With “The Rise of Skywalker” looming on Dec. 20, we throw caution to the desert winds of Tatooine on this week’s Be Reel and revisit every ‘Star Wars‘ movie in the Skywalker Saga.
To keep things under 100 hours long, we decided to take an essayistic approach to this eight-movie marathon: try to give one fresh observation on each installment, rate the film, and move on. Some of our talking points ended up being larger questions about the universe we’d never considered: “Just how central to this galaxy is the Skywalker Saga?” For other movies, we appreciated actors like Peter Cushing, who we never quite realized lent the first film such steadiness and gravitas.
As we discuss briefly, a good deal of our current thinking about the ‘Star Wars’ franchise stems from changes in our own relationship to the films. I, for one, was an Expanded Universe junkie growing up. (Sorry in advance for dropping the name K.W. Jeter in our quick discussion of “The Mandalorian.”) But as my love of ‘Star Wars’ gave way to a broader love of movies in high school and beyond, the revisionism of George Lucas looks a little different. As both fans and cinephiles, what should we do with films in which filmmaking perhaps wasn’t the top priority?
Overall, you won’t find the discussions herein too fraught. If you do feel compelled to come at us on Twitter for liking “The Last Jedi,” well, I’d invite you to try a more elegant weapon from a more civilized age.
READ MORE: John Boyega Didn’t Agree With Some Choices Made In ‘The Last Jedi’ & Felt Film Was “Iffy”
As always, Be Reel is part of The Playlist Podcast Network—which includes The Discourse, The Fourth Wall, and more—and can be heard on iTunes, AnchorFM, Soundcloud, Stitcher, and now on Spotify. To listen on this page, you can stream the podcast via the AnchorFM embed below or up top. Follow us on iTunes, and you’ll get this podcast as well as our other shows regularly. Be sure to subscribe, and drop us a comment or a rating as we do appreciate it. Thanks for listening.
