That's No Moon, It's A Poster!

Welp, Disney released the official poster for The Last Jedi today.

I like it! It's definitely one of the better poster designs I've seen in a long, long time (although it wouldn't take much to outdo the mediocre crap hanging in most cineplexes today). It's an interesting layout, and has quite a striking color scheme.

Best part about the new poster— there's no goddamned Death Star anywhere on it! Huzzah! I'm hopeful that means the film's plot won't revolve around blowing up yet a FOURTH one.


Since The Force Awakens was a remake of A New Hope, I'm assuming The Last Jedi will be a shot for shot recreation of The Empire Strikes Back, so we should be safe. They'll save the blowing up of the fourth Death Star for the remake of The Return Of The Jedi.

That's No Moon... It's A Lack Of Originality.

As you are no doubt well aware if you've stepped inside any retail establishment in the past few days, September 1 was Force Friday II. That was the big event in which all the new Star Wars crap, er, merchandise was dumped into stores, right on top of all the stuff from Force Friday I that's still sitting unsold on the shelves.

Among the new merchandise was this model kit of the TIE Silencer, Kylo Ren's new ship from The Last Jedi. There's not a lot to say about the new ship, other than it's a butt-ugly design that seems to be a cross between Darth Vader's TIE Fighter from A New Hope and the TIE Interceptor from The Return Of The Jedi.

What really caught my eye though was the box art. Take a good look at the box, specifically the area just to the left of the Tie Silencer.

Yep, that a goddamned Death Star.

Jesus Jetskiing Christ on a cross! Please, please, PLEASE tell me that writer/director Rian Johnson isn't so creatively bankrupt that he's bringing back the Death Star for a FOURTH time. Yes, I said fourth. I'm counting The Force Awakens' Starkiller Base as a Death Star. It looked like one, it destroyed planets like one, and they blew it up like one. It was a Death Star, no matter what JJ Abrams called it.

I realize it's entirely possible that I'm getting all vexed over nothing here. The inclusion of the Death Star here could be nothing more than a mistake. It could be a case of a rushed and overworked designer battling a deadline and grabbing a random background to stick behind the ship, not realizing it contained something it shouldn't. Hell, if he was in a time crunch he may not have even noticed the Death Star back there. He may have even cropped it out, only to have it unexpectedly shift into view due to a computer glitch. Such things are in the realm of possibility.

On the other hand, corporations like Disney are notoriously picky about their properties and how they're represented by products. This box no doubt went through numerous rounds of approval before it was finally OKed. If the Death Star WASN'T supposed to be there, rest assured some Disney exec would have noticed and ordered it changed.

All I know is if I sit down to watch The Last Jedi and they trot out another goddamned Death Star, I will lose my sh*t. I am gonna get up, walk out of the theater and flip over the frakin' ticket booth. And then I'll get mad!

That's No Moon: A Field Guide To The Imperial Super Weapons Of Star Wars

When it comes to the Galactic Empire and its offspring the First Order, bigger is always better! Why simply build a fleet of heavily-armed warships capable of engaging enemies on multiple fronts, when they can sink all their capital and resources into one massive, impractical and highly vulnerable super weapon?

With all their various Death Whosits and Star Whatsits, it's hard to tell them apart without a program!

Here's a handy guide to the Imperial Super Weapons Of Star Wars.

First up of course is the granddaddy of them all, the Death Star. Despite its relatively small size, the original Death Star had enough firepower to destroy an entire planet, which it demonstrated on the peaceful world of Alderaan.

Unfortunately for the Empire and the crew of the Death Star, it had a minor, yet fatal design flaw— a small exhaust port connected directly to the station's main reactor. This led to a catastrophic failure caused by a single, incredibly lucky blaster shot. It was destroyed by Luke Skywalker at the Battle Of Yavin.

Undaunted by this minor setback, the Empire simply picked themselves up, dusted themselves off and built a second, even larger Death Star. Even though it apparently took two decades or so to construct the first one, the Death Star II was seemingly built in just three short years (perhaps the Empire secretly had a head start on it). 

Like the original, the Death Star II also had the power to destroy entire planets. Its powerful super laser was fully operational even though the station was still under construction. 

The original station's design flaw was corrected in the Death Star II. Unfortunately it had an entirely new set of defects. Due to its unfinished state, it had no protective shields of its own. One would think that would have been a top priority, even ahead of the super laser, but one would be wrong. Instead the station was enveloped by a protective field beamed directly from a massive shield generator on the nearby forest moon of Endor. 

The Rebellion was able to knock out the shield generator and a squadron of small fighter ships, led by Lando Calrissian, entered the interior of the Death Star II. The fighters then targeted the main reactor, destroying the station. This apparently led to the downfall of the Empire.

Thirty years later, the sinister First Order rose from the ashes of the Empire. Never ones to let a good idea go to waste, this plucky band of fascists somehow obtained the material, personnel and most amazingly, the capital to construct yet another, even more humongous super weapon— Starkiller Base.

Starkiller Base was a mobile ice planet (no, really!) that was partially hollowed out and fitted with a massive energy weapon. There was also a large complex on the planet's surface that housed hundreds of thousands of First Order troops.

It was, in effect, the Death Star III, or the Death Planet, if you will.

Starkiller Base traveled from system to system, where it would drain the primary sun, storing its energy in colossal batteries in the planet's core. It would then release this energy as a highly destructive beam that traveled through sub-hyperspace, whatever the hell that is, to its intended target. Instead of simply destroying one planet at a time, Starkiller Base was capable of wiping out entire solar systems.

Naturally a weapon of this size was not without its defects. The entire planet was protected by a shield powerful enough to deflect any bombardment, however, a ship with a skilled pilot could exit hyperspace inside the shield. The shield control system was easy to override and deactivate, allowing a larger squadron of ships to approach and attack.

Since a small planet couldn't possibly accommodate the enormous energy of an entire sun, naturally the Base used a thermal oscillator to generate a containment field large enough to store it. The inevitable destruction of this oscillator caused Starkiller Base to implode.

One would think that after all these setbacks, the First Order would realize the folly of constructing these costly and wildly impractical and easily destroyed super weapons. Apparently the First Order, like the Empire before them, had a flair for the dramatic.

After the destruction of Starkiller Base, the First Order began construction on the Death Solar System. This super weapon consisted of a gargantuan Central Star, some 800,000 miles wide, orbited by a series of seven smaller Death Planets, forming an artificial solar system 3.6 billion miles in diameter. Oddly enough construction of this enormous weapon took just under five years. Perhaps First Order commander Kylo Ren found "new ways to motivate" his men.

The Death Solar System was mobile, and could move freely through hyperspace and pop up anywhere in the galaxy. Like the super weapons before it, its power was exponentially greater than its already vast size. The combined firepower of its Central and Planet Stars was capable of destroying hundreds of enemy solar systems at the same time.

It was destroyed when the Resistance boarded the outer Planet Star and took control of it, targeting the enormous Central Star and causing a chain reaction which destroyed the entire system.

Thirsting for revenge, the First Order upped their ante considerably and immediately began construction on the ridiculously huge Death Galaxy.

They replaced their home galaxy's central core with a gargantuan Death Star a thousand light years across. From its central position, the Death Galaxy's ultra laser could draw power from the hundred billion stars around it, unleashing a beam powerful enough to destroy a good section of the known universe.

Unfortunately for the First Order, this time they were defeated by their own hubris. The first time the Death Galaxy was activated, a faulty baffle plate erupted. This caused a massive black hole to form, which sucked the entire Death Galaxy into a parallel universe in another dimension.

Stranded in an alien dimension, the tattered remnants of the First Order began a final, last-gasp attempt at complete and total domination. They used the last of their resources to convert known space into the ultimate super weapon— the Death Universe. 

The Death Universe was massive, inconceivably huge base that encompassed all of reality. It could drain power from the billions of galaxies within it, and fire a beam capable of destroying entire universes in other dimensions. 

Kylo Ren intended to use the vast station's inter-dimensional super laser to target the universe housing the Resistance and be done with them once and for all. But as with all the First Order's super weapons, this one was also easily destroyed. 

Rey, Finn and the droid BB-8, members of the Resistance, flew their Millennium Falcon into a third parallel dimension, one that had also been turned into a Death Universe. They then simply aimed this station's super laser at Kylo Ren's Death Universe, destroying him and the First Order forever.

I hope you've enjoyed this Field Guide To The Imperial Super Weapons Of Star Wars. You'll have to excuse me as I duck out the back window, as I hear a group of Disney lawyers pounding on my front door.

Rogue One - Audience Zero

Now that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a certified mega-hit and has grossed a flajillion dollars at the box office, Disney's begun releasing a few details about their upcoming stream of never-ending spinoff films.

First up is Rogue One, directed by Gareth Edwards. He previously directed Monsters and the 2014 Godzilla. The film is scheduled for release in December 2016.

This week plot details for Rogue One finally emerged. According to Disney:

Rogue One is set sometime before Star Wars: A New Hope, and revolves around a band of rebels and bounty hunters who unite to steal the plans for the first Death Star.

Phew! Thank the Maker! For a minute there I was afraid we were going to get a new Star Wars film that didn't somehow involve the Death Star, or a Death Star-like super weapon. The world has dodged a bullet today, my friends! Crisis averted!

Um… don't we already know how this movie's going to end? It's obvious the Rogue One cast will successfully steal the Death Star plans, since A New Hope opens with Princess Leia desperately trying to deliver them to Alderaan. How the plans were stolen isn't important. If it was the story would have already been told.

The same thing goes for Disney's upcoming Han Solo spinoff, set to release in 2018. Like Rogue One, it'll be a prequel, presumably telling the story of a younger Han Solo before we met him in A New Hope. We don't need to see Han's childhood or awkward teen years, or how he hooked up with Chewbacca. We learned everything we needed to know about the character the minute he first appeared onscreen back in 1977.

So what's the point? Why spend millions making a movie about a minor plot point that everyone can figure out for themselves? 

This digging into the distant past of a franchise is called story mining, and it's completely unnecessary, even dangerous. George Lucas found that out the hard way with the Prequels. He came up with a lame origin story for the mysterious Boba Fett that was met with outright hostility by fans. 

Not every story needs to be told. Some things are better left to the imagination.

But this is Disney we're talking about, and they don't just want most of the money, they want ALL of it. They're going to keep pumping out these movies and they'll keep grossing billions until there's no more money left.

Actually I'm not so sure about that. By its very nature Rogue One will feature a cast of brand new characters. New favorites like Rey and Finn can't be in it, because the movie's set before they were born. I doubt it'll feature any old characters like Luke or Han either, unless they're played by younger actors. The only familiar face that might show up would be a CGI de-aged Leia, who'll appear at the end to receive the stolen plans.

A Star Wars movie without any beloved characters is an extremely risky move, and as we all know, Disney doesn't like risk. It'll be interesting to see if the public flocks to a movie filled with unknown characters and a plot they've already seen. Ah, who am I kidding— I just described The Force Awakens! Rogue One will make 'em another billion. Disney might as well start construction on a new money bin!