My Entertainment Weekend Update

Hello my friends, and happy weekend!

I’ve finished Shadow of the Sith, and it’s a great book for the most part, and gives quite a bit of insight into the Sequel trilogy. For instance, many people (sequel haters, to be precise) criticize Rey for knowing so much about starship mechanics when she’s never flown one before. Okay, I get that, but in this book we learn why. Miramir, Rey’s mother, has a natural ability when it comes to mechanics, computers, slicing, etc. She’s brilliant at it, actually. And so Rey apparently inherits this trait from her mother. It’s an inborn knack. So the book seems to be going back and explaining how Rey was so good at it from the get-go. Does it bother me that the book is trying to fill in some holes in the films? Not really. I figured because Rey had the Force, maybe a lot of things came naturally to her. That it came from her mother only makes it more special.

There’s also a situation that I never really thought about until I read this book. When Rey is left behind on Jakku by her parents, they take off in Ochi of Bestoon’s ship. That’s how she recognizes it later on Pasaana. But…why were they on the ship that belonged to the guy who was chasing them? Well, this book explains that, too. So it’s answering questions I never knew I had!

We get a lot more insight into Lando Calrissian and his grief over his missing daughter, Kadara. I feel like this is mostly Lando’s story, and that I know him much better now than before. I can’t say the same for Luke, though. He seems strangely flat to me. I think the author is trying to show him as the calm, collected Jedi Master, but it only makes him seem, I don’t know, empty–like he doesn’t have a personality anymore. It’s disappointing. There’s no character arc for him, except to find this Sith villain, face it and defeat it; but there’s no personal challenges or changes. He’s exactly the same throughout the entire book, while Lando struggles with his grief, his purpose, his impatience, his not knowing. In other words, Lando is portrayed as a flesh and blood human being with flaws, while Luke is…kind of boring. I feel like the author was maybe afraid to do anything with Luke for fear of being criticized like Rian Johnson was for what he did with him in The Last Jedi. And that’s unfortunate, because I was really hoping for a great Luke story, and I didn’t get one.

Otherwise, the rest of the story was quite good and I did enjoy it.

So Padawan by Kiersten White will release on Tuesday the 26th, and I’m looking forward to this one. It’s a YA novel about Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi, and anything Obi-Wan is exciting to me! Can’t wait to dig into that one.

I noticed on Disney+ that the Assembled episode for Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness was released, and I gladly watched it even though MOM wasn’t my favorite Dr. Strange story. I always feel a huge appreciation for all the incredible amount of work and the armies of people that are involved in making these stories come to life, just so we can enjoy ourselves for a couple of hours, lol. Bravo.

So after finishing up Stranger Things Season 4, I was poking around Netflix to maybe find something else to watch, and there are a few movies I’d like to watch in the near future, even though I’ve seen quite few of them. But I came across the TV show Merlin, which came out in 2008 and ran until 2012. I watched every episode when it came out and loved it, and decided to revisit it.

It’s a more family-friendly version of the Arthurian legend, so it’s been defanged quite a bit, but it makes up for it in charm. I’ve rewatched the first episode so far, and it’s going to be great fun revisiting this show. Anybody ever watched it?

That’s it this week. What’s been entertaining you? Let me know in the comments and we’ll talk about it!

My Entertainment Weekend Update: Shadow of the Sith Edition

Hello friends, and happy weekend!

I received my copy of Shadow of the Sith by Adam Christopher, and eagerly began reading it. It’s a big book (almost 500 pages!) and I’m about 150 pages in and really enjoying it. Basically, it’s the story of Luke and Lando searching for Ochi of Bestoon, which was mentioned by Lando in The Rise of Skywalker. It takes place about 20 years after Return of the Jedi, and about 13 years before The Force Awakens.

There’s some SPOILERY stuff ahead for Shadows of the Sith, so if you haven’t read it yet and think you might want to, proceed cautiously. I haven’t read the whole thing, but I’d like to mention what I’ve read so far.

So this book brings a lot of threads from various Star Wars periods and media together. Ochi of Bestoon, as mentioned in TROS, was seeking Rey and her parents by order of the Sith and Sidious. We see Rey’s parents–Dathan and Miramir–fleeing with Rey across the galaxy, trying to get away from the Sith, and Ochi pursuing them. I think we’re going to get Dathan and Miramir’s story in flashbacks here, which is something I’ve wanted since seeing the sequel trilogy.

We see Luke on the planet Ossus with his new Jedi Order he’s been training, including Ben Solo. But he’s been having visions of a dark, evil place, which turns out to be Exegol. He’s visited by Lor San Tekka (seen at the beginning of The Force Awakens), who is a member of The Church of the Force. Luke and San Tekka have traveled the galaxy together in search of Jedi artifacts and lore, in Luke’s attempt to rebuild the Order. Luke tells him about his visions, and though San Tekka can’t help him, he brings him to the planet Yortuba, on which an archeological dig is taking place.

The dig is being helmed by Beaumont Kin (Dominic Monahan’s character from TROS), and while there, they discover an old Sith holocron and some shards of red kyber crystal. Luke takes both artifacts to the old Jedi temple on Tython and sits on the seeing stone. While meditating on the crystals, he once again finds himself at Exegol, only this time, he’s really there. He’s attacked by nine strange beings, who seem to be Sith acolytes with lightsabers. He’s saved by the intervention of a force ghost–his father, Anakin Skywalker (awesome!). Anakin warns him that a dark threat is looming, and is rather cryptic about it before disappearing. Luke finds himself back on Tython, and that’s when Lando shows up.

So in the meantime, Lando had been gambling on a space station called Sennifer’s Balance and Beam, and overheard Ochi of Bestoon talking with some cohorts about kidnapping a girl, and being “reactivated” by the Sith (he’d been on Exegol with Vader at one point in the Darth Vader comic series, which I haven’t read–but you don’t have to to understand the story).

What caught Lando’s attention is Ochi’s mention of kidnapping a girl–and here we learn that Lando’s own daughter, Kadara Calrissian, had been kidnapped six years ago when she was two. He’d spent the time since scouring the galaxy looking for her, for any clue that might lead to her, and hadn’t really found anything. He decided to get involved, if only to do some kind of good and take his mind off his own daughter, and had gone to Luke because of the mention of the Sith.

In the meantime, we see a Pantoran woman with an ancient Sith mask, a mask that has mostly taken over her mind and she does its will. This woman is Kiza, a character we see in some of the interludes in the Aftermath books. I’m not sure yet what role she’ll play in the story, except that she’s involved in the dark evil that is looming in Luke’s mind.

So yeah, a lot going on here, with lots of different threads that will ultimately come together. I feel like it’s a pretty important book as far as canon goes. You don’t necessarily have to be familiar with all the source material that it borrows from, but it’s neat to make the connections.

In the meantime, I’ve set Black Spire aside (it’s awfully slow sometimes) until I finish this book, but I’m still reading Bloodline on the Kindle.

That’s really it this week, which is why I decided to get a bit detailed about Shadow of the Sith.

And, oh yeah, Thor: Love and Thunder opened yesterday, and I’m hoping to go see it while I’m on vacation this coming week. It looks super-fun, and I can’t wait to see it!

What’s been entertaining you? Let me know in the comments and we’ll talk about it!

My Five Favorite Things About Solo: A Star Wars Story

I forgot to put Solo and Rogue One into the timeline as I went along with my “Five Favorite Things” series. So here’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, a seriously underrated Star Wars movie, in my opinion.

Favorite Scene

The Train Heist Scene. This whole sequence is just exhilarating. Han and Chewie have wormed their way into the employ of Tobias Beckett and his crew (Val and Rio) to steal raw coaxium from the Empire. It’s being transported on a mag-train winding around a snowy mountaintop. Han, Chewie and Tobias jump onto the moving train to secure the coaxium as Rio pilots their stolen freighter above. Everything is going according to plan until Enfys Nest shows up–a gang of masked thieves that always seem to know the group’s next move. Things go down from there, Rio and Val are killed, Beckett is furious, and they lose the coaxium, putting them into the debt of Dryden Vos. Big pickle. But a really fun, exciting scene.

Favorite Battle/Duel

The Maw. There are no lightsaber duels in Solo, but there are plenty of battles and action scenes that I could choose from. All of them are terrific, but when the crew flee from Kessel with the hot coaxiam, they need to get it refined, like yesterday, before it blows them up. When the Imperials show up to make things worse, Han decides to go off the beaten path and find a shortcut through the Kessel Run. Not good, as they encounter a giant space monster (a summa-verminoth) and an enormous gravitational-sucking maw that wants to pull them into oblivion. They manage to survive, Han finishes the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs (yes, distance, not time–finally figured that out), and they get the coaxium to the refinery in time. The Falcon is pretty banged up in the process, though, which leads to…

Favorite Line

Lando: “I hate you.” Han: “I know.” This is a great twist on the famous “I love you, I know” lines from Han and Leia in Empire. I also love when Han says, “I have a really good feeling about this,” on the Falcon during the Maw crisis, another twist on a famous line. It’s nice to have good feelings for a change, rather than bad ones, lol.

Funniest Moment

There are SO many funny moments and lines in this movie, it’s almost impossible to pick just one. From nearly everything that comes out of L3-37’s mouth, to the way Lando deliberately mispronounces Han’s name, the chuckles are frequent and delightful.

Most Impactful Character

Han Solo. The movie is called “Solo,” so of course it’s all about Han Solo. The movie is about what made Han into the man we meet in A New Hope, an older, cynical man who nevertheless has a heart in there somewhere. Q’ira sees this in him when she tells Han he’s “the good guy,” while he blusters about being an outlaw. Q’ira is also the one who breaks his heart and sours him on love (until he meets a certain princess). The movie is filled with the people who influenced Han in his youth: not just Q’ira, but Tobias, who turns into a mentor and cautions him to not trust anyone; Lando, who loses the Falcon to Han and becomes a kind of frenemy until the events of the OT solidify their friendship; and of course Chewbacca, a lifelong and dedicated friend, and the only one Han trusts (despite what Tobias says). So yes, the movie centers on Han, but all the supporting players impact him in so many important ways.

There are so many things I love about this movie. The cast is excellent–Paul Bettany as the Crimson Dawn villain Dryden Vos is particularly wonderful, and Donald Glover as Lando is just a joy to watch. The movie is fast-paced and fun, and I think Alden Ehrenreich did a great job as young Han, capturing his youthful zeal, ambition, and devil-may-care attitude. For a Star Wars movie with no Jedi or lightsabers (the closest thing is Maul’s brief appearance at the end) I just love this movie.

What did you like about Solo: A Star Wars Story? Let me know in the comments and we’ll talk about it!