Modern Mars Hill

"How can you not like Star Wars ?" Do you know how often I get that question? About as often as I say that I don't like Star Wars  (which isn't often). I didn't grow up with Star Wars . I didn't watch any of the movies until I was 14. So I don't have the emotional connection to Star Wars that everyone else does. Which leads me to want the same thing from a Star Wars movie as I do from any other movie: To enjoy myself I don't care about a Star Wars movie being good. I care about a Star Wars movie entertaining me personally. So what does  entertain me personally? What would I want from a Star Wars movie that would make it my favorite movie ever? Cleverness I want to shake my head in disbelief during a movie and think "How did you even think of that?": "How did that writer think of this?", "How did this character think to do that thing at that moment?" I will never see a cleverer fight scene than the Wheel of F...

I'm genuinely disappointed that the sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is officially titled Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald . JKR had already established a wonderful pattern: that each prequel movie set in the Wizarding World could be named after a textbook. Instead, the name of the franchise is now Fantastic Beasts , leaving us with 2 problems: 1) " Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"  is simply too long (it's so long that I copied and pasted it that time). We usually abbreviate it Fantastic Beasts , but that doesn't mean  Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (copied and pasted again) anymore. That name refers to the franchise as a whole. It's a similar problem to when Star Wars  got retitled Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope . Years later, people still hear Star Wars  and don't know if it's talking about the franchise or the film. Hopefully, people will start calling  Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (co...

Does anyone remember playing Jeopardy in school? Or in Church activities? Or any other situation where the host hadn't actually seen Jeopardy? To people running group trivia games, can we please find a game that's more relevant? Jeopardy has a rather dull premise, is stereotypically watched by people 3 times the age of those public school kids, and is really hard to spell. Not to mention that nobody seems to answer with "What is______" or "Who is _______". Of course, maybe I'm the only one who got annoyed by that or by the fact that it seemed like the squares on the board turned out to be questions more often than answers. Or maybe that was just my experience. The lack of buzzers also made things really problematic. How do we know which student answered first? Do we have to wait for the Special Edition to find out that a different student actually answered first? What about in the blu-ray version, where the greedy student hits the buzzer fir...

Well that is the most inflammatory title I've ever written. I can just imagine the responses: "You don't know Star Wars better than George Lucas!" "How many movies have you  made?!" " Star Wars  is my childhood! It's perfect! Don't insult it!" Calm down. It's OK. You really like Star Wars . And I will not tell you to stop liking Star Wars . But people keep complaining that modern blockbusters just aren't as good as they used to be. Besides, every movie could be improved. So let's learn from Star Wars  about how to make blockbusters even better  by learning from the good and learning from the bad. "But you can't make a better movie than Star Wars !" We're just talking about Episode IV here, and we can all agree that Episode V is better than Episode IV. And the guy who made Episode V didn't make Episode IV, so I'm sure after 40 years of learning how to make a good film, someone else could make...

When I walked out of the theater for Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, I didn't wonder who Rey's parents were. Maybe I should have. After all, J.J. Abrams directed it, and he loves to include mystery in his movies and TV shows. When I walked out of the theater for  Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, I didn't wonder who Snoke was. Maybe I should have, but I assumed he was just a Big Bad behind the Big Bad. I didn't care whether he was a resurrected Palpatine, or an evil version of Yoda, or Darth Plagueis (which I just found out is spelled exactly the opposite of how I thought). I didn't wonder whether Finn was the son of Lando Calrissian, or whether Poe was related to Boba Fett, or anything like that. I actually thought it was pretty cool that the villain was related to Han Solo! Then I heard that people were wondering "Who are Rey's parents?" and "Who is Snoke?" and I thought "People are wondering this?" Now...