Selasa, 17 Desember 2019

‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ First Reactions Are In and They’re Pretty Much What You’d Expect - TheWrap

(This post does not contain any spoilers for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”)

We’re just a few days away now from the arrival of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” in theaters everywhere, and that means the hype meter is already off the charts. And with the world premiere taking place Monday night in Hollywood, we’ve now got a whole bunch of people who have actually seen the thing.

And, of course, a lot of those people tweeted their reactions as soon as they got out of the theater. And, well, those reactions are mostly what you’d expect from people attending the premiere of a new “Star Wars” movie. For the most part, the responses are very positive, though some are less positive than others.

The reactions thus far have come in two main flavors: folks voicing overwhelmingly effusive praise for the film, and folks who say that the movie is a whole lot and they’re gonna have to think about it. It’s not extremely surprising that we’d get those types of responses at the premiere — it’s unlikely that anyone at the premiere would straight up trash the movie, so this is the range I personally expected.

Also Read: Will Baby Yoda Be in 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'?

We want to reiterate here that there are no spoilers in the tweets below — unless you consider “I liked it” or “I’m not sure how I feel” to constitute plot and story details. Now let’s get into it.

If all these tweets are getting you wound up with anticipation, don’t worry. “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” hits theaters on Thursday evening.

15 Best Stories Ever Told in the 'Star Wars' Universe (Photos)

  • best star wars stories ever told

    With 40 years of movies, TV shows, comics, video games, novels and reference books, you'd be hard-pressed to ever run out of stories to read about the "Star Wars" universe, past and present. It's a big universe out there, and every story told in it is connected to all the others. Big stories are told as many different smaller ones, and small stories are told as chunks of a bigger picture. 

    These are the best chunks, big or small, in the history of the "Star Wars" universe.
  • jedi search admiral daala

    15. The Rise of Admiral Daala in the "Jedi Academy Trilogy"

    After "Return of the Jedi" in the version of the "Star Wars" continuity before Disney bought Lucasfilm, the Empire fractured into a bunch of splinter governments led by self-proclaimed rulers who would make up new titles for themselves like "high admiral" or "warlord" while still maintaining the pretense of Imperial legitimacy. Daala (a woman!) decided to try to bring it back together, and eventually was able to do so -- for a short time at least. Her brilliant machinations were a compelling as hell tale, and one of author Kevin J Anderson's only good contributions to "Star Wars" lore.
  • star wars black fleet crisis

    14. The Black Fleet Crisis

    This is not referring to the "Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy" as a whole, since two of the three main narrative arcs in those books are unrelated to the event in "Star Wars" lore known as the Black Fleet Crisis.

    The Crisis is great because it's the sort of cool scifi story that checks a lot of boxes simultaneously. In particular: unknowable alien force you've never heard of, weird galactic political intrigue with lots of backstabs from said alien force, and a grand mystery regarding how those aliens came to power in the first place. It's a really interesting scenario.
  • the force unleashed

    13. Darth Vader's Secret Apprentice

    The "Star Wars" universe is full of stories about good apprentices going bad and wreaking havoc on the good guys, but we've very rarely gotten the inverse. That made "The Force Unleashed" a really novel experience. You play as Darth Vader's secret apprentice in the years between the original and prequel trilogies. You're a dark side force user and soldier for the Empire who goes rogue in a really epic way.
  • x wing alliance

    12. "X-Wing Alliance"

    You're Ace, and you work for your family shipping company. You fly a freighter doing pretty boring things, until your dad's sympathies for the Rebel Alliance come back to bite the whole family in the ass. 

    You know how this goes: the Empire brings the hammer down, you join the Rebellion as a fighter pilot. But maybe the entire family isn't on board with facing down the Empire. This is the only "Star Wars" space combat simulator that gives you a personal story, and it turned out to be a great idea.
  • thrawn

    11. Admiral Thrawn

    Not specifically thinking of Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy here, but the story of Thrawn's life as a whole and his lasting legacy in the Expanded Universe. This guy was such a genius that even a decade after his death the plans he'd laid out were threatening to tear apart the fledgling New Republic. His fingerprints are everywhere.
  • enemy lines duology

    10. The Battle of Borleaias

    Late in the "New Jedi Order," famed Rebel hero Wedge Antilles is charged with holding the planet Borleias from the Yuuzhan Vong, and it's one hell of a thing. Massively outgunned, Wedge pulls a whole lot of seat-of-your-pants gambits out of his ass -- and this pair of books, authored by the late fan favorite Aaron Allston, is full of great and witty dialogue of the sort you just never got from other "Star Wars" authors.
  • starfighters of adumar

    9. Wedge and Friends Go to Adumar

    As the war against the Empire winds down, Rebel hero Wedge Antilles and pals Tycho, Hobbie and Janso, are sent as diplomats to a newly discovered planet full of people who pretty don't give a shit about anyone who isn't a fighter pilot. If that sounds like a sitcom scenario, that's because it basically is. And it's great,  incessantly funny and very awkward -- a great little side story that's as witty as they get in this universe.
  • wraith squadron

    8. Wraith Squadron

    The story of the Wraiths, told over three books, is unique among "Star Wars" stories in a lot of ways. It follows famed Rebel pilot Wedge Antilles as he assembles a hybrid starfighter/footsoldier squadron of emotionally unstable washouts -- the idea being that such a group, when given some operational leeway, might approach apparently normal war scenarios in really unpredictable ways, and that's exactly what happens. It's the most human of all the "Star Wars" stories, full of truth.
  • swtor imperial agent

    7. The Tale of the Imperial Agent in "The Old Republic"

    Many of the most interesting "Star Wars" stories are those that focus on characters who can't use the Force, and this is one of those. You play as a spy for the Sith Empire (thousands of years before the movies), doing awesome wartime spy stuff. And you get caught up in a galactic conspiracy to destroy both the Republic and Empire -- by a secret society tired of Force-using factions starting all these galaxy-spanning wars. It's a compelling-as-hell hook.
  • revan and malak

    6. The Rise and Fall and Rise of Revan

    Thousands of years before the movies, Revan was a Jedi who led the Republic military against invading Mandalorians -- only to turn to the dark side and wage his own war on the Republic, before turning away from the dark and defeating his own armies. That's the very short, very incomplete version. The story of Revan is thoroughly fascinating and ends up lasting hundreds of years across two video games ("Knights of the Old Republic) and a pile of books and comics.
  • jabba's palace heist

    5. The Jabba's Palace Heist in "Return of the Jedi"

    It's become clear in the last few years that a lot of folks never really got what Luke, Leia, Lando and Chewie were doing during the first portion of "Return of the Jedi" -- and now we have all these thinkpieces about how it was reckless and haphazard. But no, that shit was an impeccable heist. They had a plan, and they pulled it off flawlessly and in style. 
  • kreia kotor 2

    4. The Dark Wars

    This story was told in the video game "Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords" -- a former Jedi who was exiled from the Order returns to known space only to find the Jedi gone from civilization and a pair of mysterious Sith lords wreaking havoc all over. It's a rare "Star Wars" noir story, and it's quite a doozy.
  • traitor

    3. "Traitor"

    In the '90s the "Star Wars" Expanded Universe got really moralistic and stuffy, and "Traitor" was a total refutation of that approach. It's the darkest "Star Wars" story ever written, but it serves a positive agenda in the end: one that asserts that maybe the Force isn't black and white and the Jedi don't need to stand around wondering about the moral implications of every little thing they do. It was a really great change for storytelling in the EU, and it's nice that it appears "The Last Jedi" might take a similar patch.
  • star wars grand moff tarkin

    2. "Star Wars"

    The one that started it all is a silly, not-particularly-well-thought-out movie, but it's tight as hell and covers all the ground it needs to. It establishes a completely new universe so casually, making it feel from the very beginning that this is a real, lived-in place. Everything you need to know about what's going on is right there.
  • empire strikes back

    1. "The Empire Strikes Back"

    The lesson J.J. Abrams and friends should have learned from "The Empire Strikes Back" widely considered the best "Star Wars" movie, is that you don't make a"Star Wars" movie that stands the test of time by aping previous ones -- you have to go somewhere new. "Empire" functions as a total counter to the first movie, and that's why it's a perfect sequel.
1 of 16

There are more “Star Wars” stories than even you can imagine, even if you think you can imagine quite a bit. These are the best ones

With 40 years of movies, TV shows, comics, video games, novels and reference books, you'd be hard-pressed to ever run out of stories to read about the "Star Wars" universe, past and present. It's a big universe out there, and every story told in it is connected to all the others. Big stories are told as many different smaller ones, and small stories are told as chunks of a bigger picture. 

These are the best chunks, big or small, in the history of the "Star Wars" universe.

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2019-12-17 10:40:00Z
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‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’: First Reactions from the World Premiere - Variety

Disney’s third and final film in the latest Star Wars trilogy, “The Rise of Skywalker,” had its world premiere Monday night in Los Angeles with audience members quickly taking to Twitter afterward to share their reactions.

The review embargo for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” lifts on Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 12:01 a.m. PST. However, the social media embargo broke immediately after the premiere.

(No spoilers from the film ahead). 

Members of the press, including critics and reporters, had mostly mixed-to-positive reactions of J.J. Abrams and Lucasfilm’s final chapter in the Skywalker saga, which stars Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac.

“‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ is certainly the most convoluted Star Wars,” Uproxx’s Mike Ryan wrote. “There is a lot I liked, but the first half gets so bogged down with exposition and new plot and doodads and beacons and transmitters, it feels like it should have been three movies on its own.”

Variety’s Adam B. Vary tweeted: “There’s so much movie in this movie. But its best moments are the quietest and most human.”

Popular on Variety

“The emotional highs are spectacular, and there are a lot of payoffs (some earned, some not). But some choices feel like an unnecessary course-correct from The Last Jedi and some just plain don’t make sense,” said Laura Prudom of IGN.

Meanwhile, other writers like Rob Keyes of Screen Rant were more enthused: “It’s an immensely satisfying and massive end to the saga. It somehow addresses issues, problematic characters, and most unanswered questions from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi too.”

Erik Davis of Fandango was also feeling The Force: “Epic. All of it. #TheRiseofSkywalker is a terrific finale that is just stuffed with so much of everything. Action, adventure — answers!! — humor, heart, love, and grit.”

See more reactions below.

“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” opens nationwide Friday, Dec. 20.

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2019-12-17 07:08:00Z
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‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ First Reactions Are In and They’re Pretty Much What You’d Expect - TheWrap

(There are no spoilers in this post for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”)

Hype levels are at critical now that we’re just a couple days away from “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” hitting theaters, and the week’s festivities kicked off Monday night when the film got its world premiere in Los Angeles.

Finally, those in attendance are out of the theater and tweeting their reactions, and, well, those reactions are mostly what you’d expect from people attending the premiere of a new “Star Wars” movie. For the most part, the responses are very positive, though some are less positive than others.

The reactions thus far have come in two main flavors: folks voicing overwhelmingly effusive praise for the film, and folks who say that the movie is a whole lot and they’re gonna have to think about it. It’s not extremely surprising that we’d get those types of responses at the premiere — it’s unlikely that anyone at the premiere would straight up trash the movie, so this is the range I personally expected.

Also Read: Will Baby Yoda Be in 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'?

We want to reiterate here that there are no spoilers in the tweets below — unless you consider “I liked it” or “I’m not sure how I feel” to constitute plot and story details. Now let’s get into it.

If all these tweets are getting you wound up with anticipation, don’t worry. “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” hits theaters on Thursday evening.

15 Best Stories Ever Told in the 'Star Wars' Universe (Photos)

  • best star wars stories ever told

    With 40 years of movies, TV shows, comics, video games, novels and reference books, you'd be hard-pressed to ever run out of stories to read about the "Star Wars" universe, past and present. It's a big universe out there, and every story told in it is connected to all the others. Big stories are told as many different smaller ones, and small stories are told as chunks of a bigger picture. 

    These are the best chunks, big or small, in the history of the "Star Wars" universe.
  • jedi search admiral daala

    15. The Rise of Admiral Daala in the "Jedi Academy Trilogy"

    After "Return of the Jedi" in the version of the "Star Wars" continuity before Disney bought Lucasfilm, the Empire fractured into a bunch of splinter governments led by self-proclaimed rulers who would make up new titles for themselves like "high admiral" or "warlord" while still maintaining the pretense of Imperial legitimacy. Daala (a woman!) decided to try to bring it back together, and eventually was able to do so -- for a short time at least. Her brilliant machinations were a compelling as hell tale, and one of author Kevin J Anderson's only good contributions to "Star Wars" lore.
  • star wars black fleet crisis

    14. The Black Fleet Crisis

    This is not referring to the "Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy" as a whole, since two of the three main narrative arcs in those books are unrelated to the event in "Star Wars" lore known as the Black Fleet Crisis.

    The Crisis is great because it's the sort of cool scifi story that checks a lot of boxes simultaneously. In particular: unknowable alien force you've never heard of, weird galactic political intrigue with lots of backstabs from said alien force, and a grand mystery regarding how those aliens came to power in the first place. It's a really interesting scenario.
  • the force unleashed

    13. Darth Vader's Secret Apprentice

    The "Star Wars" universe is full of stories about good apprentices going bad and wreaking havoc on the good guys, but we've very rarely gotten the inverse. That made "The Force Unleashed" a really novel experience. You play as Darth Vader's secret apprentice in the years between the original and prequel trilogies. You're a dark side force user and soldier for the Empire who goes rogue in a really epic way.
  • x wing alliance

    12. "X-Wing Alliance"

    You're Ace, and you work for your family shipping company. You fly a freighter doing pretty boring things, until your dad's sympathies for the Rebel Alliance come back to bite the whole family in the ass. 

    You know how this goes: the Empire brings the hammer down, you join the Rebellion as a fighter pilot. But maybe the entire family isn't on board with facing down the Empire. This is the only "Star Wars" space combat simulator that gives you a personal story, and it turned out to be a great idea.
  • thrawn

    11. Admiral Thrawn

    Not specifically thinking of Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy here, but the story of Thrawn's life as a whole and his lasting legacy in the Expanded Universe. This guy was such a genius that even a decade after his death the plans he'd laid out were threatening to tear apart the fledgling New Republic. His fingerprints are everywhere.
  • enemy lines duology

    10. The Battle of Borleaias

    Late in the "New Jedi Order," famed Rebel hero Wedge Antilles is charged with holding the planet Borleias from the Yuuzhan Vong, and it's one hell of a thing. Massively outgunned, Wedge pulls a whole lot of seat-of-your-pants gambits out of his ass -- and this pair of books, authored by the late fan favorite Aaron Allston, is full of great and witty dialogue of the sort you just never got from other "Star Wars" authors.
  • starfighters of adumar

    9. Wedge and Friends Go to Adumar

    As the war against the Empire winds down, Rebel hero Wedge Antilles and pals Tycho, Hobbie and Janso, are sent as diplomats to a newly discovered planet full of people who pretty don't give a shit about anyone who isn't a fighter pilot. If that sounds like a sitcom scenario, that's because it basically is. And it's great,  incessantly funny and very awkward -- a great little side story that's as witty as they get in this universe.
  • wraith squadron

    8. Wraith Squadron

    The story of the Wraiths, told over three books, is unique among "Star Wars" stories in a lot of ways. It follows famed Rebel pilot Wedge Antilles as he assembles a hybrid starfighter/footsoldier squadron of emotionally unstable washouts -- the idea being that such a group, when given some operational leeway, might approach apparently normal war scenarios in really unpredictable ways, and that's exactly what happens. It's the most human of all the "Star Wars" stories, full of truth.
  • swtor imperial agent

    7. The Tale of the Imperial Agent in "The Old Republic"

    Many of the most interesting "Star Wars" stories are those that focus on characters who can't use the Force, and this is one of those. You play as a spy for the Sith Empire (thousands of years before the movies), doing awesome wartime spy stuff. And you get caught up in a galactic conspiracy to destroy both the Republic and Empire -- by a secret society tired of Force-using factions starting all these galaxy-spanning wars. It's a compelling-as-hell hook.
  • revan and malak

    6. The Rise and Fall and Rise of Revan

    Thousands of years before the movies, Revan was a Jedi who led the Republic military against invading Mandalorians -- only to turn to the dark side and wage his own war on the Republic, before turning away from the dark and defeating his own armies. That's the very short, very incomplete version. The story of Revan is thoroughly fascinating and ends up lasting hundreds of years across two video games ("Knights of the Old Republic) and a pile of books and comics.
  • jabba's palace heist

    5. The Jabba's Palace Heist in "Return of the Jedi"

    It's become clear in the last few years that a lot of folks never really got what Luke, Leia, Lando and Chewie were doing during the first portion of "Return of the Jedi" -- and now we have all these thinkpieces about how it was reckless and haphazard. But no, that shit was an impeccable heist. They had a plan, and they pulled it off flawlessly and in style. 
  • kreia kotor 2

    4. The Dark Wars

    This story was told in the video game "Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords" -- a former Jedi who was exiled from the Order returns to known space only to find the Jedi gone from civilization and a pair of mysterious Sith lords wreaking havoc all over. It's a rare "Star Wars" noir story, and it's quite a doozy.
  • traitor

    3. "Traitor"

    In the '90s the "Star Wars" Expanded Universe got really moralistic and stuffy, and "Traitor" was a total refutation of that approach. It's the darkest "Star Wars" story ever written, but it serves a positive agenda in the end: one that asserts that maybe the Force isn't black and white and the Jedi don't need to stand around wondering about the moral implications of every little thing they do. It was a really great change for storytelling in the EU, and it's nice that it appears "The Last Jedi" might take a similar patch.
  • star wars grand moff tarkin

    2. "Star Wars"

    The one that started it all is a silly, not-particularly-well-thought-out movie, but it's tight as hell and covers all the ground it needs to. It establishes a completely new universe so casually, making it feel from the very beginning that this is a real, lived-in place. Everything you need to know about what's going on is right there.
  • empire strikes back

    1. "The Empire Strikes Back"

    The lesson J.J. Abrams and friends should have learned from "The Empire Strikes Back" widely considered the best "Star Wars" movie, is that you don't make a"Star Wars" movie that stands the test of time by aping previous ones -- you have to go somewhere new. "Empire" functions as a total counter to the first movie, and that's why it's a perfect sequel.
1 of 16

There are more “Star Wars” stories than even you can imagine, even if you think you can imagine quite a bit. These are the best ones

With 40 years of movies, TV shows, comics, video games, novels and reference books, you'd be hard-pressed to ever run out of stories to read about the "Star Wars" universe, past and present. It's a big universe out there, and every story told in it is connected to all the others. Big stories are told as many different smaller ones, and small stories are told as chunks of a bigger picture. 

These are the best chunks, big or small, in the history of the "Star Wars" universe.

Let's block ads! (Why?)


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2019-12-17 06:25:00Z
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Senin, 16 Desember 2019

The Incredible, Indelible ‘Watchmen’ - The New York Times

Spoilers for the full season of HBO’s “Watchmen” follow:

“Now: We have a god to kill.”

It is a bold statement that Lady Trieu (Hong Chau) makes in the finale of HBO’s “Watchmen” — boldness being part of the job description for a comic-book mad genius. It is also a kind of mission statement for this daring, breathtaking series, which in one season took American history and pop mythology, dismantled it down to its smallest atoms and reconstructed it in a form that was familiar yet wholly new.

It’s hard to overstate how risky, how primed for disaster, was the challenge that the creator, Damon Lindelof, signed up for. First, to adapt a notoriously hard-to-adapt subversive superhero comic. Then to lovingly, impishly subvert that subversion, extending the story backward and forwards in time. To do all that while reframing the story as an antiracist pulp thriller, weighty without being pompous or exploitative. Oh — and could it also be electrifying and playful and fun?

Amazingly it could, culminating in “See How They Fly,” a mind-bending, gravity-defying finale that successfully landed this improbable airship.

Like a fine watch or a chicken’s egg, the symbols the finale returned to, this season was a marvel of self-contained engineering. It succeeded, first, in craft and performance, with visual invention and memorable work from Chau, Regina King, Jean Smart, Jeremy Irons, Louis Gossett Jr. and many others. It set up a domino chain of mysteries that the finale satisfyingly paid off.

But it also created something more: an urgent entertainment that was as unignorable as the pealing of an alarm bell.

Alan Moore, the creator of the graphic novel, did not endorse this project, any more than he has other adaptations of his work. Yet Lindelof’s approach — to honor it by taking it apart and questioning the appeal of masked avengers in the first place — was very much in the spirit of the original.

Reinventing “Watchmen” by making its subject white supremacy rather than the Cold War — not to mention making its hero Angela Abar (King), an avenging black police-ninja — also meshes with Moore’s critique of the superhero genre, as he put it in a 2016 interview.

“Save for a smattering of nonwhite characters (and nonwhite creators),” Moore said, “these books and these iconic characters are still very much white supremacist dreams of the master race. In fact, I think that a good argument can be made for D.W. Griffith’s ‘Birth of a Nation’ as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and masks.”

Lindelof (who wisely assembled a diverse writers’ room for the job) made a form of that argument. Then he complicated it and recomplicated it.

One of the first things we see in “Watchmen” is not “Birth of a Nation” but its imagined silent-movie antithesis: “Trust in the Law!,” the story of the black Oklahoma marshal Bass Reeves, playing in a Tulsa movie theater that is about to burn in the white-terrorist massacre of 1921.

The boy sitting in that theater grows up to be Will Reeves (Gossett), who takes the marshal’s surname and becomes America’s first superhero, Hooded Justice, under cover of a lynching victim’s mask. His “origin story,” as he calls it in the finale, is horrific. Yet there’s also a heartbreaking optimism in the idea that this child would grow up with the trust — or at least furious determination — that the law might win out, even if it took a century.

The history and present of American racism figure directly in “Watchmen”: the use of nostalgia as a literal drug; the Seventh Kavalry’s resentment at being expected to “say sorry” for the “alleged” sins of the past; the circled-thumb-and-finger-to-forehead gesture of the racist secret society Cyclops, which resembles the real-life white-power appropriation of the “O.K.” symbol.

But “Watchmen” also asked: What if black people were among the ones wearing the masks? What if a black man — a black policeman — were the first masked hero? Why would he need to shield his identity, even more than Clark Kent? And would the subterfuge work so well that — as we saw on the show-within-a-show “American Hero Story” — later generations would assume he must have been a white man?

All this played out in the sixth episode, “This Extraordinary Being,” which reimagined the origin of Moore’s Hooded Justice, astonishingly taking that character’s symbols — the hood and the noose — and tying them to the dark history of lynching in such a way that it seemed as if that reading was always there, begging to be revealed.

The “Watchmen” endgame then one-upped this gambit, remaking perhaps the original comics’ most memorable character, Dr. Manhattan, revealed here not to be in exile on Mars but living incognito as Angela’s husband, Cal (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).

The image itself, of an African American man as the azure Übermensch — as both black and blue, to quote Fats Waller — was a striking statement, reimagining the universe’s one superbeing like an icon out of Afrofuturistic art.

Now the show was asking: What does it mean to give god a black man’s face? What if the very people once left out of superhero stories have the greatest claim of all to their themes and ideals? Who has a greater stake in truth, justice and the American way — an exile from Krypton, or the black child who fled a ruined movie theater, yet didn’t forsake the words of Bass Reeves?

In the end, “Watchmen” returned to the subject of power: Who holds it, who can be trusted with it and what should be done with it.

Superpowers are obviously horrifying in the hands of evildoers; hence the story of the Seventh Kavalry trying to steal Dr. Manhattan’s power, the show’s most conventionally comic-book-villain plot.

But “Watchmen” is also suspicious of those, like Veidt and Lady Trieu, who want to use power to impose their idea of good on the world. That opposition — toxic hate and toxic idealism — is paralleled in the background, in the fictional, quasi-autocratic presidencies of Richard Nixon and Robert Redford.

But dispassionate withdrawal, as represented by Dr. Manhattan’s retreat from the world, is no answer either. “He was a good man,” Will says. “But considering what he could do, he could have done more.”

Can anybody be trusted with absolute power? Can it ever be employed in a way that won’t create new and greater problems? “Watchmen” doesn’t answer these questions. But by ending with the suggestion that Dr. Manhattan could transfer his powers to Angela (incubated, like a vaccine, in a raw egg), it offers a suggestion as to who might be the best kind of person to entrust power to.

Maybe, the ending suggests, someone who didn’t ask for it. Maybe someone who has watched god and her only love die simultaneously. Maybe a black woman who has swallowed the memories of a century of injustice and persecution and struggle, who has (through an egg and a pill) literally taken into her body both the ultimate power and the ultimate understanding of powerlessness.

We are left, to wonder what Angela will do and should do from here. In a quintessentially Lindelof move, the screen cuts to black the instant that Angela’s sole touches the surface of her swimming pool, to test whether she can, like Dr. Manhattan, walk on water.

It’s tempting to call this a “cliffhanger” though I have no reason to believe the show intends to resolve it. You could call it a “tease,” but I don’t think that’s the spirit of it at all.

Instead, “Watchmen” leaves us at the electric moment of transformation — the precise instant when foot meets water, flesh meets the elemental, mortality meets immortality.

God is dead. Long may she live.

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2019-12-16 14:17:00Z
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'Jumanji' Sequel Takes Box Office Might To 'The Next Level' - HuffPost

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2019-12-16 07:17:00Z
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Minggu, 15 Desember 2019

Wait, Did J.J. Abrams Really Just Tease an Ahsoka Tano Cameo in The Rise of Skywalker? - Gizmodo

Ahsoka, ready to fight.
Image: Disney/Lucasfilm

J.J? Please, don’t tease me on this. It’s important.

In a recent interview with Japanese outlet Sora News, Abrams did the standard press junket interview, you know, promoting one of the biggest franchise films ever made and all that. Normal, routine stuff, until the interviewer asked Abrams who his favorite Star Wars character was.

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“Han Solo,” is Abrams’s not terribly surprising answer. Then he threw the question back: who’s the interviewer’s favorite? The interviewer responds: Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice and prominent non-Jedi Force user in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels.

To which Abrams replied, “Hmmm, Ahsoka, huh? Well then you’ll probably want to watch closely during The Rise of Skywalker.”

What? Like, for real? Considering how much has already been revealed about The Rise of Skywalker in marketing up until this point, there’s considerable reason to believe that Abrams may be telling the truth. And if he is, that means that Ahsoka might indeed make a small, likely background appearance as the Skywalker saga rockets to its final conclusions.

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If so, that would be an interesting choice, and would make a gesture that, so far, at least, the Skywalker Saga films have not been all that interested in making. While Rogue One and Solo have referenced substantially the animated side of the Star Wars universe, it’s always felt sequested from the mainline series. Ahsoka was never mentioned in Revenge of the Sith because she was created after that film was written; her appearance in even a minor role or throwaway ensemble shot would suggest an interest in more closely harmonizing those disparate parts of the universe. Which would be neat.

It’d also let us know more information about what Ahsoka has been up to since Return of the Jedi (how long do togruta live, anyway?), giving probably the only hint we’re going to get until Dave Filoni decides to do something else with her. 

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2019-12-15 18:30:00Z
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'Jumanji: Next Level' has strong box office opening as 'Frozen 2' crosses $1 billion - CNN

Sony's "Next Level," the sequel to 2017's surprise hit "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle," had a big weekend with an estimated $60 million debut in North America.
The film, which stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Kevin Hart, nearly doubled the opening of "Welcome to the Jungle," which would eventually go on to make nearly $1 billion two years ago. Industry experts had predicted that "Next Level" would make around $45 million while Sony was more conservative with its forecasts at $35 million.
2019 was not a kind year to sequels. "Dark Phoenix," "Men In Black International," "Godzilla: King of the Monsters," "Terminator: Dark Fate" and "Doctor Sleep" were all disappointments at the box office. But "Next Level" was able to avoid the sequel curse because it's a "brand that audiences love," according to Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore (SCOR).
"'Welcome to the Jungle' delivered exactly what audiences wanted in a reboot two years ago. This film took that popularity, I guess you could say, to the next level," Dergarabedian told CNN Business. "It's got a great cast, it's a lot of fun and it's just a perfect popcorn movie for the holiday season."
Elsewhere at the box office this weekend, Disney once again crossed a milestone.
"Frozen 2," the studio's follow up to its frosty animated hit, broke the $1 billion mark at the global box office on Saturday.
'Jumanji: The Next Level' repeats the program, with a few welcome wrinkles
The film, which stars the voice work of Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell, is the studio's sixth film to make more than $1 billion. The film joins the studio's other billion dollar blockbusters this year including "Avengers: Endgame," "The Lion King," "Captain Marvel," "Toy Story 4" and "Aladdin."
Disney is the first studio to have that many $1 billion movies in a single year, and it's not done yet.
"Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" opens next weekend and is poised to be one of the biggest box office hits of the year. It's also likely to be Disney's seventh $1 billion film of 2019 once everything is said and done.
The box office could use all the help it can get. The North American box office is down 5.4% compared to last year and there is less than three weeks left to make up the deficit.

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2019-12-15 16:56:00Z
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