Movie review: Disney Star Wars #3, Rise of Skywalker

I watched Rise of Skywalker and it was glorious! I have so much to say. It started off slow--I had fallen asleep twice by the time Rey blew up the transport, once for a few seconds and once for quite a bit longer. But then the movie really hit its stride, and every two minutes, like clockwork, it began showing me new ways to be logically, physically, narratively, dramatically, emotionally, or tactically ludicrous. It was glorious, like a movie script written and directed by a middle schooler who hasn't yet learned to "show, don't tell" (i.e. use acting instead of exposition) but that WASN'T THE END OF IT! There was another hour of glorious nonsense to go, and by the end of it I had changed my mind: this wasn't a movie script written by a middle schooler. It was halfway between a movie script written by a third grader, and the incoherent stream-of-consciousness insanity my subconscious spews at me when I'm asleep.

Storm troopers dressed like nuns? Old man Lando hitting on the female version of Finn? Luke and Leia looking like a married couple, no Han in sight? Faceless hordes of Sith death cults? Three COMPLETELY DIFFERENT evil master plan climaxes from Emperor Palpatine in the same scene, none of them so much as acknowledging the previous climax? Kylo Ren going completely mute for the last third of the movie for no apparent reason?

The weirdness is transcendent.

It. Was. Amazing.

This may be the worst movie I've ever seen. Yes, worse than Last Jedi, worse than Thor, *maybe* even worse than Spielberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence. Maybe. I'm not sure. They both left me incredulous with laughter every few minutes, but I think Rise of Skywalker did it more frequently, and for more total minutes.

-Max

Linguistic oddity

Quoting from the play:

Sweeney Todd: [in anguish] Fifteen years sweating in a living hell on a trumped up charge! Fifteen years of dreaming that, perhaps, I might come home to a loving wife and child… [grimly] Let them quake in their boots – Judge Turpin and the Beadle, for their hour has come.

"Trumped-up" means "concocted with intent to deceive; deliberately done or created to make someone appear to be guilty of a crime." Future writers could be forgiven for mistaking it for a reference to the fact-free 2019 impeachment, but it's really much older, and yet still amazingly apt. Is that wild or what? I wouldn't be surprised if some people accidentally started capitalizing the saying, "Trumped-up charge." 

-Max

 
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I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Recognizing Revelation

Context: when Abraham was 75 years old, the Lord promised him that he would have a great posterity, and this promise was repeated several times over the years. "This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir." When he was 85 years old, he still had no children. It appears that Abraham and Sarah took it upon themselves to do everything they could to make the Lord's promise come true, via a surrogate mother:

"And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai... And Abram was fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram."

But it turned out the Lord had something else in mind. Four years later when Abraham was 90 years old, the Lord gave Abraham the name of his future son Isaac, and ten years after that when he was 100 years old Isaac was born.

Open question: when Abraham and Sarah made Ishmael happen, were they wrong to do so? Did it show lack of faith in the Lord's promises?

My opinion: maybe or maybe not--I don't know what the Spirit said previously to Abraham's heart or in what detail. I don't think the Lord was angry with Abraham for doing as much as he could, but I am also not prepared to say that the Spirit wouldn't have told Abraham in advance that the Lord really, truly, literally meant it when He promised Abraham and Sarah a posterity. Sometimes it's hard for people to believe in things that aren't going to happen until 25 years in the future, but the Lord knows the end from the beginning.

How can you distinguish your own hopes and feelings from the Lord's promises? Only by the spirit of revelation. Yes, I realize that's a somewhat circular answer. To put it differently, "recognizing revelation requires reflection, prayer and practice." It's like learning to use your sense of smell: you know when it's working because it works, but it can't be described fully in terms of words or things you can see.

Ask me in 25 or 100 or 6000 years how things turned out with the things that I am not completely 100% sure of right now.

~B.C.

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I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.