Let’s talk about fan service

The idea behind fan service is to put something into a work – say a movie – that would please the fans.  However, lately it seems the term “fan service” is applied to any stupid shit that clueless, corporate stooges cram into a movie even though nobody wants it.  My opinion, is that – broadly speaking – there is good fan service and bad fan service.  The problem is that good fan service requires thought to be put into it, whereas any clueless, corporate stooge can cram in bad fan service.  This is something that’s been in the back of my mind for some time now, but it really came to the head recently with The Rise of Skywalker, so I’ll use examples from Star Wars. 

An example of good fan service – again, in my opinion – is the crumpled AT-AT where Rey lives in The Force Awakens.  There’s the nostalgic “I remember those” which seems to be the foundation of modern fan service, but it’s also an element of world building.  We had already seen a crashed Star Destroyer, but Rey’s AT-AT drives home that the galaxy is littered with the wreckage from the fall of the Empire.  If they had better scripts – and a plan – that might have built to something, other than a McGuffin in the wreck of Death Star II.

While I could use the wreckage of the Death Star II as an example of bad fan service – “I remember that” – I’ll go to the Prequels instead.  My example is Anakin building C-3PO.  Why?  To be perfectly honest, R2-D2 could have just shown up in Episode III in a cameo and that would have been fine, and would have fit in with that one line in A New Hope.  There is no reason for C-3PO to be in the Prequels, let alone having been built by Anakin.  Oh, it could have been fun to see how the two droids met if the giant shoehorn cramming them into the plot wasn’t so distracting.  And that is the problem with bad fan service: the eye-rolling distraction of them outweigh any benefit to the story of having them there.  Now, I remember at the time a friend going on about how R2-D2 and C-3PO were the only characters in all the movies, but there doesn’t seem to be a point to that.  Especially with the latest trilogy.  But the Prequels needed some nostalgia, since that’s easier to do than compelling stories.

I used to be a Star Wars fan.  I gave it up in the Prequel days, but this latest trilogy didn’t do anything to change that.  As a former Star Wars fan, I wanted good movies.  That might have brought me back.  But that requires actually writing good movies.  I didn’t want just any random shit to remind me of the good movies thrown on screen as “fan service.” But what can we expect from clueless, corporate stooges who are more interested in making a quick buck than lasting art.

My The Rise of Skywalker Prediction

Some people will love it.  More people won’t. 

Now, I know talking about the problems of Star Wars is like shooting mynocks in a barrel, but it’s the internet so what am I supposed to do?  To explain my meh feelings about IX (I’ll just use numbers instead of typing out their names all the time), I’ll have to explain my feelings about VII and VIII.

I thought VII was rather bland and mediocre.  They have to destroy this evil superweapon?  Gee, I’ve never seen that before.  VII was their chance to do something bold and show us a new part of this galaxy that we’ve not seen before.  (New does not always equal good, but I’ll get to that.)  Instead, they played it safe which is why I found it bland and mediocre.

In VIII they tried some new stuff, but there is goodnew and badnew.  An example of goodnew from Star Wars are the AT-ATs in V.  We’d seen Stormtroopers storm a ship in IV, but we hadn’t seen them attack a base.  So the attack in the beginning of V filled in a gap, but did it in a way that fit in with the world already established in IV.  An example of badnew from outside Star Wars would be the portkeys in Harry Potter.  One would think that someone – a teacher, Hagrid, Ron – would have sat Harry down in the first year and given him a crash course on magical things.  So why is it that it isn’t until the fourth book that he first hears about this thing?  It wouldn’t be that bad, but it happens in like every book where there’s something new but Harry has conveniently never heard of it so it can be explained to the audience.  (“They can fly now?”)

There are a couple bits of badnew in VIII.  One are arms dealers.  Where did the Empire get its weapons?  Well, they were probably built by droids in a factory.  Bigger things – like the Death Star – were probably built by the Stormtrooper version of the Army Corps of Engineers possibly using slave labor.  (I wouldn’t put it past the Empire to do that.)  That is stuff that isn’t really explored in the movies, but it’s headcanon that makes sense.  So where did the First Order get their weapons?  They probably took over some factories from the Empire days, or they go to some planet and say, “Give us weapons, or we’ll invade you.” Again, this isn’t covered in the movies, but it makes sense.

Now are there arms dealers in Star Wars?  Sure, but they’re probably small and very local.  They’re more likely to deal with crime family’s fighting over a system or two than dealing with the First Order.  So they’d make some money, but not be the 1% of the galaxy as seen in VIII.  If they had just left them as generic rich assholes, fine, but by calling out arms dealers it became a square bit trying to fit into a round world building hole.

The bigger badnew in VIII was the hyperspace ramming.  Yes, it looked cool, but after three seconds I thought, Why hasn’t anyone done that before?  And that just opens up a mess of contradictions.  Just a movie earlier they had a scene where some of our heroes came out of hyperspace within the shield of Starkiller Base.  Something that would have been useful in VI.  But if they hadn’t come out of hyperspace, would that have caused major damage to the base?  So why do all this sneaking around and attacking with X-wings when you could just send a couple hyperspace missiles?  It feels like the conversation went: “It’s going to look really cool!” “But how will it fit in with the established lore-” “IT’S GOING TO LOOK REALLY COOL!”

In the end, given the marketing for IX about it being an end of a saga and the biggest and bestest thing since blue milk, they make it sound like Star Wars is going out with a bang.  But given the lead-in from VII and VIII, I think the best IX can do is a whimper.  It is all too easy to build a shitty house on a solid foundation, but it’s next to impossible to build a solid house on a shitty foundation.

Ideas for Episode IX

Given how things ended in The Last Jedi and the death of Carrie Fisher, here is my idea of how Episode IX will start.  I don’t really have an idea on how it would end, but it doesn’t really matter since it’s unlikely they’ll do anything like this.

Anyway, I’d say Episode IX will be set at most two years after The Last Jedi.  Rose and Finn will probably have a baby, maybe with another on the way.  The Resistance just has a handful of transports and fighters and are probably hidden out in some asteroid field.  (I’d love to see the remnants of Alderaan, but they probably wouldn’t do that.)  Poe will be second-in-command, after Leia.  Leia will be off meeting with a group somewhere trying to get them to join.  There will probably be a couple staticky transmission on her progress.  Possibly during one she’ll be talking and then there will be background explosions and someone shouting, “They’ve found us.” She’ll look at Poe and say, “May the Force-” and then the transmission will end.  I know, I know, killing Leia off-screen in a transmission will offend people.  But killing her off between the movies, saying that she’s retired and no longer part of the Resistance, saying that she’s off on some mission which we never see, hiring a new actress, hiring a new actress but CGIng Fisher’s face onto them … whatever is done will offend someone.  Also, it would probably make sense that Chewie would be flying Leia around in the Millennium Falcon, maybe with C-3PO, but killing them all off-screen would be too much.  Anyway, fearing they may have been discovered, the Resistance moves on. 

Meanwhile in the First Order, Hux is having a ball reforming the Empire and crushing any dissent.  But while Hux needs to take a cold shower whenever reading they massacred 10,000 civilians on some planet, Kylo is bored with the day to day tyranny.  That’s why I said it would probably be no more than two years because that’s probably how long before Hux tries something stupid with Kylo and is killed.  Kylo is focused on his White Bantha, Rey.

Rey isn’t with the rest of the Resistance.  She is probably out spreading the message of the Force is for everyone.  At first I thought she might be going around with Chewie in the Falcon, but she probably realizes that the Resistance needs it more than she does.  This might lead to some humor over whether or not Chewie will let Poe fly the Falcon.  Rey travels the galaxy by hopping freighters, maybe earning her passage as a mechanic.  Never knowing where she’ll end up, she lands on a planet and goes out and talks to the people. 

She ends up back on Jakku.  She probably goes back to her old home, only to find someone else is living there.  Maybe she goes off to some hidden cave and recovers a box of little treasures she had hidden years before.  She probably has a long discussion with Force Luke.  And then her old boss sees her and calls in the First Order.

So that’s my idea of the setup.  How it ends, I don’t know.  Rey will confront Kylo, but it won’t be the simple, She kills him, the end.  It will probably be some Forcy-Worcy stuff.  As to the First Order, really the best way to defeat it would be if the people of the galaxy rose up to do it.  But I have no idea how they could set that up.  Rey talking to the people would be part of it, but there’s no social media for the Resistance to spread their message.  Instead they’ll probably just do the Resistance – somehow – gets a small fleet of warships and by the skin of their teeth they take out the First Order fleet and the whole galaxy celebrates.