‘You’ve always been crazy. This is just the first chance you’ve ever had to really express yourself.’
-Louise to Thelma, in Thelma and Louise
Category: Movies
Celebrating The Life of…Ray Harryhausen
After seeing King Kong (1933) Ray Harryhausen was inspired to experiment with and develop his own unique stop motion animation called Dynamation. He joined forces with model maker and animator Willis O’Brien, to bring his own unique creatures to life. He took art and sculpture classes at this time and also made life long friends with the writer Ray Bradbury.
‘Evolution of the World’ was one of the first demo reels he produced featuring fighting dinosaurs. His first animation job was on George Pal’s Puppetoon shorts.
Ray served in the U.S.A Special Services Division during World War 2. He made documentary shorts on the use of military equipment. After the war, he made a series of fairytale shorts, which he called his ‘teething rings’. His father worked the armatures of the models, while his mother assisted with little costumes for his animated characters.
In 1947, he was hired as assistant animator on Mighty Joe Young (1949) and then on ‘The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms’ as main animator. The film was a major international box office hit for Warner Brothers. Ray worked with producer Charles H. Schneer on Columbia Pictures and made ‘It Came From Beneath The Sea’ (1955) featuring a giant octupus. This was followed by the extra terrestrial invasion film, ‘The Earth vs The Flying Saucers’. After ’20 Million Miles To Earth,’ he began working with colour film to make ‘The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad’. It was the top grossing film of that year.
The 60’s saw the release of ‘Mysterious Island’ and ‘Jason and the Argonauts.’ After the success of ‘One Million Years B.C‘, Sinbad was to raise his handsome head again, in ‘The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad‘ and ‘Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.’ Both films were box office hits.
His last major motion picture was ‘Clash of the Titans.’ (1981) which was nominated for a special effects award. ‘The Story of the Tortoise and the Hare’ was originally undertaken in the 1950’s and finally finished in 2002. It won an award for best short film.
At 90 years old, Ray was given a special tribute hosted by John Landis, where he was presented with a BAFTA award by Peter Jackson. Steven Spielberg and James Cameron are among the many movie directors who have cited him as an enormous influence and inspiration. George Lucas said that without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no Star Wars.
Harryhausen founded the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation, a joint UK/ US charity, which perserves his collections and promotes the art of stop motion animation. John Walsh, a BAFTA nominated filmaker is a trustee of the foundation. He is also interested in developing Ray’s lost film projects and runs a podcast dedicated to him.
One of my favourite dynamation films is ‘The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad’ featuring Tom Baker, who plays an evil sorcerer. It was so memorable seeing ‘Clash of The Titans‘, in the cinema when I was eleven. The scene at the end with Medusa was very powerful and dramatic.
Ray brightened up my childhood with his unique fantasy movies. I have most of them and watch them regulary. I find them as magical and as exciting today as I did when I was a kid. As Tom Hanks says, ‘Some people say Casablanca’ or ‘Citizen Kane’, I say, Jason and the Argonauts’ is the greatest film ever made. ‘
Quote Of The Week
‘One never knows what joy one might find amongst the unwanted and abandoned.’
The Scarcity Principle and ‘The Greatest Showman’
This month I’m mostly going to the cinema.
I’m not a film buff. It’s not my idea of an ideal night out. I don’t have the attention span. I can’t sit still for two hours. Actually, I can, but that’s the problem, extreme self consciousness will make me sit completely still for two hours and therein lies the problem. It’s physically and emotionally taxing to sit completely still for two hours. Also, to compound things, I never understand the plot (unless it’s fantasy, sci-fi, or rom com).
This month, I’m mostly going the cinema for two reasons, it’s cheap seat night on Monday in January and I’ve had the flu for almost three weeks, since Christmas, three relapses all in all, and there’s nothing like a moderate dose of the flu to make you feel depressed and claustrophobic. I started to feel better one day, had a bit more energy, ran around like an idiot, playing catch up on laundry and chores, returned to my cardio exercises and completely burned myself out. I returned into the welcoming arms of the flu and then, just this week, when I thought I was out of the woods, got a brand new cold on top of it all. Colds are easy though, can handle colds.
All my friends think I’ve disappeared off the face of the earth and I sort of have. By the middle of this bleak cold January, no surprises there(when is January in Britain ever warm and balmy)? I badly needed some fun, but stationary fun, where I could just sit, weakened, through viruses, in a mostly empty, but warm, dark cinema, passively watching, through the mild delirium of a benign and almost friendly cold.
I just had to get out of myself. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t a hotbed of contagion by then, but we’re always playing Virus Russian Roulette in the winter. Fortunately, people like to ‘spread out’ seat wise, in cinemas. It’s not like the old days, when I was a kid, when we were packed in like sardines, soft drink cans rolling down the aisles and cigarette smoke fogging the screen and filling our lungs. Hey, perhaps that’s why I’m so weakened in the lung area.
I went to the cinema last week to see ‘The Greatest Showman‘ starring Hugh Jackman but it was sold out! No more seats left. I’m not sure if this has happened to other people but I’ve never experienced it before. Went to a second option, a Plan B, which happened to be The Commuter. An action/thriller/mystery/crime, which is not good for my attention span, and certainly not good for plot line understanding. ‘What just happened?’ I asked when the movie ended (I actually did say that) and ‘Where were all the gnomes?’ (I didn’t say that. Thought it though)
‘The Greatest Showman’ being sold out was a bit like the psychological situation of seeing a tin of soup in a supermarket and there’s only one left but there are several other kinds of another soup and you think, ‘What’s so special about that one?’
Maybe it’s popular because it’s good, tasty, delicious. Not so keen on popular people, but popular soup…now that’s a different matter.
What have I learned? Well, I’ve learned a new appreciation of cinema. It’s quite exciting I suppose, sitting in the dark for two hours. So I sat there with my carton of popcorn and watched the movie. Screen 4, or wherever it was. The Commuter had a decent turnout (probably down to the cheap seats on a Monday in January) but I couldn’t stop thinking about the scarcity principle. What was so good about ‘The Greatest Showman’ that it was sold out? That’s the theatre I needed to be in but as Groucho Marx said, ‘I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.’ I wasn’t accepted as a member of Screen 2, where ‘The Greatest Showman’ was playing.
It must be good.
James Bond Style Morning
I woke at 6.30 a.m today, not bad for a Bank Holiday Monday. I thought maybe another hour or so more shut eye wouldn’t go amiss, and then I spied, with my bleary eye, a Harvestman, ambling like a drunken sailor, towards me, a la Sean Connery, in James Bond’s Dr. No.
I’m not generally afraid of spiders. I’m afraid of a lot of things, but spiders are not one of them. I’m not keen on the big hairy arsed ones but they still won’t die in my charge. Apparently, Harvestmen aren’t even proper spiders. They’re a lot nicer. Perhaps that’s why I’m not afraid of them.
Harvestmen are Opilione arachnids with particularly long sexy legs. They are part of the Phalangiidae family and don’t have venom glands. They are sometimes called daddy longs legs but I associate daddy long legs with the Crane Fly that comes out in September. Most spiders have a distinctive waist but harvestmen have a head, thorax and abdomen, melded into one and sometimes resemble Craneflies.
Harvestmen aren’t hunters like normal spiders and they congregate together and get all cosy and hygge and unlike spiders, they have penises, makes them somehow…less insect-y and more mammal-ly.
They know very well they have these sexy legs and they shave them to accentuate their loveliness. If you like your spiders tall and gangling and resembling a string of piss, then these are the spiders for you, or rather non spiders, in fact they’re not even insects. You can’t stick a label on them and they can’t be put in a box. Well they can, physically, but they’re getting more interesting the more I read about them. I’ve only seen them once before, on the ceiling, some time ago, two of them getting jiggy with it. No doubt that’s why they’re in my bed. They’re been breeding like rabbits since that je t’aime moment. First time I’ve seen spider sex, hope it’s the last.
Still, it was a bit of a shock waking up to him/her, stumbling awkwardly but purposely along the mountainous terrain of duvet country, aiming straight for my face.
I was suddenly not so bleary eyed anymore. Don’t make a bee line for my mouth, I don’t want you for breakfast. It’s toast and tomatoes for me, burned tomatoes, that can only be identified by their dental records.
I somehow eased myself from out of the duvet, without upsetting the determined route of silky legs. Not sure how I did it and I somehow delicately and carefully moved around her, bypassed her, and didn’t crush her in the ensuing activity, trying, at the same time, to abseil over my husband, who has the outside spot in the bed…and I need to take a breath, or a comma.
Now that I am in Sean Connery/Tarantula/ Dr. No territory, I must say, he was such a chump handling that spider. It crawled off his shoulder without harming him, yet he jumped out of bed like a little girl. No, that’s an insult to little girls. I never jumped out of bed like that to kill a poisonous hairy tarantula, when I was a little girl and I never would have done, I don’t think. But what I know I wouldn’t have done was to beat it to death with a slipper after the danger has passed. How cowardly. Sean Connery is considerably more hairy than the spider. What’s there to be afraid of? I’m surprised he didn’t have more of a kinship with a fellow hirsute brother.
I don’t know what became of Mr or Mrs Attractive Harvestman/Woman but I’m glad that I don’t feel the need to beat creatures who are a thousand times smaller than me, to death, with a slipper. Oh, you’re so tough Mr. Bond.
So, I get that the tarantula in Dr. No may have been poisonous but that’s what happens when you’re a secret agent. It’s the whole occupational hazard thing.
So, just saying…I was up nice and early today. Whether you are afraid of them or not, and whether they’re classed as spiders or not, a spider alarm clock works.
Quick Review – The Great Wall
I went to see The Great Wall movie last week. I have concentration problems when it comes to watching movies but this kept me riveted. This has been described as an historical fantasy but also a monster movie, with elements of (although it doesn’t compare) The Two Towers and Jet Li movies and even Alien in some respects. The relationship between William (Matt Damon) and Tovar (Pedro Pascal) is legendary, palpable. There is great chemistry between them. It feels like a pilot to a series. I would love to see more of these two characters. The human aspect of the story is better than the monster aspect, which I think have some issues regarding plausibility. If you’re military minded, but open to the idea of alternative battle strategies and also enjoy siege situations, I think you might like this. Worth a watch.
The Great Wall directed by Zhang Yimou
Quote Of The Week
‘I’ve been a fool, and I’m done with it!’
– William (Matt Damon) from The Great Wall directed by Zhang Yimou
Whatever Happened To…Gene Wilder
There are actors and there are, sorry, there is, Gene Wilder. He stands out in my mind, always has done, since I first saw him in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) when I was a kid. I’m not putting down the Bratt Pitt’s of this world, they have a place too, but there really is something special about Gene Wilder.
He started life as Jerome Silberman, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin born to a Russian Jewish immigrant father and a Russian Jewish descent mother. His first movie role was as a hostage in Bonnie & Clyde. (1967). Wilder is best known, or should be best known for his movies with director/producer/actor Mel Brooks. Mel Brooks is a creative inspiration. He was an influence to me, as a thirteen years old, who constantly imbibed his movies at that age. I must say at this point, many thanks to our next door neighbours who had all his films AND a video recorder in 1982. I didn’t have drugs or sex but I went somewhere other teenagers in my town never would have had the chance to go. I will never forget how blessed I was, much appreciated.
I use the word genius sometimes when talking about Mel Brooks but we all know the term is overused and most times, not deservedly so. When we ascribe the word ‘genius’ to someone, we are really describing out favourite pudding, which is very subjective and self indulgent, a pleasure best taken alone and with a bib.
Wilder’s breakthrough role was his sublime interpretation of Leo Bloom in Mel Brook’s The Producers (1968) He was also in Blazing Saddles (1974) Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975) If you haven’t seen Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, you haven’t lived. I would not want you to leave this world without a verse or two and certainly a chorus, of Kangaroo Hop jumping through your mind and eye. It makes drugs, alcohol and fine food permanently unfashionable in comparison.
Young Frankenstein (1974) is another must see, more so, actually, a very funny, well acted, well directed, well produced movie, which I recommend wholeheartedly. If you haven’t already seen it, it should be on your Bucket List, needs to be.
Gene also did some great movies with that comic genius, (Ooh, let’s not go there, favourite pudding) Richard Pryor, an extremely talented but tortured comic if ever there was one.
Wilder collaborated with Pryor on Silver Streak. (1976) I audio taped this from T.V, at age thirteen, about a year before dad was able to afford a video recorder. Oh gosh, I sound old but I listened to it, over and over, on that little tinny tape recorder. I had to resort to imagining the visuals each time. Sad I know, but we worked for our pleasure in those days.
Wilder also acted with Pryor on Stir Crazy (1980), Hear No Evil, See No Evil (1989) and Another You (1991).
Gene also directed and starred in his own movies including ‘Woman In Red, (1984) and Haunted Honeymoon (1986) which he also wrote, along with Terence Marsh.
Gene Wilder has also written an autobiography entitled ‘Kiss Me Like A Stranger‘ and also several novels including, ‘My French Whore: A Love Story.’
But we’re not getting anywhere here, are we really? It’s all very fine to talk about and reminiscence over the greatness that was Gene Wilder’s past but what about his present, as an 82 year old man, what is Gene doing now?
Well, he starred in two episodes of Will and Grace as Mr. Stein in 1998 but he was also a voice over in Yo Gabba Gabba as Elmer, as recent as 2015, so he’s still keeping his hand in.
The thing is, Gene has been there and done that. He’s an octogenarian, probably wanting a bit of peace and quiet. Well, it’s not uncommon at that age. Whatever he does now in the celebrity world, he does because he wants to. I always wanted to act with Gene Wilder. He was my silly girlish fantasy in those terms because there was something intrinsically human and innocent in his performances, as well as passionate of course. I always thought his passion burst out of him during his roles, but he hadn’t actually meant for it to get so out there, so out of control. He’s an actor who, after the final take, might or might not be genuinely surprised and shocked at the depth of his own emotion. I could never imagine that, after his performances, he could ever think otherwise. He was so natural and dare I say, so full of volcanic sexual tension, that his performance could never be premeditated. I don’t see that in the actors of today but maybe I’m looking in the wrong places.
Let’s take something as simple as his role in Willy Wonka. My mother recently, unexpectedly, and treacherously declared, that she preferred the remake. Astounded, I asked her how, why and when? She just said she liked it better. While I love Johnny Depp to bits and think he’s an awesome actor, I did not rate the remake.
Let’s look at The Tunnel Scene that Marilyn Manson spoofs so wonderfully with his Dope Hat musical version, a fitting, if not slightly more macabre tribute to the original film. It works but what works more is Gene Wilder’s performance, which no doubt helped inspired ‘Dope Hat’. His acting is unpredictable, exciting, terrifying, psychopathic, passionate, chaotic but most of all, authentic. These are all the things that maybe an actor should be, yet not as a person should be and I think that encompasses Gene Wilder, a beautiful, serene and thoughtful person off camera and an incredibly powerful and unique actor on camera. While I’m still not sure exactly what happened to Gene Wilder, I believe, hope, think and trust, that he will always be that.
Limiting Belief
Your limiting belief may be skulking outside, just behind the door, in the dark. Some of them like the dark. That’s where they feels safe. Or, your limiting belief may be a right show off, does five minutes when the fridge door opens and a ten minute routine when your relatives come round, complete with top hat, cane and dickie bow. Doesn’t matter that it looks like a dick. It doesn’t care. It likes dickie bows. It likes looking like a dick.
Your limiting belief may even be inside you. A bit like that Alien movie with Sigourney Weaver and John Hurt. You’ve got this foreign body inside you, only it’s not the least bit pleasurable. And it doesn’t always wants to burst out of you, it likes the warmth too much.
Would it be difficult to ignore this mucus covered fiend waiting impatiently in your stomach? All it ever threatens to do is gut you like a fish, gore and intestines everywhere but it doesn’t really want to do that. Not really.
Because that would mean getting rid of it.
Its power lies in the anticipation, the fear. And like any other expert bluffer, the limiting belief often depends on us just pretending it’s nothing more than indigestion. And so it stays there, painfully repeating, but there is no heartburn remedy or decongestant available that can shift this.
‘The opportunities that we pass up (through limited belief) stop us taking risks that we don’t want to take. We simply say we can’t and we’re off the hook.’
The NLP Masters – Judy Bartkowiak
According to some schools of thought, you’re not supposed to blast your limiting belief into smithereens, you’re not supposed to medicate it, or fight it using psychological warfare. No, none of these things. You are supposed to write a letter to it, as if, it were a person. Your mother, your father, an ex lover, an ex friend, maybe it’s all of these and none of these. Maybe our limiting belief is unique and we can’t cannot connect or relate it to anyone else. Limiting belief, you’re an alien, no, you’re a demon at the end of my bed. I believe you can read. I believe you learned your letters at limiting belief school. You’re clever. But it’s what you will do after you get the letter. That’s what’s important. What will you do then?
Maybe it doesn’t matter what it does. Maybe that’s the point. Hey, limiting belief, you can rip it up without reading it, you can mock it and laugh over it with friends, or you can sit and re read it time and time again crying into a glass of Chardonnay, or you may never open the letter at all. It may just go unopened into a drawer, because you’re afraid of what’s in it.
So that’s it guys, you have to write a letter to your limited belief, if you have one, whatever that may be.
Oh okay, I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours etc. Ahem.
Dear Limiting Belief, Please stay away and don’t ever come back. I am much happier without you. I’m more sociable for one thing. I’m like a completely different person. I don’t recognise myself. I can do so much without you and nothing is impossible. Everything is possible and then some. Don’t contact me ever again. X
I don’t know why I gave it a kiss. For old times sake I guess.
Oh Han, put me into hyper drive, the way you used to do…
All the real fans who give a toss will have seen Star Wars The Force Awakens by now. And to those who haven’t seen it, by your very actions, it’s obvious that you’re not really arsed, but I still have to do this
SPOILERS ALERT! SPOILERS ALERT!
I’ve already discussed sexism in Hollywood, and we’ve all seen what a terrible mess it is. Injustice doesn’t come into it, it’s horrendous, but ageism, oh my goodness, now there’s a can of worms, there’s a bargepole no-one will touch. Why, because it’s sticking up, in luminous yellow and undulating like the Alarm Meanies in Yellow Submarine. It’s the huge pink elephant in the room. These Hollywood big shots, these movie moguls, these polyester patriarchs (cashmere I know) just look what they did to Han Solo in Star Wars, The Force Awakens? It was like Euthanasia. Ageism at work. Why the hell didn’t they make him grow old a little more gracefully? Okay then, disgracefully. Beforehand, I had one of those dreaded sneaking suspicions. I sort of knew it was going to happen, I had the inkling, and it doesn’t surprise me one bit. Why? Well, because he’s over fifty, and if you’re over fifty in the movie business…At least, please, let him grow old I said to myself fretfully, don’t cull him, don’t cull any of them just because they’re getting on a bit. Oh, wait, you did? My worst fears were realised. I guess I’m too late, and even if I’d have got there in time, I still wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it.
Here’s a guy who has been flying the Millennium Falcon for about fifty years now, lovingly, O.C.D-ishly, manically, lustily even, and then, some snotty nosed kid comes on board, who has never seen its innards, and suddenly starts telling Han how to fly it. Okay, he’s been away a while, but this man knows EVERYTHING there is to know about the Millennium Falcon. He’s an EXPERT. He would have made love to it, if it would have been physically possible. He would have married it and had its babies. So they better not start telling me he’s forgotten how to fly it, or what buttons to press, ‘cos he’s always known how and where to press her buttons.
Just because he’s mature, does that mean he’s not quite up to scratch ? His mental faculties are not at optimum, is that what they’re telling me? That does not ring true with Han, simply because this is a man who has full control of his faculties.
Even though, every pirate and business associate in the universe, are all swarming after him, for debts and favours, in a DELUGE, he’s roguish enough to swindle them and avoid them which makes him competent mentally, in fact, makes him sharper than you’re average guy. He has game and if you’ve got game, you’ve got guile, and if you have guile…you have NOT FORGOTTEN HOW TO FLY THE MILLENNIUM FALCON!
In Star Wars, Episode VI, Return Of The Jedi, Lando Calrissian ‘borrows’ The Falcon for a Saturday night date, (yes I know, not really, but how cool would that have been) and he assures Han that ‘it won’t get a scratch’ and ‘no snogging in the back seat.’ Han replies, in what was to end up, a classic quote from the movie, ‘I got your promise now, not a scratch.’
Now does that sound like a man who, thirty years on, or so, would then allow the Millennium Falcon to get into such a state of disrepair? I don’t care if, during his mid life crisis, he forgot about his ‘oneitis’ (which, by definition, cannot be forgotten really). I don’t care if he bought a red sports car, an electric guitar, a leather jacket and a 18 year old Miss Corellia Coast beauty pageant winner, he would not abandon and neglect his beloved ship. (The Star Wars land, Corellia, is forest and jungle terrain but ‘Corellia Coast’ has such a nice ring about it).
Nowadays, they kill you off before you get your first liver spot.
Are people so afraid of death that we can’t have old people on the silver screen, for a long time, with lots of lines, having meaningful and important roles, that last through to the end of the movie?
So if Han would have lived, perhaps he would have smelled of wee and start wearing purple, who knows.
Come on, let’s give the up and coming stars of tomorrow a chance. We’ve had our day. It’s a young man’s game. It’s not like the forties any more, where twenty year olds would happily be played by fifty year olds. I’m sure that trend will come round again someday.
Until then, the desert is a great training ground, making brilliant pilots at such a young age.
Luke needed many months of training by the great Jedi master Yoda, before he got up to Rey’s standard and she’s barely out of her teens. It’s not like the old days, when skills got learned over time. Luke didn’t know how to spit in a bucket when he left Tatooine. People need a bit of green in them, so we can see the difference later on (I think it’s called growth) but Rey is successfully playing the Jedi Mind Tricks now. And yet it took Luke, what, five years of serious intense training with Yoda, on the Dagobah System, to achieve the same results?
Apparently, it’s fine to be an amazing pilot and learned mechanic, even though you’ve been barely irking out a living as a desert scavenger and can barely afford to eat. Nice to see that hunger and homelessness doesn’t get in the way of self teaching quantum physics, engineering and propulsion, and of course, don’t forget, what took Han Solo many, many years, learning the ins and outs of The Millennium Falcon, took Rey just a few seconds.
No-one likes a smart arse.
Even if she’s a girl.
So, if you’re over fifty, you will either be patronized, humiliated, killed off, given a couple of lines and forgotten about for the rest of the movie. Or, if your name is Mark Hamill, and you’re obviously over fifty, you won’t appear until the last five minutes of the movie. But I’m sure you’ll be in the second one, as you’re bearded and wiser now and a new Obi Won Kenobi. Get used to it.
I hope in the next movie, we are going to see General Leia kicking someone up the arse, telling someone they stink, to their face, and that they are a little too short for a storm trooper, and start swinging off ropes in the Death Star. I was genuinely disturbed by the fact that Leia implied that she had been sitting home night after night waiting for Han to come home to her. He says I know that you missed me, I know about the pain of missing me and that’s why I did it. I was surprised this powerful intelligent confident woman was waiting at home, pining for a man, to turn up, who gleefully enjoys ‘stirring anxiety.’ Of course, Han is a P.U.A, naturally. And then I saw that Han had gone from playfully misogynistic to seriously misogynistic.
Is Chewie going to go off on a big revenge thing or is he going to be resigned to an old Chewie home, which would be consistent with getting rid of the old, and bringing in the new.
I was woefully mistaken in my hopes that we would see some swashbuckling action from Han, in the whole three movie franchise adventure…instead of what actually happened.
What a fool I was.
As I say, it’s a young man’s game. Look at this doddering old man who can’t even start up his own ship. Let’s all laugh at him. Let’s look at the fact that he’s seventy odd and his memory is going. Let’s put that across, so we can then do a spot of euthanasia. Then everyone will think, well, we had to do that really. We had to put him down. It wasn’t fair on him.
Now, all these spring chickens in this movie, will happily attract other spring chickens to the cinema, as they have lots of spare cash and can make the film companies lots of dosh.
Don’t get me wrong, the new up and coming young actors in it are great, and you can see that they have a wonderful future ahead of them. Rey, Finn and Kylo are going to be wonderful in this new saga and will end up as iconic as Han, Leia and Luke. A new generation.
Harrison Ford as Han, is an iconic figure with so much mileage, but they have decided to kill off their golden goose. Han has been slaughtered and euthanised by Kylo. Let’s waste him, in favour of the young ‘uns. Youth is the thing.
Your grandparents are only good for one thing. Presents.
It would have been better if Han would have retired and played golf instead of being impaled like that. He may have made the finals of the desert golf championships on Tatooine. He does look a bit like Severiano Ballesteros, who was supposed to be the Han Solo of the golf word, but he is obviously more like Jimmy Connors, who was well known as the Han Solo of the tennis world in the early 80’s.
There’s another point. Han, at his age, and in his experience, would not still have two bit Chav gangsters coming after him, at this stage in the game. At his age, he’s have more seasoned rivals, more like himself and more in line with his level of experience and skill, which would have been gained by the time he was seventy. He would not still be in dealings with some teenaged gang on a street corner in Mos Eisley.
We keep banging our heads against a brick wall in our lives, sometimes…often, but we learn from our mistakes, even though we keep making them, but..surely Han would have moved on… in some way, somehow…It just doesn’t ring true.
There’s nothing wrong with Han Solo, played by Harrison Ford, so why are they saying he’s forgotten how to fly his beloved Millennium Falcon and this child has to tell him how to do it? Humiliating in the extreme. Listen Rey, you’re a nice kid and all, and somewhere along the line, you’re going to defeat ultimate evil, and stop the destruction of the universe, but don’t teach your granny to suck eggs okay?
It doesn’t ring true. I know, I keep saying it. This guy has social skills. The only thing they keep, of the original Han, is his contrariness, which unfortunately, now that he’s getting on a bit, just comes across as ‘Grumpy Old Man’. They should have put him in a smoking jacket, a silver fox, puffing on Eldorian cigars and drinking sand cider. He married a Princess for Goodness Sake. He married Princess Leia. He would have come up in the world in some small way. He’s been conning the inhabitants of this mythology for a very long time and gained a great deal of experience. By the time he’s seventy or so, he’d be a dab hand. He’d have written a ‘How To Win Friends and Influence Jakku.’ manual, at the very least. I think he would have even run for president. He’d have gone up, on the democratic end, against Arnie of the Star Wars Universe, and probably won.
It would have been nice to see him moving on. Everyone changes and matures with age, even if it’s just into more alternative chaos, or denial that you’re no longer an 25 year old smuggling space cowboy. We all evolve into something, even if we’re losers, or in denial, or won’t/can’t grow up? (This is resonating with me) But we all evolve with time. We have to. He’d have changed, a little. Was Lucas pandering to his fans? Or rather J.J Abrams? That was exactly the case, he has said that, in a round about way, I can see where he was coming from, but, I was upset that Han has not moved on, has not ‘progressed’, has remained frozen, as if he was still back in carbonite, in 1984 in Jabba’s Hutt‘s Palace.
And he would not be in the same garb, we all love that garb, it’s the sexiest garb ever, but he’s older, we’re older. I’m not ready to grow up either but we all like consistency. He would not be wearing the exact same clothes. What if Marilyn Monroe had lived until she was 90, would she still be wearing that iconic white dress, from the Seven Year Itch, the one she wore while standing above the Subway air vent on Lexington Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Street in New York City?
No…and only when she was alone in her bedroom, with a few sherries under her belt.
I admit at first, I liked the idea of Han in his black and white space cowboy stuff, because it appealed to my safe sense of nostalgia. How lovely and warm and fuzzy but fashions and trends change, even in space. Would you be wearing the exact same clothes twenty years on, even in space?
Even men don’t do that.
We all know people who stand still, but not like this.
It just doesn’t ring true to his character that he would let his beloved ship gather dust bunnies like that. It also doesn’t ring true that he would owe all these space gangsters money and favours and they would be still be trying to kill him? He’d have come up with strategies by now. He’d have evolved, surely? Had people to take care of more pedestrian business. Unless, we are really trying to say that he’s a loser, who doesn’t learn from his mistakes, or hone his game? That he was in his dotage and he doesn’t know how to turn ‘her’ on any more. And we’re not saying that, are we?
HAN: Yes, I pressed all the right buttons in my youth but it’s all slippers and afternoon game shows from now on.
You can’t please all of the people all of the time I guess.
But you can still pull a lever and press a button. You can still turn on the Millennium, can’t you, Han?
Okay, so we have encountered extreme ageism in this new saga, so far, but that’s okay, Ageism won’t cause a riot yet will it? It’s not yet politically incorrect to be ageist. It’s not going to get people’s backs up. So, we can let it go and no-one but no-one, will be character assassinated for ageism. So ageism will exist…in your face.
Apart from that, I genuinely liked everything else about the film, especially the fact that this new up and coming young Jedi is a girl. How non sexist! Oh, how forward thinking.
As Geena Davies might say, thanks for the tokenism boys, but will it actually be sustainable? Will it go anywhere? Will it be nothing more but the false girl power of yesteryear, a lip service, an opium of the masses, just to sedate the ladies for a short time? Oh look, a girl is going to be a Jedi! Well then, that should keep us satisfied for the next twenty blockbusters and for the next twenty years. Phew. Good to get them off our backs. Not that they were ever really seriously on them.
Now, after a nice quick patronizing pat on the head, we can sit back and relax girls. Surely we should be happy now. Something to be grateful for. Forget the revolution. Rey is the next Luke Skywalker!
All is well with the world.
Or is it?
Some of us might have thought thought sexism was a problem, and it is.
They way the older, iconic stars were treated in The Force Awakens upset and offends me, and it feels isolating, like no-one else can see it, but it was expected and that’s what is really disturbing.
But, I guess, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Things In My Head 