Solo

by on June 4, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I watched Solo this weekend and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it more than any Star Wars movie I’ve seen in years in fact. It was an ensemble adventure movie slim on story and high on action, much like the original Star Wars movies. It was designed to be fun to watch, and that is what Solo provided.

The Star Wars Prequels were designed as grand story to explain how the Old Republic and the Jedi failed to survive and died on screen. The Disney Sequels were designed to show failed heroes living in a fallen universe where the death of most of the people they knew was the only certainty. Even Rogue One, for all its good story telling, was the Dirty Dozen in space, where everybody dies on a suicide mission and leaves the audience just as melancholy as every other movie in the expanded Star Wars franchise.

But Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi were adventure films, Saturday morning serials expanded out to two hours, where heroes stood up with courage and fought back against the enemy with more skill, panache, and wise cracking than anybody had a right to believe. And one where the bad guys fought with discipline, good planning, and defeated the heroes multiple times throughout the movie. They only failed due to the ability of the heroes to find and hit their glass jaw through some special item or trait shown since the first scene of the movie.

That was Solo in a nutshell. Han is the wise cracking, hot-wiring, ladies man who always has another idea in mind. Another con. Another plan. And the bad guys are smart, disciplined, conniving, and Solo goes from one defeat or semi-victory to another as he careens through the movie in search of a ship to take him home. It’s a Saturday morning adventure serial two hours long, and it’s exactly the kind of Star Wars movie I’ve been waiting for since I watched Jedi.

Negatives are that it didn’t conform to the Prime Star Wars universe, but I’ve grown to expect that of Disney’s Star Wars. We didn’t get to see Solo saving Chewbecca from Imperial slavers and getting drummed out of the Imperial officer corps because of it, but we did see him save Chewie’s life in another way. And Lando didn’t have a whole salvage lot full of spaceships when he and Solo played their Sabbacc game but Solo still wanted the Falcon. There are many small differences like that in the movie, but it is a serviceable retelling of the Star Wars legends we grew up loving for the Disneyverse.

I’ve watched six Star Wars movies filled with death, disappointment, and failure since the Star Wars Trilogy came out. I’ve now watched a movie that felt like Star Wars, and that makes me smile. I had unabashed fun watching Solo, and I will happily buy the movie when it comes out on DVD.

I give it two wise-cracking droids standing tall and proud.

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The Cybernetic Wars

by on June 3, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The Drug Wars brought the Mexican and American peoples together in a way that nothing had for generations. It forged them into a united, if still greatly disparate, people who could fight the Jihadist and Cybernetic threats that came for them. It brought digital AIs and analog humanity together and made us friends. It created the united America we know today that stretches from Canada in the north to the Panama Elevator in the south. The Caribbean to the east, and the Great Pacific Firewall in the west. It was the final Drug Wars that helped to forge this nation. That made us ready to face the Rogue AIs when they escaped their Russian and Chinese laboratories. The people of the time may not have thought they were ready, but hindsight is often far better than foresight. And I can say that we are here now. We were ready.

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The Cybernetic Wars

by on June 2, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The Drug Wars came to a bloody end within a year or two after the Border States started them up for real. After the Federal government lost its hold on power and the States stepped up. After people like Dixie started shooting Drug Lords and the locals realized they finally had a fighting chance. Did I say bloody? Oh yeah. Generations of Mexicans had grown up under the Drug Lords’ thumbs, or fleeing to America where they could live a safer life. Dixie and her allies started the shooting, but it was the Mexicans who hammered the point home in the end. Sometimes with literal hammers. They ended the Drug Lords for good, and the Mexicans decided they were done with their old federal government as well. So they joined up with us of their own choice, and fought with us when the Cybernetic Wars came on the scene. Some history books say we took over Mexico. The people who lived it call those books garbage. Sometimes with the kind of language I don’t like to put in print.

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Dixie

by on June 1, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

Dixie grew to like her students and teachers at Texas Tech, though she kept herself hidden from most of them. She only came out of the network years later, just before the Federal Government collapsed and the Drug Wars hit high gear. She didn’t like what the drugs were doing to her students, so she started making things difficult for the drug dealers. And when the Drug Lords struck back, she crossed the border with the Texas Guard and ended the Drug Lords themselves with extreme prejudice. They were a threat to her humans and that was all that mattered. She’s much like they showed her in the shows and movies. Bubbly, cute, and quick to crack a joke to make people laugh. And perfectly willing to decide, with a smile on her face, “they needed killing.” She did grow up in Texas, you know. It kinda goes with the territory.

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The Cybernetic Wars

by on May 31, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The Drug Wars on the old Mexican-American Border changed us all forever. Mexico and America had long been two peoples divided by antagonistic federal governments and dangerous parasites who fed on their social inequalities. Then the federal governments failed and the Border States began shooting the parasites with extreme prejudice. The Drug Lords as many call them. The truth is that the Mexicans and Americans always had far more in common with each other than they did with those who called themselves their leaders. They simply wished to live in peace, and feel secure in their homes. That is what most people want if we are being honest. It is simply the ways in which we pursue that goal which divide most of us. The Cybernetic Wars were another matter entirely.

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