Musings

While announcing the new headless Mac Studio last week (the mythical midrange workstation catering to creative professionals that it seemed Apple would never release) and its accompanying 27 inch Studio Display, Apple very quietly confirmed that these would ostensibly be replacing the now-discontinued larger 27 inch iMac and iMac Pro (collectively the “Big iMacs”, with apologies to McDonalds) that those same professionals had leveraged for over a decade. And yet Big iMacs had also found a home on the desks of hobbyists such as myself and content creators of various levels throughout recent years. Some of us will miss the Big iMac, but the writing has been on the wall for some time that it no longer has a niche to fill in Apple’s product line.

History of the Big iMac

When Steve Jobs introduced the Macintosh at the 1984 Apple Shareholders meeting as the friendly computer that said “Hello” to you, one of the first reassuring visuals a user would see following the boot up chime was the “Happy Mac” - a stylised version of the computer itself with a smiling face over the screen (as opposed to the “Sad Mac”, made infamous on Sex and the City). This anthropomorphised icon persisted throughout the era of classic MacOS, even as the shape of the Macintoshes it featured on changed and started to resemble their beige pizza box-shaped PC cousins.

It wasn’t until Jobs’s triumphant return to Apple in the late 90s that a true successor befitting the Happy Mac arrived - namely, the original iMac G3, with its candy-coloured chassis surrounding a dominant 15 inch CRT display and prominent “chin” featuring its optical drive and speakers. Here was another computer whose screen and chin once again resembled a face smiling back at the user. In fact, the ejecting optical drive even went so far as to resemble a tongue blowing a raspberry. Despite a temporary reversion to a slot-loading drive, the tongue took on even more prominence in the successor “sunflower” iMac G4, which also came with an articulating neck to hold the “face” above its “torso” (though let’s not take the analogy too far in this instance!).

The iMac G4 debuted in January 2002 with a 15 inch LCD screen, but it was quickly followed in July by a 17 inch model. While the PC industry was only just beginning a painfully slow transition from hulking 4:3 CRT displays to thinner LCDs, Apple had already taken two further steps forward - offering a much larger (for the time) 17 inch display, with a more visually pleasing “widescreen” 16:10 aspect ratio and a “high-definition” resolution of 1440x900. Naturally, these features were initially marketed at “prosumers” and creative professionals, leveraging Apple’s “digital hub” strategy of making the desktop computer a central repository for photos, videos, and music. These customers typically could not necessarily afford Apple’s 20 inch or 23 inch Cinema Displays or the PowerMac G4s and G5s that went with them. Very briefly towards the end of its life, a 20 inch iMac G4 joined the line - then a behemoth size for an all-in-one.

The 20 inch display would seem less oversized in the 2004 iMac G5, which is the direct ancestor of all modern iMacs - featuring a widescreen LCD display and a seemingly superfluous “chin” that has housed various components over the years, in a package that “floated” off the ground thanks to a rigid, tiltable rear stand. The iMac G5 and its first Intel successors would continue to come in white plastic 17 and 20 inch models, until the 17 inch was phased out in 2006 and replaced by another behemoth “Full HD” 1920x1200 24 inch model - finally offering prosumers and creatives a screen that would allow them to natively view (and better deliver) HD content.

By the time the iMac moved to a unibody aluminum enclosure in late 2007, peak iMac had been reached - this same basic model would lead a long life, morphing through ever-thinner enclosures and “retina” resolution displays. Its product range would only see one further change is screen sizes - a bump for each model to 21.5 and 27 inches, respectively, in late 2009. These Small and Big iMac sizes would persist for almost 12 years.

The Swiss Army knife of computers

Of course, the lure of an enormous 27 inch desktop display was too tempting for me, and I found myself amongst the early adopters of the original Big iMac in 2009. Thanks to a strong Australian dollar almost at parity with the USD, the price of entry was not much over AUD 2000. For this, the Big iMac brought a considerable amount to the table: most visibly, an enormous 2560x1440 LED display that would comfortably fit full HD content and editing workflows, at a time when most commonly available displays were barely cracking 20 inches, at lower resolutions, and lesser LCD and display technologies. The Big iMac also came with then-higher end Core 2 Duo processor options (though still largely based on mobile chips) as well as two key distinctions from the Small iMac: user-upgradable RAM slots and the ability to use the display as a monitor for other computers in “Target Display” mode.

Together with the availability of progressively better processors over the years (eventually moving across to Intel’s main i5/i7/i9 desktop CPUs) and an eventual doubling of the resolution to a 5120x2880 “retina” 5K standard, these features made the Big iMac an increasingly cost-efficient proposition for content creators and creative professionals. Having set up several of them for editing workflows across a number of feature films, television series, as well as hours of ancillary and online content, I can attest to the fact that Big iMacs were cheap enough to buy and spec up for even single project use, offered great value for money when amortised over several projects, and could easily be repurposed later for less-intensive desktop work.

This became all the more significant as the Mac Pro found itself at a lengthy crossroads, when the move in 2013 to an “innovative” cylindrical chassis (referred to by some as a nuclear reactor, but more ubiquitously as a “trash can”) created a thermal ceiling that Intel’s workstation-class processors and modern graphics cards could not stay within. The resulting lack of updates to the Mac Pro over 6 years made the Big iMac even more obvious as the flexible and modern option for creative workflows. Some customers responded by leveraging Apple’s use of an Intel architecture and building cheaper “Hackintoshes” using off-the-shelf parts.

Apple on the other hand leaned the Big iMac into this “professional” identity in late 2017 by creating a sleek special edition black iMac Pro. The iMac Pro was a stop-gap solution using Intel Xeon processors with a greater number of cores than their mainstream products, as well as workstation grade graphics cards. This decidedly “Professional” iMac would also have a starting price of USD 5000 to match. But some of its benefits - primarily in terms of better processors and graphics, as well as some improvements in display technology - would also find their way back to the Big iMac as well, which once again proved itself to be the better value proposition.

And yet with greater power and performance being pushed through an unchanging thin chassis originally designed for laptop grade chips, the Big iMac (as well as the iMac Pro) would eventually start to suffer from the same thermal dissipation issues that hampered the development of the trashcan Mac Pro. It could no longer be all things to all people - and high-end professionals were finally offered a new pathway in 2019 with the release of a new, highly customisable and upgradable Mac Pro tower. Starting at an eye-watering USD 6000, with a matching Pro Display XDR for a further USD 5000 (without even a stand, that would infamously cost an additional USD 1000!), these machines were clearly targeted only at the very top end - beyond the reach of all but the most well-resourced creative studios, and certainly not for hobbyists or anyone looking for cost-effective solutions.

Apple silicon transition

With the long-awaited transition from Intel to Apple silicon in 2020, the game changed. At the loss of native interoperability with Windows, Apple was finally freed from the thermal performance shackles imposed by Intel. As they had been doing for mobile devices for a decade, Apple’s M1 chip leapfrogged the performance per watt offered by Intel’s laptop and desktop chips. The initial batch of M1 Mac Minis and MacBooks Air and Pro displayed single core performance significantly higher than even the highest-end of its predecessor Intel Macs, and were surprisingly competitive on multi core performance as well. These were soon followed by a thinner 24 inch M1 iMac (with a 4.5K display in a thin and colourful chassis, now housing all of the computer components in the iMac’s “chin”), and two new and slightly thicker 14 and 16 inch MacBooks Pro featuring even more powerful M1 Pro and M1 Max chips with up to 10 CPU and 32 GPU cores.

Based on performance benchmarks, the basic M1 chips found in the Mac Mini, MacBook Air and iMac offer 45% better single core performance than the previously top end Big iMac, and come within 7-17% of multi core scores of the highest customised 10 core Intel i9 CPU for around a third of the price. The multi core performance of the M1 Pro and M1 Max in the new MacBook Pros are on par with the highest end iMac Pro and lower end Mac Pro (for less than half the price). Only the uppermost 16, 24 and 28 core Mac Pros outperform the M1 Max - and leaked benchmarks of the new M1 Ultra featured in the Mac Studio suggests its performance will best even those by up to 30% (again, at a fraction of the price). With Apple being able to deliver this level of performance on its own silicon, one would assume their eventual Mac Pro replacement will easily fit in well above all of these at a price to match.

What all of this means is that the 27 inch Big iMac that was all things to all people is no longer required. Consumers have a more than capable laptop in the M1 MacBook Air, a headless desktop in the M1 Mac Mini, and a perfectly adequate all-in-one 24 inch M1 iMac. These models also provide sufficient performance for prosumers and hobbyists (which I unashamedly count myself amongst), though I think there may be room for the M1 Max from the MacBooks Pro to find its way into in the Mac Mini and iMac for these users as well. The Mac Studio provides options for creative professionals and content creators, and can be paired either with Apple’s new Studio Display or any number of similar (and more cost-effective) displays from other manufacturers. Finally, while the days of high-end professionals needing to spec out a 27 inch iMac or iMac Pro had already ended with the introduction of the 2019 Mac Pro, even this niche of the market is presented with options for now given the stellar performance of all of the M1 chips (especially the Mac Studio’s M1 Ultra). And it won’t be long before the Apple silicon replacement for the Mac Pro makes them an even more compelling offering.

Just prior to the release of the third movie of Disney’s Star Wars trilogy, I posted some thoughts to the effect that I no longer had the energy to write at length about what Star Wars had become under their watch, because I no longer had any love left to fuel that effort. THE MANDALORIAN has changed all that and, ever since then finale of its second season, I’ve been wanting to process and contextualise why it has been so impactful. The clearest place to start is the finale itself, and the sequence that has led adult fans across the world to revert to a child-like state of wonder and break down into tears. If you haven’t already seen THE MANDALORIAN, in particular “Chapter 16 - THE RESCUE” then please read no further - do yourself a favour and stay off the internet until you’ve caught yourself up. From here on, the spoilers will be rife.

A QUICK RECAP

The clues leading to the finale’s big reveal are staged in a masterfully accelerating fashion, leading to a crescendo of certainty that no amount of “subverted expectations” could extinguish. Imperial Moff Gideon has recaptured the Child (Grogu), and the Mandalorian (Din Djarin) has managed to locate him and threatened that he will stop at nothing to free his ward from Gideon’s clutches. We rejoin Mando and his allies (shock trooper Cara Dune, assassin Fennec Shand and her benefactor the infamous bounty hunter Boba Fett, and two survivors of the Mandalorian Death Watch in heiress Bo-Katan Kryze and Koska Reeves) as they chase an Imperial Lambda-class shuttle in Fett’s ship, Slave I. After a minor altercation with Imperial officers taunting Dune over the destruction of her home planet of Alderaan, they capture the Imperial scientist Pershing who, at Moff Gideon’s direction, has been using blood samples from the Child (Grogu) in cloning experiments that quite possibly may lead to the resurrection of the Emperor years later (ugh). 

With Pershing’s help and Boba Fett creating a distraction, they use the shuttle to stage a boarding of Gideon’s cruiser. Mando searches for the Child while the others quickly take the bridge. First Mando has to deactivate the ominous Dark Troopers, one of whom escapes from cold storage before Mando is able to seal the others in. As the remaining Dark Troopers persistently continue to punch the doors, gradually wearing away at them, Mando engages in mortal combat against the escaped Dark Trooper. It is relentless and seemingly indestructible, a veritable terminator that keeps pounding away at Mando despite all of his tricks. Held by the scruff of his neck, the Dark Trooper keeps punching his helmet into a wall. Mando can only use his flamethrower and wrist launcher as mere distractions to get the Dark Trooper to release him, and it is only after he notices the Dark Trooper’s blaster shots deflecting off his beskar armour that he realises that a well-placed thrust of his beskar spear into the Dark Trooper’s weak neck will take out his foe. Moments before the remaining platoon is about to escape cold storage, Mando is able to vent them all into space. 

Mando proceeds to the brig where he finds Moff Gideon holding the Child at the point of the infamous Mandalorian Darksaber. Gideon demands that Mando disarm himself, and warns Mando to assume that he knows everything and is in complete control. He describes the power of the Darksaber and the fact that it gives the one who wields it a claim to the Mandalorian throne. When Din surprises him by telling him to keep it in exchange for the Child, Gideon agrees - noting that he’s already got what he wanted (namely, Grogu’s blood with its rare properties - aka Midichlorians). Gideon permits Mando to take the Child, provided he leaves the ship and they go their separate ways. But of course, it’s a ruse and the moment Mando tries to take the Child Gideon stabs him in the back and engages him with the Darksaber. Of course, it can’t cut through beskar so he is evenly matched against Mando’s beskar armour and spear. However Mando is the superior warrior and quickly disarms him, much to Gideon’s surprising glee. For when Mando takes Gideon to the bridge and offers the Darksaber to Bo-Katan, Gideon smugly tells Mando that Bo-Katan needed to win the Darksaber in combat - and that now means that she has to take it by force from Din. Bo-Katan’s indecision is interrupted by the proximity sensor, and Fennec informs the others that the Dark Troopers (with their Iron Man-like foot rockets) have reboarded the ship. They quickly march towards the bridge against a thumping dub step soundtrack, and Fennec seals the blast doors.

Trapped in an unwinnable position, the posse prepares for a Sundance-style fatal showdown. A single Dark Trooper all but overpowered Mando, so a platoon of them would vanquish even this elite squad in short order. Gideon idly taunts  that no one except for himself and the Child will end up leaving the room alive.

Then the proximity sensor pings once more.  

This is the moment when you expect a Deus ex Machina. When the odds are so heavily weighted against the protagonists that only a “machine of the gods” is going to be able to get them out of their impossible predicament. Season 2 laid the seeds for a couple of such options - most obviously, the New Republic has a small but insignificant presence in the Outer Rim that Mando has encountered a few times in his recent travels (almost literally the cavalry). Boba Fett may still be a part of the plan, skipping out only briefly to return with reinforcements. Despite the elimination of the coven on Navarro, perhaps another coven of the Mandalorian zealots might return to save the day as they did in Season 1. 

But none of these really make proper sense. Ever since the first appearance of the Child in Season 1, and Mando’s subsequent quest to return him to his kind, all roads had to eventually lead to only one person. Not Ahsoka Tano, whose return was a welcome return to form (more on that later), but who steadfastly refused to be considered a Jedi after leaving the order and would not agree to train Grogu lest his attachment to Mando might lead him to suffer the same fate as her former Master. No - at this point in time, there exists only one true Jedi in the entire Galaxy.

Bo-Katan is the first to notice the solitary X-Wing approaching, with Cara’s subsequent quip suggesting it would make no difference at all - it might just be Captain Teva or Trapper Wolf again. But this was the first in a series of subtle but escalating hints as to how wrong she really is. If there were any doubt, the next few moments would lay them to rest. The X-Wing flies into the docking bay on the security cam - it bears indistinct but clearly older Rebellion-era markings, and does not respond to Bo-Katan’s hail. Grogu’s ears perk up - he senses the arrival. Then, abruptly, the Dark Troopers stop punching the door. In unison, they all do an about-face towards a new threat approaching. For the first time, the all-knowing smirk is wiped off Gideon’s face. 

A gentle guitar arpeggio and choral ballad reminiscent of Qui-Gon and Padmé’s Funeral themes begins as we see the second clue on the security cam - a hooded figure walking down a hallway, wearing a dark cloak. It could still be anyone, but it could definitely be the one we’ve all silently hoped to see for so long. This is followed in short order by the third, almost definitive clue: the hooded figure on the security cam expertly wields a single lightsaber, cutting through Dark Troopers like butter. Bo-Katan immediately identifies the figure as a Jedi, and suddenly Moff Gideon’s face betrays fear for the first time. 

Then we see the one thing we’ve waited decades for - a green lightsaber. Not a blue historical artefact wielded by plot-amour protected novice, but a brilliant green blade self-made to stand out against the deep blue desert skies of Tatooine. At last, we allow ourselves to feel hopeful once more. Only one of those Dark Troopers nearly ended Din Djarin minutes ago, but this figure deflects their blaster bolts back into them and slices through their torsos like the battledroids of old. However, unlike the flamboyant Jedi of the Old Republic, the figure’s strokes are spartan and precise. Grogu is at attention because he knows who’s coming to rescue them.

And finally, a low shot of the green blade shows the black leather glove holding onto it and all doubt is removed. It’s LUKE FUCKING SKYWALKER. Luke as the Jedi Master he (and his father) aspired be, at the height of his powers. Luke, who bested but never quite defeated Darth Vader, and through his unwavering faith enabled his father to destroy the most powerful evil in the Galaxy. No longer a naive farm boy, but a full fledged Jedi and, both by default and power, the Grand Master of the New Jedi Order. And certainly not the cranky old defeated hermit passing off for Luke in certain other films, with no hope, determination, or empathy. The REAL Luke Skywalker. This is who heard Grogu’s call two episodes ago, and is the only possible person with whom Grogu could end up with. 

Luke slashes through several more Dark Troopers, and force pushes a crate against another. Craning his neck to see the carnage on the security cams, Moff Gideon realises that the battle is lost and he makes his desperate last move. Clutching the hidden blaster beneath his cloak, he fires at Bo-Katan before taking a shot at the Child. Mando valiantly throws himself into the line of fire - in a way, both moments would have been more powerful if beskar wasn’t so strong as to harmlessly absorb Gideon’s shots. So too would it have been if a shot got through to Grogu, putting him in grave danger. 

The figure cleans up the Dark Troopers on the lower level and takes the elevator up towards the bridge. The Dark Troopers in the exterior hallway wait silently. We’ve seen this moment before - in A NEW HOPE, before the stormtroopers cut through the port on the Tantive IV; and again, in ROGUE ONE, as the lights go out on the Profundity’s docking bay. The final light ignites and the doors open - the Dark Troopers open fire, but their shots are easily deflected by the figure who twirls and swirls more elegantly through his prey, dancing through the corridor and using his hands to bat away debris and crush the exoskeleton of the final unfortunate trooper. We haven’t seen this kind of carnage since the other Skywalker exterminated the Separatists on Mustafar in REVENGE OF THE SITH. 

Mando and Grogu know that it’s time, and he demands that the blast doors be opened. Not getting any favourable response from the others, he opens the door himself. As the blast doors part, we see the figure’s shrouded green lightsaber emerge through the smoke just as his mentor’s did at the start of THE PHANTOM MENACE. The figure slowly holsters his blade on his familiar belt, and deliberately hesitates as he removed his hood. As the iconic notes of the Binary Sunset play, at last we see the face of Luke Skywalker - here to rescue us - with just a little bit more wisdom and wear than he bore at the end of RETURN OF THE JEDI. Mando asks him if he is a Jedi, and Luke responds that he is (in the unmistakably optimistic voice of a young Mark Hamill). Luke reaches out, confidently asking Grogu to join him. When Mando queries Grogu’s reluctance, Luke wisely advises him that the Child wants his permission first. 

What follows is the culmination of the series, a heart wrenching scene between Din and Grogu where Din breaks the creed and shows Grogu his face - a father saying goodbye to his son with his own eyes, echoing Luke’s own farewell to Anakin. Grogu doesn’t want to let go of Din until he hears a reassuring sound - R2D2’s familiar beep-bop cadence as he leans over to examine the Child, a clear moment of recognition between the two. Whether they’ve both met at some point in the past (perhaps prior to or during Grogu’s escape from the Jedi Temple), or whether R2 is suffering some PTSD from his memories of Yoda, remains to be seen. But it’s enough to win over Grogu, who allows Luke to pick him up and take him and R2 away. The final shots of Din’s final tearful goodbye and Luke, Grogu and R2 in the departing elevator against a triumphant refrain of the Mandalorian theme are iconic Star Wars images that will be etched in our minds forever alongside the Throne Room and other final shots. 

I’M LUKE SKYWALKER - I’M HERE TO RESCUE YOU

I don’t want to relitigate the issues of the Disney Trilogy at length, suffice to say that the miserable end to that sorry saga far better illustrates them than any missive penned by me could. Yes, as things stand, everything that transpires in THE MANDALORIAN could lead to same sorry end just as the supposedly-fairytale ending of RETURN OF THE JEDI did. But the mere hope that it doesn’t have to, or that it is far enough away to be ignored, is enough to allow the moment to savoured for the delight that it represents.

Because Star Wars has always been about hope, and that hope has always been best embodied by Luke Skywalker - the “Son of Suns”. Luke is our childhood hero, the Boy Scout or Superman defined by his optimism and his faith in our better angels. His journey may venture through internal conflict, impatience, confusion, and failure - but he never gives up hope, even when it seems that all is lost. He was born in a moment of despair, as his mother’s dying breaths gave life to both he and his sister, and saved his father from a tortuous death. The prequel trilogy, fundamentally about perpetual-slave Anakin Skywalker’s hope for a better life for his family, may have ended with a Galaxy entering an era of oppression, but its final shot featured baby Luke with his closest kin watching the famous binary sunset and hoping for the eventual dawn to bring them out of the darkness. 

We later meet Luke again in the eponymous A NEW HOPE as a sheltered and naive young farmhand, dreaming of making a difference in the fight against the evil Empire. Under the guidance of his watchful protector, he produces a one-in-a-million shot heard around the Galaxy. He trawls the Galaxy in search of a new mentor, whose trickery and patience are a foil for his impatient desire to return to the fight. After being humbled by a superior adversary and learning the dark truth of his parentage, he soon realises that his attachment to others can be a weakness to be exploited. Nevertheless, his faith in his friends and family remains resolute - even in the face of discouragement from his masters and enemies alike, Luke manages to persuade his broken and defeated father that he is not irredeemable. Luke’s unwavering belief provides the gentle push needed for Anakin to commit his final act to destroying the evil Emperor that had enslaved him and would destroy the only thing left in the universe for him to love. 

Basically, after searching for his absent father his whole life, only to discover him to be one of the most terrible people in the Galaxy and believed to be beyond redemption by his only remaining friends, Luke still perseveres against all odds in believing there’s a tiny sparkle of good left him in - and ends up convincing his father of that as well. This is the most unbelievably optimistic person, who sees the bright side of things where everyone else sees nothing, and who never, ever gives up. He is what Star Wars is fundamentally all about. 

IF THERE’S A BRIGHT CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE, YOU’RE ON THE PLANET THAT IT’S FARTHEST FROM

However, the Disney Trilogy’s failure began with the first words of its opening crawl, claiming that “Luke Skywalker has vanished” - depriving us of that hope for a whole film. When he finally appears up at the intersection of the first and second movies, it turns out to have been a false hope - in a “subversion” of our expectations, the Luke we find is a shell of a person who has given up on his friends, his family, and his students. He is so devoid of hope and resigned to the ignominious fate of dying alone that he may as well be Darth Vader. After sensing the mere potential for evil in his only nephew, he doesn’t try to turn him away from it but stupidly draws his weapon on him in his sleep - and by doing so creates another version of his father. He senses a familiar darkness in the Resistance’s strange messenger, and resolves not to train her. And yet... suddenly, after a bizarre encounter with an addled apparition pretending to be Yoda, he softens and decides not to join with her in a fight to the death but instead perform some insanely draining Matrix-like distraction that ends up killing him anyway. His last ditch effort saved practically nothing, and didn’t end up mattering anyway when the nemesis he and his father sacrificed everything to destroy “somehow returned”. 

Mark Hamill himself, who has lived and breathed the character for over 40 years, knew that none of this made sense coming from Luke - he would rather amusingly refer to this incarnation as “Jake” Skywalker. The people behind the Disney Trilogy have stated on record that Luke’s absence from the first film was to avoid stealing the spotlight from their new characters, and the butchering of his character in the second ostensibly appears to have paved the way for them to take over the role of the hero. It was as if, in some misguided zero-sum view of the Star Wars universe, in order for the new generation to succeed the old had to be destroyed (in more ways than just this one). And, in doing so, Disney deprived us of seeing the Luke Skywalker we all deserved. 

GOOD, YOU’VE TAKEN YOUR FIRST STEPS INTO A LARGER WORLD

When Anakin Skywalker looks up at the night sky on Tatooine in THE PHANTOM MENACE, he wonders if anyone has ever visited them all - ominously suggesting that he’d be the first. There’s only so much of that story that can be told within the motion picture medium, and there have always been Star Wars stories that existed in the same universe but were not about the Galaxy-changing saga of the Skywalkers. From the Expanded Universe novels, to cartoons, games, and other non-saga films, the Star Wars Universe has weaved a rich tapestry for fans who have been invested in the diverse, fantastic, and advanced  setting it provides for stories that reflect on our own human condition. Many of these stories were self contained - filling in gaps or corners of that tapestry - but just as many intersected with our beloved characters at various points of their lives, who at once both recognisable as their iconic selves but also given further colour and depth through new experiences and challenges. 

Of Luke Skywalker in particular, we saw a hero struggling with his legacy and the monumental task of rebuilding the Galaxy and the Jedi Order in such as way as to not repeat the mistakes of the past. We saw Luke succeed and fail in training new Force-sensitive students into Jedi, and grow in power to become the new Grand Master of the Jedi Order. We saw him defeat stronger foes than he had before and weave his way through the intergalactic politics of the New Republic and Imperial Remnant. We saw him fall in love with Mara Jade, someone who had been tasked by the Emperor with killing him, marry her and have a son (appropriately) named Ben. We witnessed Luke live a full, difficult, but happy life with meaning and purpose - the kind of life his father always wanted but could never achieve.

With this Expanded Universe cast away by Disney, it was left to stories and shows like THE MANDALORIAN to sketch out the details of what is supposed to exists in the rest of the Star Wars Universe. Throughout its run, THE MANDALORIAN has demonstrated definitively that Disney’s approach in sidelining and belittling Luke and the story of the original and prequel trilogies in order to tell new stories in that universe was not only unnecessary, but completely wrong. By starting with a fresh style and a lone gun for hire in a new, small frontier in a corner of the universe it established a new dynamic in the transition period between the fall of the Empire and the establishment of the New Republic. 

But as it continued to flesh out that small corner, we started to see bits of the familiar return from a variety of sources - some from the films such as Trandoshans, IG units, Jawas, Ugnaughts, AT-STs, Mos Eisley’s Docking Bay 94 populated with Pit Droids, Tusken Raiders; others from other media such as Cobb Vanth, Bo-Katan and the Mandalorian Death Watch, Ahsoka Tano (and soon hopefully Grand Admiral Thrawn!), and Dark Troopers from the 90s game DARK FORCES. Others still fleshed out things we’d heard about in previous stories but never seen - krayt dragons, krynkas, Quarren. And at the heart of it all - the Mandalorian creed and the mysterious and powerful Force-using species. We care about and are interested in all of these things because they are familiar elements of the Star Wars Universe, and we care about what new things Mando and the Child encounter because they are grounded in such elements to which we can already relate.

Most of the credit for this change in direction is due to the respective efforts of creator John Favreau and Executive Producer Dave Filoni. Favreau’s early contributions were largely responsible for the dramatic success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and he has been involved with Star Wars for some time (voicing characters in SOLO and THE CLONE WARS). Filoni, himself the creator of THE CLONE WARS, has long effectively been George Lucas’s personally selected designated successor as the sage of all things Star Wars. Unlike JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson (relative neophytes to Lucasfilm, who seemed to be unable to move beyond their nostalgia for A NEW HOPE and desperation to spit on Lucas’s prequels), Favreau and Filoni have an understanding of the already-significant diversity of the Star Wars Universe, of its values and potential. 

Favreau, Filoni and the fabulous team of writers and directors they collaborate with have treated the existing source material with respect (the same source material their boss claims not to exist), and have both intertwined and extended it in new ways that make sense and add depth to what came before. The production design has drawn on both the existing worlds of the original and prequel trilogies (and yes, even what would be yet to come in the Disney Trilogy), while referencing the original concept art of Ralph McQuarrie and Doug Chiang (the concept art based credit sequences are particularly inspired) and creating new environments, species and spacecraft that add greater diversity to those worlds. Even Ludwig Görannson’s music has hit it out of the park - not merely rehashing John William’s greatest hits (another area where the Disney Trilogy fell surprisingly short), but creating a whole new aesthetic that feels right for the style of the show, but is unmistakably Star Wars. In short, THE MANDALORIAN feels like a true addition to the Star Wars universe, which seemed impossible after the lukewarm reboot of the Disney Trilogy. 

YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT ME - TELL YOUR SISTER. YOU WERE RIGHT.

So this is why, when we first see the X-Wing appear, the hooded figure walking down the hallway, and the brilliant green blade - followed by the decisive elimination of the Dark Troopers through Gideon’s ship and the corridors leading to the bridge - longtime fans across the world could no longer contain their emotions, with many breaking down into tears of jubilation and relief. After being teased with horrible “subversions of expectations” and being told that our “theories sucked”, finally we actually got what we wanted after all this time - a reason to hope again. 

In early 2010, I wrote this piece on Apple’s newly introduced tablet computer for MacTalk Australia, speculating on what it could mean for the future of personal computing. Ten years later, we all know now how that turned out. 

Steve Jobs heralded the iPad as a ‘third’ category of devices (the other two being smartphones and computers) that performed a key set of functions far better than the others - he identified these as web browsing, reading and writing email, viewing photos and video, listening to music, playing games, and reading e-books. Rather than replace the other two categories, the iPad would supplement them - where the PC was a multipurpose agricultural truck, the iPad was a car that simply got you from A to B with no fuss or frills.

That first reveal was polarising (as is the case with the launch of many first generation Apple products) - either you were sold on Jobs’s vision of the future of computing or this was nothing more than a big iPhone / iPod Touch with larger versions of existing apps (somewhat true at the time). And the name provided much mirth to the American crowd many of whom would compare it to a sanitary product. 

In my initial reaction, I mentioned that the iPad may not be a PC killer (at least not yet), but a real threat to Netbooks. Remember Netbooks? Cheap, tiny, cramped, underperforming PC laptops that were all the craze of the late noughties? I didn’t think so. The iPad annihalated them (as, to be fair, did larger smartphones and lighter full featured laptops like the MacBook Air and its ilk). It did so for largely the reasons Jobs highlighted - it made some key computing functions more pleasurable by making them simpler and more tactile. And the roughly A4 sized handheld screen made it a perfect device for mobile content consumption, something a mini laptop with a dim low-res screen could never do as well.

Despite much incremental enhancement over the years (especially in multi-tasking), the one challenge that many contend the iPad has not been able to overcome entirely has been content creation. While the iPad features Apple’s own slick productivity suite (and more recently Microsoft’s own Office applications) and dedicated apps for media creation, certainly when it comes to detailed word processing and spreadsheet manipulation, or photo and video editing, a laptop is undoubtedly a superior tool. The availability of better external connectivity, file management, and cloud syncing have certainly improved the iPad’s ability to be used for productivity but for some the absence of a pointing device or a fully transparent file system without sandboxed limitations means that the iPad won’t match the utility of a laptop anytime soon (which, in Jobs’s view, it was never supposed to). Even Google’s line of stripped down, cheap Chromebooks (that have taken a strong lead in the educational space for now) would equally struggle with replicating some of the ‘truck’-like functionality of a proper laptop. 

But still nothing compares to the iPad as a dedicated tablet. By eliminating the control layer of a computer and focusing the large screen UI on dedicated tasks, it makes completing those tasks more accessible (and dare I say it more enjoyable). Despite the passage of a decade and heated competition from Android manufacturers in the smartphone market, no other tablet device has even come close to the iPad - it overwhelmingly dominates its niche. Comparisons have been drawn to Microsoft’s Surface line, which are impressively nimble devices in their own right and run a full implementation of Windows. I currently work at an organisation where Surfaces are standard issue. But Surfaces are used primarily as light (and slightly underpowered) laptops, not as tablets or true hybrid devices. When it comes to consumption and dedicated tasks leveraging a simple UI, iPads win every time (indeed, part of my work relates to the use of iPads and the like to replace previously analog processes through the use of a CRM platform).  

There will be many retrospectives that will cover the specs and evolution of iPads over the past 10 years, its impact on modern consumer technology, and missives on how far it still has to go. Instead of rehashing all that, I thought it would be a better tribute to reflect on how I have used this most personal of computing device over the years. As a perennial early adopter, I have had the privilege (curse?) of owning and using almost every model of iPad that Apple has released over those 10 years. Thanks to a complex web of hand-me-downs and repurposing, many of them are still in use today. 

iPad (2010)

As with the iPhone before it, the original iPad was a US-first release that came to other markets several months later. I had the fortune of having willing relatives in the US order one of these online on my behalf at launch and then forward it over to me in Australia. I later had the dubious pleasure of waiting for hours on a freezing May morning to pick up another model (with 3G) for work on the opening day of the Apple Store at Bondi Junction. 

It didn’t take much more than a few minutes holding and using the device to feel its transformative potential. While the iPhone completely changed the way we thought of a phone, the size of the iPad made it feel more like a window into a simplified computer - and using a computer had never before felt so tactile. Immediately it ticked off some of the “far better” objectives Steve Jobs had listed - a far better web experience, viewer for photos and video, and a great way to read eBooks and magazines. I took this iPad on an overseas trip not long after which quickly reinforced the fact that the touch-tablet form factor would be the absolutely perfect flight companion - a light, large screened device, that for the most part could be stowed in a magazine pocket and didn’t have to be removed from your bag through security (benefits that have fluctuated over the years). While it was great to use while seated, it wasn’t particularly well suited to using whilst lying flat - I probably still have a few indents on my nose from dropping the original iPad on my dozing face. The original iPad’s accessories included a fully-enclosing case that allowed it to be opened up like a book or propped up on an angle, as well as a 30-pin connector keyboard for use in (unusually) Portrait mode.

I would use this iPad for a year, until the release of the iPad 2. My wife used it for a little while before it ended up in a Fisher Price case to be used by my kids just emerging out of infancy to watch videos of themselves and play some educational games to learn the alphabet and vocabulary. I finally retired it around 2015 by which time the kids had finally received a superior hand-me-down and compatibility of the iOS was no longer able to keep up with the apps they were using. This original iPad shipped with iOS 3.2 and was not updated past iOS 5, so did not quite have the longevity of its successors (that being said, Apple launched it with the promise of support up to iOS 5, so they did deliver on that). Neither did it receive the “polish” of the over-the-top skeuomorphism in iOS 6 or the extreme flatness of iOS 7. I still occasionally take it out for a play with the past or to compare it against whatever is new - remarkably, the battery still holds up even if the home button is a little flaky.

iPad 2 (2011)

The iPad 2 shipped in several international markets very soon after it did in the US. In Australia it was also widely available at resellers, so I joined a friend for a few hours at a local JB HiFi. Unlike almost every other release to come, the iPad 2 officially went on sale at 5.00pm local time so for once this simply involved passing time inside an already-open store. 

The iPad 2 had a few significant things going for it over and above its predecessor. Most apparent was the fact that it was thinner, lighter, and finally had feature parity with the iPhone with front-facing and rear cameras. Much fun was made of those who dared use the iPad camera at public events (see the infamous shot of Spike Lee with President Obama) but despite their relatively low resolution each of these cameras paved the way for significant functionality - such as taking photos of meeting notes / whiteboards for later reference, and FaceTiming on a screen with a more lifelike size. Rather than adopting a fully-enclosed case like the original iPad, the iPad 2 was accompanied by a magnetic “Smart Cover” that snapped on the side, sat on the front of the display and could wake or sleep the iPad by being opened or closed. It could also be folded up to prop up the iPad at the ‘laptop’ viewing angle. 

I got a year’s worth of use out of this iPad before handing it down to my mum, who would use it for email and web browsing while traveling. After that my toddler daughter used it for about a couple of years or so for watching videos while traveling and at home. While I updated the iPad to iOS 7 (rather painfully given the relatively low non-Retina resolution screen) and it made it all the way to iOS 9, I took advantage of an uncharacteristic Apple bug to downgrade it back iOS 5. After nearly 9 years, it’s now still in regular use by my son for certain apps that he still loves that never made it past the iOS 7 watershed, and can only be accessed on this iPad.

This was also the final iPad (and product) that Steve Jobs keynoted, and it was already apparent that he was under considerable strain - he would step down as CEO of Apple Inc soon thereafter, and passed away later that year.

iPad third generation aka iPad 3 aka the “New” iPad (2012)

The first iPad launched by Tim Cook came with problematic nomenclature - to achieve some sort of unnecessary simplification, instead of calling it iPad 3 it was simply introduced as the “New” iPad. The point of this move was never explored or allowed sufficient air to make sense, as it was followed quickly later in 2012 by the “iPad 4” which reverted to the old naming scheme. Even Apple would come to refer to the “New” iPad as either the “iPad 3” or “iPad third generation”.

This was in many ways a transitional iPad - with Retina screens available on all other products, Apple needed to bring one to the iPad but had missed the boat for the iPad 2 in 2011. On the other hand, the processors needed to drive the Retina screen well wouldn’t be ready until late 2012, so Apple instead enhanced the graphics power of the chips used in the iPad 2. Similarly, the Lightning connector that would used in the iPhone 5 - and all future iOS devices until the 2018 iPad Pro - was also not yet ready to ship. The iPad 3 was also the first iPad that was actually thicker and heavier than its predecessor (though still lighter than the original iPad). In Australia it was initially advertised as offering 4G connectivity, at a time when no Australia carrier offered 4G on the bands accessible by that model. This resulted in Apple having to offer refunds and a rare instance of having to redo its packaging to meet local regulatory requirements by referring to future iPads (and in turn, Apple Watches) as offering “Cellular” connectivity, without reference to the specific type of connection. Nearly all of these issues were rectified by the iPad 4 not long afterwards. Accordingly, the third generation iPad was only available for sale for a few months and is often criticized as the worst iPad for its sub-par performance and longevity. 

All that being said, my iPad 3 is probably the device that has given me the most joy and value over the many years it’s been used. It was a day one release in Australia, and represented the least amount of work in acquisition for me - it was delivered to my door before any Apple Store had opened on launch day. The Retina screen finally coming to an iPad (before it made the leap to any Macs) was incredible and finally came close to replicating the experience of holding a digital piece of paper in your hand. It elevated the already-great experience of viewing photos and watching movies to another level entirely, and made reading eBooks or PDFs rival the clarity of paper. If ever there were a device that felt like it had dropped out of Star Trek and into your lap, it was the iPad 3. 

My iPad 3 was my primary device and frequent traveling companion for a good year and a half. I saw no reason to upgrade to the iPad 4 that followed because the iPad 3′s performance was more than adequate for what I needed - mostly watching movies, web browsing, and taking notes. As with the iPad 2, I handed this one down to my mum for a year or so, but it was the third life of the iPad 3 that meant the most to me. My son was diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) during the time I had this iPad, and it represented my first exploration of how such a device could leverage customised apps to provide assisted communication, targeted learning, and other sensory functions for children with ASD. 

Eventually this iPad was later handed down to my son during his years in early intervention and school as an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device using the Proloquo app (which used to require a very costly standalone device), as well as a device for him to use for learning, behavioural regulation, and leisure. My son used this device (the “Purple iPad” as he called it, after the colour of its rugged case) for almost four years at a critical time of his development. During that time it took a daily beating in his school bag and was dropped frequently, but all the while pulled through. It received software updates through to iOS 9, and we only replaced it a little over a year ago when some of the apps he used needed iOS 10 or beyond for future updates. It currently still sits on a wall at home, functioning as a hub for some smart home devices and a security camera. 

iPad Mini (2012)

After a swathe of Android tablets (and ‘phablets’) made the case for the 7 inch form factor, Apple finally caved in 2012 and released the iPad Mini. The Mini’s launch was slightly delayed after the launch of the contemporaneous iPad 4 (requiring online pre-orders) and turned up on our doorstep a few weeks later. It was a hot commodity as it encapsulated essentially all of the features of the beloved iPad 2 and shrunk them down to an almost A5-notebook size that was almost pocketable, and at the very least could easily slip unnoticeably into most small bags. It was the debut of the modern iPad design language, drawing on the chamfered edges of the iPhone 5 with uniformly rounded sides that would be echoed later in the iPhone 6 and beyond. The design persists to this day in all modern iPad models, with the sole exception of the 2018 iPad Pro. The iPad Mini’s official accessories included a full-body leather “Smart Case” that was one of Apple’s better cases (but sadly hasn’t stuck around for as long as I’d have liked, with Apple reverting to “Smart Covers” like they did with the iPad 2).

This was the first iPad that I didn’t buy for myself - it was to replace my partner’s aging original iPad, and due to its size it quickly became a mainstay of her handbags (where its successors continue to find a home to this day). The old adage about the best camera being the one you always have with you easily transfers over to the iPad Mini, whose easy portability vaulted it to becoming her best web browser, email composer, gaming device, and e-book reader. This Mini was eventually passed down to both my kids as a play device for videos and apps, then briefly performed a similar function for their younger cousins while visiting at my parents’ house. We finally parted with it very recently when a friend wanted a simple device to give it to her grandmother to FaceTime with their kids.

iPad Air (2013)

The original iPad Air was released in late 2013 as the new flagship iPad. It adopted the “Air” moniker ostensibly because it was much lighter and thinner, taking the design of the iPad Mini and shaving off some of the vertical bezels on the sides of the screen - the first substantial change to the size of the 9.7 inch screen iPad. It was famously advertised by using a side profile comparison to a pencil, alluding to similar versatility. It was also the first iPad that shipped with the flat, minimalist software of iOS 7.

This was the first iPad since the original for which I lined up on the launch morning at an Apple Store. If I recall correctly, I had my young son with me as it was a relatively brief wait due to there being plenty of stock and comparatively low localised demand given the expansion of the iPad distribution chain. As a relatively mature product, the iPad Air probably represented a first significant upgrade for many early iPad adopters as well. I also took the leap back into acquiring a cellular model as the iPad Air had ‘proper’ 4G in Australia (which was resolved in the iPad 4 a year earlier) as well as a Smart Case like the iPad Mini. 

This was a solid workhorse iPad that served me well for a year, and was then given to my mum who used it for almost four years for her basic computing needs, which by now had shifted more towards media consumption. About a year ago it became my daughter’s primary device, which she uses to play videos, watch YouTube Kids, colour and draw, and use educational gaming apps. It did not receive last year’s update to iOS 13 and is starting to feel slow to use, so to may be on the path to an early retirement or relegation to feature duty like the iPad 3 - but over six years of solid service is not bad at all in isolation, even if slightly less impressive than some of its counterparts.

iPad Mini with Retina Display aka iPad Mini 2 (2013)

Shortly following the launch of the iPad Air came the iPad Mini 2, which I snagged on release day at a nearby Big W store. The iPad Mini was the final iOS device to receive a Retina screen - this was especially significant given the iPad Mini’s smaller size, which meant higher pixel density had a far greater impact on clarity than in the larger iPad. Interestingly the iPad Mini 2 had mostly the same internals and resolution as the iPad Air, leaving Tim Cook to famously suggest that the feature parity between the two models meant that all that was left to decide was what size you preferred – though to be honest, he should’ve added price, as the iPad Mini and iPad Mini 2 were easily the cheapest iPads on offer to date.

It was an easy decision to get the iPad Mini 2 to replace my partner’s iPad Mini, as it freed up the latter to be used by the kids when traveling (which was far more convenient than traveling with their bulky full-size iPads in rugged cases). After a couple of years it became my son’s primary device for play and travel (used alongside his iPad 3 for school and AAC), following which it also went to my parents’ house for use by visiting cousins and other guests where it remains to this day. We never ended up getting the iPad Mini 3 that followed the year after, primarily because it shared the internals of the iPad Mini 2 and only differed in its selection of colours and the TouchID home button.

iPad Air 2 (2014)

The iPad Air 2 is what I would call “peak iPad” - much like the iPhone 6 before it, iPads are still being released to this day that superficially could not be distinguished from the iPad Air 2. It represented both a refinement to its predecessor and probably the first iPad that was clearly overbuilt for its time, with a level of performance that would see it and be able to cope with years of updates to come (right up to today, and likely beyond). It was much thinner and lighter than even the original iPad Air, and held that record right up until the release of the 2018 iPad Pro. Here was an iPad you could read in bed, without worrying too much about the injury you’d suffer if you dozed off and dropped it on your face. It also came in a fetching shade of gold, the first new colour variation in the iPad line since the iPad 2 introduced black and white.  

The iPad Air 2 also came with the TouchID home button (taken from the iPhone 5S the previous year) and introduced the celebrated ‘laminated’ display, which eliminated the tiny air gap between the glass surface and screen, reducing apparent latency and making it feel as if you were practically touching the screen itself. Unfortunately, the trade off for this was higher cost and lower repairability - if you happened to break the screen, you’d have to replace the entire digitiser and not just the glass surface on top. The inclusion of this display has been a distinguishing feature of higher-end iPads since, though its absence from the lower-end ‘budget’ iPads has been a sore spot for many. For me, while it’s certainly a ‘nice-to-have’ that enhances the experience of using an iPad, it is far from a necessity and its absence does little to hamper the usability of iPads that have non-laminated screens. 

By this stage everyone in my family right down to the kids were all using iPads, so we’d entered the phase of repurposing all retiring older devices. I got a good year out of the iPad Air 2 before passing it on to my father, who continues to use it when traveling and on the go. He has only recently started commenting on it being a little slow at times, which I put down to perception rather than reality due to the slow internet at places he visits - and while it still multitasks really well, he now has an iPhone XS Max with a four-generation faster processor which makes the Air 2 seem clunky in comparison. I expect that when the 2020 line of iPads Pro debut, this iPad Air 2 will find its way to my daughter to replace the iPad Air.

iPad Pro 12 inch (2015)

The first iPad Pro debuted in a massive 12.9 inch screen that was a sight to behold (and hold). While 13 inch screens have been standard (if not small) for years in laptops, having such a screen float freely in your hands in a (relatively) light slate was an experience resembling the tactility of first using an iPad but on a full-sized computer display - 5K iMacs had finally been released the year prior, and the iPad Pro’s screen had roughly the same usable area. Interestingly, the dimensions of the screen more closely resembled an A4-sized piece of paper then the original 9.7 inch iPad, but somehow this still felt bigger - almost like an A3 page. The size of the 12.9 inch screen would enable it to allow split-screen multitasking of two apps in the full-screen display they’d have on the 9.7 inch iPad - a feat still unequalled by any other iPad, including its younger 10.5 and 11 inch siblings.

With the iPad Pro came the first “Smart Connector” on the rear of the device, which allowed accessories to connect and draw power through three small magnetic dots. This connection held much promise but in the years since has only really ever been used for keyboards, like the Smart Keybord Folio released at the same time for the iPad Pro. What appeared to be a relatively simple case (if quite thick) needed to be folded out almost like an accordion in order for the iPad Pro and Smart Keyboard to resemble a small laptop. The fabric covered keyboard itself was quite durable, though the Smart Connector pins have worn out over time creating occasional connection problems. 

The iPad Pro had an odd launch in Australia - rather than morning or midnight, I found myself waiting for 1.00pm to tick over on launch day at my local Apple Store before they were made available for sale. As such, it was pretty much a sight-unseen purchase. The full-screen multitasking is what really sold me on the iPad Pro. Even if limited, it felt like a step in the right direction towards not just emulating a computer’s multitasking but creating a more effective paradigm for multitasking where only the windows that really matter are open and featured front and centre. 

On the other hand, the downside to the iPad Pro’s size was... its size. At 12.9 inches large (and considerably heavier when adding the new Smart Keyboard Folio and rear case) it was far larger than even the original iPad (let alone the Mini) and as such was no longer as snug and comfortable a fit in many bags and cases tailor made for iPads - rather it approached the heft of a laptop. Neither was it as handy a traveling companion, especially on aircraft where the iPad had previously excelled. This was a tablet that was better used at home. After a little over a year I’d finally decided that such limitations didn’t work for me and handed it over to my father, who continues to use it more properly as a “home” iPad for most computing tasks (email, browsing, basic mobile gaming) that he’d previously have done on an iMac. 

The one other significant feature of the iPad Pro was the concurrent introduction of the Apple Pencil, still one of the most responsive input devices for a tablet. Writing with the Apple Pencil on the huge iPad Pro resulted in fine script that felt as close as you could to writing on paper (without the same level of friction). This also resulted in revealing deficiencies in handwriting for which a pen and paper were more forgiving. But the Pencil really excelled when used for drawing, colouring, and painting using the pressure-sensitive tip. Despite its much maligned “eraser” charging port, I rarely separated the Pencil from my iPad Pro and was more than happy to have it awkwardly stick out for a couple of minutes for hours worth of charge. After finding some teeth marks in that “eraser” area and finally updating to a newer model, I gave that original Apple Pencil first to my son who used it for handwriting practice with his current iPad (replaced by a Logitech Crayon), and then to my mum to use with her current 10.5 inch iPad Pro. 

iPad Mini 4 (2016)

While the iPad Mini 3 was a somewhat unimpressive reskin of the iPad Mini 2, it wasn’t until the quietly introduced iPad Mini 4 that we got a true mini version of the “peak” iPad, with the same incredibly thin and light profile, TouchID, and laminated display. And with its even smaller size, this made the Mini 4 effectively lighter than most A5 notepads and, with the bright laminated display, almost as pleasant to read from. 

The Mini 4 replaced my partner’s Mini 2 for about three years, freeing up both the Mini 2 and original Mini to be used as travel iPads in rugged cases for both kids. The Mini 4 was not updated by Apple again for several years, and for some time appeared like it would be the final Mini Apple would release - thankfully not the case, as the form factor really made the device incredibly appealing to those like my partner to whom it represented the perfect compromise between screen size and portability. 

iPad Pro second generation 10.5 inch (2017)

Some of the issues I had regarding the size of the original iPad Pro were mitigated soon after by the release of a smaller 9.7 inch iPad Pro in early 2016, also with the benefit of a better camera and wider range of colours (Gold and Rose Gold). However this was basically a beefed up iPad Air 2, so I wasn’t yet ready to give up on a larger sized iPad until the following year when the intermediate size 10.5 inch iPad Pro landed. Both the new 10.5 inch iPad Pro and updated 12 inch iPad Pro came with a new display with a 120Hz refresh rate for more ‘lifelike’ scrolling and transitions, and more importantly greater responsiveness from the Apple Pencil.

The 10.5 inch iPad Pro also signalled a clear differentiation between two sizes of ‘Pro’ iPads - one larger with more usable space, and one smaller and more portable. However, with that smaller size came a significant compromise - unlike the 12 inch iPad Pro, the 10.5 inch model could not do full-screen split-view multitasking, instead reverting both apps to the ‘compact view’ that more closely resembled a smaller iPhone app than a full-sized iPad app. I sweated on this difference for some time and sat out the launch, for the first time seriously considering passing on a new iPad. However, not more than a few hours after store opening I buckled and drove over to one of the only Apple Stores in the city still showing stock. 

In the end I found the 10.5 inch iPad Pro to be an absolute pleasure to use, a good compromise between size and portability, much lighter and easier to carry, but without what I then considered to be the killer feature of the iPad Pro - a sacrifice I simply learned to live with, and did not end up missing as much as I thought I would. As a consequence, I pushed my usage of this iPad Pro and tried using it as much as possible as a laptop replacement (indeed, during this time I stopped carrying around my laptop with me and relied on a combination of this iPad and the newly functional iCloud Drive file browser in iOS 11). While there were inevtiably certain tasks I still needed to use my laptop for, I was surprised at just how much of my mobile computing needs were achievable (and possibly even more pleasant) on this iPad Pro. 

This was also one of my longer used iPads, giving me a good year and a half of service before being handed to my mum to replace her long-in-tooth iPad Air. I used it with its Smart Keyboard accessory, which unfortunately now did not have a matching rear case leaving the back of the device exposed - the first time I had carried around a ‘half-naked’ iPad in pretty much forever. This required a degree of extra care on my part, having to use the front keyboard side as a buffer against other items while ensuring that the exposed side was always flush to padded fabric in my bag. When I gave it to my mum, I was sure to pick up a third party accessory that would both protect the back of the iPad and also included a holder for the Apple Pencil (which sadly she does not use as frequently as I’d like). 

iPad sixth generation (2018)

While the iPads Pro had established themselves as the new flagship line of iPads, Apple quietly released a ‘budget’ iPad in 2017 based on the old, thicker iPad Air chasis and non-laminated screen, but featuring more updated internals (similar to the first iPad Pro). This product matured even further the following year with a processor similar to my then-current iPad Pro and a screen that was compatible with the original Apple Pencil - for a fraction of the cost of the iPad Pro. 

To this point my son had been using the old iPad 3 as an AAC device at school and the iPad Mini 2 at home, and this new iPad represented the best of each device - so I bought one on sale a few months after it launched to consolidate and allow him to be able to use updated versions of his apps that were no longer supported on the older devices. In particular, Pencil compatibility has opened a way to use the device to enhance his fine motor skills, and the relative thickness and non-laminated screen are beneficial from a repair perspective in the event of unforeseen kid damage (mercifully not yet required due to adequate encasement). I’ve given him one of the Logitech Crayons, which lack the pressure sensitivity of the Apple Pencil but are cheaper, more durable, and have a flat, textured surface that is much easier to grip. This iPad’s already clocked up almost a year and a half’s worth of use and still looks and feels brand new in use.

iPad Pro third generation 11 inch (2018)

Following the release of the iPhone X with its all-screen display, FaceID security mechanism, and infamous “notch”, it was only a matter of time before that design found its way to the iPad line. It took a year but it was finally realised with the release of the 2018 iPad Pro, which eliminated the notch by simply having a smaller uniform bezel around the entire screen. The 12 inch model shaved its bezels and shrunk in physical size substantially, more closely resembling an A4 size page. Instead of retaining the 10.5 inch size, Apple traded some of the bezel of the smaller model for a tiny bit of extra screen space, brining the screen up to 11 inches. While that seemed quite close to the 12 inch, the difference was deceptively significant. In particular, even at 11 inches the smaller iPad Pro couldn’t quite do full screen split-view multitasking. 

Finally, instead of the iPhone X’s rounded stainless steel sides, the 2018 iPad Pro adopted a slate-like appearance with a flat aluminium back and thin, flat sides - making it the thinnest iPad ever at just 5.9 mm, and more closely resembling the back of the original iPad than any other model. The iPad Pro is covered in magnets to enable easy attachment of the corresponding Smart Folios and Smart Keyboard Folios (now with a smaller profile that involves less folding). The flat sides and magnets also enabled a new Apple Pencil 2, with a flat magnetic side that attaches nicely to the top of the iPad Pro - good to carry around in the hand, though not quite strongly enough to withstand significant movement or friction when carried in a bag.

But the two most important developments in this iPad Pro were first, the use of a USB-C instead of Lightning port (opening up a variety of charging and IO options that had long eluded iOS devices) and increased performance (said to rival then-recent benchmarks for the MacBook Pro) making a compelling argument for its ability to replace a laptop. With improvements in multitasking in iOS 12 and iOS 13, and the ability to use the new Files app and USB-C port to directly access external storage, some significant limitations that had dogged the iPad since its original release had been mitigated (if not quite overcome). Of course, the primary limitation - availability of apps that fully take advantage of this new functionality - persists, and may yet take some time to overcome. For example, there are some great video editing apps available for iPad (such as Luma Fusion) but I would love to see Apple port its own Final Cut Pro to the iPad, and take advantage of the external file management options offered by the USB-C port, to really kick the iPad up a notch. If nothing else, the passage of the past 10 years has demonstrated that such functionality may take some time to come, but when it does it should represent a refinement of the experience that makes much more intuitive sense than something slapped together for the sake of feature creep. 

This is my current iPad, and the device on which I am currently typing this post - other than the early adopter urge and my dad’s unreasonable concerns about his iPad Air 2 (which let’s face it, are probably enough), I wouldn’t see any compelling need to upgrade to whatever new version of the iPad Pro is released in the coming months. I rarely carry around a laptop anymore as the iPad Pro (in conjunction with iCloud) now meets almost all of my mobile computing needs. But for a few tasks that I can’t yet do without a laptop (mainly organising storage of file libraries and some video editing), I’d almost be prepared to get rid of my MacBook Pro entirely (in fact, I haven’t bought a new MacBook Pro in almost eight years, in which time I’ve bought all but three of the iPads in this list). 

iPad Mini 5 (2019)

For a while it seemed like the aging iPad Mini 4 would never be replaced, and the iPad Mini product line would fade into obscurity (much to the chagrin of my partner, and many others who relied on its small form factor). Apple pulled a cat out of the bag by surprising everyone with a very late update to the iPad Mini in early 2019, bringing it back into line with the specs of the newly-refreshed iPad Air (feature parity not seen since the original iPad Air and iPad Mini 2 in 2013). I picked this up from a local Apple Store a few months after release to replace my partner’s iPad Mini 4, and it currently sees daily use from her handbag.

My thoughts leading up to the (hopefully) final film in the Star Wars / Skywalker saga. No spoilers beyond what’s in existing promotional material.

No one delivered this trade mark Star Wars line in The Last Jedi (though director Rian Johnson claims that it was beeped by BB-8 near the start of the film - the less said about this explanation the better). 

I’ve grown up on Star Wars, and in particular its transitions across the decades. I was born between Empire and Jedi and the fallow years of the 90s were my adolescence, when the only new morsels of content were (great) books and video games and the bright lights of the Special Editions. The world building of the prequels were my entry into adulthood, answering the mystery of how it all began, providing a lesson in how heroes and utopias can be subverted from within - and showing how the flaws of a parent can be redeemed by their children.

And now as a father myself, Star Wars continues to be particularly meaningful to me - for example, despite its sequel trilogy setting, the mere hints of original and prequel trilogy lore have made Galaxy’s Edge at Disney Parks a bucket list item for me to share with my kids. 

Recently in preparation for this final chapter of the “sequel” trilogy, rather than rewatching the two current entries (each of which I’ve only seen twice and once, respectively) I sat down and read the pieces I wrote musing on my expectations and reactions for each of Disney’s attempts at telling a Star Wars story. I’m linking them below for posterity, because reading through them tells an interesting story of expectations, trepidation, and abject disappointment:

Reawakening the Dead

Going Rogue

The Penultimate Jedi

Return of the Penultimate Jedi

I’ve got an okay feeling about this

On reflection, while they’re not perfect, they’re some of the more personally meaningful bits of writing I’ve done - because I care about this story a lot. I’ve genuinely hoped that Disney, the current Lucasfilm story group, and JJ Abrams can find a way to deliver a story that does justice to what Star Wars means to me (and millions of others) - bearing in mind that I was mostly positive about Rogue One and Solo. And while I’ve not forced myself to rewatch the “saga” films for confirmation, there’s very little in those pieces that I feel doesn’t still hold up to this day and affect my current hopes and expectations for the final film.

I wrote each of the preceding pieces either immediately before or after watching the midnight premieres of the respective films, at hours long stretches into the wee hours of the morning to ensure I captured my unfiltered and uninfluenced perspective on what I’d just seen. I simply don’t have the energy or inclination to expend that kind of intense energy on this product any more - I’ll watch it, but I no longer care enough to respond to it.

For me, there is nothing about the “sequel” trilogy that in any way represents a true sequel or meaningful continuation of the story that previously ended with Return of the Jedi. It’s not just that George Lucas’s vision for his own creation was blatantly ignored, or that I have a soft spot for the prequels. Those personal reservations could have easily been overcome by a genuine attempt at telling a new story that built on what had come before. I may have strong feelings, but I’m open to change for the better - I was hesitant when Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale and Heath Ledger first became attached to yet another reboot of Batman, but have come to admire and cherish each of their work as definitive adaptations (still haven’t seen Joaquin yet, so maybe the jury’s out). 

Instead of changing for the better, this trilogy hasn’t changed at all - it’s been about as blatant a short-term cash grab as possible. The Force Awakens didn’t continue the a “not-so happily ever after” story (see: the end of The Graduate) that would have resulted from the Rebels’ victory in Return of the Jedi but instead slavishly retreaded A New Hope. Even within the sequel trilogy itself, each film has appeared to entirely reject any constructive plot or character progression put forward by its immediate predecessor. While The Force Awakens may have ignored the outcome of Return of the Jedi, it did create mysteries around Rey’s lineage and Snoke, only for The Last Jedi to outright dismiss them. Where The Last Jedi claims the past should die, decimates the Resistance and sets up a galactic uprising, Rise of Skywalker appears to bring back Palpatine and resurrects the Imperial and Rebel fleets.

So Luke’s stand, Anakin’s redemption, Yoda and Obi Wan’s sacrifice, and the Alliance’s victory were ultimately futile? None of the Pandora’s boxes originally in the first movie of this trilogy meant anything either? When was that “another day” that Maz Kanata promised would reveal the stories telling the significance of certain events and objects? And let’s not even start on how the development of the characters we actually do know and love was tossed away like an old laser sword.

The real tragedy is that they could easily have found a way to meaningfully extend the story - the set up for Finn’s character was fantastic. There is absolutely a way in which a remnant of the Empire could build to becoming a galactic threat. The New Republic should absolutely have issues in holding the peace, and the power gap should leave plenty of scope for the underworld to flourish. And there’s so much to be told about how the ever-optimistic Luke might struggle to rebuild a better, more humble Jedi order. But we got none of that - the story and everything the characters had built themselves up to was completely ignored or in some cases photocopied precisely from the original trilogy - and as each chapter has progressed, we have had progressively less to look forward to.

Back in 2005 on the premiere night of Revenge of the Sith, the movie I’d been waiting decades to see, I remember coming across a fan-fiction blog written by someone taking on the persona of Darth Vader, explaining his thoughts and musings leading up to the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi through the lens of what we now knew about the character’s history in the prequels. It was both thrilling and heartbreaking, and really got me into the headspace to enjoy the movie to come. It’s one of the reasons I started this obscure little blog myself, to try to have a record of my thoughts and feelings in relation to popular culture that is meaningful to me. Sadly, I don’t feel the same desire to know what the hell Galactic Supreme Leader Kylo Ren is thinking in the lead up to his eventual demise and third beat-down from nobody-but-actually-somebody Rey.

So to cut a long story short, I just don’t have the energy to break down my feelings on what works or doesn’t work in these movies in almost-real time any more. Maybe it’ll interesting or bold (or dare I say, good) enough to warrant some thoughts at a later stage. But I plan to get a good night’s sleep instead and turn the page on another year (and perhaps catch up on The Mandalorian, very much a step in the right direction - baby Yoda and all).

PS: Apparently “they fly now” - which pretty much sums it all up. Thankfully, people like John Boyega are finally starting to be honest about they really feel.

[EDIT] I’ve now seen the film, and was entirely happy to sleep than to write. I guess it was a fitting end in all respects to this tremendously disappointing, directionless “trilogy”. That’s all I have to say about that (for now). 

A fan’s review of SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY.

(Spoilers ahoy, matey. Proceed with extreme caution. Running on extreme low sleep, so this will probably be updated over the next day or so.)

I’ve been pretty clear about the parameters for what I consider to be a good Star Wars film. My initial concern has been that they should at least be internally consistent, and consistent within (let alone respectful of) the established lore of the Star Wars universe. Beyond that, my mind also turns to whether or not it merely repeats what has come before or extends the universe in logical and interesting ways. Is there a need for this story to be told, or does it excessively rely on (or trivially extrapolate from) a known backstory? And finally, does it strike the right balance of humour and fan service while telling a decent story that stands on its own?

So, having been quite critical of Disney’s previous Star Wars releases on that basis, how does this latest instalment fare?

May the month of May be with you

There’s something right about Star Wars in May. Despite the attempts by all and sundry to turn a stupid dad joke into ‘Star Wars Day’ (May the Fourth - get it? No, Cinco de Quatro is much better), in fact the month of May has its own enduring significance for the franchise. Each of the original and prequel trilogy movies were released around the mid-May Memorial Day holiday. In the US, this means summer, when kids are on break and sitting in an air-conditioned cinema is preferable compared to just about anything else. For us on the other side of the world, it is on the cusp of winter, just as the weather really starts turning for the worse - the wind picks up, the chill sets in, and darkness falls before you know it.

It’s those memories of fighting to stay warm while making it to midnight on a dark, crisp winter’s night that have always accompanied first watching a new Star Wars film for me. For some entirely silly commercial reason, Disney has thus far eschewed the traditional May release window instead choosing  December for its premieres, which has never felt right to me - December is for Christmas movies and Lords of the Ring, not Star Wars. So if nothing else, there’s some small satisfaction for me in being able to enjoy a new Star Wars movie for the first time again in the cold of May - perhaps its karma, but it feels like that’s translated to my reaction to this second anthology film.

Why make a movie about Han Solo?

Here is a character who is infamous for his intrigue. Many so-called fans criticise George Lucas for adding context to Star Wars where they believed none was necessary - see the “Han shot first” controversy (the real objection being that Greedo shot at all - which changes nothing about Han himself)(1) - in which case, why sacrifice the ultimate lamb and give him an origin story? That being said, I am loath to be too critical of the raison d’être for the ‘Star Wars Story anthology’ films (this and ROGUE ONE) - they have to date been somewhat respectful of Canon, made some generous nods to what is now ‘Legends’, and taken some interesting new directions in filling the gaps in the existing story. We don’t necessarily need them (much like we don’t need the Saga to continue an already concluded story), but that doesn’t mean they don’t have anything interesting to add to the stories we already love. 

Back in the very early days of the Star Wars Expanded Universe (what would now be called ‘Legends’) there was a series of novellas by Brian Daley about a pre-Yavin Han Solo and his adventures with Chewbacca and (you guessed it) a couple of droids on the Millennium Falcon, as he tried to eke out a living as a white hat smuggler in the Empire-lite Corporate Sector.(2) They were some of the first EU books that I read, and simple though they were, I enjoyed them because they were episodic tales set in a different part of the world of Star Wars established by the films. They weren’t high stakes, and didn’t give Han Solo an origin or back story - they just gave a glimpse into some of the sort of swashbuckling adventures that we assumed the character we met in the Cantina Bar would have had.

This movie is nowhere near as light or insignificant as that - much like ROGUE ONE before it, it takes a throwaway line mentioned in the original film and turns it into a definitive origin story about how Han Solo became that guy who shot first.(3)

Now the story of a film that lost everything and the one director who had no choice but to bring it all together

From what little has been made public, this film has not had an easy gestation - even more so than ROGUE ONE, whose ending was completely changed (undoubtedly for the better). THE LEGO MOVIE directors were fired during the shoot due to “creative differences” with writer Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote the brilliant EMPIRE (but also the lackluster AWAKENS). Apparently their take was too humorous and not the sarcastic selfishness that characterises Han Solo - which I guess is a good thing considering how ridiculous the obvious jokes in the Disney ‘Saga’ films have been. Their replacement is none other than early Lucas protege and all-round pretty damn talented Ron Howard of Imagine Entertainment (not Orange County Imagine), whose voice is embedded in many of our heads thanks to his shoddy narration of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.(4)

Ron Howard reliably makes good movies. He might not have the most stylistic flair, he may not be the most innovative or creative, he may not use the most challenging source material, but it would be difficult to suggest that any of the movies he’s made are anything less than solidly watchable - and most of them have been, in their own way, pretty great. He now runs a director’s masterclass, and you’d be hard pressed to find a better teacher from whom to learn the craft.

George Lucas had offered Howard the opportunity to direct previoud Star Wars films over the years, but as with Lucas’s other bestie Steven Spielberg, Howard didn’t want to take the reigns from his longtime friend. Now that Lucas has rather foolishly handed the keys over to the Walt Disney Company, that reluctance seems to have diminished. I’ve been disappointed with the direction Disney has been leading the franchise enough times to have serious doubts about this film, but the one thing that kept me optimistic about it was that it was ultimately left to Howard to deliver the final product.

That faith was well placed - this was the first Star Wars film in some time that I really enjoyed.

“You’re the good guy”

The fundamental premise of the film appears to manifest itself in this line of dialogue that Qi’ra casually throws away towards the climax. This information will spoil the payoff of A NEW HOPE, just like knowing who Darth Vader is spoils the reveal in EMPIRE. But it’s nevertheless true to the core of the character of the Han Solo that we know and love - despite being a selfish cad and a scoundrel, he is a softy underneath.

Given the context above about the importance of the tone of the film, it would appear that the decision made by Lucasfilm to bring in Howard was on the money (though really, the question is why he wasn’t there from the start). Moments of over the top humour have been toned down (at least from what I can recall of one of the early trailers showing Han being interviewed to join the Imperial Academy). That’s not to say there aren’t any funny moments, but for the most part they feel earned and not simply played for easy laughs (like *ahem* Poe/Hux).

There are some call-backs in the dialogue to the original films that might go a little too far (L3: “They don’t even serve our kind here”), but they are mostly effective when they subvert our expectations (“I hate you”/“I know” and “I’ve got a GOOD feeling about this”) which is nice when the film itself is a giant call-back. On the other hand, there were a couple of lines of dialogue that strayed towards uncharacteristically real-world expletives - especially Han’s use of the phrase “Bantha crap”, when we all know the correct terminology is “poodoo”.

Visually the film was just as much of a treat as any Star Wars movie, exploring some new frontiers with the Maelstrom / Maw surrounding Kessel, as well as the WWI-style trench warfare and snow train hijacking scenes. What I loved about each of these was that they created new unfamiliar environments with their own mechanics that drove the plot and the plight of the characters, as Star Wars does at its best. The Kessel Run - in particular the climax with the Millennium Falcon trying to escape both a hideous space monster and a black hole / gravity well at the same time - was both spectacular and incredibly intense to watch, despite the fact that you know that the chracters you’re invested in are going to survive (and that the Falcom reliably has trouble making the jump to lightspeed). From that perspective, it far exceeded anything in the last couple of ‘Saga’ films (two hour long chases of fuel attrition, anyone?).

The music was serviceable and on par with, if not a little better than, Michael Giacchino’s score for ROGUE ONE. It was used effectively and enjoyable, with impactful use of the well-known themes and leitmotifs. While I wouldn’t have called it as memorable as John Williams at his best (he was only partially involved), it was adequate if not decent - and unlike the ‘Saga’ films, it didn’t have to be any more than that.

Finally, the performances were for the most part quite good. Alden Ehrenreich faced the near impossible task of stepping into Harrison Ford’s shoes to recreate one of cinema’s most iconic characters, and he did it pretty well. Rather than attempt to mimick or channel Ford’s trademark smirk or swagger (let alone be forced to undergo make up or CGI as was done rather poorly in ROGUE ONE), he simply stayed true to the character and made it his own. Within a few minutes, I was on board and completely accepted him in the role, made all the easier by not constantly being reminded of how Harrison Ford would have played it. To each of their credit, Howard and Ehrenreich have created a perfectly believable young Han Solo that stands on his own two feet, not in the shadow of a legend.

Similarly, Don Glover (aka Childish Gambino) perfectly captured Lando Calrissian and at no point did I feel like I missed another legend in Billy Dee Williams (though I feel like Glover may have had some prosthetic teeth put in). Having to portray the dashing Lando in his prime provided Glover with the opportunity to bring greater depth to the character than Williams, who pretty much just played himself. Woody Harrelson and Thandie Newton were both solid as far as their roles allowed them to be - as was Joonas Suotamo, for the first time reprising his role as Chewbacca (despite the subtleties of the Wookiee costume, not for a moment did I doubt it was the same character created by Peter Mayhew). Paul Bettany chewed the scenery as the slimy crime boss Dryden Vos. Wherever there is Bettany, Jon Favreau can’t be far behind, giving a short but charming life to the personable alien pilot Rio (bonus point for giving the universe a little more needed diversity). Also bringing her vocal talents to the fore was Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who created one of the more sympathetic droid personalities in L3. Perhaps the only slightly disappointing performance came from the otherwise brilliant Emilia Clarke as Qi’ra, through no real fault of her own - despite playing a duplicitous badass, she wasn’t given much meaningful to do.

“Assume everyone will betray you and you will never be disappointed.”

The film is at its essence a heist movie, and a good one at that - it effectively uses the tropes of the genre, and though largely predictable it subverted them enough to keep me engaged the whole way through. The number of double crosses was just right enough to reflect that none of these characters were naive, but they all had their fundamental weaknesses.

I feel like Lawrence Kasdan and his son Jonathan did a pretty decent job with the script. Having said that, while the plot overall was thrilling, the story itself was a little disjointed. Other than Han’s relationship with Qi’ra, there was no real thread that wove all the way through and connected the somewhat disparate few escalating heists that resulted in Han’s independence and acquisition of the Falcon. Perhaps that’s enough, given most of the second and third acts focused largely on the famous Kessel Run and its consequences - most amusingly, how the Falcon goes from Lando’s souped up, sleek hot rod, into the bucket of bolts we’re introduced to in A NEW HOPE.

The side plots involving the competing crime syndicates and the mysterious motivations of the marauders weren’t particularly compelling until they each revealed their secrets towards the conclusion - but they did an effective job of believable world building, and setting up things that we already know will follow (like the Rebellion). However, the ‘droid rights’ concept inspired by the new character of L3 seemed a little underdeveloped and out of place.(5) It actually reminded me more of Hermione Granger’s Elf welfare from Harry Potter mixed with Korg’s ‘revolution’ from Thor Ragnarok, though I’d love to see the idea more fully explored within the Star Wars universe.

The film introduced the concept of ‘hyperfuel’ (also known as coaxium) as the primary MacGuffin for driving the plotting of the heists. This acted as a deus ex machina at several points with some interesting results in the execution of the Kessel Run itself (Where were the spice mines by the way? Was Disney afraid of being sued by the estate of Frank Herbert?). While fine in isolation to this movie, this did also feel a little bit on the nose given the central role fuel bizarrely played in the plot of the last ‘Saga’ film (not to mention the ongoing focus on Han’s lucky gold dice, which was overplayed in that film and introduced here as if they were far more significant to Han’s established identity than they actually are).

But there was one final touch to the plot that got the kind of ecstatic reaction out of me that I haven’t felt in years - it genuinely shocked and thrilled me, but more on that later.

“I’m putting together a crew? Are you in?”

A good heist requires the building of a good crew that brings a variety of talents to the table. To be frank, the actual Kessel Run heist in this film itself was somewhat anticlimactic. Other than the diversion created by L3 and the subsequent fire fight, the stakes involved in boosting the coaxium from Kessel were not particularly high. On the other hand, the escape and ensuing ‘Run’,(6) as well as the inevitable series of double-crosses and competing moral and selfish imperatives after pulling it off, were full of thrills and gave the characters an opportunity to really shine through - and this was nothing if not a character piece.

The Anti-Hero: The eponymous Han Solo. Well, this is his movie, you can hardly expect us not to start with Han - who is for the first time the sole protagonist of a film. As this is an origin story, he’s not going to be leader of this pack, but he’s hopefully going to show us why he will be when he meets the Skywalker family. Despite a stray reference to his father being a shipbuilder on Corellia, we never get Han’s true family name or any other indication of his lineage; he was dubbed ‘Solo’ by the Imperial recruiter quite literally for being on his own.(7) We meet him as a street kid with a conscience and a mouth - who’ll happily point out to a superior officer in his company that they are themselves the hostiles, not the natives of the planet they’re invading for the glory of the Empire. Much like his father-in-law before him, he starts off idealistic and a little bit twee in his oft-repeated desire to become the best pilot in the galaxy (the title actually held by said future father-in-law). Also like Anakin Skywalker in PHANTOM MENACE, we don’t actually get to see a lot of those skills before he slips into the role; Anakin at least was a Force-sensitive pod racing child (let alone the Chosen One), but other than the pretty nice speeder chase opening the movie its’s not until the Kessel Run itself that we actually see Solo’s exceptional skills. Han in this film is very much driven by the loss of Qi’ra right at the start, and his quest throughout is to first find her and then win her back. Having seen his cynicism while Luke is under Obi-Wan’s tutelage, it’s a nice change to see him as the earnest student trying to learn the game from his own mentor, the master con-thief Tobias Beckett. He slots easily into the role of rogue, deserter and mercenary, and through Beckett and his crew he also learns never to trust anyone but himself - with one notable exception. And the fact that exception exists, is also why underneath all that bravado, Han truly is still the good guy - when given a choice between a quick score or the greater good, he chooses the latter. Han may start off street smart but somewhat naive, but by the end he demonstrates empathy and a canny insight that lays the foundation for the scruffy looking nerf herder with a heart of gold that Luke meets in the Mos Eisley Cantina. At the very end of the film, we can see conclusively why Han had to shoot first.(8)

The Brawn: Chewbacca. The one notable exception to Han’s rule is his future trusty co-pilot, who we’ve never yet seen not by his side. Here we get to see how they meet for the first time and forge their lifelong partnership. While I was fully expecting Chewie to show up at some point, I must admit to being misdirected by the set up leading to his meet-fight with Han. Howard’s staging suggested that the ‘beast’ the stormtroopers were feeding Han to would be something like RETURN’s Rancor and the muddy fur that was our first glimpse of him also echoed EMPIRE’s Wampa. Hearing that familiar growl was both thrill and relief, as Chewie engaged Han in ferocious combat until we hear Han speak Wookiee for the first time in order to persuade Chewie that he can devise a way for them both to escape.(9) The two are literally bound together until Han tracks down Beckett - who immediately recognises that Chewie, not Han, is the prized recruit. Han learns of Chewie’s desire to reunite with and free his tribe / family, something he can and can’t relate to at the same time. Chewie appears initially skeptical of Han, but circumstance conspires to keep them together from one job to the next and along the way they continually pull each other out of the kind of pickles that would well establish the life debt he later owes to Han (but nothing specific is singled out here as the sole cause for it). At a critical moment, we see Chewie choose to stay with Han rather than return to join others of his own kind. This cements the fact that Chewie isn’t simply sidekick, but that Han and Chewie are in fact partners in crime. It’s also probably the most agency we’ve seen Chewie use throughout the saga - except perhaps for the moment that we’d all been waiting for (and had been teased at least once with Beckett), when he finally pulls someone’s arms out of their sockets. He’s also the first to throw cold water on Han when he starts bragging about making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs - as Chewie points out, he was already rounding it down.

The Money: Lando Calrissian. When we first met him on Cloud City, Lando presented as a smooth-talking, responsible administrator with shades of a dark past. Lando is just as charming as he ever was, but in his younger days we can see more of the conniving, selfish operator he needed to be to survive as a renowned smuggler in the galactic underworld. However, as with Han, a glimmer of his true nature shines through his relationship with L3, his partner in crime (and possibly life). While Lando’s side of that relationship wasn’t that well explored at first (other than L3 suggesting that he may be what Futurama would call “robosexual”), and it’s not clear how sympathetic he was to her robot rights crusade, it is clear following L3’s death just how much she meant to him.(10) In return for an ever-diminishing cut,(11) Lando provides the getaway vehicle for the heist - his highly-polished and specially-modified freighter, the Millennium Falcon. The Falcon we see for the first time(12) is pristine and complete, including the escape pod completing its front that we’ve as yet not seen. Having cheated Han out of his first opportunity to take possession of the Falcon, we see the foundations of the mistrust underlying their chummy rivalry, and the guile that Han brings back to the table to finally win it fair and square. Given the considerable damage Han does to the ship through the maelstrom to turn it into our beloved hunk of junk, it’s somewhat ironic that in RETURN Lando promises Han to bring the Falcon back from the Battle of Endor “without a scratch”.

The Beauty and the Brains: L3-37 and Qi’ra. I feel terrible conflating these two, particularly between the two female members of the crew, but unfortunately that’s the sort of movie this was. Qi’ra may have conceived of part of the scheme, and been the mastermind who ultimately ended up on top, but she didn’t actually have a whole lot do other than drive the plot. It’s arguable that she may have used her emotional leverage over Han to ensure that she always had the upper hand throughout most of the film. Perhaps hers is a character that has scope to grow over the course of a greater story, but in this chapter alone she felt a little underdeveloped; you never got a sense of why Han was so besotted with her, to the extent that he would spend years trying to get her back - and her convenient reappearance at just the right time was a little contrived. But I find it more interesting to look at L3 as the one who used her appearance and/or emotions most effectively to create a robot rebellion diversion to allow the heist to proceed, despite the fact that it was literally her brains that ultimately enabled the getaway. Unlike the prissy C3PO and the sardonic K2SO from ROGUE ONE, L3 is the first protocol droid we’ve encountered that is idealistic and empathetic, and she tolerates no nonsense from her beloved Lando or the rest of the crew. While her demise was somewhat inevitable, she’s probably the most ‘human’ droid to date across all of the Star Wars movies. The other resonant feature of L3 is that she literally becomes part of the Falcon, and is as such retconned into the Saga itself as the ‘peculiar dialect’ that always seems to bring bad news to C3PO.

The Leader: Tobias Beckett (and his partner Val). Beckett also doesn’t have much to do beyond driving the plot and be a representation of the mercenary that Solo would become - his Fedora Man - without the redeeming qualities. When Val vainly sacrifices herself to try to help Beckett settle the score to end his indebtedness to the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate, he loses what little remaining connection and trust he had with others (at least, that’s what Beckett would have us believe). The challenge for Han will be not to do the same when Qi’ra walks away from him (or at least, not until he rescues a princess from a hidden fortress). Beckett is a ruthless mentor for the hungry young Han, but his commitment to making sure Han learns his lessons ends up being own weakness, resulting in his ultimate demise as Han catches him monologuing. Truly the student does become the master, with some regret but no hard feelings.(13)

The Competitor: Emphys Nest. Now this is an interesting character. Initially set up as a brutal marauder captain with a proto-Ren mask, it turns out that in fact she is the leader of a group of outcasts dispossessed by the Empire, who are not in the game for the money but for survival - and ultimately, rebellion. I found the the portrayal of the marauders and their motivation a little hard to follow at first, but ultimately far more believable and earned than the ‘resistance kids’ in the ‘Saga’. Also, I love the realism of the idea (reflected in the REBELS series) that there are disparate cells of resistance across the galaxy fighting their own wars against the Empire, who eventually coalesce into the organised Rebel Alliance. The fact that Warwick Davis’s PHANTOM MENACE cameo character Weazel returns as one of Nest’s lieutenants is icing on the cake.

The Heavy: Dryden Vos. I was fully expecting the boss of the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate to be a Hutt, so it was a surprise to see an apparently humanoid villain instead.(14) Vos appears recklessly tyrannical and limitless in his arrogance. It’s hard to believe that he’s effectively just a middle manager, though he alludes to that fact along the way, setting us up for…

The Big Bad: Holy poodoo. Darth F’ing Maul (sorry, simply ‘Maul’ now that he’s ceded the mantle of Sith to the little brat watching him from the fighter cockpit). I could not contain my glee when I saw his horned face reappear. Now this is probably going to be confusing for the casual viewer, because most would have assumed that Maul was dead after Obi-Wan bisected him in PHANTOM MENACE. But those who have had the benefit of watching CLONE WARS and REBELS know that Maul survived and has tangled with our heroes (and even his former master) a number of times, all the while plotting his comeback and revenge against his almost-murderer Kenobi. Along the way, Maul and his brother Savage Oppress took over the alliance of criminal syndicates known as the Shadow Collective (of which Crimson Dawn is one part) and took control of the planet Mandalore (in the process killing Kenobi’s beloved Satine - yes, just like in MOULIN ROUGE). We also have had the benefit of seeing his final rematch with Obi-Wan on Tatooine, possibly one of the most meaningful duels of the saga. So with context, given CLONE WARS and REBELS are technically Canon, it’s unsurprising in a way that Maul would be revealed as the ultimate villain of the piece. Nevertheless, the reveal of seeing this iconic and criminally-underutilised antagonist once again in live action was simply breathtaking. Maul was portrayed by original PHANTOM MENACE actor Ray Park, and voiced by Sam Witwer. I was somewhat disappointment that the amazing Peter Serafinowicz didn’t return to reprise Maul’s voice, but given the substantially greater amount of work Witwer has done for the character since in CLONE WARS and REBELS, it’s fair to say that Witwer is now to Maul as Hamill is to the Joker.

“You look good. A little rough around the edges, but good.”

The rather unsurprising conclusion to all that is that this film has managed to meet and perhaps surpass, the bar I’ve set for what makes a good and enjoyable Star Wars movie.

Simply by virtue of the fact that they aren’t recreating the figurative wheel, Disney seems to do a much better job with these Star Wars anthology movies than the ‘Saga’ they are unnecessarily trying to continue (but in fact are simply rebooting). I really hope they take advantage of the favorable ages of Ewan McGregor and Daniel Logan to tell the Obi Wan and Boba Fett stories that are dying to be told, let alone find a way to bottle a tiny bit of Don Glover brilliance before he becomes bigger than Yeezus and stops acting altogether.(15)

At this stage we know that there will be at least two ‘spin-off’ trilogies, by Rian Johnson (ugh) and the Game of Thrones showrunners (Qi’ra returns?). If each of those manage to continue to follow the trend set by SOLO, and to a lesser extent ROGUE ONE, rather than the tired tropes of the ‘Saga’, then my outlook is optimistic on the future of Star Wars on the silver screen for years to come.  

So for now: I’ll happily go see another Star War.

Notes:

(1) I’d add that despite sketching out a potential back story and cameo for an orphaned young Han Solo adopted by Chewbacca and present at the Battle of Kashyyyk in SITH, Lucas exercised restraint and omitted it from the shooting script. While not begrudging the creator his licence, it appears in hindsight that this was probably a wise move and certainly created an opportunity for this film.

(2) Actually, now that I read that back with decades of hindsight, I can totally relate!

(3) In this case, that line was Solo’s reference to the Falcon making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs - long maligned as an incorrect reference given that parsecs are units of distance not time, though there have been some novel explanations of how that might still work that were Canon-ised by this film.

(4) Actual narration may be brilliant, please see a theralyst if doubt persists. Speaking of which, I wonder (did someone say WONDER?) which still life image he used as inspiration for this movie?

(5) I feel like the galactic resentment towards droids was signposted a little more effectively indirectly by the prequels, given the years of destruction caused by the Separatists’ droid armies.

(6) Lando set the bar at 20 parsecs, which is way higher than what Han eventually claims he achieved. It makes you wonder about the significance of the “less than” part of the claim. 

(7) It may as well have been “Corellian” or “Corleone”, for that matter.

(8) But let’s not blind ourselves to the fact that that says nothing about whether or not Greedo would have taken a shot too - Greedo already delivered his verbal coup de grace and allowed Han to get a response in before Han shot (back). Han’s mid-monologue blow to Beckett was more along the lines on Indiana Jones’s similar shot against the swordsman in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. As I said before, whether Greedo shot or not changes nothing about Han, who had already been preparing for the shot himself. 

(9) It’s a shame we didn't get an allusion to how Han picked up his stuttering Wookiee language skills or knowledge of their Imperial enslavement - particularly given the fact that the reason probably would have further demonstrated his empathy - hat tip to my friend Justin Scott for that one.

(10) I’ll be honest - as a COMMUNITY fan, it’s always a joy to watch Don Glover cry hysterically.

(11) He can’t seem to avoid deals that get worse all the time!

(12) Technically we did see the Falcon briefly in SITH, but let’s say that Lando has done a bit of a refurbishment since then.

(13) There hasn’t been such an effectively executed succession plan since the soon-to-be Darth Vader got ‘ahead’ of Darth Tyranus.

(14) It appears that the Hutts are being set up as the antagonists for a future Solo movie.

Thoughts on the film calling itself Star Wars: Episode VIII. Only for those who have seen the film already as there are well and truly spoilers ahead - consider yourself warned. May be worth reading my pre-screening thoughts for some context.

Everything you just said is wrong

I’ve seen glimpses of the usual batch of fawning reviews, which utterly perplex me. Did we see the same movie?

My quick take on leaving the theatre was: what the hell did I just watch? I’ll say this for The Force Awakens - by hewing to the structure and story beats of A New Hope, at least it made sense (even if it seemed pointless). I can’t say the same for this one - I couldn’t even succinctly describe the plot, let alone determine what it was actually about. It really didn’t answer many of the questions I raised in my pre-screening post, though I have to give some credit - it wasn’t simply a rehash of The Empire Strikes Back as I had anticipated; it was just as much a rehash of Return of the Jedi as well.

Let’s get what I genuinely liked out of the way, because it is far outweighed by the rest: as a whole it was enjoyable enough, and had some amusing moments and clever dialogue. As I was reminded by one of our viewing party, the starship battles and some other action sequences were actually pretty good to watch in and of themselves. I appreciated some of the low-effort banter, mostly from Poe and Finn. Benecio Del Toro played a terrific cameo as the morally ambiguous Code Breaker, echoing Empire’s Lando Calrissian. No matter how much scenery they chew, I also enjoy watching Domhnall Gleeson and Laura Dern perform. And at face value, I always enjoy seeing Yoda (but more on that later). John Williams’ music is always a treat, though once again not to level of his preceding scores - there were some questionable instances of using some of his older leitmotifs, though Rey’s theme is starting to grow on me. I also enjoyed the one instance of clearly ripping off the prequels in the opening shot, mirroring the battle reveal that opened Revenge of the Sith.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this

I mentioned in my pre-screening post that there’s nothing wrong with reusing good structure, but that beat-for-beat repeating a story is a waste of creative potential. Awakens did both - but I’m not even really sure what the overall structure of this film was supposed to be. It certainly reused elements of structure from Empire and Return (thanks to the ridiculous naming of this film, I can no longer refer to that film simply as ‘Jedi’), and quite a number of nearly-identical scenes and shots - but as to the overall structure of the film itself, I’m not sure it does have an easily definable beginning-middle-end.

The film is long; really long. Much longer than it needs to be even within the parameters it appears to set for itself. I couldn’t pin down what those parameters were while watching it or upon leaving the theatre but with a little bit of rest behind me I’d say it’s a very slow chase movie and a war of attrition. It has the former in common with Empire, though I’m not sure what the point of the latter is (more on that later). In Empire, only a group of our heroes were being chased whereas here it is the entire Resistance (such as it is). And there was at least one act too many within that slow chase, though I hesitate to pin down which was the most superfluous part - I suspect the ‘out of weapons range and only x hours of fuel’ bit or the ultimately-redundant side trip to the Casino world. There were just too many stops and starts, both within the main conflict and the personal stories (involving Luke and Rey, Rey and Kylo, Finn and Rose, and Poe).

As I mentioned above, the initial acts predictably modelled themselves on Empire - but towards the middle (what I optimistically thought might be the end) it started to throw in parts of Return as well, essentially mashing the two together. The Resistance was being chased out of a base by the First Order like the Rebellion, though the epic ground battle was moved towards the end instead of at the start. Rey went to train with Luke, who grumpily declined for a while like Yoda did to him. After finally relenting, he immediately found Rey straying too close to the dark and finding her own ‘dark side cave’ like Luke did on Dagobah; following which Rey decides that she is better served going after Kylo Ren than bothering to finish her training. Then we skip to the Return bits, with Kylo taking her straight to Snoke where she is tortured and he turns on his master. So far, so similar.

But while the final act resembled Empire’s Battle of Hoth, Luke’s encounter with Kylo echoed both the Vader/Obi Wan duel and Yoda’s death from A New Hope and Return, respectively. The conclusion showing the final survivors of the Resistance on the Millennium Falcon was a less epic recall of a similar but more emotional ending to Empire, but it was followed by a very un-Star Wars epilogue showing a random young (apparently Force-sensitive) slave kid looking to the stars as Luke once did. Obviously having crammed two films worth of reused plot into one, there’s potential for Disney to go a completely different way in the final film, and those seeds seem to have been sown here. But where is that exactly? Defeating Kylo and the First Order, or what’s left of them? To what end, now that Snoke is gone and Kylo is already conflicted?

The State of the Galaxy

A number of the questions I posed in my earlier post coming out of Awakens were essentially brushed aside and dismissed in the opening crawl - despite the film seemingly picking up almost directly where Awakens left off, the loss of Starkiller Base hasn’t set the First Order back at all, rather they are now the dominant power in the galaxy. The Republic, whose only apparent losses were localised to several planets in the Hosnian system, is gone and all that is left is a measly few ships in the Resistance. How the hell did all that happen?

All of the work our heroes did in the original trilogy and the intervening 30 years has been snuffed out in one line of explanatory text. Despite the theme of this film essnetially being about ‘letting the past die’, I really struggle to get my head around how they’ve done this - essentially they are telling us not to look behind the curtain or think too hard (or at all) about the story world (even that established in Awakens) and just accept that these are the new starting conditions for the story. It hasn’t been earned or explained in any way, so they may as well have just hit the reset button completely and done a complete reboot (or told a different story, in a different world).

So any hope of discovering more about who was running the Republic instead of Leia, why or how the First Order was able to usurp power from a galaxy-wide government, is deemed unnecessary. How the First Order itself is maintaining that stranglehold is even less clear - while its “Supreme Leader” is galavanting around on a star destroyer chasing three measly Resistance ships, we see no Governors or Moffs or anything else to suggest the massive bureaucratic structure behind such an organisation (though we do get thrown the tiny morsel that apparently they finance their wars off the back of slavery).

Trivial Pursuit - the First Order slowly chases down the Resistance

It’s important to remember that even in Empire, Darth Vader’s taskforce was only ever a small part of the larger Imperial forces (such that he needed to make special arrangements to contact the Emperor at the capital) and that the Rebellion clearly had a larger fleet that was not present on its Hoth base that they finally rendezvoused with at the end of the film. However, we are supposed to believe that all that’s left of the Resistance (and, by extension, Republic) military - despite having at least three remaining flag rank officers - is three capital star ships, a handful of fighters, and a bunch of transports. Similarly, the best the First Order can mount in order to take down this rump is a dreadnought with a comical weakness, a few star destroyers that can’t move fast enough at sublight speed to engage them, or enough fighters to overwhelm them. Could they not have bothered to have a few more ships on either side, making the scale of the eventual losses seem more significant? This does not feel like an epic conflict - more like a minor brush fire. For it to lead to an incredibly convenient evacuation to a nearby planet that just happened to house an old rebel base - of which Rebellion leader Leia seemed to have no memory - was quite the cop out.

Given their continuing incompetence, I’m not sure how much we really care that the Resistance was whittled down to nothing over the course of this film. They don’t seem to be particularly good at resisting anything, and have a very odd hierarchy. As much as a fan as I am of Laura Dern, her character seemed to exist only as a foil for Poe - and also highlighting the Byzantine rank and command structure (Generals outranking Admirals? Commanders being demoted to Captains, without any intermediate ranks?) of the tiny Resistance. Having her play a human character instead of another species also underlined the Resistance’s human dominance, a missed opportunity to show a point of difference against the xenophobic First Order.

Why was it more important for the Resistance to evacuate the people on the ships instead of fighting to the end or following Finn’s plan to try and escape? Were they critical leaders who could gather a larger political or military force (doesn’t seem like it), or merely a small batch of survivors? What do they hope to achieve with so few people and almost no ships? Can they really put up any more resistance, or does it even matter now that they’re all gone and it appears that they’ve put all of their hopes in the oppressed peoples around the galaxy like the Force-sensitive child at the end? 

While I was impressed that the Resistance finally seemed to have acquired a new type of bomber that wasn’t a B-Wing or Y-Wing, they certainly still had the usual X-Wings and now A-Wing clones. Similarly, the First Order continues to be slavish in its imitation of the former Empire; other than the Dreadnought, its Super Star Destroyers, TIE Interceptors, AT-ATs, AT-STs and shuttles continue to be more of the same art direction (one pines for the evolutionary variety of ships in the prequels). I was also perplexed to see enemy fighters being able to so easily penetrate capital ship hangars - shouldn’t they first have to take down particle shields that are supposed to keep them out as in literally every other Star Wars film? Notwithstanding of course the contrived inability of the First Order destroyers or fighters from being able to speed up and finish the job.

That said, the opening part of the battle was quite fun - Poe’s piloting skills are always a delight, and while the bomber run on the Dreadnought was a little predictable it was nevertheless engaging. The destruction of Snoke’s star destroyer, using the effect of silence pioneered in Attack of the Clones was breathtaking (though if it were that simple, why didn’t the Resistance sacrifice one of their other ships that was inevitably going to be destroyed the same way?). Even Kylo’s attack on the Resistance cruiser and his hesitation at taking down his mother was quite well done - though somewhat undermined by the fact that when his wingmen nevertheless took the shot and took out the bridge, something truly bizarre happened.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane...

For reasons beyond Carrie Fisher’s untimely passing, it would have made a great deal of sense for Leia to die in this film. Much as Qui Gon, Obi Wan and Yoda before them, losing a mentor or leader gives our protagonists a chance at taking up the mantle to become heroes in their own right (we did get a little bit of this, but more on that later). But the moment of Kylo choosing not to take his mother out was a really great display of the conflict within him, and it being ultimately futile was a great note to end on.

However, despite being given the perfect opportunity to see Leia off, we instead learned that she is not only a Jedi descendant but also a Kryptonian superhero - unaffected by a devastating explosion or the vacuum of space, and able to fly through it with no means of propulsion (this time in defiance of Newton’s second law) back into the ship. What was the point of her surviving this, and if there was one, why have this attack take place at all? She could have easily fulfilled the role played by Laura Dern’s Admiral in this tale - instead of her, having Leia sacrificing herself by ramming the cruiser into Snoke’s star destroyer would have been a sacrifice worthy of the character and make an already amazing moment incredibly moving. And how exactly do they intend to deal with Carrie Fisher’s absence in the final film given they have ruled out using a CGI double? Hopefully not through another dismissive line of text in the crawl. 

The Cunning Plan - Finn, Poe and Rose

A staple of Star Wars is the protagonists devising a cunning plan to escape a dire predicament. In this instance, Finn and Poe (together with newcomer Rose) through some technobabble devise a way to stop the First Order flagship from tracking them through lightspeed (a development that didn’t seem to make sense in the absence of using any tracking devices - so novel that even Snoke is surprised by it). So once again we returned to the well of the protagonists infiltrating the enemy castle to enable escape, right out of A New Hope - and the whole endeavour, including the side trip to the Casino world, proved to be utterly unnecessary given the actual plan put in place by Laura Dern’s admiral. 

Nevertheless, seeing these characters work together was enjoyable. Poe’s clashes with Leia and the Admiral were fun, and his short-lived mutiny fulfilling. Rose’s backstory as an exploited slave for First Order weapons dealers - as well as her connection to her heroically sacrificed sister - was a nice touch, if not particularly relevant to the greater story arc. Though Finn’s constant need to get back to Rey started to feel jarring, it was good to see him step up with Rose and become a hero in his own right. His battle with Phasma was a highlight, as was his aborted suicide run against the turbolaser - leading to a pretty effective aphorism from Rose about the point of the Resistance not being about fighting things you hate, but saving people you love (more poignant given her own sister’s sacrifice). It actually made me think of young Anakin’s innocent line in The Phantom Menace about one of the problems in the galaxy being that people don’t help each other - naive, but ultimately true.

Another part of what makes Star Wars an epic space opera is traveling to different worlds and encountering different environments and species - which was one of the issues I had with Awakens, which spent far too long on and around Jakku. This film was even worse in that regard - other than the brief departure from the base at the start and the final battle on the salt planet, the vast majority of the film was spent about two starships. Finn and Rose’s jaunt to the Casino planet to retrieve the code breaker was a nice aside, but felt forced in there for variety and as such was a little perplexing. In the middle of a heated - if protracted - battle, they were able to just pop out for a few hours to the specific place suggested by Maz Kanata over a peculiar FaceTime communication and find not one but two people with the relevant skills. Showing the hardship suffered by those propping up the lavish lifestyle of the war profiteers was a good (though perhaps insufficient) way to lay the groundwork for a wider revolution to come in the next film. Benecio Del Toro’s double-dealing Code Breaker himself was amusing and pretty effective, even if he was a little too omniscient - although this provided some very interesting context when he pointed out that the Resistance was also dealing with the weapons merchants, thereby similarly morally compromised as the First Order.

I’m not going to lie, there was one cameo I was secretly hoping to see on such a world dedicated to glamour and debauchery - and that was from our beloved smooth con man, Lando Calrissian. But not bringing him back was probably the better thing to do given the new ground they should have been covering in these movies (though the same should have applied to many of the other returning characters).

The Ways of the Force - Luke and Rey

We certainly got one forgotten hero back: Luke Skywalker. The final scene of Awakens seemed to have been reshot in much different lighting conditions and reproduced here - again very odd for Star Wars. While Luke finally appeared to have developed an uncharacteristic gruff sense of humour to offset his earnestness, he appeared very single-minded in his desire to stay away from everyone and everything - leading us to believe that whatever spooked him is truly terrifying. It’s somewhat disappointing them to learn that it was set off by a rather ambiguous and unlikely event: Luke appearing to want to murder his nephew, and Ben burning the house down in response.

Though flashbacks were used briefly in Awakens, there were three flashbacks of this particular event from different points of view (clearly influenced by Kurosawa’s Rashomon). Despite Kurosawa’s influence on Star Wars, the flashback technique has never really been used in any Star Wars movie, so seeing so many of them here gave this very much a different feel. Historical information has usually been filtered through a series of unreliable narrators - showing / reenacting that on screen didn’t seem quite right, even if it may have been more necessary given the specific instances shown of Luke and Kylo’s different interpretations of this moment as his fall to the dark side (if it was even that - certainly Luke appeared to suggest he was already too late).

As to the event itself, what the hell was Luke thinking creeping on his nephew like that? Surely if he harbored any misgivings about his potential dark side there would have been other ways to approach it other than standing over him in his sleep with an ignited lightsaber apparently ready to strike? How has that sort of potential misunderstanding ever gone for other members of his family? And given his family history, surely it would have been at the forefront of his mind well before he started training his powerful nephew. How exactly could Snoke have gotten to Ben before that point if he was exclusively under Luke’s tutelage? For Ben’s part, surely there could have been some attempt to understand what was going on before perceiving it as an attack and thereby turning dark and slaughtering a bunch of his fellow students? At least Anakin Skywalker was given a few steps along the way to his turn to the dark side - Ben Solo seems to have just made the decision in an instant due to a critical misunderstanding.

Luke’s island hideaway is apparently an ancient Jedi temple of some sorts - complete with a dark side cave like Dagobah and ancient Jedi texts - taken care of by alien nuns and populated by cute little creatures called Porgs, who in fact serve no other purpose other than to look cute. He is cantankerous in his initial rebuffs to Rey, much as Yoda was towards him. Despite Rey’s incessantly on-message pleas, it takes R2D2 playing a cheap trick on him to persuade Luke to start training Rey.  His puzzlement at who Rey is though is something that continues to echo through to us as well. Something about Rey is clearly special, and yet we learn that she is in fact a nobody.

Despite some repetition of Yoda and Obi Wan’s explanation of the nature of the Force, Rey’s common-ness dovetails nicely with Luke’s view that the Force does not necessarily require the existence of the Jedi; it just IS. Of course, Rey promptly exceeds all of his expectations and he gets spooked again, sensing a similar potential for darkness within her. His view that the Jedi should end and that he would die on the planet seems prophetic, though at odds with one of his better lines in the film when he first tells Rey, then Kylo, that everything they just said is wrong (and promptly lists off the reasons why). Despite constant references to himself being the last of his kind and Rey being a nobody, he does seem to consider her to be the last Jedi.

Rey herself seems driven by a desire to find out who her parents were, despite the fact that apparently she already knows that they were nobodies who sold her into slavery. She is fixated on bringing Luke back to help save the Resistance single-handedly (seems a big ask given the circumstances) until she develops a strange connection with Kylo (more on that below). Once she concludes that Luke is going nowhere, she very quickly turns on him and turns her attention elsewhere. Of course she goes exploring the dark side cave, which this time around seems to have infinite mirror that just shows her herself. Unlike the cave on Dagobah which clearly depicted Luke’s fear that he would become like his father, this one simply tells Rey that she is her parents - or, I guess, that who her parents are doesn’t matter. I’m not sure how this is supposed to lead to any critical development of her character. She promptly decides to leave in the hope of turning Kylo back from the dark side (haven’t heard that one before either).

In her absence, Luke decides he should burn down (not quite sure why) this particular temple and in the process is revisited by the Force ghost of Yoda. Now I absolutely love Yoda, and missed his presence and wisdom in the last film. That said, there were obvious plot reasons why he had no place there, and I query whether or not he was really needed here either. This is very much the cheeky Minch Yoda that Luke met in his twlight on Dagobah, not the wise Grand Master of the Jedi Order that he was for the bulk of his lifetime. As such, he is mischievous and and doesn’t appear to have much of substance to share with Luke, other than somehow physically conjuring up flames to complete Luke’s attempted arson. Yoda echoes the overarching theme of the film of leaving the past behind and dismisses the value of ancient Jedi texts that Luke considers preserving, which of course we don’t really have any knowledge of or connection to anyway. But my biggest issue is that the Yoda on screen is in fact a CGI version of the puppet from Return, not the CGI version of the Yoda we have come to know. This seems to incorporate all of the bad things about the puppet - namely its obviously-manipulated mouth movements - without the real puppet’s charm or the CGI Yoda’s familiarity. It just totally took me out of the moment, which I didn’t think was possible with my favorite character in the saga.

As a reliable deus ex machina, Luke appeared to return to say good bye to Leia on the salt planet and to distract Kylo while the Resistance survivors escaped. Seeing a wizened old Luke as a full-fledged Master brazenly stare down an army and take on his former protege was pretty badass, despite the laboriousness of parts of the duel. Of course he wasn’t really there, he was using the new Force projection power that only appeared to exist between Rey and Kylo (see below) to create an image of himself across the galaxy. The effort to maintain this was so great that it was exhaustion, not a lightsaber, that finally defeated the great Luke Skywalker. I’m still not quite convinced that this was a worthy end to the Hero of the Rebellion, the Son of Suns, and the Chosen One.

The Turning - Rey, Kylo and Snoke

Luke’s final appearance built on the odd trans-spatial Force connection between Rey and Kylo established throughout the film. This sort of Force projection is something we have not seen before, and is an interesting development in our understanding of the Force itself. Previously the furthest tangible reach of the Force was localised within a star system, or the less tangible when Yoda could feel the dissociated pain of losing his fellow Jedi as the Clones enacted Order 66 around the galaxy. Now it appears Force users (read: anyone, according to this film) can converse with others in some sort of quasi-virtual reality across the span of light years. 

Of course the initial connection between Rey and Kylo is apparently created and manipulated by Snoke - who probably could have just as easily used it to acquire whatever information he wanted from Rey about locating and destroying Luke. But it allowed for the relationship between Rey and Kylo to develop - with each of them unable to get out of the other’s head, Rey stops seeing Kylo as a monster and starts to get a glimpse of the conflicted soul within, while Kylo no longer finds her an upstart threat but a friend and partner whose humble ancestry doesn’t matter to him. Whatever Snoke’s original objective was in creating this link, it ended up binding the two together for some possibly higher purpose.

That purpose was certainly not to defeat Snoke, which was pathetically easy. For someone who is apparently the most powerful being in the galaxy, Snoke is amazingly stupid enough not to see that the connection he established between the two would lead to his death - which was way too similar to the downfall of Palpatine in Return, right down to some of the dialogue between them. Rather unsatisfyingly, his death came before we got any context as to who Snoke himself is, and how he ascended to power. Where was he during the rise of Palpatine and the Empire, and why was he not drawn into that particular conflict? Why did they use the Emperor’s / Sith theme during Snoke’s interrogation of Rey if there truly is no connection between them? Snoke’s death also led to some exciting dueling between Rey and Kylo fighting alongside each other against Snoke’s red guards in the throne room, though one wonders what exactly the guards were defending once Snoke was killed (certainly their martial arts demonstrations were way over the top - the sort of thing that Indiana Jones aka Han Solo would grow tired of and respond to with a quick blaster shot to the chest). Shouldn’t they have proclaimed allegiance to Kylo as the new Supreme Leader? Is there some question over the order of succession, as General Hux intimated (of course, again raising the question of where the rest of the First Order’s power structure is).

The interesting part of the relationship between Rey and Kylo is that they both continue to see themselves as part of each other. The moment where Kylo offers Rey his hand in partnership was well played (if too similar to the Vader’s  offers to Padme and Luke), but unsastifyingly resolved - it would have opened up some really interesting possibilities if Rey had committed and joined him. However, despite them return to opposing factions, their connection appears unbroken and their conflict seems to be centered around Kylo wanting to destroy his past (and thereby, the Resistance) and Rey wanting to save it. How that can be resolved, at least on a personal level, will hopefully be the highlight of the next film.

All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again

So where will the next film go? As at the end of this film, we know there is basically no physical Resistance left, but that the ‘seeds’ of revolution have been sowed in the minds of the oppressed peoples of the galaxy (well, on one planet at least), and that there is nothing special about who can access the Force. On the other hand, Snoke is no longer leader of the First Order and instead we have Kylo Ren, who we know to be heavily conflicted and still intimately connected to Rey. His only malicious motivation seems to be to eliminate the past and move beyond it, which has somewhat been achieved with Luke’s passing (and inevitably Leia’s if they don’t find a way to bring her back). What reason does he have to keep in place the First Order’s oppressive power structure? He seems to have been motivated initially by revenge, not a thirst for power. How can he possibly keep such an organisation together, and why do any of the servants of the First Order owe him any loyalty they may have had to Snoke? Perhaps we will finally meet these Knights of Ren that he leads (presumably those of Luke’s students he chose not to slaughter).

Given past experience, I expect all of these concerns to be brushed away again, replaced by a fairly simplistic good versus evil, underdog versus behemoth, redemption tale that pays lip service to the story that came before it without actually advancing it to a logical conclusion. And lots of humorous banter.

*Information many Bothans died for

A few asides: 

Obviously, there are many current political allusions one can draw out of this film, which is a staple of Star Wars across the ages. I haven’t dwelt on them because the issues they describe are supposed to be universally relevant throughout history. 

We learn at the conclusion that Poe and Rey have never met before. Um, what about after the Starkiller Base Battle before she left to find Luke? Did they not have time then? This moment was clearly designed to be cute, just as were the inclusion of the Porgs and Crystal Wolves, but ultimately seemed redundant.

Threepio no longer has a red arm, so one wonders what the point of that reference was in Awakens? Of course, if this film directly followed that one as Finn’s recovery and Rey’s encounter with Luke suggest, where did he get time to repaint or replace it?

Luke refers to the Emperor as “Darth Sidious”. When did anyone who knew Palpatine’s Sith name ever tell Luke what it was? The only survivors who knew were Yoda, Obi Wan and Vader, all of whom never used that name in the original trilogy (primarily because it hadn't been thought of until the prequels were made). 

As the hours tick down to the release of “The Last Jedi” (rather presumptuously labeled “Episode VIII”), I’ve been reflecting on the state of Star Wars and in particular what exactly is going on with the mainline ‘continuation’ of the Skywalker saga. Unlike others who seem to think publicly proclaiming their thoughts on early previews of the film (basically showing off that they have had the privilege) is somehow not a totally crappy thing to do, I want to warn anyone reading this that some of this speculation may stray into spoilers (I hope it doesn’t) and that my thoughts on the actual film itself will follow soon after with similar warnings. Also, I have not read any secondary sources that may provide any context to this beyond the films themselves, so I acknowledge that some of the thoughts below may have extra-canonical explanations.

The Phantom Unease

If you’re one of the few who have read my previous entries, you’d know that I wasn’t really that impressed with “Episode VII: The Force Awakens”. I had the opportunity to rewatch it for the first time last week accompanied by the fantastic Melbourne Symphony Orchestra performing its score live in a theatre. The music still doesn’t feel as memorable as the original trilogy’s or as soaring as the prequels’, but it was nevertheless fantastic hearing even a lesser John Williams score performed by such wonderful musicians. My opinion on the film, however, did not change. As my partner pointed out, it’s entertaining enough while you’re watching it - but then, so are many other movies. Does it stay with you after you leave the theatre? Are there moments that take your breath away? Does it tell a story that you can’t stop thinking about or relating to? Does it have performances that are etched in your mind? The Force Awakens may have contained a heap of humorous banter (no fart jokes sure, but nothing particularly clever either) but I can’t say yes to any of those questions in respect of that film, yet most of them have been satisfied by every other Star Wars film (including last year’s Rogue One).

For me, Star Wars has always been about the story. Story is supposedly king when it comes to film, such that everything else should serve it. From that point of view, whatever problems I might have with anything else (performances, effects) melt away if I’m engaged with the story. Both the original trilogy and the prequels had stories I felt engaged with, and plots that were solid (except, ahem, perhaps the mystery of Master Sifo-Dyas and the clone army which have been better served in the Clone Wars TV series). They were stories that resonated and that were worth being told, and I was invested in them all the way. The original trilogy may have started in media res (in the middle of the story) just as The Force Awakens did, but it fleshed out this broader story world while adapting Joseph Campbell’s archetypical Hero’s Journey. For all of their perceived faults, the prequels are an incredibly relevant precautionary tale against concentrating power without oversight, sacrificing freedom for the appearance of safety, and the lengths to which someone can be driven to protect those they love.

An Attack by Clones

As some sort of rebuke of George Lucas and his ambitious prequels (and given the popular derision towards them both), instead of developing a logical continuation of the story that ended with Return of the Jedi, Disney and the new management of Lucasfilm seemed to buy into the Hollywood zeitgeist of rebooting and remaking existing stories with a layer of modern sensibility and sleekness to capitalise on nostalgia and cheap laughs. Though it was clear to me on first viewing, I’m glad to see that over time the feeling that The Force Awakens is a laughably poor imitation of A New Hope has finally gained wider traction. Certainly it proved commercially successful enough (though the prequels set their own box office records during their time) where riskier story world developments (such as Blade Runner 2049) have not been; though you have to ask why that capital couldn’t have been better applied to original stories instead (no one is remaking The Godfather, for instance). While there’s always value in returning to good story structures, there’s so much creativity wasted in beat-for-beat rehashing existing stories that have already been told well.

I’m rather cynically going to predict that The Last Jedi will resemble The Empire Strikes Back, just as The Force Awakes xeroxed A New Hope - and the trailers seem to suggest this is a safe bet. Rey clearly goes to Luke for training and probably acts in a manner that conflicts with Luke’s own plan (as he did with Yoda). Rey probably seeks out Kylo Ren who makes some persuasive arguments as to why he should train her instead of Luke. Finn seems to have a continuing beef with Captain Phasma that he needs to sort out, much like Han with Lando or Jabba the Hutt. Coming off its victory against Starkiller Base, the Resistance probably takes a severe beating at the hands of the First Order. Oh, and one last thing - there’s probably a pretty big cliffhanger or revelation that has been designed to echo the shock of “No, I am your father”.

But that’s all mere plot - I still have not figured out what these new films are actually supposed to be about (other than a cynical reboot of the original trilogy for commercial exploitation), or why we should care. By virtue of the world created by their predecessors, and the vast ‘Legends’ expanded universe I grew up with (now unceremoniously dumped by Disney), I care deeply about the larger story in which they take place - so I will persist and watch these remaining films in the hoping of trying to make sense of it all. There are two major areas where this uncertainty manifests: the personal and the political.

The Personal

Star Wars follows two intertwined and similar, but slightly different, personal stories within the Skywalker family - one person’s search for purpose (Anakin), and another’s search for belonging (Luke). The essence of these two stories (and similarly, the slight distinction) is reflected in the two leads of this new tale - Finn and Rey, respectively. However, what is less clear is how the background in which these stories take place fits into the broader Skywalker family saga.

Obviously Rey’s family background has been left deliberately mysterious - Ewan McGregor’s voice cameo suggests a Kenobi connection, but then she could possibly also be a Palpatine - but neither of the leads appears to be connected to the Skywalker family. The first movie seems to suggest that their connection to the Force is symbiotic - they both appeared to have ‘awakened’ at the same time, though Rey’s journey appeared to be accelerated by her vision at Maz Kanata’s cantina (ahem) and on board Starkiller Base (ahem). Luke and Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen Ones, took years to master the Jedi mind trick, but Rey’s got it down in minutes. And both Rey and Finn pick up enough skill to engage and challenge (if not necessarily defeat) Luke’s protege, a supposedly powerful dark side user who must be genetically teeming with midichlorians. Why is this, and does any of this fit in with what we know about the Force, the prophecy of the Chosen One bringing balance, or the Skywalker family itself? These are questions I hope this film and the next attempt to answer.

On the other hand, we do know that Ben “Kylo Ren” Solo IS a Skywalker descendant who, rather unsurprisingly, turned to the dark side (the stories of his grandfather obviously weren’t scary enough). He killed his father for, reasons - that don’t involve avenging any lost limbs or turning his wife against him. He is the Master of the Knights of Ren (ahem, Dark Lord of the Sith), a group that we have not yet met or been given any context for. Apparently he is so powerfully dark that he forced his uncle (who has defeated the two most powerful Sith of all time) to go into hiding, and yet he is easily engaged by two newbies, and his current master feels that he still needs to complete his training (so these Knights of Ren he leads must be total schmucks). In the trailers he flies around in a jazzed up copy of his grandfather’s TIE Fighter (so both the Force sensitivity and piloting skills pass down through the midichlorians) and appears to be gunning for his mother because, reasons. And his master, a disfigured hologram known only as “Supreme Leader Snoke”, turned him to the dark side and wants him to help him destroy the Resistance because - I don’t know, reasons? Palpatine was a malevolent presence who emerged from the shadows to completely dominate the galaxy over the course of six films. How did Snoke become so apparently powerful (while still only commanding a rump of a political or military force), and how does he fit into the saga after coming seemingly out of nowhere? And again, why should we care? I hope this film spends some time showing us.

Someone who actually has been developed over the course of three films (though certainly not the fourth) is Luke. The opening crawl of The Force Awakens introduced a massively unearned and very sterotypical Macguffin - “Luke Skywalker has vanished” - laying bare the basic plot of the film, namely trying to find him (let’s be honest, it’s a one-for-one rehash of Leia looking for Obi Wan Kenobi). First, we know nothing of why this is significant - despite almost single-handedly being responsible for freeing the galaxy from the tyranny of the Empire, Luke has apparently become a ‘myth’. So his disappearance is simultaneously Very Important to the Resistance (why?) and totally unimportant to galactic society at large. Other than failing to properly train his nephew (not unoriginal at all), we don’t know what Luke has done in the intervening 30 years to have made us care at all about his disappearance. We know why Kenobi disappeared - Vader and the Empire hunted down the Jedi, and he had a young ward to protect - but such a reason doesn’t exist for Luke (yet). We’re supposed to believe he got spooked by repeating his own mentor’s obvious mistake and decided that hiding was better than fighting back. That’s putting aside the implausibility of the disappearance in the first place - Luke hasn’t told his family and friends (let alone students) where he’s gone, but he’s left half a map in a conveniently powered-down R2D2 and another with the Exorcist (why?). And, until now, no one’s thought to look in those two completely obvious locations. None of his Force-sensitive relatives seem to have been able to undertake the task of locating him either (nor his best friend, who knows at the very least that he went searching for the ‘first Jedi temple’, which is clearly not on Jedha from Rogue One).

Which brings us to Leia: Carrie Fisher sadly passed away after shooting her scenes for this movie. Given that not much of a big deal has been made of this publicly in relation to this film (as opposed to her cameo in Rogue One), and the appearance of some massively spoilerish scenes in the trailers, it would also be a safe bet to assume Leia dies during this film. So what I’m interested in is what purpose does her death serve? Han Solo’s death certainly didn’t provide any, unlike the death of Obi Wan that it was designed to mimic. Her death would make some sense in that the completion of this particular story should be left to the next generation, as has been the case in previous iterations - but none of that helps us understand what the hell Leia has been doing acting as a general for an insurgency when by rights she should be presiding over the dominant power in the galaxy, namely the New Republic; or why losing her should be so consequential. This brings us neatly to the next serious of questions that relate to the broader political context of what’s happening in the Galaxy Far, Far, Away, and why we should care about it.

The Political

On a broader level, Star Wars is about how good institutions fall when they stagnate and arrogantly believe in their natural infallibility (the Republic / Jedi), and how evil ones fail because they unilaterally impose order to oppress (the Empire / Sith). Taken at face value, this new trilogy is a rehash of the latter, but in order for that to have any resonance the players need to be similarly placed and have similar motives.

So, what exactly is the dreaded First Order? What is ‘First’ about it? We know that Palpatine called his Empire the “New Order” but how does that connect to this new group? And what is its relationship to the remnants of the Empire? That same galaxy-spanning Empire whose bountiful resources only provided for the construction of two moon-sized system-limited super lasers and a fleet of kilometres-long starships, while its territorially-localised successor can build apparently colossal capital ships and a planet that can suck the life out of ‘suns’ (ahem, gravity and general relativity) and destroy multiple planets instantaneously from light years away? What purpose does the First Order serve? Sure, they’ve been portrayed as your stereotypical Nazis, but what specific ideologies do they advance that makes those they seek to conquer so repugnant to them, and in need of conquering? Does it exist purely for Snoke’s pleasure / power? Does it seek to impose order on the galaxy and give humans a platform for supremacy as the Empire did (though, to be fair, the Resistance is pretty human-heavy as well)? Does it merely seek to destroy the New Republic (seems likely) for reasons, with no particular plan as to what to replace it with? And most critically, why have they so closely modeled themselves on the the structures and styles of the Empire, which has already lost a galactic war?

What about the Resistance itself? Clearly it is resisting the First Order, but why? What territorial or ideological claims are made by the First Order, and how do they conflict with those of the Resistance? And, most critically, where is the New Republic in all of this and why does it need a localised ragtag Resistance to defend itself? We know the “Republic fleet” wasn’t available to defend the Resistance base in the Ileenium system (ahem, Yavin IV) or the now-destroyed Hosnian system (ahem, Alderaan - I only learned those names when I saw the subtitles at the live performance). And yet the New Republic’s presumptive political and military leaders (Leia and Admiral Ackbar) seem to have committed themselves to this cause rather than fulfilling the higher callings that they earned by fighting another much more consequential galactic civil war. Unlike the Rebellion’s first encounter with a Death Star, which relied on small maneuverable snub fighters, Starkiller Base is large enough that a fleet of capital warships would have been very useful - much as they were when the Rebels took on the Empire at Endor and Scarif. And somewhere in this mix must be the “new Jedi” that Han said Luke Skywalker was apparently training, of which Ben Solo was just one (and apparently the only one who predictably fell to the dark side) - though by looking at the title of this film, they’re probably not going to be around any more.

Finally, what about the minor players in this conflict - crime families like the Hutts and the bounty hunters or power-hungry entities like the Trade Federation? We know from The Force Awakens that there’s still some sort of underworld, reflected though Solo’s Rathtar dealings with the evil Scots and Asians - I mean Guavian Death Gang and Kanjiklub (again, names I only picked up recently from subtitles). But how do they influence the ongoing story and interfere with the conflict between the Resistance and First Order? What new characters complicate the protagonists’ objectives - is there a Lando, a Jedi Council, or even a Jar Jar, or is Poe Dameron all we get? Are the Porgs of the trailer as significant as the Jawas or Ewoks, or merely there to imitate their merchandisability?

A Final Hope

Ten years ago, I had the random luck of landing in New York at 6pm on June 29. Something else was happening at that time, and I wasn’t about to let the opportunity to be a part of it pass me by.

Other than being an Apple fanboy for years, I was (and still am) a tragic early adopter with a firm belief in the potential for technology to simplify and enhance our lives. Back in that PC-centric world, this translated to faith in what Steve Jobs described as the ‘digital hub’ - having a (likely desktop) computer be the central repository for your communications (email), documents, photos, music and movies, connected to other satellite devices such as a phone, laptop, camera, music player (ahem, iPod) and video camera feeding them content. It was a remarkably clear and tidy vision allowing a true digital library of your life at your fingertips (provided you were seated in front of your computer), however it relied on one being able to have any or all of those devices available to you when you wanted to acquire that content.

That’s a lot of devices to carry around, and pockets / bags have limited space within. I recall my daily morning routine of putting my phone, keys, wallet and iPod carefully in my pockets to minimise bulge, packing my laptop and sometimes camera (and, very rarely when travelling, video camera) in my bag, and feeling like I had everything I needed at my disposal (while hoping that nothing fell out or was stolen). And of course, the devices in your bag (and the ones left behind) were never easily accessible or useful, being large and unwieldy to carry on their own or together.

Email was simply inaccessible without a laptop and WiFi. Blackberries were a novelty at the time and the preserve of high-powered executives and consultants - even as someone then working in a corporate environment, only the most senior members of my firm carried them. Some particularly adventurous individuals had digital personal organisers called PalmPilots to store their contacts and calendars, but these were of little use beyond that. I’d been working at a conference a few years earlier when I observed many of the participants carrying around small PalmPilot-like devices called iPAQs that hooked up to WiFi gave them access to their conference schedules as well as their emails. I thought this was the bees knees, and couldn’t wait to see this technology filter down to the consumer market. 

The hottest things in mobile phone technology back then were polyphonic ringtones, stamp sized photos sent through MMS, and the devices getting smaller. Despite being around for some time in Australia, apparently texting through SMS was only just becoming widespread in the US - but of course was stunted by its 160 character limit (hmm, why does that seem familiar?). You’d type a text through the muscle memory of knowing how many times to press a number on the pad to toggle a particular character - and wait a few seconds if consecutive characters were assigned to the same number. The manual process of entering contacts was laborious and repetitive, especially when changing devices or SIM cards, as there was no easy way to transfer them.

Eventually, HP and other vendors started offering devices (‘Pocket PCs’) like the ones I’d seen at the conference to consumers, at fairly astronomical prices. Some had WiFi included thanks to horrendously large antennae, while others required the purchase of a separate SD card for connectivity. Most shipped with the ironically-named Windows Mobile and required a stylus and an abstract Palm-esque character system for handwriting recognition (or an absolutely tiny software keyboard that needed to be prodded by said stylus). Due to the limits of this character recognition and the resistive screens of these devices, this experience was fraught with errors and inaccuracies. Other devices had large Blackberry-style physical keyboards requiring a similar symphony of thumb presses, this time somewhat resembling the experience of using a regular keyboard but with greater potential for RSI. Palm had such a product called the Treo, as did Motorola (then-known for its extremely popular slim flip-phone, the RAZR, and less so for its clunky iTunes Phone, the ROKR) with the Q.

In 2005, once Pocket PCs finally started to incorporate a mobile phone as well, I saved up and splurged on what I thought to be one of the most elegant - the i-mate JAM. About the size of the original iPod, it was compact but with a then-decent sized screen. Its ability to recognise one abstractly-scribbled word at a time felt like a revelation, and turned the one-character-at-a-time experience of texting and writing emails into something slightly more fluid. Of course, emailing and web-browsing were limited by the need for WiFi (and I did buy one of those silly SD cards for occasional use) and the awful and very rare mobile-optimised websites (the ‘baby web’ as Steve Jobs would go on to call it). I could get useful information such as weather forecasts, but only occasionally when hooked up to WiFi through that card - forget about getting anything useful through 2G GPRS data - or download a bunch of information at a time when syncing to my computer (clunky though it was, given it ran Windows and I used a Mac). But the fact that it did sync to my computer at all, and provided all (well, most) of my contacts when I needed them felt incredibly useful - instead of having to repeatedly press a button to scroll through my contacts to make a call, I’d simply find it using my stylus. I’d occasionally even get by scribbling characters messily with my thumb or forefinger, but for most intents and purposes the stylus was the most effective method for input. 

Several years earlier, the iPod had stormed the market for portable music players and effectively killed portable CD players - despite lukewarm efforts by other manufacturers to build MP3 players or alternative technologies like MiniDisc. Ostensibly, the iPod triumphed over its competitors due to its straightforward ability to sync a library through iTunes, its non-removable hard drive for storage, as well as its simple user interface and click wheel - which, despite the steady addition of photos, videos and games, few people felt could be adapted for other purposes like a phone. At the same time, despite the ROKR flop, phones were starting to include the ability to store and play music - which posed a long-term existential threat to the iPod. Much as the hard-drive based iPod Mini was killed and replaced by the superior flash-based iPod Nano, so too would the iPod itself need to be replaced by a convergent product. Similarly, ‘3G’ phones were providing limited online walled-gardens where carriers would provide certain services or information, thereby also posing a threat to the nascent Pocket PC market as well.

I say all this because I was one of those people searching for the mythical ‘one device’ that would replace all of these others and surpass their various limitations. There had already been considerable talk and rumour-mongering of an ‘iPod Phone’ which I hoped would come to pass eventually, but had no idea how soon that would be. In January 2007, I was utterly amazed to see Steve Jobs unveil just that: not just a better widescreen iPod with touch controls, not just a better mobile phone, and not just a more effective way to get information from the internet - but all three of those in one. Gone were both stylus and click wheel, replaced by a smooth capacitive touch interface that allowed you to use your always-available fingers to do everything you needed - and with barely any physical buttons, the entire screen was the phone, and the UI adapted to the needs of the specific app you were using. There was no physical keyboard simply because there was no need for one. This device was not just an iPod, a phone, or an internet communicator - it really was a computer in your pocket. 

It was the third part of the ‘device’ that spoke to me the most and I was surprised at how lukewarm its reception was at the time - being able to view whole web pages at a time and tap to zoom in on the content you were interested was absolutely mind-blowing (and now that it’s dead, we can forget the minor inconvenience of not being able to view battery-hogging Adobe Flash content). And add to that the fact that it also had maps and a limited type of GPS as well, so it could potentially also replace a Melway (our local street directory), printed directions or even those expensive in-car GPS systems. Unlike the Blackberry or even Pocket PCs before it, this was a smart phone that any consumer signing up to a telco contract could access - and to top it off, on a technological level it left those predecessors firmly in the dust. 

With that kind of tremendous change came a predictably hostile response from the incumbents and pundits, all of whom couldn’t grasp how such a device could have anything but niche appeal when it was so different to what success currently looked like and what they believed people then wanted out of their phones (see Steve Jobs’ later co-option of Wayne Gretzky’s line about skating to where the puck will be, not where it’s been). I, on the other hand, was a true believer, and wouldn’t be brought down by such negativity - even if it was reasonable or proved to be valid (happily for me, it wads neither). I was well and truly sold and, being unable to bear the anticipation of getting my hands on this game-changing device, skinned my JAM to resemble the iPhone interface and patiently waited to hear when we might be lucky enough to get an Australian release for the device - likely months or years down the track.

So you can imagine my excitement when by chance I was asked to chaperone my nephew on a vacation to New York that just happened to land on the day the iPhone was released (Modern Family’s Phil Dunphy had a similar description for how fate aligned the stars to make his birthday coincide with the release of the iPad several years later). We landed just as the doors would have opened at Fifth Avenue and the first lucky customers who had lined up days earlier would walk out with their shiny new toys. Despite the 20-odd hour journey, I pleaded with the relatives we were staying with to take me to the nearest Apple Store as soon as we unpacked. The last thing I wanted to do was go that far and find the product had sold out. Luckily, this was a mall store in Long Island, and I was completely shocked to find no queue, not that many people around, and plenty of stock sitting at the counter. It seemed not quite everyone was sold on the future just as yet. I did not hesitate, and walked out of there USD 600-odd lighter.

Of course many people then posed the obvious question to me: as an Australian, what good was a phone locked to a US carrier that couldn’t even be activated without signing up to a contract? I may have been blinded by my enthusiasm, but I wasn’t stupid about it - and luckily again, the particular circumstances surrounding the original iPhone conspired to make things work for me. Despite the lack of the ‘outright’ device purchasing model at that time in the US, the original iPhone had the carrier subsidy built into the contract, not the device itself - so while you did have to sign up to a two-year contract to use the phone, you did that after purchasing the phone at an ‘outright’ (not subsidised) price. So the sting in the tail was a USD 300 cancellation fee if you left prior to the end of the two years. Factoring this as a cost of purchasing a ‘widescreen iPod with touch controls’ and ‘breakthrough internet communicator’ I persuaded my relatives to take up then AT&T contract so that I could activate the device, and would reimburse them for the cancellation fee. But again luck struck - as the phone was effectively purchased at an unsubsidised price, the contract termination fee didn’t kick in until 30 days after purchase - so I got my device (without the phone) at its sticker price (and even better, would later be refunded USD 100 when Steve Jobs finally realised he’d ripped off all of us early adopters a little too much). When I finally made the pilgrimage to the Fifth Avenue store a few days later, I picked up another one for my (now) wife.

Using this ‘touch iPod’ (soon to be made redundant by an actual iPod Touch) during those early days was a total thrill, and completely surpassed the experience of using my not-very-old-but-ancient-feeling Pocket PC. The skeuomorphic ability to touch the device with your fingers and have it appear to respond in a physically consistent way was tremendous. Certainly it also had appeal as a novelty - its absence from the Australian market did result in quite a bit of interest from friends and onlookers after my return. I was somewhat surprised by the quality of the photographs it took, though not sufficiently to use it to regularly replace my point and shoot or DSLR. And it definitely became my full-time iPod, as the cover flow visuals and multitouch interface made up for its relatively modest 8GB storage. But, as if that weren’t enough, within a few months enterprising hackers had found the Death Star's weakness, and exploited it to allow people to jailbreak the iPhone and unlock it from its Apple and AT&T shackles. While it was by no means the easiest or risk-free process and required a bit of technical know-how, thanks to some pretty detailed instructions published by said legends I was able to carefully work my way through them and fully unlock the phone - making it almost fully functional at home and allowing me to finally ditch my other mobile phone. Of course, our mobile telco plans were then still stuck in past as far as data, and I had to switch carriers to find a 'reasonable' plan that gave me a 'generous' allowance of 50MB/month (thanks Virgin Mobile!). But for the limited purposes of browsing and checking email in that data-lite era, this was still enough for the experience to be a revelation.

It's true that it wasn't until the iPhone 3G launched (and was finally made available in Australia as well) that the iPhone started to feel more like a mature product - and the local availability of the 3G obviated the need for the various workarounds and hacks I had to employ to make use of the original. Many of the features weren't really refined or perfected until the iPhone 4 or 5. A feature film was shot entirely on an iPhone 5S, and the capabilities of today's iPhone 7 (as well as the iPad, the iPhone's spiritual sibling, on which I’m typing this post) are drastically beyond what most people can fully utilise as they can store your entire (much larger) media library locally or access it through the cloud. Our phones now no longer look like they used to then - all modern phones and tablets still have the same basic form factor and layout as the 10 year old original iPhone, which truly felt like the opening of the technological floodgates and the start of an incredible paradigm shift. Of course, that shift has had many positive as well as negative consequences since - most notably, as a function of its widespread adoption, how we communicate with others, interact socially, and work outside the office - but that is always the way with (and cost of) progress. 

Spoilers below. Not going to spend as much time constructing my thoughts this time, just going to dump them here as I think of them. These are my thoughts as a long-time Star Wars fan, not a review.  

It’s better than the last one.* It had a reason to exist (essentially referenced in the opening crawl of Star Wars), and a solid premise. Thematically distinct, and a different story not a glorified remake.

I completely welcome non-saga stories by Disney, much more so than ones that purport to continue the saga but do so poorly. 

I really liked the fact that it touched on what it means to be a part of a rebellion, and what you have to be prepared to do in the service of a cause; both in concept and execution. For the most part, loved the pacing and the somewhat inevitable ending.**

Most of the performances were great. The CGI performances, though a little offputting, were generally very convincing. Leads were all great, though I thought that Jyn was supposed to be a lot more of a rebel - she seemed a lot more earnest, they must have changed her character in the cut (which is a shame as it made her a little one dimensional). Donnie Yen and Alan Tudyk were the stand outs, Mads was great, and I was over the moon to see Jimmy Smits playing Bail Organa again (and Genevieve O’Reilley finally appearing on screen as Mon Mothma) - anything that brings the prequels and original trilogy together is my jam.

Still it had many of the same problems as The Force Awakens.

There were way too many planets - I can’t even remember how many let alone name them. While allowing some visual distinction (no crawl, different titles) is good for non-saga stories,*** the use of chyrons identifying planets was very un-Star Wars, and served no purpose since none of them were around for long enough to be worth remembering. Yavin IV seemed pretty easily accessible for a hidden base. On the other hand, the one planet that was really interesting, the home of Vader’s temple, was not named at all. Was this Mustafar, the planet where he lost his limbs and ended the Clone Wars? Star Wars traditionally traverses 3-5 incredibly distinct planets / environments in a film, that are so iconic as to be etched into memory. Really wasn’t the case here, and was so over plotted that it should probably have been on TV instead of film. 

I can’t seem to remember the names of the lead characters other than Jyn, Galen or Krennic. Sure they were mentioned, but so rarely as to be forgettable. That said, generally speaking the leads were great and welcomingly diverse (both good things it shares with its predecessor). On the other hand some very important characters story-wise (Mon Mothma, Organa) were not even name checked, and relied totally on familiarity with the saga.

There was way too much fan service, typical of the Disney era. Some old favourite characters given cameos for completely spurious / incomprehensible reasons (Vader, Leia), just for fan kicks. Only really worthwhile cameo for the story was Tarkin, since this was essentially a story about the Death Star which has always been associated with him. These CGI cameos were surprising and initially satisfying as fan service, but suffered from uncanny valley issues. Vader himself was way more hands on than he should have been - where were his legions of stormtroopers to take out the enemy infantry? In this time period Vader is no longer the spry deadly slayer of Jedi, he is an old and broken machine-more-than-man, and has only dealt with serious threats personally (Kenobi, Luke).

It wasn’t as canon-revisionist as the ‘sequels’, but still took some liberties that are hard to reconcile with the existing story / universe. Lots of new ship designs (U-Wings, new TIEs, many different shuttle craft) which didn’t seem to feature at the Battle of Yavin or the rest of the Galactic Civil War (but as incongruous as they may be, I guess these are sadly necessary to keep selling new toys). The Rebel fleet seemed to be quite large in comparison to what we basically understood to be a ragtag bunch of stolen ships represented by only two squadrons (Red and Gold) at the Battle of Yavin. Red and Gold Squadrons took quite a battering (most notably the loss of the incumbent Red 5 callsign, giving rise to a convenient vacancy soon to be filled by a young pilot from Tatooine) so close to their upcoming famous battle. The Death Star’s creation at the Maw (Expanded Universe) or design by the Geonosians (Episode II) was either ignored or retconned.

The space battle was fun, though as I mentioned above the Rebels had way too many ships and found it way too easy to get into and out of battle from their hidden base. Weird seeing the main capital ships being variations of the medical frigate and blockade runner, and especially having another Mon Calamari admiral commanding from a frigate as flagship (where were their famous cruisers?) - kind of undermines the significance of Ackbar (missed an opportunity for him to respond to Vader’s last minute appearance with “We’re trapped!”). Also, how can there already be an admiral for such a small ‘fleet’ - surely Raddish should have been a captain?

On the ground, the once formidable AT-ATs seemed like canon fodder, able to be taken down by bazooka and X-Wing. These were supposed to be so heavily  armoured that the only way they could be disabled was by tripping them up. Also, the Death Star itself seems far more capable than it was originally made out to be; the first Death Star was supposed to be powerful enough to destroy a planet, but not precise, whereas the second Death Star had the capacity to target and destroy individual ships. If the first Death Star can now be so precise and its commander so restrained as to destroy only cities, is it really anything more powerful than a simple atomic bomb? And doesn’t it completely undermine the superiority and terrifying power of the second Death Star?

Some elements were clumsily plotted and shoehorned in - why would one man be so critical to the design of the Death Star that he would have to be kidnapped out of retirement? Especially when his involvement was always going to create a conflict that could cause trouble for the Empire down the track - was that honestly a surprise for them? Why do the crew always seem to end up in the same place as Krennic? Why did Krennic need to go visit Vader (except for pure fan service)? Why does Vader have his own planet (and guards?) in the first place? Why is he not busy serving the Emperor or the fleet? And why do all these temples (both Jedi and Sith or whatever we’re calling them) look the same (except to reuse Ralph McQuarrie and Doug Chiang’s old unused concept art)? Why were Leia and the Tantive IV at the final battle? I get that she was given the stolen plans and ‘pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents’ at some point, but wasn’t her primary mission to recruit Kenobi and isn’t it a bit too much for all of this to happen at once? It’s a bit difficult to pass yourself off as a diplomatic mission when you literally just slipped out of Vader’s fingers and he saw you escape with the plans himself, and a bit silly to head straight to the reclusive general’s hiding place without first trying to lose the Star Destroyer that’s already on your tail.

What was the point of Galen being recruited at gunpoint by Krennic with Jyn escaping as her mother was killed? Was there anything inherently special about either of them, or any motivation generated by this? And jumping from Jyn being rescued by Saul (?) the extremist to suddenly having to find him again after so many years felt as unearned as the whole premise of The Force Awakens. There was some more potential to explore the nature of being a rebel and the lines that you have to draw as to how far you'll go to serve the cause (such as Saul (?) being comfortable using torture), but that was largely left on the table.

In this time period, the Jedi had long-since been destroyed and become myth; Luke didn’t even know what the Force was. So why is everyone throwing it around like an active faith and not dismissing it as a hokey religion that barely anyone remembers? The only subplot where this made sense was Donny Yen’s character and his side-kick, which were surprisingly my favourite characters (along with the droid) once it was clear they weren’t themselves hidden or fake Jedi. Seeing Matrix-like martial arts in the trailer made me skeptical initially, but I was impressed with how they handled these characters and their contribution to the story.

On the other hand, I really wanted to like Ben Mendelsohn as Krennic, but it felt more like a caricature of an Imperial bad guy, without the menace of Tarkin or Vader, and no sense of deep sadistic evil buried within like Palpatine. 

The music was not by John Williams (who himself dropped the ball heavily on the last one); so while it was serviceable - quite moody and complementary to the byzantine plot - it was not at all iconic or memorable in the way Williams’s scores (especially his Star Wars ones) have always been.

The title of the film was nice, apropos to the theme - however, it also felt incorporated as an after thought into the plot. I mean, what was it ultimately? A symbolic title for Jyn? Representative of the crew of misfits that came together to steal the plans and make the Rebellion’s first strike? All of those would have made more sense, and had more thematic heft (especially given the name’s significance down the track as the name of the Alliance’s flagship fighter squadron founded by Luke Skywalker) if it had been more than just the callsign the pilot came up with when stealing their already stolen Imperial shuttle from the rebel base. I mean, they spent most of the film in a U-Wing, that ship probably had more of a claim to the title than the shuttle. 

As I mentioned earlier, this was fundamentally a story about oppression and rebellion; symbolised by the creation (well, more like first strike) of the Death Star and the birth (well, again, first strike) of the Rebel Alliance. Unfortunately, this is essentially the plot of the original Star Wars; so in a way, this story is kind of just filling in the gaps, but had the opportunity to explore that broad conflict in a slightly different way. For the most part, I think it succeeded doing that in some very specific instances; off the top of my head, these include the rebel captain killing in cold blood, the ‘good guys’ having to use torture (was that any different to Vader torturing Han at Cloud City?), the Force presenting itself to the blind warrior in a meaningful way without going over the top, and the protagonists all having to make the ultimate sacrifice rather than some or all of them living happily ever after (more than just severed limbs were sacrificed here). On the other hand, making a modern film about that conflict and in this story universe with all of today’s film making advantages creating a greater spectacle than the original kind of undermines the original’s own significance in the first place. It’s as if there were a little-known but incredibly significant battle of much greater scale that occurred several days before the Normandy landings.  

Lots more thoughts, but I don’t know if I’ll have sufficient time to construct them properly for now. Will edit as I remember anything else.

* I didn’t end up seeing The Force Awakens a second time. I just didn’t care enough about the story, for all the reasons mentioned in the post I made at the time (see below). Film makers love to say ‘story is king’, but so often sacrifice it in the name of making something flashy or witty. On the other hand, a film can have all the flaws in the world, but if the story is solid it doesn’t matter - I’ll forgive them if I’m invested in the story. I’m okay for more for this kind of movie than of the remake type that we’ve been dished up so regularly of late. 

** The final shot on Skarif / Skaro (Wasn’t that the name of the Dalek home world?) was incredibly similar to the one in Zak Hilditch’s These Final Hours. 

Please only read on if you have already watched the new ‘Star Wars’ movie or if you don’t care about watching it, because I have held my tongue in public but won’t be holding back below.

I walked into the movie theatre late last night knowing no more than what I’d seen in several trailers and an unfortunate glance at a report of early reviews claiming that this film had brought back the ‘magic of the originals’.

In this, I can’t disagree with the premature headlines - if by ‘magic’ you mean the exact same plot and by ‘bringing back’ you mean xeroxed perfectly a carbon(ite) copy.

Steve Jobs co-opted Wayne Gretzky’s line about not skating to where the puck is, but skating to where it will be. I feel like the same can be said of modern storytelling. We may have reached the boundaries of the playing field when it comes to stories but there are always fresh ways to tell classic tales. There are people who do this incredibly well - Christopher Nolan would be a prime example, but also JJ when working on his own material; and JK Rowling would undoubtedly be the most successful of our modern story tellers to bring something new and engaging to some ancient concepts. But by and large, risk-averse commercial enterprises are churning out fodder for where the puck is, servicing the predictable, stale wants of the ever-reliable geek / kid dollar.  

I could go on at length about the overexploitation of existing materials to rehash the same ideas over and over again in cinema franchises. I accept that there are no genunely new stories and that our culture rhymes with and repeats itself, but as I said above that doesn’t mean there’s no scope for anything new – we are still graced with many fresh takes on classic stories. Of course the more certain tellings of those stories take off in popularity the greater likelihood that they will be milked completely dry.

That has always been my feeling towards new Star Wars movies, particularly ones which purport to continue the ‘saga’ as this one does. Putting aside my feelings about Lucas, his original movies, and their prequels, he had a single story in mind that followed the arc of a good person turned bad through a desperate deal with devil, set against the fall of a great democracy through paranoia and suspicion into a totalitarian empire. Big themes, enduringly relevant. Whatever one thinks of any of those movies themselves, they were his unique take on such a story and each added a different piece to that puzzle, culminating in both the redemption of the hero through their family and the toppling of the evil dictatorship. All stories must have an end point, or else the journey to get there has no purpose - and Star Wars got its ending with Return of the Jedi.*

Due to out of control expectations and rampant nostalgia, and whatever unique faults of their own, Lucas’s prequels have been widely seen as a blip on the legacy of Star Wars, lacking the spirit of the originals. Given the far more sombre story they tell, this should have been expected. But what many are quick to forget is that they nevertheless delivered on the promise raised by the concept of starting the original story in ‘the middle’ – namely, to show how such a story could begin. In doing so, Lucas also dared to push the boundaries of how films were made by pioneering digital cinema production and exhibition, which barely a decade later we completely take for granted.

From the very first trailers up to now, the signs were clear that this was to be for many people, including JJ Abrams himself, a welcome and highly-anticipated  ‘return’ to the feeling and form of the originals. Indeed, there was sand, stormtroopers, X-Wings, droids, the Millennium Falcon, a red lightsaber-wielding villain and Han Solo. JJ chose to shoot on 35mm film, eschewing the advances Lucas had pushed for, and to return to practical effects instead of computer generated ones, to almost universal approval.

But JJ has bad form on other people’s franchises (see what he did to Star Trek),** and that has held up just as expected here – it is both an almost identical copy of the plot of the original Star Wars (with a few elements from Empire Stikes Back thrown in) as well as rampant fan service preying on nostalgia, rather than pushing forward a logical, more interesting story (indeed, how much more interesting can a story get past the point where everyone should have lived happily ever after). 

The story that has led to this point has been completely ignored, wiped away by a simple statement that ‘Luke Skywalker has vanished’, and some fakers have taken the place of the once-powerful and all-encompassing Galactic Empire. Barely a thought is given to the fact that the Rebels of the original trilogy may have actually succeeded in creating a New Republic to replace them and may hold a not-trivial amount of power themselves in this new galactic order. No, these bad guys are now the rising and oppressive power, with a more impressive (but equally vulnerable) superweapon at their disposal. 

There were certainly some engaging elements – particularly the leads, including Rey, Finn, Po and the droid BB-8 – but these were massively drowned out by shortcuts, replicas, and self-referential pats on the back (which I could go into at extreme length and detail, but for the sake of brevity will not do so here – ask me about it again sometime, though you almost certainly already know what they are). Despite being almost completely spoiler free for the first time ever,*** I knew everything that was going to happen before it did – because all I had to do was rely on my memory of Episode IV which I’ve only seen a few thousand times.****

Even then there were some huge opportunities and terrific potential moments that JJ set himself up for that he completely missed or fumbled in execution – ask me again for the complete list – though, to give appropriate credit, perhaps due again to his desire to slavishly mimic so precisely similar shortcomings from the original trilogy.

Having said that, I can totally see why many will nevertheless lap this movie up for its witty dialogue, relentless pace, fervent battles, ‘authentic’ practical effects, and bringing back classic characters. Kids will love it, and rightly so,***** and it will obviously shatter box office records and make billions of dollars because it’s the sort of unchallenging popcorn blockbuster that will move people off their couches and into a dark theatre full of smelly strangers. Perhaps because of all of this many can overlook some of the gaping plot holes and inconsistencies. But I’m not sure that any of the above can help me get over the incredible lack of originality or respect for the story that’s already been told in the same way as the story of its six predecessors maintained my interest (despite any of their respective shortcomings).

The worst part of it all? Despite the legendary John Williams coming back on board, the score was completely forgettable. Never before has John Williams failed to hit a Star Wars score out of the park - his record has been pretty much unimpeachable - but I’d challenge anyone who feels otherwise to try to whistle a leitmotif for Rey, Finn, Kylo or anything else. Even when revisiting other long-dormant franchises like Indiana Jones, Williams has always brought something special that the images on the screen could never do on their own. Sadly, this score seemed like it was phoned in or done by a Williams fan once again trying to capture the magic of his original soundtrack without creating anything of new and enduring appeal. 

Of course I’ll watch this movie again, but I feel like I’ve already seen it thousands of times already – because we all have.

--

* And Star Wars has never been the kind of story that has an ‘episodic’ reset button in the same way that some of the Star Trek TV series may have been, or subject to the wilful kind of suspension of continuity that allows the Bond franchise to keep retreading old ground with new faces. 

** I am a huge fan of JJ as a storyteller (believe it or not, I have been since Taking Care of Business!) and I think his original work and the concepts he’s generated are mostly pretty fantastic. He’s also one of the most talented directors (let alone a general triple threat / polymath) working right now - but that doesn’t change the fact that when adapting other people’s stories he can subconsciously turn into a superfan and belabour his work with way too much fan service. 

*** I was born after Empire Strikes Back, which means Luke’s parentage has never been a secret to me. But that has never diminished the impact of that reveal, which gives me chills right to this day - and which is on point given part of the plot of this movie. 

**** Spoiler alert for ‘Episode VIII’: someone is probably someone else’s child, someone will probably teach somebody something, and the bad guys will probably get a leg up. Just a guess.

This post will get progressively more spoiler-y, so check out when you feel you’ve gone far enough or read on if you have no skin in this game.

1. I wasn’t crazy about it personally.

2. I didn’t really think it was all that great compared to the previous seasons, from as objective a viewpoint as I can muster.

Now that those two initial reactions are out of the way, some more detailed thoughts.

3. The Antagonist(s)

I’m glad that this season diverged a little more from the briliant UK original series, though I still feel like the overall arc is somewhat similar. But unlike the inevitable ascension to the top over the first two seasons, that mirrored the first season of the original, this season was sort-of about an incumbent Frank facing off sometimes against a powerful higher adversary in Russian President Viktor Petrov (like the activist King in the UK’s season two) and at others against rising challenger Heather Dunbar (similar to centrist Foreign Minister Tom Makepeace in the UK’s season three). Neither of those antagonists were dealt with as finally as were those in the UK series, making this season seem more like a placeholder (ironic, given Frank’s own predicament) than a work that stands up well on its own.

Because when you do look at it in pure isolation, the real antagonist of this season was Claire; and that is such an anathema to the dynamic of the UK original, or indeed of the Shakespearean roots on which both series draw. Francis Urquhart’s (the original UK version of F.U.) wife Elizabeth was a very subtly manipulative Lady Macbeth, who supported and enabled her husband’s ambition all the way right until the bitter end (and, somewhat like Lady Macbeth, paid in blood to secure his legacy). She had no personal ambition, other than securing their combined prosperous future.

Perhaps it is a sign of better times and the transplanted locale that Claire harbours greater personal ambition for herself. But she’s already sacrificed her own ambitions and demonstrated a realpolitik understanding that rivals Frank’s. While you wouldn’t be surprised to see her follow in Frank’s footsteps (a la Hillary), you’d also think that she was ruthless and calculating enough to understand the impact of her being parachuted into the UN Ambassadorship so soon without any relevant qualifications or diplomatic experience given Frank’s limited political capital and the potential foreign policy and domestic political consequences. Following on from this, her naivety and inability to keep her emotions in check when dealing with the Russians demonstrated time and time again that she was in over her head; but instead of facing up to this as the old Claire would have, she turned against Frank when he correctly realised that her involvement had compromised his own position and the nation’s best interests (and he was often the last to do so).

I just can’t believe that Claire would be so blind as to fall for the fanciful story being woven by the novelist Tom Yates (more on that later) and come to believe that she truly was too good for Frank and would be better off without him. This is a woman who threatened the life of the unborn baby of one of her subordinates in season two, pity-jerked off her former bodyguard out of spite, and wanted to see an innocent woman killed so that she would no longer pose a threat to her husband’s political fortunes. How does that person only just get moved to develop a conscience over the murder of a political dissident? I’d understand if it slowly drove her crazy, as it did Lady Macbeth and Francis Urquhart of the UK series, but for it to drive a developing wedge between herself and her equally ruthless husband? It doesn’t make sense.

One can only imagine that with Claire walking out of the Residence in the final moments of season three, that she will somehow develop into a direct political rival for Frank in season four (which, I do presume to be the last; given the way this season was drawn out, I just can’t see this series going on for that much longer). But even that doesn’t make sense; the Democratic primaries were the subject of this year’s season, and Claire is not going to suddenly become a Republican and challenge Frank in a general election; which leaves us with some ill-fitting possibilities for a final season, as that is the only real remaining battlefield that could constitute the climax between these two (now) arch-enemies.

Some other thoughts:

4. I liked the general idea of Heather Dunbar becoming the presumptive challenger, and her Warren-esque platform. But it did seem hard to believe that a formerly non-political operative could become such a threat so quickly. At least Tom Makepeace of the UK series was already Deputy Leader, with a political base that made him a real threat. Dunbar’s managed to appear out of nowhere, and relied heavily on the fact that Frank’s own party had already abandoned him. That seems to come awfully soon, without giving Frank the opportunity to do some real damage through longevity like the even more ruthless UK version of Francis.

5. Lars Mikkelsen’s President Petrov was a deliciously clever and ruthless foil, who made Frank look small and positively earnest in comparison. If this is what Putin is like, I can understand why Western leaders are Petrov-ied (see what I did there?). The only criticism I have here is that he wasn’t a central character and didn’t feature in the story nearly as much as he could have.

6. I loved the fact that Donald Blythe was Frank’s VP, despite being the subject of Frank’s longstanding hatred. It’s nice when characters built up along the course of a series are not summarily abandoned as it develops. On the other hand. Donald was never a real political threat to Frank so having him in the position of VP wastes a valuable opportunity to showcase a more worthy adversary.

7. That adversary certainly was never Jackie Sharp. Her character seemed to lose a considerable amount of development from season two to become effectively a plot device to be used against Dunbar. The only redeeming arc for her was the slow rekindling of her relationship with Remy.

8. Speaking of Remy, an even worse reversion of character. Remy had dangerous charisma to him in previous seasons, only to become a relative functionary as chief of staff, without even Doug’s ingenuity. I guess this may have been deliberate as he seemingly realised this and the level to which Frank took them all for granted. But unlike Doug, Remy walked away with no real malice or ambition; his connection to Jackie was pretty much the only thing that endured. His run in with the DCPD seemed a little odd and on the nose, but I guess it underlined the fact that Jackie is/was one of the only friends he has left. And if West Wing has taught us anything, what Presidential chief of staff doesn't travel around with their own personal secret service detail, let alone drives Iowa caucusers to the airport?

9. Doug. Doug is probably the most consistently interesting character of the series, and by far the most improved facet of the show in comparison to the relatively one dimensional Stamper from the UK series. I don’t even know if Doug’s arc this season was remotely necessary or even that engaging in and of itself; but it was a great performance and openeind up some interesting plot developments that I would not have otherwise seen coming. Seeing Doug alive in the opening moments of the season, and then being thrust headfirst into his lengthy recovery, was an odd way to start things off; but was similarly a complete relief. Doug may do terrible things in the service of his master, even against people he loves, but despite his steely resolve the burden of guilt he bears for carrying them out is painfully evident. None more so than having sacrificed his own wellbeing and his position in the White House while failing to complete the job Frank gave him a second chance to get right, and doing whatever it took (including earning the trust of rival Dunbar) to get his old life back. I felt real concern for Doug’s fall back into additction at the start, and I figured someone was going to put him out of his misery; particularly the anguish he felt when he was led to believe Rachel was dead. But knew how to pull himself out of that, and told Frank point blank that he was no Peter Russo. There was a real sense of uncertainty about Doug’s motivations once he finally did track Rachel down; while he did initially have a change of heart, I had thought perhaps he had a convoluted plan to really fake her death and send her off to safety in Venezuela or elsewhere. His resolve to do whatever was necessary to secure Frank’s position made his final decision all the more heartbreaking, as disgusting as it was. Nevertheless, seeing him manage to crawl back to Frank’s side just as everyone else was deserting him was still satisfying.

10. Once again unlike the UK’s Francis, Frank has not really had any political muses since Zoe Barnes. The closest to this would be Jackie Sharp in season two, and perhaps his favourite noveslist-cum-biographer Thomas Yates in season three (and he certainly didn’t sleep with either of those, though there was an interesting dynamic developing between him and Tom). I love that Tom’s talent was introduced through a poetic review of the mobile game Monument Valley, which Frank had been playing late at night instead of his usual first person shooters or God of War. (Speaking of which, did Sony not pony up any money for product placement this time around? And I’m loving the fantasy of a government run exclusively on iMacs, even if the odd person ends up on a cheapie Windows Phone). Tom himself proved to be quite an interesting addition to the cast; very much an audience surrogate, right down to being an unreliable narrator himself. His purpose for being there was less clear; Frank wanted him to write some sort of pop-culture propaganda promoting his AmWorks jobs program, but in fact he served as a quasi-biographer. And it was in that context that he served perhaps his real purpose, which was to force Frank and Claire to confront the truths / lies underlying their relationships with each other.

11. What the hell happened to Meechum? From a character central to season two’s uncharacteristic but nevertheless intriguing threesome, he basically did nothing except mutter a few critical asides to Yates. Certainly not even as large a role as the developing Commander Corder of the UK series. I was kind of hoping that Meechum might have a bigger role as things became more desperate for Frank, especially with respect to Doug’s return. But to Doug’s credit and Meechum’s loss, that didn’t happen.

12. Frank himself seemed a shadow of his former self. Rather than being cool and calculatedly manipulative, he just seemed like an aggressive bully. Events happened to Frank and he reacted angrily; very rarely (if at all) did he have moments of brilliance that saved his skin it of nowhere and ingratiated him to the people he needed to achieve his ends. And he didn’t kill anyone this season! How disappointing! Francis Urquhart never shied away from killing (or ordering the killing) of his rivals, friends and potential liabilities in order to secure his position, but so far Frank’s only knocked off Russo and Barnes. The teaser tantalisingly suggested that Frank and Claire would get more blood on their hands, but it in fact referred to the suicide of the jailed gay rights activist that they actually didn’t have a lot to do with. Nor was he haunted by his past murders in the way Urquhart was (then again, Zoe didn’t call him “daddy” either). His encounter with his father and his ‘God’ were those of a petulant child, not an evil force of nature; and had nothing on the rage against divine injustice in the cathedral from Martin Sheen’s beloved President Bartlett in The West Wing.

It took a long time to get there, and a bit of meandering that started to give me some doubts, but I absolutely agree with Gruber’s conclusion about the Apple Watch:

I think the steel and gold Apple Watches are not better-tasting Cokes. They’re the same Coke that everyone can get with the $349 Apple Watch Sport, but served in expensive goblets. It’s uncharted territory, to be sure, but I don’t think it is worrisome that the steel and gold Apple Watches exist. What would be worrisome would be if the $349 Apple Watch Sport did not.

Just as with iPods, iPhones and iPads, the basic product (the wearable connected computer) is the same - but unlike the others (mostly) you can customise the build quality to your heart’s (and wallet’s) content. That makes me perfectly happy to tote around a $349 sport model and feel no envy or desire for it at all if Kanye’s wearing a gold edition - just like Coca-Cola.*

In response to a friend’s similar list prior to his acquisition of a PS4 and Xbox One, I’ve had a think about what were my favourite games of the past (seventh) video game console generation. I’m not a hardcore gamer, but I've been into video games ever since I was entranced by seeing the first Super Mario NES game at my cousin's place when I was but a small child. I wouldn’t call myself a casual either - I buy and play games semi-regularly, though I do have particular tastes, which don’t include blockbuster FPS / shoot-em-up games. It’ll never happen again, but thanks to the coincidence of just leaving a well-paying job and not yet having kids, the seventh video game console generation was the only one in which I’ve owned all of the consoles (both home and handheld) so I’ve had a chance to play quite a range of them and also to figure out the sort of games I really enjoy (and the ones that I don’t like, don’t really play, and shouldn’t keep buying simply because, well, shiny).

In no particular order and with only the briefest of explanatory notes that do no justice to their respective quality, here are my favourites:* 

* I had to exclude early remakes from the sixth generation era (Super Mario DS, Jak and Daxter trilogy) and games that have only recently been released and remade for the eighth generation (The Last of Us) as well, as it could be argued that they are more suitably placed in those respective generations.

Super Mario Galaxy 1/2 (Wii) - Probably the definitive modern platformer(s), made by the original masters. Also helps that they’re both completely delightful and playing them genuinely does make you feel like a kid again. Despite the quality of other modern Mario platformers (“New” and “3D”, the latter of which is really only a little bit 3D in nature) these are the flagship of the franchise, the pinnacle of what a Mario game can be. If Disney ever bought Nintendo, the resultant “Mario World” (or Galaxy even) would be absolutely incredible - until then, these games come pretty close.* If there is to be no third Galaxy game for this generation (Nintendo's first in HD) then at the very least remastering these classics in HD would uncover a wealth of visual beauty that would make them instant hits.

* Honourable mention to Donkey Kong Country Returns, which is an exceptional platformer itself, but its kudos really belongs to the original Donkey Kong Country back in generation four - its sequel on the other hand is currently in my eighth generation list.

Wii Sports (Wii) - Aside from being the game that popularised movement-based controls and temporarily saved Nintendo's skin, the best thing about Wii Sports was that it made local multiplayer or party games fun again, despite being firmly in the midst of the online multiplayer age.*

* Another honourable mention to platform puzzlers Boom Blox (by none other than Steven Spielberg himself) and Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure, which also made great use of the movement-based controls of the Wii.  

Guitar Hero 2 (360) - As with Wii Sports, a fun game to play with others and one notch up from the age-old air guitar. This one in particular made me get a 360 - other than including Pearl Jam’s "Life Wasted", ending with "Free Bird" pretty much makes it the Guitar Hero game to play. 

Gears of War (360) - As I said above, I don’t care for FPS or gory shoot-em-ups, let alone zombies (with one notable exception not on this list), mutants or alien war type games (sorry Halo). This was slightly different because of the sheer satisfaction of using the lancer machine gun / chainsaw and the then-innovative cover system. The high-definition grittiness of the environments also really made the 360 (and this generation in general) shine. 

Uncharted trilogy (PS3) - Following on from the amazing Jak and Daxter trilogy from the sixth generation (itself recently beautifully remastered in HD), Uncharted brought game developer Naughty Dog into the HD era. The spectacular, lush and hyper-realistic vistas of the Uncharted world made full use of the extra resolution and processing power of the PS3. On top of that, leveraging the basic gunplay they started to work with in Jaks 2 and 3 and the cover mechanics popularised by Gears of War made this a terrific game to play. Despite their ‘cinematic qualities’ (especially with respect to its relatively linear gameplay, which I felt was a regression from the more open world of the Jak franchise), one of my favourite aspects of these games were that they still retained some of joyful platforming from Naughty Dog’s roots. And for the most part, they told historically fascinating but pulp fantastic stories, in more immersive ways than any motion picture could.  

Braid (360) - You’d think a 2D side-scrolling platformer should have no place on a seventh generation top ten list, but you’d be wrong. As a pure platformer, Braid is beautifully rendered with enjoyable gameplay and an unusually melancholic soundtrack; a pretty and nostalgic nod to the golden age of platforming. Then it unexpectedly introduces four new gameplay mechanics (based on the manipulation of time) that send into the stratosphere, opening a whole new range of possibilities while significant increasing the difficulty and ingenuity of the platforming challenges. But on top of this, Braid is a multi-layered allegory for various aspects of the human condition, from regret to lust to wrath, touching on subjects as creepy as child stalkers and a clever inversion of the traditional platformer story, to those as terrifying as the creation and use of the Atomic Bomb. Some say the game took itself too seriously, but I couldn’t sleep well for days after I finally finished it.

Little Big Planet (PS3) - As above, but Little Big Planet is a 2D side-scroller (well, really 2.5D) that’s well and truly of this generation. Its decidedly hand-crafted look suited the fact that it was ultimately about creating your own platforming challenges, and manipulating its environments to solve them. With the soothing voice of Stephen Fry guiding you through a range of gorgeous, always-fun and never too challenging levels and worlds, Little Big Planet (and its successors) finally gave the Playstation a masterpiece of side-scrolling platforming.

Portal 2 (PS3) - I can’t say anything about this game that hasn’t already been said before. I played it without having the benefit of yet having played its predecessor, so it was perhaps more delightful to me (and ultimately, more genuinely scary when the pace picked up) and the much-improved graphics made me feel more immersed than the original would have. But the premise of a first-person shooter that is actually about solving platforming puzzles is right up my alley, and made this an absolute joy to play. On top of that, the story journeying through the optimistic but ultimately dark and disturbed history of Aperture Science, together with the fantastic commentary provided by J.K Simmons as Cave Johnson and Stephen Merchant as Wheatley, made this a witty yet tense thriller of a game. While I’m not really sure where they would go with it story-wise, I hope in vain that maybe Portal will defy Valve’s Rule of Three and be continued some day.

Tales of Monkey Island (PS3) - Having waited uncertainly for almost a decade for a new entry into the legendary Monkey Island franchise, Telltale’s new episodes did not disappoint, matching the look and feel of the originals (retaining the unmistakable voice of Dominic Armato as Guybrush) while developing the story in just as clever, amusing and interesting ways. While it certainly doesn’t scale the heights of its predecessors, the fact that it exists and was enjoyable nevertheless, is good enough for it to make it onto this list.*

* I didn’t mind Telltale’s take on Back to the Future either, though it didn’t quite recapture the spirit of that franchise and felt a little too much like Day of the Tentacle, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.

Katamari Forever (PS3) - The whole premise of rolling around a ball and collecting exponentially more and more crap on it seems ridiculous, but makes for  incredibly entertaining gaming. While the Katamari games originated on the PS2, I feel like this was the definitive, most refined, and most beautiful version of the game - the one we’d been waiting for since it first debuted.

For the record, the decisive factor that got me into both the sixth and seventh console generations was the presence of a DVD and Blu-Ray player, respectively. Without that kind of hook for drastically improved media consumption, and not a significant leap in terms of immersive gameplay, processing power and graphics, I’m still not sure I’ll be leaping into any of the new batch of eighth generation consoles any time soon. That said, I do have the Wii U and the two handhelds (the 3DS and PS Vita), each of which provide a unique point of difference that creates interesting new gameplay experiences and also have some stellar games. They might be the only ones that feature on the corresponding list I write in five years’ time.

Some thoughts on the look of the Apple Watch.

A friend of mine (who is also an Apple fan) told me that he felt the Apple Watch looked ugly and wasn't fashionable, which is what watches are all about. He asked me what I thought, and I had to stop and consider it – personally* – in the context of aesthetics for a moment. 

* Because apparently there's nothing more personal than one's choice of watch – as this post on Hodinkee affirms, looking at it purely from a watch aficionado's perspective.

I like it. I'm still getting used to the design, but I don't think it's ugly. At the same time, I can pretty easily accept that others may not like it from a style perspective. My feelings are that a watch may be a fashion statement, but the thing about fashion is that it's constantly changing and context-dependent so you don't wear the same thing all the time. I have a dress watch that I'll probably still use that for special occasions, as I do now. But instead of not wearing a watch the rest of the time, I'd be happy to wear this. I'd probably get the simplest, cheapest version as I don't really care about looking particularly fashionable most of the time, and to the extent I do this works just as well as any everyday timepiece I used to wear (before the mobile/smartphone made it functionally redundant). Of course, it does also come in a variety of sizes, materials and band combinations that  would cater to different tastes and contexts, and that variety will only increase as the years go on and new models arrive.*

* See the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, each of which was initially only offered in one model (though the latter had different capacities / cellular capabilities), and now have each developed a broad product range with different styling, functions and pricing.   

TL;DR - The now-legendary iPod is on the decline, so why not replace it (in place and name) with a 'wearable' also named 'iPod'?

"No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

In anticipation of what appears to be the most-hyped Apple event since the launch of the iPad (or possibly even since the iPhone), I've been thinking a lot about how we were introduced to Apple's original breakout non-PC device, the iPod. Notwithstanding the imminent and expected updated iPhones, signs are certainly firming up to suggest that tomorrow's event will represent another one of those 'revolutionary' moments Steve Jobs considered would change an industry and create a new benchmark product. 

The product launch for the original iPod was, in relative terms, a muted affair.* Set in Apple's Town Hall theatre on the Cupertino campus (rather than the hallowed Moscone, Flint or Yerba Buena Centers in downtown San Francisco), there were no dramatic reveals, no standing ovations, and (ironically) no performances from high-profile musical friends.** The press and tech enthusiasts at the time were positively underwhelmed.*** 

*  Despite the fact that, unlike now, Apple had expressly flagged that they were launching a 'breakthrough digital device'. Not as many people tended to take Apple's announcements as seriously back then. ** A few did lend some effusive words to the now-famous production introduction video, including Moby, Seal and Smash Mouth.  *** See the infamous comment from Slashdot above. 

But make no mistake - the players involved knew that this was the start of something big. Following the conception of Apple's 'digital hub' strategy after the return of Steve Jobs, the iPod represented the first time Apple had moved from just making the Mac, the centre of that so-called 'hub', to one of the spokes.*

* I think it's fair to exclude the QuickTake camera and Newton as they preceded the return of Jobs and the Digital Hub strategy. As an aside, it's interesting to note that Apple (and others) has managed to cover all of the spokes of that strategy (essentially, the creation and sharing of music, photos and videos) and then some with each of the iPhone and iPad. Where does that leave a wearable? 

According to Jobs, it was only natural that their first move would be into music. Jobs highlighted Apple's passion for music, and the fact that such passion was almost universal and timeless. He also noted the shortcomings of the existing field of portable music players (led at the time by the portable CD player, but also populated at the fringes with basic flash players and a few hard drive-based players).   

I'd seen an MP3 player before - the Diamond Rio. It was large and ugly, cost $299 and came with a horrible user interface, only 32MB of storage (enough for about an album and a bit, at heavily compressed bitrates) and it transferred files over a parallel port. Compared to a portable CD player (or even Sony's MiniDisc, which had massive potential but was stymied by internecine corporate wrangling, poorly-implemented DRM and a lack of focus) it just didn't represent an attractive proposition on most fronts. I'd not seen the vaunted Nomad, which may have partly been a marketing failure by Creative (which, as a leader manufacturer of PC sound cards at the time, would have been well-placed to create an MP3 player) or simply the fact that the product had failed to ignite the collective imagination.  Either way, the MP3 player market was in its infancy, and no one had at yet managed to crack the formula for creating a device that the masses wanted to use. 

I can clearly remember seeing the iPod appear on apple.com immediately following this announcement. It's fair to say I've been an Apple enthusiast now for quite some time, but back then I was shackled to the Wintel world.  This new device was like nothing I'd seen before. It was tiny, futuristic, and glaringly shiny from the seamless stainless steel back to the clear and white front (not to mention those soon-to-be-ubiquitous headphones). It was also horrendously expensive for us (thanks to a pathetically weak Australian dollar and the usual Australia 'tax'), so despite my immediate techno-lust I didn't get my hands on one for a couple of years (by then, the odd all-touch third generation model) - though it indirectly had a halo effect on me as I finally switched to a white iBook G3 shortly thereafter and never looked back. 

In addition to the sleek design from Jony Ive, the iPod came with a combination of ground-breaking technologies that Jobs believed struck just the right balance for the ideal portable music player. It was ultra-portable (with a then-tiny 1.8 inch hard drive) with effective long-term skip protection. It had very fast data transfer over FireWire 400 (which could transfer an album in five seconds, as opposed to five minutes over the then-current standard USB) and a battery with 10 hours worth of playback, that could be charged in an hour over the same FireWire cable. In addition to these, it managed and synced your music through iTunes* so you didn't have to worry about keeping everything organised and updated. And finally, the user interface was incredibly intuitive, taking advantage of a scroll-wheel, four buttons, and a simple set of menus. The scroll-wheel and its successors were tactile, fluid, and highly-responsive, allowing you to scroll through your thousand songs quickly but also slow down to find whatever you were specifically looking for. Years later, when introducing Apple's next major user interface (the multi-touch display), Jobs would refer back to the scroll-wheel as Apple's second 'revolutionary' interface (after the GUI and mouse, to the extent popularised by the original Macintosh).  

* iTunes may now be much maligned (especially the later-released Windows version) for being bloated and trying to do too much as it tries to manage your entire media collection and also keep iPhones and iPads up to date (a function largely superseded by iCloud), but at the very least it was at the time an incredibly user-friendly application for the sole function of creating and updating a digital music library.

The marketable characteristics of the device were focused down to a series of narrow, unforgettable messages. Ultra-portable. No bigger than a deck of cards. 1000 songs. Your whole library fits in your pocket.* This focus permeates the product strategy that would follow, from the iTunes Store and successively improved iPods, right through to the iPhone and the iPad. No matter how many functions these products were able to serve, the purpose for each was distilled to an essential message that resonated incredibly well with consumers and turned the company's fortunes right around.

* This was a bit of a leap, but perhaps it was reasonable to assume that at the time most people didn't have more than 50-100 CDs at home. Of course, now that digital music is well and truly the norm, the idea that the average music library is smaller than 1000 songs seems almost laughable. 

In keeping with this you would expect the focus of an Apple wearable product to be just as sharp. While a few sane voices have been cautioning against outlandish expectations, and carefully pointing out that it's best to expect the unexpected, much speculation has been driven by competitors in the Android market* and Wall Street analysts' demands that Apple create another game-changing product. This has led to quite a diverse range of mockups and feature lists that have started to find physical shape in the current nascent smartwatch lineup, including Samsung's Galaxy Gear range and Android Wear devices such as the Moto 360. These devices can be quite impressive in their own right, with an enviable set of features and design qualities that are not too hard on the eyes;* but one need only look at the famous 'before and after iPhone' images from recent patent litigation to see how wrong those expectations set by the competition can be (and how quickly the market responds to paradigm shifts ushered in by Apple's flagship products). They also do a lot; perhaps too much. I'd find it difficult to come up with a pithy description of the singular purpose of those devices (Motorola tries with "It's time", but that's a little trite and superficial). The Apple wearable will probably do far less than these competitors; but whatever it does, I'd expect it to do really well. As John Gruber notes, it should be excellent at something other than what our existing phones or watches do (and this is exactly how Steve Jobs justified the raison d'être for the iPad).  It should solve a problem that we don't realise we have yet.  

* Of course, nor are they designed by Jony Ive or Marc Newson, and that's something not to be underestimated.

I feel it would be a little presumptuous to speculate on the specific feature set of such a device, though I do think that history would suggest that some of the clues lie in Apple's recent software innovations (think iTunes and iPod, Cover Flow and iPhone). Some of these may include iOS 7’s  Passbook (or something similar for mobile payments, possibly enabled by Bluetooth or NFC), iOS 8’s HealthKit and HomeKit (monitoring health and controlling automated home devices seems a natural fit for a wearable product), as well as the Continuity feature across iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite (allowing calls and messages through your iPhone to be made and received across any of your iOS devices or Macs). These technologies (and probably some new ones to be revealed tomorrow) provide an ecosystem into which the wearable’s focused purpose will fit (or the features which enable this purpose).

The common nomenclature for the much-anticipated wearable product to be released tomorrow is that it will be called the 'iWatch', or some variation, keeping with Apple's modern naming convention. Of course, while 'iPhone' probably couldn't have gone any other way (trade mark lawsuits notwithstanding - see iTV) it was for a while thought of simply as the 'iPod Phone', and many people thought Apple's tablet computer would be called the 'iSlate' - that it would be something as straightforward as 'iPad' never really gained much momentum. And yet, the name so clearly defines the product - of course an iPad is something you would pick up and look at as you would a piece of paper or a book; naturally, an iPhone makes calls; and an iPod is something personal, that you always carry with you (hint hint).

Maintaining the 'iP' prefix for most of the flagship product range has a certain unity to it. So how would a name like 'iWatch' fit into that? It probably wouldn't; but what could? There aren’t many variations on ‘iP’ that are as elegant as the existing product names (iPeek? iPaid? iPed? iPip? iPot?). On the other hand, you have an existing product that is in rapid decline, being cannibalised by its more fully-featured family - the iPod.

iPod sales have been declining for quite a number of years now, but no one has been particularly worried about this as Apple effectively replaced iPod revenue with the much larger revenue streams generated by the iPhone and iPad. Further, now that smart phones are everywhere and do just as well (if not better) as portable media players than stand-alone devices, the market for the latter has inevitably shrunk considerably. Rather than see the iPod name fade into obscurity with the obsolescence of the stand-alone portable music player category that it defined, why not let it evolve (or, as with the iPod Nano to the iPod Mini, completely replace it) into a new expression of that idea? And even if replacing the current iPod lineup with a wearable is a little too soon, why not make it part of the family?** An ‘iPod Go’ or an ‘iPod Air’, if you will. It’s certainly not unprecedented - Apple has reused names before, like ‘iBook’. Further, it would seem that Jony Ive may have drawn some inspiration in originally naming the iPod from his friend (and now, colleague) Marc Newson whose Ikepod watches (and other ‘pod’ watches) he’s worn for years.*

* Of course Newson’s hire is another big hint that the wearable device will likely be, or resemble, a watch - and since he’s already collaborated with Ive under the radar on the Product (RED) auction line up last year, it’s possible he’s already been involved in the design process for the wearable given his background. ** U2's rumoured involvement in the event certainly adds credence to the idea of a relaunched iPod - after all, they were one of only two groups who had an iPod made especially for them (the other being HP).

This leads to another line of thought - what will this wearable device look like? Again, the phalanx of competing devices and mockups certainly suggest a variety of directions. Just as the expected iPhone 6 takes design cues from the current iPod Touch, I’d like to think that (as with the name) the iPod may provide some clues as to the design of the wearable product. The iPod Classic has stagnated since 2009, the iPod Shuffle is an extremely simple single-purposed device, and the iPod Touch is basically an iPhone without a cellular antenna. So it is the iPod Nano that is in reality the current evolution and expression of the ‘ultra-portable’ interactive media player that Steve Jobs evangelised back in 2001. The sixth-generation iPod Nano, with a full-body clip, was in many ways the first Apple 'wearable' (almost) full-featured iPod, or 'watch' even - it shipped with a variety of watch faces for its 1.5 inch 240 x 240 pixel screen, and was so small and watch-like that an Apple board member started wearing it on a band before it was even released. Companies such as Lunatik created a vibrant market for iPod Nano wristbands.

The current seventh-generation iPod Nano is already incredibly thin, and features an iOS-like home screen with a 2 x 3 (240 x 432 pixels at 202 pixels per inch) grid of circular icons, and a similar set of gestural inputs. It is distorted somewhat to resemble an iPod Touch by a circular home button (as with the icons, with a circle on it instead of the rounded rectange of other iOS devices), which could possibly stay or go depending on whatever other interface innovations Apple adopts (given Siri’s development and the new enterprise partnership with IBM, there's a reasonable chance voice could play a major part in interacting with the wearable). And the idea of what an 'iPod' is has already evolved quite a bit - this one plays not only music but also FM radio, displays photos and videos (and some of its predecessors also shot video), and monitors fitness attributes through Nike+. Oh, and it also tells the time. ;)

It seems Australian telcos are 'getting serious' about helping customers to avoid 'billshock'.

For the benefit of those without mobile telephony services during the past decade, this situation arises when customers are offered what appears to be a generous plan including a certain amount of 'funny money' that can be used for calls/text for a fixed 'cap'* and a certain fixed data allowance. Of course, the less emphasised part of this arrangement is that when the funny money / allowance is used up, the balance is billed back to the customer. With the proliferation of data-hungry smart phones and more people roaming on international networks, these situations would from time to time become quite extreme (especially where certain types of use would be excluded from the 'cap') - up to several thousands of dollars a month in some cases.

* They're not allowed to call them 'caps' any more, for pretty much the reasons outlined above.

From these articles and the commercial offerings of telcos since this 'realignment' has started, it appears that most of these companies feel that simply increasing the allowance for certain 'cap' levels will eliminate most instances of bill shock (that's assuming of course, that they're sincere about this change of heart - that reputation and customer satisfaction outweigh short-term windfalls from billshock). 

Here's a simpler model: why not simply have a graded series of plans that offer certain fixed inclusions, and rather than charging for any excess use that a customer makes over and above the cap, simply bump them up to the next level (with its attendant larger allowances) for that particular month? It gives the customer confidence that billshock won't be an issue, because (provided they don't abuse the system and comply with existing fair use limitations) they eventually will hit a cap that provides for unlimited use (for some carriers), or meets their actual usage, within that billing period. That way, the most they'll end up paying is likely to be between $100-200; combined with reasonable usage notifications from the carriers, and clear advance notice in contracts that excess usage will push you into the next plan bracket, I'd love to know why this couldn't work (other than the insincere purpose of taking advantage of actual billshock)?

One problem with this situation could be that all customs will simply take up the lowest plan and just let their monthly usage go up to whatever plan-level they hit each month; however, telcos are still guaranteed a minimum service fee each month, and they still have open to them hardware carrots (subsidised handset costs) which allow price-differentiation and lock-in over contract periods. This model could also be modified so that where a customer gets bumped to another plan bracket, their inclusions might not be quite as generous as if they'd locked that rate in for the duration of the contract, or they might by default stay in that bracket until they requested to return to their original plan level.

I've been thinking a lot about apologies lately, and how they seem to serve little to no purpose when they're clearly insincere. Funnily enough, we saw two very different types of apologies from Myer CEO Bernie Brookes over his comments about the NDIS income tax levy affecting Myer's profits, and Niall Ferguson backtracking from some thoughtless things he said about John Maynard Keynes. 

I got to thinking that instead of the 'sorry if you took offence' line Brookes and Myer's PR team used to try to douse the flames (but resulted in fanning them), perhaps they could take a leaf out of Ferguson's book (or a post out of his blog, as it were), and admit that the comments were disappointing, acknowledge their impacts, and pledge to overcome them. Perhaps when Brookes takes the stage at the Consumer 360 conference about the "online decade", he might like to consider starting with something like this:

"During a recent question-and-answer session at a conference for Macquarie Securities, I made comments about the funding of the National Disability Insurance Scheme that were as stupid as they were insensitive.

I had been asked to comment on funding the NDIS through a 0.5% levy imposed on income taxes. The point I had made in my presentation was that all government imposts on consumers add to negative consumer sentiment, which in turn has the potential to impact adversely on retail sales, profits and jobs. 

But I should not have suggested – in an off-the-cuff response that was not part of my presentation – that the $300-odd contribution of the average tax payer to the scheme would have otherwise been spent with us. This was doubly stupid. First, it is obvious that people would not simply be spending all of their discretionary income at our stores, so I may have overstated the impact of the levy. There are many possible consequences of increased taxation on consumer behaviour, and many potential reasons why consumers would or would not choose to shop at our stores. And secondly, it was wrong of me to assume that consumers would necessarily resent the imposition of such a levy, especially given the particularly worthwhile cause to which it contributes; a cause so important, that the levy is supported by both major political parties in this country.

My disagreements with the government's imposition of this levy have nothing to do with the NDIS itself. It is simply false to suggest, as I did, that the NDIS is less worthy of being funded by consumers (who are also fellow citizens, some of whom will certainly benefit enormously from this scheme) than my company's profits. As those who know me are well aware, I am deeply committed to helping those who are affected by disabilities, and those who care for them, to live fulfilling and meaningful lives. In fact, Myer has now committed to an employment target of 10 per cent of people with disability by the end of 2015.

My colleagues, customers, and friends – including those whose lives are affected by disability – have every right to be disappointed in me, as I am in myself. To them, and to everyone who heard my remarks at the conference or has read them since, I deeply and unreservedly apologize."

Maybe that's the kind of approach that might ring true in the ears of the public at large and actually go some way towards actually addressing the negative sentiment directed towards the company because of some thoughtless remarks; and demonstrate that the company is worthy of respect and further patronage, because they have been able to turn such a negative situation into a positive outcome that embraces a broadly-supported initiative.