Welcome, dear readers, as we continue our slow-motion review of Star Wars IX:  The Rise of Skywalker.

As we said in our last, we thought that it might be useful, and we hope, interesting, to review it by seeing it as we imagine the creators did, as the final installment of something which began almost as “long ago” as that well-known subtitle says the story took place.

We begin with the idea of trilogies.

In Western story-telling, three is a kind of magic number—almost an embodiment of the English proverb, “Third time pays for all”, where the third of three things completes something.   Fairy tales, for instance often involve three wishes.  Sometimes that third wish is a corrective, when the first two take the story in a bad direction.  In the story of “The Fisherman’s wife”, one of the tales in the Grimm Brothers’ collection of German fairy tales, the greedy fisherman’s wife even asks for a fourth wish–and loses everything the first three have given her.  (If you don’t know this story, here’s a LINK to the 1868 edition of the first English translation (1823) of it, by Edgar Taylor:  https://ia600907.us.archive.org/12/items/germanpopularsto01grim/germanpopularsto01grim.pdf).

When we think of books written to be read in a three, we might think of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games,

or Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials

(if you’ve read these in the US, you’ll know that first volume, Northern Lights, by another title, The Golden Compass)

or, of course, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings

(although it was never designed to be such—early 1950s British printing demands broke what was thought of as a single work into three).

In the case of Star Wars, however, there is not one trilogy, but three.

(actually 2 and 2/3s—IX is not yet commercially available, but here it is for completeness).

Reading about the problems the original director/main writer, George Lucas,

faced in gradually developing the story, we learn that, for a time, his plans kept changing until he finally settled on beginning the big story not with I, but with IV.

Instead of returning to I after that, however, he went on to make his first trilogy of IV, V, and VI.

Ultimately, the two main characters of this trilogy are Luke Skywalker and his antagonist, Darth Vader.

In this second trilogy—although really the first in the series—Lucas had set his audiences what seemed to be several puzzles:

1. who was Darth Vader—and why/how does he turn out to be (no spoiler alert here, we’re pretty sure!) Luke’s father? (and, we’d add, “Who’s his mother?”)
2. what is the more general context—among other things, there’s talk of a republic and its senate, of “Jedi”, and then of the galaxy being ruled by an evil emperor who, when we see him, employs powers he derives from the “dark side” of “The Force”—so where does all of this come from?

And so, in this first trilogy (shown here with the second, as images of the first trilogy seem hard to find),

not only has the author given us several puzzles, but he’s seemingly set himself what might prove to be a very difficult task.  If he tells the story of Darth Vader in the first set of three films, Vader has already appeared as such a monster that it might be impossible to generate any sympathy for him, making him simply a two-dimensional villain of the sort the emperor appears to be in the second trilogy, and any films in which he is a main, if not the main, character, could be mostly just a series of repetitions of his evil behavior.  Instead, Star Wars I

begins with two of those Jedi, a master (as he’s called by the other), and an apprentice (called a “padawan”), Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan.

During their adventures, they encounter the Queen of Naboo, Padme,

and what appears to be a kind of child prodigy, Anakin.

Qui-Gon decides that Anakin is something called “the Chosen One”, who is to “bring balance to the Force” and proposes to adopt him as his next padawan/apprentice.  The difficulty with this, as we are told in time, is that Jedi:

1. must be without fear or anger
2. must renounce all attachments

Anakin, still a little boy, must leave his mother, Shmi (short for Lakshmi, after the Hindu goddess of good fortune?)

and is obviously troubled about this:  a possible serious flaw in his becoming a Jedi, let alone “the Chosen One”.

Qui-Gon is killed in a duel with a mysterious figure called “Darth Maul”,

who is, in turn, cut in two by Obi-Wan,

and, at the conclusion of this first film, Obi-Wan, now a Jedi himself, pledges to become Anakin’s master,

much against the will of a senior Jedi, Yoda, who has examined the boy and seen very clearly that flaw, along with his possibilities.

So far, then, the story is about promise, that Anakin will grow into a Jedi, but also a threat:  will Yoda’s doubts be proved correct?  And who was Darth Maul and why was he despatched on what looks like an assassination attempt?  We are briefly told that he was a “Sith” and the equivalent of a padawan, with the addition that, where there is one Sith, there is always one more…

The second film, Attack of the Clones,

seems to take place about 10 years later:  Obi-Wan is now a settled Jedi (with a beard) and Anakin is a sort of senior apprentice, who nurses a growing sense of resentment that he’s never recognized as he believes he should be for his abilities.

At this point, Padme, now a member of the Galactic Senate, reappears,

having just survived an assassination attempt.  Anakin confesses his attraction for her and, added to his anger, we see the very beginnings of what Yoda has always feared.

This is only intensified when Anakin discovers that his mother has been captured on his home planet of Tatooine by Sand People and, basically, tortured to death.

Beyond the personal, we see that the Republic is falling apart:  a number of planetary systems within the Galaxy are struggling to separate themselves.  The current Supreme Chancellor is forced to step down and, in his place, another senator from Naboo, Palpatine, is his replacement.  We saw Palpatine briefly in the first film and we see him again here and he seems like a sympathetic, if minor, figure.  Fatherless himself, and increasingly estranged from Obi-Wan, Anakin is drawn to him.

By the end of the second film, developments have come in quick succession:  the rebellion of the Separatists is being fueled by a one-time Jedi, Count Dooku; to defend itself, the remaining members of the Senate vote to form an army—only to find that there already is one, an army of clones; and Padme has fallen in love with Anakin and they secretly marry.

We now come to the last of this first trilogy with Revenge of the Sith.

In a way, the title says it all:  Senator Palpatine is revealed as the Sith lord, Darth Sidious, and Anakin, corrupted by his fears for Padme’s death in childbirth and Sidious’ suggestion that, as a Sith, he knows ways to deal with death, joins him as his apprentice, Darth Vader, as Sidious activates Order 66.  It seems that, behind that mysterious clone army is Sidious himself, who has also been behind the Separatists, all to overthrow the Republic and become Galactic emperor.  This, however, is only one of two goals.  The other is the complete destruction of the Jedi order and Order 66 is the command, implanted in the clones, to murder all of the Jedi without question.

 

This then leads to the climactic battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin/Darth Vader,

in which Obi-Wan reluctantly defends himself but eventually defeats Anakin, who is left sprawled and mutilated, while Obi-Wan escapes with Padme, whom a jealous Anakin has nearly murdered.  She dies, however, just as Anakin feared, in childbirth, leaving behind twins, Luke and Leia, who, to protect them from the murderous Darth Sidious, are to be raised on separate planets, Leia on Alderan and Luke on Tatooine.

Meanwhile, the dying Anakin is rescued by Sidious and reconstructed within the black armor in which we know Darth Vader, Sidious assuring him that he has killed Padme in his rage.

Yoda and Obi-Wan, two of the very few surviving Jedi, both disappear into exile, and we are left with the image of baby Luke in the arms of his foster parents, Beru and Owen, initiating a scene we will view again in the first film of the second trilogy.

So, in the three films of this first trilogy, we see:

1. the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Sith Darth Sidious as Galactic emperor
2. the destruction of the Jedi, with two notable exceptions
3. the failure of Anakin as “the Chosen One” and his rebirth as the apprentice of the greatest enemy of the Jedi
4. and yet we also see Anakin’s children, who will reappear in the fourth film, perhaps optimistically titled A New Hope?

We shall see in our next, even as we thank you for reading this posting, with a promise, rather than a hope, that

MTCIDC

CD

 

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Recently, we saw Star Wars IX:  The Rise of Skywalker

and we’d like to talk with you a bit about it.  If you follow this complex world, you’ve probably read reviews and even seen the film, as we have.  If so, you know that the reviews have been a wild mixture, although the tone among many has been dismissive and disappointed.

For us, the feelings were much more complicated.  After all, our first view of this world was with Star Wars IV:  A New Hope,

the subtitle of which, to us, who loved adventure stories—especially long, complex ones—was true.  Suddenly, we were in “a galaxy far, far away” in a time “long, long ago”:  phrases which sounded as traditional as “once upon a time” or “a king there was upon Ireland”, but phrases which indicated a hope for many new stories about new characters in new places.

And that hope has been fulfilled, over and over–

And not just with the slow but steady building of the main story, but with stories around the edges, from animated features like the Clone Wars

and Rebels

to Rogue One

 

to Solo.

And this is not to mention all of the novels, comic books, graphic novels, games, costumes, toys—some of the toys being our favorites…

 

 

as well as the bits of dialogue like:

“She’s rich.”

“Rich?”

“Rich, powerful.  Listen, if you were to rescue her, the reward would be…”

“What?”

“Well, more wealth than you can imagine!”

“I don’t know, I can imagine quite a bit.”

And

“Do or do not.  There is no try.”

Thinking of all of those things and much more and how they all began with one film, made us think of the long, complex history of the story of Troy.  Unlike Star Wars, this didn’t begin with one identifiable man,

but with an oral tradition of singers, aoidoi, in Greek,

who gradually spread and embellished upon what was probably once a song about a raid

but which, as it grew, included not only Greek adventures, like the homecoming of Odysseus,

but even Roman, with the escape from the collapsing city of the Trojan prince, Aeneas, who then, in Italy, will begin the process which will lead, in time, to the founding of Rome.

The same could be said for the King Arthur story, which may have begun with a tale about a kind of vague post-Roman historical figure,

and became, in western Europe, the center of a web of medieval stories and spin-offs

up to the present (and who can forget Monty Python and the Holy Grail?).

Here’s a LINK to some—and it’s only some—of those treatments and spin-offs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_based_on_Arthurian_legends#Film

Because the story is so complicated and because our reactions to IX are also so complicated, we thought that we’d tackle our review a little like the original, by moving in three postings, one to cover each trilogy, leading up, at the end of the third, to our reaction—reactions, really—to the final episode (with a spoiler alert:  we will not grumble, complain, or condemn IX, only try to understand what it is trying to do and what we are feeling about what we understand, with a huge amount of gratitude for all that the series has given us along the way).

So, thanks for reading, as always, and definitely

MTCIDC

CD

ps

If you haven’t seen it, we definitely recommend the Camelot Project sponsored by the University of Rochester (the US one) at this LINK:  https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/theme/arthur

 

 

 

“ ‘Then what is Durin’s Day?’ asked Elrond.

‘The first day of the dwarves’ New Year,’ said Thorin, ‘is as all should know the first day of the last moon of Autumn on the threshold of Winter.’ “ (The Hobbit, Chapter Three, “A Short Rest”)

Welcome, dear readers, to our end-of-the-year posting.  It will be posted on January 1, 2020—which is hardly Durin’s Day.

But when is Durin’s Day?

It seems that that is as much a puzzle for Thorin as it might be for us, as he says:

“ ‘We call it Durin’s Day when the last moon of Auturm and the sun are in the sky together.  But this will not help us much, I fear, for it passes our skill in these days to guess when such a time will come again.’ “

Thorin and Gandalf have consulted Elrond over the map of the Lonely Mountain made by (or for) Thror, Thorin’s grandfather, and Elrond has discovered that the map has more to tell than would first appear.

As, in the light of a crescent moon, Elrond

“held up the map and the white light shone through it.  ‘What is this?’ he said.  ‘There are moon-letters here, beside the plain runes…’ “

Those briefly-readable lunar runes (highlighted in white on our image), say:

“Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks…and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole.”

Like the first day of the dwarves’ New Year, the first day of the Western New Year has been a bit of a mystery over the centuries, too.

Ultimately, our calendar comes from the Roman calendar and that calendar, at its beginnings, was already in trouble, and all because of that same moon which illuminates Thror’s map.

Roman tradition said that this calendar had been edited by the founder of Rome, Romulus, here depicted murdering his twin brother, Remus, before introducing

his ten-month lunar calendar.  His successor, Numa Pompilius,

attempting to combine a solar with a lunar calendar, added two months, but was forced to add another, shorter, month, every two years so that the seasons and the calendar didn’t drift too far apart.  As this still caused difficulties, Julius Caesar, many centuries later,

recently made “Dictator for Life” by the Senate, consulted an Alexandrian astronomer, Sosigenes, and redesigned the calendar with 12 months with a total of 365 ¼ days, an extra day being added every four years to fill out that ¼ day—that is, more or less, a solar year.  There are a lot of complications in this which we ourselves would roll our eyes over, so, if you would like more information, here’s the WIKI LINK:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar.

The difficulty with this, as we understand it, is that that ¼ day is fractionally longer than a quarter and that, over many years, the seasons and the calendar still managed to drift apart, so that, by the early 1580s, there was a 10-day gap.  This was adjusted by a new calendar, authorized by Pope Gregory XIII, in 1582, which recalibrated things in such a way that we’re still using that system in 2019.

But what about the first day of the Western New Year?

Originally, Romans, with a ten-month calendar (which is why we the names “Septem-ber, Octo-ber, Novem-ber, and Decem-ber”, even though, now, those names/numbers can no longer be correlated with the modern 12-month variety), marked the beginning of the New Year as late in March, at the time of the vernal equinox.   This was one of two days a year when day and night are approximately equal (the other is on the autumnal equinox, which, as the name suggests, is in the fall).  In 2020, that will be on March 20^th.

Although the Roman Republic had established 1 January as the beginning of the civil year, when their two chief magistrates, the consuls, took office,

that late March date was still being used until, along with his 12-month reform, Caesar permanently moved the beginning of the year to the first day of the extra month named after the god of endings and beginnings, Janus.

This shift also nicely fit in with the season of traditional Roman year-end festivities (which seemed to go on no matter what the calendar might be doing), including the Saturnalia,

and the later addition of the festival of Sol Invictus (the “unconquered sun”), all from mid-to-late December.

This worked until 567AD, when Christian clergy, meeting at the Council of Tours, decreed that 1 January still reeked of paganism and shifted the beginning of the year back to late March—March 25^th, in fact, where it remained until Pope Gregory XIII (remember him?) revised the calendar and moved it back to 1 January.  Most of the West adopted this new version of the calendar rather speedily, except for Great Britain, which didn’t make the change until 1752.  (So, when you see that George Washington, for example, was born on 22 February, 1732, until he was about 20, he must have believed that he had been born on 11 February, 1731.)

But what about Durin’s Day? we asked some time ago.

We know that Thorin seems a bit unsure and that would appear to be true for his creator, as well.  The best guess (with the author sort of behind it) would be 19 October, but, if you want to pursue it farther than that, see this LINK:  http://thorinoakenshield.net/confusticate-and-bebother-these-dates-the-durins-day-dilemma/  The author does a very good job of, well, trying to deal with something JRRT once wrote in a note at the top of a page of revisions for the projected 1966 edition of The Hobbit, “Hobbit Time table is not very clear”.

In this world, however, in the West, 1 January remains the beginning of the year and we wish you a happy and prosperous one, no matter when/how you celebrate.

With thanks for reading, as always, and, as always

MTCIDC

CD

ps

The traditional New Year’s song in the English-speaking world is Robert Burn’s “Auld Lang Syne” (literally, “Old Long Since”) and our favorite version is that of Leopold Kozeluch (1747-1818).

Here’s a LINK so that you can hear it for yourself:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INzME1iKkGE