To be honest, I was over it before I walked into the theater.

The GOOD:

Let’s get the good out of the way. It was faced paced.
It had moments of humor and it had moments (although some for nothing) of sadness and emotion.
The actors did what they could and had to do. I have no complaints about any of the acting from all three films in the new trilogy. Let’s be honest the acting in these films was better than the empty emotionless acting in the Prequels. They auditioned for these parts, they earned them and they did what they had to do. It’s not there fault.

The visuals were good but, it’s a DISNEY movie. I mean does having good visuals and effects really make a difference in a film funded by a multi-billion dollar media corporation.
“Wow, the aliens looks real!”
“Of course, they do. The studio spent as much money as a third world country’s economy on five minutes of footage.”

What else can I say that’s good about it? Well, they did try to wrap everything up nicely. They did try to remind us of the magic and message of hope of the whole franchise.

The BAD:

They basically all sat in a writer’s room and shat in the same burlap sack and took turns throwing clumps of shit at a bulletin board of McGuffins and fan service and duct taped the plot holes with Band-aids.
I’ll summarize because, this is a movie where the less said is better.

If you enjoy fast paced action and events happening just to happening and plot devices being pulled out of asses. Then you’ll like this film. If you were young when The Force Awakens and you love these new characters, then you’ll like the film (nothing wrong with that).

Younger audience members with enjoy the film because these are movies made for younger audiences. And these young fans will grow up and defend these movies much like a lot of twenty-somethings now defend the prequels. But, not me – To me this saga concluded with Return of the Jedi. Everything that has come after has been WEEKEND AT BERNIES.

The film does a poor job of avoiding questions raised in The Force Awakens while failing at ignoring the events of the Last Jedi. The story is just a convoluted mess of nonsense dressed in tattered rags of nostalgia and fan-service. The emperor is back but how, how did he survive Return of the Jedi? They movie never answers that. Why did he make some many Snokes? The film doesn’t answer that. How did all those Star Destroyers get buried on the planet? We don’t know. Why is he suspended on a life support harness that is attached to the sky? I don’t know. He looks like the Doctor Cenebite from Hellraiser too. I guess the makers have never seen Hellraiser. I don’t even think they’ve seen Return of the Jedi.

Is Kylo Ren now a supporting character? Yes. People use the force and die, why? We don’t know?
Did Carrie Fisher deserve better? Yes. The emperor was wasted. Now that I mention it, how does the Emperor in his decayed state look fresher than he did in Return of the Jedi? If he revived himself from the lifeforce of Rey and Kylo, why does he look like his scared self from Revenge of the Sith? Shouldn’t he look like Palpatine again?

What was the point of the very emotional scene of 3PO saying goodbye to his friends when R2 was just going to reboot his memory at the end? A good scene wasted. How good was it? Well three seats down from me in the front row was a middle-aged man sunken into his seat sobbing his eyes out with rivers of tears cascading down his face onto his Championship NY Jets Jersey.

There were good moments in the film and some good action set pieces but, with no defined plot to thread them together it was all for nothing.

Basically, Rey is a Palpatine grandchild. Palpatine is offering Kylo the entire ‘LAST ORDER’ fleet of star destroyers to Ren if he can bring the girl to him. Yes, the ‘LAST ORDER’. A fleet of hundreds of star destroyers armed with planet killer cannons. You know, because we people are tired of ultimate weapons in their star wars films, you give them a hundred ultimate weapons. Rey, Fin, Po, BB, 3po and Chewie go on a treasure hunt for a sith-finder. The sith-finder that resembles a throwaway prop from an episode of DOCTOR WHO can give its owner the coordinates to the secret sith fleet and Emperor Palpatine. The movie takes off from there and it does move. All these events and shenanigans leading our heroes to a fairly decent space battle and ground fight on the planet bumblefuck until, the big showdown between the ying-yang couple and Emperor Frankenberry.

From then on, it’s drek. And I was the first one out the theater during the smattering of applause.
It’s not complete garbage but, it’s not great. It’s decent for an ugly date. Like I said, the cast did their thing and did a decent job. The fault of all of this falls on the hands of Disney and JJ. Rian Johnson too but, he said, “You don’t like it, fuck it” and bailed a long time ago and is doing well with his own projects like KNIVES OUT which is a great movie.

This new trilogy was not planned out well, not executed well, not written well and taken for granted. They relied too much of the blind undying devotion and in some cases fanatical support of the Star Wars fans to send them laughing to the bank. But, their arrogance made them into villains for a confused and divided fanbase to decide how to justify or how to make sense of it all.

Good luck in a galaxy far, far, away. Better luck on the next trilogy or film. And thank your lucky stars that the writers of Game of Thrones aren’t involved with the next Star Wars movies. Because, this new trilogy may have been bad but, it didn’t suck like Season 8 did.

But, hey, you got The Mandalorian.

Some Manhattan kids became decent square members of society but, the rest of us that didn’t turned into artists, professional gamers, graff writers, musicians or just successful in their own hustle.

One of those success stories belongs to The Sucklord. The Sucklord is a POP Artist that manufactures unlicensed action figurine art through his company, SUCKADELIC. His action figurines are inspired by the old style of action figure that we all grew up pulling our mothers skirt to have. With limited runs and a word of mouth hype to his creations, these are the classic retro toys with limited articulation but, with a totally left-of-center style and subversive nostalgic feel.

He was born Morgan Phillips in the West Village and attended P.S. 41 and the High School for the Humanities, graduating in 1987. He later attended an art school in Eugene, Oregon. Now he creates subversive action figure runs from is headquarters and sells them at pop-up shops, private screenings or conventions.

His main source of inspiration comes from his undying love of Star Wars which is a recurring foundation of most of his toy runs. One of his physical incarnations is clad with custom Boba-Fet helmet, tracksuit and boom-box jetpack and is a totally badass galactic b-boy.

I’ve been in attendance at one of his events. It was a screening of episode 4 of his lo-fi and “exquisitely MY era L.E.S.”, web-series ‘Toy Lords of Chinatown’. Toy Lords tells the story of masked, ruthless, toy makers living in Chinatown. Competing and undercutting each other to have the next hot toy on the market.. If you loved late 80s-90s MNN public access or the surreal and experimental Liquid Television (both things would later be ripped off & recycled through a west coast blender to make Adult-Swim), then TOY LORDS of Chinatown was for you. The party was held in a very extravagant yet low key hotel by the West Side Highway. I was already curious about the Sucklord brand and the web series after my fellow Jade Palace Guardsman David Arcade put me on to him; seemed like we weren’t the only brand in town running around lower Manhattan in masks and alter-egos creating art… And to be honest, I was impressed and inspired by the turn out. People came to be apart of what he was creating and support his art. This was back in 2012.

Since then, he is still running strong and doing things his way. He even collaborated with CZARFACE in creating the CZARFACE action figure. He still maintains a presence on social media where you can find updates and appearance dates. He’s still host the SUCKHOUR and has a patreon – https://www.patreon.com/thesucklord

If you love independent art. If you love lo-fi artwork, subversive art, retro toys, retro star wars and a more back-in-the-day feel to your next art purchase then you should definitely go shop with SUCKLORD.

The method behind Jeronimo’s vision:

“Here is my 2d submission for the “Re-Imagining Star Wars” CG Plus challenge – decided to mix my two favorite movie franchises: Blade Runner and Star Wars. I used a bunch of different techniques – (a lot of them learned from Maciej Kuciara’s Learn Squared class). I still see a bunch of things I can be nit picky about, but I had to get this thing done.”

Also used in one of our uploads!

How EPIC is this?!

I should be upfront about this. I am a casual fan of Star Wars. In the collective panic attack that was the lead up to Stat Wars: The Force Awakens, I found myself mildly excited. J. J. Abrams had done a good job on Star Trek. The movie would probably be good (which it was). And despite the fact that I easily clocked over 100 hours in “Galactic Conquest” mode in Star Wars Battlefront II, I simply thought the Minions-esque onslaught of Star Wars media and merchandise was tolerable.

This is all to say that I approached the expansive Vader Down Marvel crossover comic series with an open mind. The series itself was penned as a team effort by veteran comic book writers Jason Aaron and Kieron Gillen. Gillen is responsible for a number of original titles. In fact, two of my absolute favorite series from the past ten years are Gillen originals (The Wicked + The Divine and Phonogram, go read Phonogram now). While it’s unclear who was leading the writing duties when, Vader Down‘s writing does not feel as fresh and vibrant as Gillen’s earlier works.

It’s not that Vader Down is a particularly bad series. It’s ultimately just mildly forgettable. In the hype surrounding The Force Awakens, the continuity of the series has been exploding in several directions, for obvious financial reasons. Star Wars makes big money. The most glaring aspect of the series holding it back is the dialogue. This is inherently a difficulty in adapting characters from a previously established (let alone overwhelmingly loved) franchise. These characters have specific voices that the reader will undoubtedly hear in their head. Darth Vader is a perfect example of this. He has that voice. He will always have that voice in your head no matter who is writing him. The lines he says can sometimes come across as cheesy. Not campy. Cheesy. The other reason Vader stands out so much in a negative way is that he is carrying this story. Vader Down follows Vader in the time between the A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Luke and Leia also suffer from less-than-exciting dialogue and strange character choices. Of the established characters, Han Solo (and fine, I guess Chewie too, but honestly how hard is it to write HHHRRRHHHH) is the best written. The essence of the character’s personality, and even of Harrison Ford’s iconic performance are captured in the lines.

Aphra and 0-0-0 are both the show stealers, and characters I would like to see more. Apart from the fact that they are fun and engaging, bouncing off the cast in interesting ways, they have some interesting unexplored narrative space. The stories of the main Star Wars cast has been told to death. You can’t do much with them in the time between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back because we know how they will act and what they will do once the comic is over. Aphra, a sort of morally grey Indiana Jones-esque rogue archeologist, and 0-0-0, a C-3PO-looking droid that specializes in “etiquette, customs, translation, and torture”, are not defined by any of the films in the series. They are free to breathe without the unbearable weight that the films have created on the extended universe.

Overall, if you are a Star Wars die hard, there is obvious interest for you here. You will enjoy it, and seeing Darth Vader as ace pilot, as well as an incredibly skilled and mobile melee fighter, will certainly leave you happy. If you are simply a casual fan of the franchise, and in particular if you have never read anything from the extended universe before, this is probably a pass. Something cooler will (hopefully) come out. Or not. Maybe the movies are enough for you. 

In film:

Which Star Wars film is your favorite and why is it Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back?  The Empire Strikes Back was a phenomenal success. It was so profitable that George Lucas distributed $5 million dollars worth of bonuses to the employees who worked on the film. It was the highest grossing film of 1980, more than doubling the second place film.

The first Friday the 13th film was released. While not as well-crafted as John Carpenter’s Halloween, Friday the 13th has proved to be nearly as influential and iconographic.  The film was made with a budget of just $550,000 and made over 108 times that at the box office. Fun fact: the hockey mask does not appear in this film or the sequel. You’ll need to watch Part III for that pop culture phenomenon.

Finally, to close out an excellent month of film, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining was released. This is one of the best films ever made. The film is a masterstroke by a filmmaker at his best, reveling in a pervasive sense of dread and isolation. I get chills every single time this film is on. If you don’t like horror movies, you probably still like The Shining. Yeah. It’s that good.

In music:

The B-52’s, a favorite of mine, scored their first Billboard Top 100 hit with “Rock Lobster”, a song that perfectly straddles new wave, surf rock and novelty.  Peter Criss quit Kiss. Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” is banned in South Africa. That makes me wonder about playing parts 1 and 3.

Deaths: Joy Division vocalist Ian Curtis commits suicide. If you don’t listen to Joy Division, now is a good time to start. 

In literature:

Two noteworthy novels were published in May 1980. The first was John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, a debut novel published eleven years after Toole’s suicide. Michael Chrichton published Congo. The film rights for the novel were purchased before the novel was even finished. The film, by the way, is excellent. But you should have probably figured that out since it has Tim Curry and Bruce Campbell.

In television:

Henry Winkler, after years, finally becomes the top billing cast member of Happy Days following an exit by Ron Howard and Donny Most. After literally jumping the shark three years earlier, the Fonz was finally the captain of a sinking ship. After five hilarious seasons, the original cast of SNL has their final episode. Regardless of what all the cool kids say, the show is still great.

In video games:

This might not seem like such a big deal but Pac-Man was released. This game is currently or was at one time the highest grossing video game across multiple platforms. It is completely and totally ubiquitous. We even have it on our site! (link) The game also introduced the first instance of a mascot character, appealed to a large number of female gamers, originated the idea of power-ups, and featured cutscenes. Toru Iwatani, creator of Pac-Man, received little recognition or acknowledgement for creating something that was, and I’m not being hyperbolic, one of the most important pieces of entertainment in the past century.