'S FATHER!

(And the sub-headline, right below it?

AND LEIA IS HIS SISTER!

Fuck you, Kalamazoo Gazette. Fuck you straight to hell. 32 1/2 years later, fuck you.

And hence, my aversion to spoilers.

Now, that in and of itself didn't ruin Return Of The Jedi for me. But it sure didn't help that the mystery, the speculation, that had been building up for over over a thousand days was dismissed by some jerks (let's make sure we include the editor(s) in this, after all) who...what? Wanted to increase circulation? (But it was in one of the interior sections!)? To show off because they had knowledge no one else had? Because they had no respect for the intentions of filmmakers, who thought the mystery and surprise were important for their movie?

Of course, it's so much worse in the modern world. People will spoil for clickbait headlines (I'm looking at you, Newsarama). Casting news, preceded by unceasing coverage of casting rumors, is spit out by the internet instantly, almost before the ink can be dry on any contracts, and the publicity machines can't help themselves from revealing who is a villain, who's an alien, whatever. Well-meaning folks, in their exuberant enjoyment (or their narcissistic need to express every thought instantly...), can't resist live-tweeting every single plot development, every line of dialogue and every surprise revelation to the world before 75% of the viewers have a chance to see it. And, well, there are some jerks who find pleasure in boasting about forbidden knowledge, and others who find glee in ruining things.

I've learned to adjust. I know when to get off Twitter, or what accounts to mute (or even unfollow), for the most part. I know what sites to avoid. I've become deft at skimming just enough to set off my spider-sense, and bookmark something to come back to later. Oh, I still get spoiled occasionally...and I hate it...but that's the world we live in.

I know some people don't mind spoilers, and more power to them. But we should have a choice, right? It shouldn't be blared out where we can't avoid it--because that takes the choice away from us.

Me, I believe that if creators wanted a surprise to be a part of their art, we owe it to them to receive it in that fashion if we're going to do a fair evaluation, and enjoy it the way the they intended. There's plenty of time later to go back and re-watch/re-read after we've experienced it just one time through the veil of ignorance. If you knew the plot twist in Psycho before watching it for the first time, for example, well, it's still a helluva movie...but you're not experiencing the way Hitchcock wanted you to, and you can't fully appreciate the subversion of the genre's conventions, etc. Spoilers are just second-guessing the creators about the best way to appreciate their work. I'm not that wise.

So, yeah, I hate spoilers.

And you know what? There's not one time that I discuss or think about Star Wars--not one single time--that I don't find myself wishing that I could have just once have seen ROTJ without knowing ahead of time the Leia was Luke's sister.

Star Wars--A Prologue

Guess what time it is?

 Yeah, *that* movie is coming soon.

In honor of the resurrection of that franchise, they'll be a few Star Wars posts around in in the next couple of weeks.

Why? Like my blog-buddy Siskoid, I tend not to talk about Star Wars much around here.

Not that I don't love Star Wars--I've got tickets for opening night, and 2nd night, and...

But I try to keep things mainly comics-focused around here, and for whatever reason, I never latched onto the 28 trillion Star Wars comics that Dark Horse published over 20+ years. (I think Bully has that covered, though).

Still, I've got some thoughts about the movies I'd like to share, and this is as appropriate a venue as any. So don't be shocked when I occasionally delve into the galaxy far far away over the next few days.

Meanwhile, a wacky accident during Lucasfilm's digitizing the original trilogy has lead to Sergio Aragones' accidentally being transported into the movies!! Let's watch!!

Oh, if only that were true...

Anyway...

D'oh!!

Sergio Aragones Stomps Star Wars #1 is from 2000

Manic Monday Triple Overtime--This Is How Priceline Worked A Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Maybe we could send this guy to Iran, or Syria, or Latveria...

Well...OK.

That's probably a little bit more effective than this guy:



But I'd still love to see what the Priceline Negotiator could get from Jabba!

From Star Wars #4 (2015)

Manic Monday Triple Overtime--Well, This Explains The Ewoks, Doesn't It?

It's not easy being a world famous science-fiction author.

Especially when there are monsters lurking outside your window:

Well, a chase leads to the building's roof, where unnamed creepoid reveals his master plan:

A cunning plan...

Man, nobody has an original invasion idea anymore...

Hmm, horrendous monsters made to look cute and friendly so we'll actually welcome them?

That might be the only way to explain Ewoks. George Lucas, vanguard of an interdimensional invasion?

From Tales To Astonish #34 (1962), as reprinted in Monsters On The Prowl #29 (1974)