Additional media is a sacrificial lamb

The concept is well tested and solid; have your main story supplemented with additional works, such as comics and novels, that expand on the core work. This sort of franchising has become extremely popular to the point of being a standard practice and very few standalone projects get made any more. Even the Marvel Cinematic Universe has seen its stories expanded in aforementioned media. This always leads to the question of canon, where the main piece always trumps over whatever the side material has stated. Hence why canon barely matters, when anyone in charge can say what really happened, sometimes wiping few comics away, sometimes erasing whole decades of supplementary material.

Nevertheless, they’re secondary at best. Licensed works to make some money out of the IP while the main thing is wiring its next stuff up. The stories and characters told in these works don’t really matter, and never have. Only decades later, when fans who grew up with these materials, may make references to them in proper works, giving them some legitimacy in the eyes of fellow fans. That’s all fine and dandy, no harm done by having someone in the background mentioning Life Day and reminding the people in the know how bad Star Wars Holiday Special is. It’s butt of the joke, it’s done to death, we get it.

Star Wars and Star Trek are great examples of this as both have extremely extensive supplementary material to go with the main works. The general rule has always been that what’s on the screen overrides whatever’s in other works. While they’re advertised as further adventures of our heroes, and for the time being they probably are, they’ll always be overridden when the IP owner comes up with something new, something that can be capitalised on. Prequels and midquels are sort of comfortable ground to many, as they’re mostly based on sayings and history told in the main works, so it’s easy to take the premise and go town with it. It doesn’t exactly require creating something completely new from the ground up. Hence why you often see sequels lifting material from the old stuff or reusing characters and settings. Jean-Luc Picard and all the re-used assets from the cutting room floor in Disney Star Wars movies are examples of this.

All this a somewhat inconvenient arrangement, but it makes two things possible; it doesn’t demand the audience to rummage through hundreds of pages to understand a new TV-show or a movie, but also allows them to engage with the IP and characters further. There’s this silent agreement with all the parties that it is probable that all the side content will be ignored when a new movie or show rolls in. Which happens all the time with pretty much every single large franchise out there.

There are of course times when this fails. The Rise of Skywalker had a collaborative event in Fortnite, where Emperor Palpatine’s speech was introduced. The returning villain and one of the major points of the plot, which was used in the beginning crawl, The Dead speak, was introduced and used in the aforementioned event. This effectively cut a section out from the movie, the message Palpatine send to the galaxy to announce his return, something the characters all react to and is the impetus behind the movie’s events. If you weren’t playing Fortnite at that time, you effectively missed something the core work, the film, should’ve had.

Too often Star Trek and Star Wars novelisation have been used to correct mistakes and loopholes in the main body of works. Loads of Trek novels based on The Original Series episodes were used to effectively fix continuity and conceptual errors within the episodes themselves. Similarly, The Rise of Skywalker‘s novelisation reveals that the Palpatine in the movie was a clone. Whether or not this is canon is of course for the fans to debate, as none of the corrections and fixes are rarely talked in the main body works. It’s not uncommon to see books and comics being published that fill in holes with some plot putty, sometimes even explaining whole backstories and events that were completely lacking from the main works. We can understand that a movie can’t set up decades worth of background story in a short time, and sometimes it doesn’t need to. The original crawl at the beginning of Star Wars Episode IV is work of sheer genius, setting up the premise. Further into the movie, short discussions about the Clone Wars as a background material elaborated on some bits, but those there to colour the world further. With Disney movies we have the gap between Episode VI and VII, which is just a void. Even after the last movie we barely know what happened, where did the First Order truly come from and why did the Emperor allow the Empire to fall just to wait thirty years building Star Destroyers under ground with gimped navigation systems. Maybe it’s Abrams’ mystery box killing the work again, maybe it’s just outright bad writing. These explanations of course are found in the supplementary material, meaning the work can’t stand on its two feet.

You could of course argue that this weaves the main work and the supplementary works together better, that it allows exploration of these events and concepts in a grander scale compared to what movies and television could. This is completely true and has been supported by multiple franchises for some decades now, mixing and matching each other punch to punch. The problem is of course the future. Be it removal of old canon or a new “real” work taking place of that timeframe and overriding the current works, supplementary material never really can stand the test of time. Not unless the creators are adamant on keeping one continuity and will always take notice what happens across the whole franchise. That task is nearly impossible, though if you were to hire bunch of people just to follow what the hell’s going on in your setting across all media, it would become manageable. Imagine if your day job was to read every Star Wars book and comic just to tell the future writers of whatever series or movie they’re making what stories and settings have already been used, and what are their historical consequences. Somebody’s dream job right there.

While you could boil this down to Canon doesn’t matter because it always changes, but that’d be missing the point here just slightly. We’ve seen the main work been put on the chopping block and some of its important elements have been cut off, only to appear elsewhere. This weakens the main work, but it also makes the story’s canon that much weaker. If you’d need one more example of this, the 2009 Star Trek reboot movie doesn’t ever tell what Nero was doing in the past after he came through the wormhole. In the movie, he’s just sitting there doing nothing and waiting for Spock to pop in. However in the comic he was captured and enslaved by the Klingons, making his escape and reclamation of the Narada that much more important. After seeing his home world destroyed, seeing Vulcans’ inaction as betrayal despite putting everything he had in their hands, and then forced to the past and for years being unable to do anything to prevent that from happening, Star Trek could’ve had its best and most understandable villain. All that was from the movie, making him just a jackass with a vengeance. It’s only a matter of time before someone writers a new book or a comic that explores this further, erasing already established events in the comic, which already is questionably canon. The comic version’s story is that much stronger compared to the movie, but it’s the not the story. It’s just an alternate take, which some people supplement the movie itself with.

Here’s a way you could make cross-media function for their own benefits without taking away any from the main work. The Mad Max game from 2015 was supposed to be tightly connected to Mad Max Fury Road, but ultimately wasn’t. The two would have supplemented each other, but only in a manner that there would not have been anything missing from either work. For example, the Pursuit Special is missing its spoiler in the movie. Not a huge detail, something most people probably missed altogether. However, in the game it would’ve been a collectable item with some story tied to it, adding to the overall story of Mad Max. We don’t know what these details were going to be, as the game was completely revamped and reused two decades worth of abandoned concepts alongside concepts for possible future movies. If you’re a fan of Mad Max, the game should look and feel extremely disjointed and somewhat schizophrenic because of this.

This is really convoluted and lengthy way to say how works, even sequels, need to be standalone enough to be consumed as-is without any surrounding media taken into account.

It looks like a movie

For some time now, I’ve been wondering what has been the definitive line splitting the old Star Wars and the Disney ones for yours truly. Outside the whole thing that their quality is questionable at best, outright offensively idiotic at worst, the one thing that ultimately stood out was how things were filmed, and ultimately written. This will be largely personal musings without any writer’s approach I usually employ.

Lucas’ directing and camerawork is not suited for big budget movies, as we saw during the Prequel films. Nevertheless we saw evolution of both during those three movies, where characters gained more meat on them as people who trained the actors in acting and effectively pre-directed them were brought in. The scripts, however, were more questionable in quality, but their tone, intention and motions were almost always on-point the same; as if it were real things happening.

This is largely how Lucas has always worked with his films, from building the sets to how he writes them and directs. Filming too, if he can help it. The world as it would be if these things were real. While the movies have the familiar structures to them and certain beats are made, the documentarian approach Lucas used is largely absent from Disney’s Star Wars movies. This approach was costly to him in terms of budget, as special effects, practical effects, the sets and the actors all had to blend in one shot together seamlessly and naturally. For example, in Episode IV after Death Star blows up Alderaan, we get a wide shot from inside of Millennium Falcon, showing the insides of the ship, Chewbacca playing games with the droids and Luke training with Obi-Wan. This shot could have been done cheaper by tightly focused shots that excludes the background, but the way things were filmed, as if they were real rather than a movie, doesn’t allow such budget conscious choices.

Furthermore, levity or jokes come from events and situations naturally. For example, C-3PO in Episode V often works as someone who brings some levity to the events and situation without breaking the tone. It comes through his natural being and interaction, unforced by external factors. For example, when 3PO breaks between Han’s and Leia’s tender moment within the Falcon, the audience doesn’t consider this as a forced joke. Rather, it is 3PO’s nature not to consider such things in his excitement. We saw some of this in Episode IV  as well, but how trusty he is with others to large degree when he has not foreknowledge. However, we should also consider him a strong diplomat, which 3PO shows rather well with the Ewoks in Episode VI. Sure, Lucas didn’t direct Episode V, or have much to do it with it creatively, but this just shows that Star Wars can be done right when in right hands. Nevertheless, the core story was still his.

The Disney Star Wars movies feel like they’ve been scripted and filmed like movies. The best example of this really is the start of The Last Jedi, where you have Your momma jokes shoved into a very deadly serious moment, breaking the tone of the scene and the whole sequence, especially when slapstick Force jokes are then put on the show when General Hux gets dragged on the floor in order to humiliate him. It doesn’t look natural, it doesn’t feel like what these characters would do if the movie was shot if it was real.

While we can always argue that the Disney movies are well made, that there is large effort to have the best look there is to them, the same can be said and argued for all the previous movies. It is easier and cheaper to make a movie look absolutely terrific, beautiful even, than what it was during making of Star Wars or Episode I. None of the modern CGI fests wouldn’t exists in their modern form if Lucas had not pushed the envelope in making his movies, something which ILM opened doors to other production to be lifted to new heights visually and technically, like Jurassic Park. The whole of Marvel movies would not just be possible without Lucas’ way to push technical limitations on the side, and at times it mostly seemed like Lucas was making movies to have something to edit or to try new tricks out. Digital filming broke its first grounds properly with the Prequels, for better or worse, but none of that really exists in Disney films. They’re rather safe to the point a fault. They are movies by the numbers, always using whatever trends currently are about, which is especially clear how Disney Star Wars and Marvel movies largely share the similar forced comedic, and the forced messages that are less than subtle.  Outside plastering Yoda’s face on a box of grapes, I can’t really think of any other way Disney has pushed Star Wars or film making onward. Sure, Lucas did franchise Star Wars like no other as well, but his was nothing compared to what Disney did. Well, maybe making Star Wars toys shelfwarmers should be considered some kind of achievement.

Remember when Star Wars somewhat subtle? Somehow I can’t help but think how Jar Jar’s comedy would be extremely fitting for Disney movies, seeing all the characters want to either act like a wall or a clown.

You could say that making Star Wars as by-the-books film should be enough, but it seems all the people who have been in the leading roles during Disney’s unwatchful eye, it’s a thing hard to actually pull off properly. Some would argue Lucas couldn’t with the Prequels, and with the media turning their tails on The Last Jedi, now calling it controversial instead of arguing how subverting it is, Star Wars is something that can be easily fucked up badly. Subverting expectations also have to lead into something of quality, something that would end in a positive net gain, which sorely is lacking with most stories that try to fail consumer expectations with some twist or another. Conventions and cliches exist for a reason. Denying them as sort of trash from the get-go is not only unproductive, but stupid. Not even a master storyteller can make a grand tale if all he does is fail the expectations of the audience. This doesn’t mean that the teller has to capitulate telling the tales and events the audience wants, but that he strikes with something even better, something that works even better than what they imagined. Unlike this blog.

Perhaps all this is really why Disney Star Wars feels so much like fan fiction. Not only are the new, original characters of the writers better than the original, they’re also eclipsing their roles altogether and failing to have any interesting developments and movements without the originals. Hell, I once argued that recasting all the characters with new actors should have been considered to continue their story after Episode VI, but if the rumours of Disney still paying royalties to Lucas due to him being original creator of most of these characters, it’s very easy to understand why they’d choose to opt killing the old cast in favour of their own. Also the reason why they excised the Expanded Universe, no need to pay any of the previous people anything when you can just push your own stuff. Just trickle an old character here and there as fanservice, that’ll keep the nerds happy. Now that Bob Iger’s autobio is out, we can see him throwing Lucas under the bus, as it states that George Lucas hates Star Wars. He isn’t the only one nowadays. Iger going on about how he didn’t appreciate Disney’s hard work on the new films and how Lucas didn’t like how all of his ideas were ignored reads like a hit piece. No matter how much hard work and effort you put into something, it can just a well amount to nothing. Well, in Star Wars case it has effectively become a tainted franchise thanks to Iger and the rest of the people from whoever that new Lucasfilm head was to J.J. You can’t blame Lucas for you own massive failures. They wanted to take the movies in their own direction, and that direction led to dropping revenues title by title. I can completely understand why Lucas would dislike Disney’s Star Wars, it’s really dumb after all. Most of the audiences seem to think the same way.

Well, can’t say I was there to begin with. The aforementioned Yoda branded grapes and the first initial shots and trailers we saw of The Force Awakens put me off a lot. It didn’t look right, the atmosphere was off, there was something in the back of my head saying this won’t end up well. That little voice of experience has saved me loads of money and headache, and I can honestly say that was the point when I bailed the ship. I wasn’t the only one, but lately we’ve seen more and more news about fans “quitting” Star Wars and kids being lost to other franchises. The franchise in itself is not at fault, but the way it has been managed, the way stories have been written, the goods and services that have been put out, are. I guess Star Wars is like a zombie of a long-past friend now, with some still flocking around for whatever reason, but the rest are just veering off due to the reeking, festering dead flesh.

It’s in the pattern

In Star Wars, the Force represents drugs and staying clean. Much like how drugs are addictive and an easy way to get high and good feelings, so it the Dark side of the Force. Both are demons that lurk in the shadows of everyday life, something that seemingly shady people string other by promising a thing or two. You get a small feel for it, then begin to use more and more of the stuff until it envelopes you whole. Anakin found the Dark side through a promise and it consumed him, changing his character and nature to something completely other, much like a hard drug addiction does. Note that Dark side users tend to have visible effect in and around of their eyes, similar how druggies have certain look and sags under their eyes. To contrast this, the Light side is all about staying clean and true to healthy life style, trying to spend your time doing whatever normal healthy stuff you can to get similar feeling of good, be it going for a run or going to a gym. It keeps you straight and clear headed, doesn’t pull you into anything that might ruin your life. The fight between Luke and Darth Vader in Episode V is all about how home violence blooms in a household full of drug use, be it alcohol or drugs, and Vader asking Luke to join is the drugs trying to compel Luke into abandoning his healthy life and becoming an addict. The battle between the two in Episode VI in contrast is Luke’s total refusal of drugs to a point of almost falling into the role of violent abuser, as well as showing the traditional patriarchal role of brother needing to protect his little sister from evil. Luke’s battle also depicts an intervention, where Vader is thrown to become a cold turkey and has to choose between healthy lifestyle and continuing to be the Emperor’s drugboy.

All the above is, of course, total and utter bullshit.

Humans are masters at pattern recognition. We see things where there is none. A tree’s bark might seem like a face, and there’s always that example of seeing a smiling face in cars’ fronts or in electric sockets.

Sometimes, like with the cars, the designer plays us and uses that pattern recognition while designing the car’s front. We can’t help it, its a result of our natural evolution. However, the way humans think often leads into reading something that isn’t there, like that example of Star Wars and drugs. We can make sense of something in a completely irrelevant context and say that there is a correlation between the two patterns. We can say so, perhaps even claim that these things exist, but never really realise that this is what people call reading to deep into things. I like over analysation personally, but they’re really the same thing, giving meaning to matters through concepts that don’t exist in a body of work, but through either personal bias or misconception we tend to apply comparisons and themes to patterns that don’t exist. Like those sockets; there is no face of any king, but I am sure you all see two very happy sockets that just wait a plug to smash into their faces.

This has become somewhat an academical field, to view something from an angle that looks for themes and patterns that are not there. It has become rather profitable to apply social issue themes to some popular franchise, despite such thing does not exist in the work. To use Star Wars as an example again, nowadays the Empire is called a proxy for the German’s National Socialist party, the Nazis. This has been taken to the extreme of being applied directly into the First Order, where the it goes overboard and hits you in the head. However, in the original trilogy this does not exist. The thing with the Empire and Rebels is that it contrasts to an overall theme of overpowering superpower might over small, but extremely resistant group of fighters. The direct comparison is to Viet Cong and the United States during Vietnam War, a timely parallel. Episode IV doesn’t hit you in the head with this, but this is by design. Lucas did put the comparison in there by intention, but didn’t hit you over the head with it. Everything else was put before hitting the viewers in the head, unlike in the Disney era Star Wars where there are no subtle approaches. This makes seeing the themes much easier, but at the same time treating your audience like idiots has tanked the franchise rather harshly.

Seeing patterns and analysing them of course is fandom pastime. Neon Genesis Evangelion fandom is effectively build on analysing and seeing things that aren’t there, applying motifs and themes that seem applicable either because the patterns fitted into a motif make sense, or because there isn’t much to go that even the smallest leaps of logic require pulling stuff out from your ass. Then again, the Rebuild movies seem to be build on this idea and scatter hints and connections all around for these fans to put together. Then again, even then people will pull out comparisons and motifs of homosexuality between Shinji and Kaworu, despite the concept not exactly being applicable between a human being and a creature beyond us that doesn’t exactly conform to humanity despite being shackled into a boy’s form.

News media of course is worst in this, as they intentionally will play with pattern recognition bias either with selected footage, manipulated images via mirroring, cropping or otherwise, and of course with selected words that are meant to trigger associations. An important part of media education is to teach children to be aware of their own bias first and foremost and consider what has been presented and how. Appealing to the consumer’s own leanings is extremely common, and catering to these leanings is extremely large market, where people are offered bias confirmation as well as ways to assert their personal believes. Hence why Wikipedia should only be start of your research, not the end. Reading beyond what’s presented to you at face value should be a standard, not just a thing you do now and then.

Perhaps even more common is the refusal of trying to see things from multiple angles. While this sounds similar to seeing patterns that don’ t exist, seeing two sides of the same coin very different. Rather than forcing a view unto something, you instead take all the information you can and see from a view that wasn’t or has not been presented to you. Often biased news outlets will only showcase one biased view while completely ignoring, and sometimes even suppressing, more views because it might hurt the legitimacy of their agenda. For example, electric cars are now said to be the most green way to travel via car, but what’s not told is that producing those cars and their batteries consume resources and pollute as much as driving a gasoline car daily for seven years. Practically all news are like this, and even me mentioning it can be analysed to drive the agenda of promoting consumer self-education and awareness.

An era of hamfisted franchises

Using very sources or examples is never really a proper thing to do, but recently I can’t help but to feel that as of late more and more companies have been trying to expand their franchises at the cost of the core audience. I don’t mean the usual memetic way, but at the expense of the franchise themselves.

Take both Star Trek and Star Wars as an example. Hell, throw in Ghostbusters in there for good measure. I’m not wondering what the hell happened, because we know what happened in both cases. With Star Trek, we first had the Abrams’ reboot films, which weren’t great to any degree. He didn’t care about the franchise, he didn’t get it. Whatever he did wasn’t in the spirit of Trek and it showed on-screen. The same applies to the second movie, revisiting the same beats for characters like Spock being essentially reset to his original form in the first movie. The PR team directly lying to the audiences about the villain disn’t do any favours. After all, trying to remake what is considered the best of Star Trek movies is a tall task, something the writers and directors weren’t up to. Into Darkness is considered the worst in the series for a good reason, even if it hamfists the usual Trek message in like a truck. Third film may be a fan favourite from the reboot timeline, bu that’s little worth when the movie itself made the least amount of revenues.

All this is really ramps up with Star Trek Discovery, the least viewed Trek if we go by what Midnight’s Edge’s latest Trek video. The overall reaction to it has been less than favourable, but this is not surprising. Les Moonves micromanaged the show to the point of failure. He didn’t care for the franchise, but saw the potential in it to make money. What he or the rest of CBS’ staff didn’t seem to realise that failure would mean further losses on the long run. Any person running a franchise with fifty years of history and a cultural position will tell you that you don’t play the game for short-term gains. The Next Generation‘s later seasons, and the subsequent series didn’t dabble in current politics too much. Instead, good storytelling was at the front with the occasional thematic comment, much like how the Original Series had gone. Deep Space 9 had few episodes that were about racism and culture, yet these were woven into the story in a significant way. The same can’t be said about Discovery, which sadly pushes the politics over the story to the point of the main character Michael Burnham being unable to do anything wrong and comes out the most unpleasant main spot character across the franchise. Pretty much everything was driven by political ideology, with Klingons being turned into representation of political views.

Star Wars suffers from this same approach. Rather than tell a good story, a fitting story for the franchise, Episode VII gave us a terrible story that only got worse in the next mainline movie. The current Expanded Universe has seen vehicles for further one-sided agenda both in books and comics in a similar manner, and it all shows in the falling revenues.

There is no respect towards the franchises or the stories in either camp.

The best stories in either Trek or Wars have been fantastical character pieces. The comparisons of current politics have always been present, but largely in an allegorical method or as motif that is woven in to the overall fabric. You may not notice them, but your brain sure does. This is where so many modern stories fail. For example, the struggle between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire is an allegory to certain war with small and technologically weak group fighting a large and overpowering enemy, the Viet Cong against the United States. However, that isn’t emphasized to any degree within the Sequel Trilogy outside the setup.

The First Order from the new movies abandon this altogether and simply makes them sci-fi Nazi Germany, both in action and visuals. This lack of any sort of subtle approach undermines whatever the writer wanted to say to the point of making the First Order seem like Saturday morning cartoon villains, especially in Episode VIII.

The difference between the two isn’t just that Nazi Germany, or Nazis overall, aren’t just largely irrelevant nowadays as a political power, but also shows the fundamental misunderstanding of the franchise and its visuals. This applied to the older Expanded Universe as well, which explain clearly how the Third Reich marched into the cinemas. Abrams can tell us he is a fan of Star Wars how many times he wants, but the end result shows that he isn’t up to the task to write a good Star Wars movie like so many other before him. The same applies to largely almost every piece of SW fiction produced under Disney rule. It is understandable that Disney didn’t want to start making movies based off the Thrawn Trilogy or the like, as that would have meant they’d need to pone up some money for the original writers. The less they have to tie themselves to pre-existing stories and can make whatever the hell they can all the while milking fans’ affection towards characters like Thrawn, it’s all good to them.

Except when their movies are bombing and toys are barely selling. Disney is now trying to course correct the franchise with their next mainline movie, despite being adamant that nothing has been going wrong. Hollywood PR mandates a studio to keep their shit straight and tell nothing’s wrong, until sometime later they can just admit everything being gone to hell and silently try to fix stuff. It’d be better PR to admit they’ve gone wrong and are looking into ways to correct the matter. You’ll never see a studio do this though.

Trek is also taking a new direction, trying to capitalise on the success of The Orville of all things. ST Discovery‘s second season trailer already shows that they have a new direction, with emphasize on more adventure and fun, with Lower Decks being a straight out comedy from the writer of Rick and Morty. While we shouldn’t pass a judgement on series that haven’t even aired an episode yet, but an educated guess about their intentions isn’t hard to make. Discovery, by all means, has been a failure. Rather than looking at what makes a good Trek show and how to go on about it, CBS has opted to see what the direct competitor was doing and wants The Orville audience. Doing comedic Star Trek isn’t the way, doing proper Star Trek and not whatever Discovery ended up being should have been their first course of action, but that’s not how business is done when blind data is looked at without any consideration to the franchise.

Maybe all of these companies should look into making new IPs rather than bastardise existing ones to function as their vehicles. The Orville did it, against all the odds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The continuing fall of Star Wars

I’ve started this post few times during these pasts months, even before the Solo movies was out. However, that movie solidifed all the missteps Disney has managed to make with Star Wars. It’s not even funny in hindsight, as we did make educated guess how things would go down.

Star Wars has become mundane.

Way back when Disney announced they’d have Lucasfilm produce a Star Wars movie on a yearly basis, I mentioned that they’ll be risking making it all too mundane. Now, the movies are falling, the merch are warming the shelves and people are have become more or less apathetic towards the franchise.

Just like so many other before me now have said, the decline in the movies series’ quality has put people off. While movie snobs and wannabe intellectuals can muse themselves over Episode VIII turning Star Wars inside out, but the main audience, that is everyone else, deemed the movie a major step towards the wrong direction. For numerous good reasons, one of which is bullshit turning around how Hyperspace works. Good job at making any and all weapons completely and utterly worthless. How?    hear Jimmy asking. For example, strap a droid to a hyperdrive vessel and let ‘er rip. Doesn’t even need to be a full ship. Unlike what Wikipedia’s entry on hyperspace wants to you to believe, the franchise has always treated it as an alternative dimension to travel through, though objects with enough mass could interact with said ship and pull ship out of it. It wasn’t just go-fast gear.

An audience can’t keep up a yearly hype, it’s too taxing on the nerves and on the wallet. The absolute core fans of the franchise probably would give their left kidney and right lung to spend cash on anything related to Star Wars, but not the general audiences. The Marvel movies can do multiple movies per year, as that’s expected from them. They’re dime in the dozen action splashes, and different movies offer different things. They’re good for that. Star Wars, as much as it may be hard to believe, should be treated carefully as a phenomena. Each movie previously was a phenomena on themselves, and while Episode I may have a bad rap, that’s exactly what Disney more or less hopes from the franchise with each major entry.

If Lucasfilm was using Star Wars as a cashcow, Disney has been whoring it to everyone and everything. You can do this on an occasion, with bit event movies, but that’s not working anymore. Major event movie phenomena is dead as a concept. Mainly because of Marvel movies, incidentally. Each movie and cross over in the series is hyped and expected, and Infinity War broke box office records, largely signing that it works. We can discuss about the quality of the movies, but they make money for sure. Star Wars has lost its luster as that one series with high emphasize on both story and special effects. Ever since the first Star Wars, Hollywood has constantly upped its ante towards it, and we’ve ended up in a situation where Star Wars as a whole is rather dated as a concept.

Of course, you have the constant politics pushed in, with Kathleen Kennedy, the person spearheading Star Wars currently, has been rather vocal on her stances to the point of them getting injected into the movies themselves as well as in her staff. This is very much apparent in Episode VIII as well, with the Resistance leader, whose name I can’t bother looking up, forcing other’s hands to act against her, because she’s a terrible leader. She’s written like one of the worst Janeway episodes in Star Trek Voyager, where her actions have no true reason outside her role as the boss, and you don’t question the boss. She’s always right.

As you might’ve guesses, people don’t go to watch Star Wars for discussion about current politics. The original certainly was some commentary on Vietnam war, but in a way where it commented on how it is evil for a larger power to oppress the smaller ones. Star Wars is simple in this manner, with stark contrast between good and evil. I’m not going to play that it is some sort of complex storytelling at its finest, but I would argue that the first trilogy is, in overall terms, well crafted storytelling. The same can’t be said of the new trilogy, however. Whether or not it is because modern Hollywood writing simply produces homogeneous scripts that all end up having the exact same beats with the lines and timing, though that’s not exactly a new thing. However, if you look at Marvel movies and Star Wars, the similarities are more than skin deep.

Lucas sold Star Wars at a good time, when taxation was being renewed and now that what the franchise is has become just another in the mix. I’m rather sure that he misses Star Wars, it was something he’s build his whole life. He probably was doing the right thing for the franchise to try get that live-action series off the ground and explore the universe from other perspectives in Young Indiana Jones -fashion, something Disney clearly missed. Why probably? While the production would have been expensive, it would still have been on a smaller scale, but also something that could have been franchised better. Considering Netflix and other streaming services now have large amounts of shows that attract consumers to watch them, a Star Wars live-action show would’ve hit the market consensus pretty spot on. It’s a missed chance now, with the brand recognition losing its value with each new entry.

Then lastly, there’s the fact that Disney had no plans, no cohesive story to tell. Star Wars was always been under one man’s rule before Disney. Without a vision to drive a the movies through, they’ll end up being, well, as they are now; completely separate pieces that do whatever they want without any consideration for the next or what comes out at the end. Star Wars may not have been designed The Empire Strikes Back in mind, but as the series grew towards that, it changed and evolved into the storyline, which Lucas later would put on paper. New Star Wars has none of that, it has separate writers doing separate things with separate directors. Disney didn’t take care of the franchise, and now they’re in a bit of a crisis to fix things up.

On modern Star Wars

To choose one song from Star Wars movies that would encompass the motion that is Star Wars, would surprisingly the one you can hear above. It would not be the main theme, not Duel of Fates, not Imperial March, but this one. The reason for this selection is that depending on the context, this particular song can sound hopeful and romantic, all the while offering doors to mystic scapes, with a tinge of desperation in there.

That, and I used to spend an unhealthy amount of time reading through Star Wars: Behind the Magic discs to the point of my disc drive of the time breaking. The first section was used extensively early on in the discs. Needless to say, that interim time between 1998 and Phantom Menace‘s release was something special.

Thanks to circumstances, I’ve had to spend these few days doing pretty much nothing else but to indulge myself in nostalgia few times over, and due to a friend I fell into the pit of rewatching some Star Wars. Not just a movie, but going through radio drama bits, playing games and then some. Nothing major, but when you have a moment to relax thanks to Easter, take the chance.

Except when things came to The Last Jedi. To follow the idea of relaxation, I’ll spent this month’s opening to finally let loose some of the steam. Mostly because it’s modern Hollywood drivel and you can truly feel that it is a Disney movie through and through. It’s a sterile, by-the-books flick that doesn’t carry any of the spirit Star Wars, or the piece above, is supposed to have.

This is perhaps the best seen in the first ten minutes of the movie, where a character that died in the last movie (yet came back alive without any explanations) stalls time for the Resistance’s evacuation by making a prank call. Prank call to Last Order officer, who either has constipation troubles or the actor can’t pull the role. Either one of the two, or the director really asked him to act badly intentionally, which I wouldn’t put past him.

The thing about why The Last Jedi fails where The Empire Strikes Back succeeds is that it doesn’t treat the characters like pieces of shit. Each character that is in the movie gets treated like a meat to be tossed around and unmade. In Ray’s case, she’s just a lump of meat going whatever the plot demands of her, she has no agency. Empire doesn’t force humour into every scene. It has moments of levity, which stem naturally from the characters and scenes, whereas The Last Jedi‘s is incredibly intrusive and forced. Worst of all, attempted humour is tied to how the movie treats its characters. One of the best examples of this is when Luke is given his father’s lightsabre, and after at the dramatic music cue, we’re robbed the response. Luke tosses it over his shoulder. While you’d think this movie is build on letting your expectations down, it’s more about unmaking Star Wars as a phenomena through directly removing everything associated with these stories and character. Luke is no longer the most hopeful person in the galaxy despite the darkest hours he’s been through, traditions are trashed to hell to make room for the new and supposedly improved. Continuity is not held from previous movie for the sake of aesthetics.

All this to essentially destroy the old in the way of the new, just like how Disney unmade the old Expanded Universe in order to sell their new one.

While letting viewers’ expectations is something that can be done well, it is extremely hard to do well. You have to have a core reason, a strong narrative to do so. Not even Neon Genesis Evangelion, a series applauded for doing so, did it cleanly or even competently. A weak script like The Last Jedi‘s can’t possibly gain enough favours from the audience after it fails them in almost each scene. Hell, at this point I’m not sure if wast majority of the characters’ lines are intentionally made and delivered unfitting for a Star Wars movie, or if it was just incompetence. A scene with Snoke and Kylo Ren plays out like from a comedy, where Snoke asks how are Ren’s wound, to which he replies with extremely mundane tone “It’s nothing.” We’re then offered full scene of cartoony villain monologue that would find a better place in Star Wars parody.

I could go through the movie scene by scene and tear it a new one, but it’d be useless.

It’s all intentional, without a doubt. The end-goal doesn’t exactly matter, when that intention is to break. Cute things made to sell toys are turned into food. Even Tatooine, which used to be end of nowhere in the galaxy, has been replaced with Jakku. Hell, all the superweapons the franchise’s Expanded Universe had thus far has been made inept in the face of simple hyper drive. See, even in the movies hyper drive slid the ship into a pocket dimension of sorts, the hyperspace. It couldn’t physically interact with real-space objects, unless stellar objects with enough mass would pull them out, hence why Han mentions colliding with a star. Here, we see one ship tearing through an armada with its hyper drive, which makes the whole war in this setting stupid. By using a computer controlled ships, or even droid ships, you could use a hyper drive equipped ship to tear through anything, including the Death Stars and Starkiller. Incidentally, any company that produces hyper drive engines are now also the manufacturers of the most powerful weapons in the whole setting, aside the Force.

You’d think that after gaining one of the most important pop-culture franchises under your belt, you’d take care not to let it bloat. Disney and Abrams did not have planned anything beforehand, and it shows.

Star Wars is now effectively rebooted. Disney and whoever are charge of the franchise will ride on its thirty years of fame without any problems, all the while largely ignoring it. It might as well be a completely new franchise, which it effectively is. This is how Hollywood and so many other companies have treated their long-standing phenomena for two years now, taking the name recognition and making it something else entirely. It happened with Star Trek a well, twice over now.

This post ended up sounding It’s different so its bad, but that’s not what I’m saying. I tend to applaud things that try new things, however it’s extremely important to treat your property with respect and apply proper new things to it. As a story, and sequel to Lucas’ Star Wars, The Last Jedi is a boring, unintelligent and outright disrespectful story. Any merit it might rack is marred with Hollywood’s own disrespect towards the audience and unwillingness to step outside the usual plot writing formula, the same that Marvel movies suffer from.

Much like with other things, I don’t feel sympathy or willing to spend money on things that actively hate my.

Behind the scenes theatre

After a long time, I had a moment to spare to watch some movies. Whilst my collection is nothing special and does not contain many flicks film buffs would tell you to watch, I noticed an interesting trend with then. Behind the Scene stuff changed across the ages. For example, with Star Trek‘s behind the scenes footage was quite honestly just someone on the set doing home videos, with the occasional Roddenberry-owned goof tape he used to sell at conventions without any approval of the studio or the actors. I think you can still find pirate versions of these tapes floating around the Internet. These are honest showcases of what was happening, all the flips and flops of the actors.

Television didn’t exactly have the same amount of documentaries about making of television or movies, all these were relegated to magazine articles and newspaper interviews. Something that the studios themselves didn’t do at all. The value wasn’t in there for them. Genre magazines shone with their exclusive contents, behind the scenes photos and such.

Things changed, albeit slowly. By the late 1970’s you began seeing more and more material on the television about movies being made, as studios began to recognize the PR value. Outside the usual interviews, footage was more often than not honest to the reality.

A paradigm shift began to take hold in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, where  some studios began to intentionally build a library of making of documentaries for documentary and PR use. While only Laserdiscs could really contain large amount of extras, television saw more of these Behind the Scenes stuff to a larger extent. These documentaries have a more professional feel and look to them, as they’re shot as intended for a purpose.

However, it wasn’t until the 2000’s when Behind the Scene documentaries lost pretty much all plausability. Star Wars Episode I; The Phantom Menace‘s footage is one of the last Making Of documentaries, where you see the director and his staff being completely honest. That footage is interesting, because it has no veil on it, and you can see all the little bits that would build up the movie, for better or worse. There are multiple moments of Lucas himself telling directly in a natural environment what he is doing and how. Him watching old silent comedy for Jar Jar Binks, using a marker to draw on storyboards or reviewing readied models, it’s all there.

Then jump to Star Wars Episode VII. By 2010’s, Hollywood has fully recognised the power Behind the Scenes and Making Of features have. DVD brought us an era, where discs were chock-full of specials features, something we’re starting to lack with BDs. While a lot of the special features were simply transfers from the LD versions, at some point you could find yourself watching a Making Of, where the actors, director and everyone else who is involved being interviewed against a backdrop, over a footage they act in or make models.

In effect, these features have become less about the reality of the situation and fully about the public relations aspect, and how the studio and its staff can promote each other to the fullest. These studios, Disney especially, exerts large control over what material gets out and how it should be presented. A book called Making of the Force Awakens supposedly would’ve revealed lot of the background while making the movie, including some of the details about the deal Disney and Lucas made. The only reason a book like this would get cancelled is because it had something negative, something that could’ve damaged reputation of Disney or Star Wars as a franchise. There would have been no questions about its potential sales, as Star Wars was at its hottest since Episode I at the time.

The design of these things have never truly been about what’s happening behind the scenes. However, with time these features have become effectively fraudulent, showcasing a reality that doesn’t exist. Well, perhaps this was to be expected, a documentary is one’s subjective view of the events after all, not the objective reality.

Death of a World

I have been enjoying reading as of late. Not Visual Novels mind you, but books. I used to spend lot of time with books and used the library quite often, but nowadays I feel that I’d rather than something of my own in my hands, so I can do whatever I please with it. A creased page or cover (one of the many reasons I prefer hardcover) won’t bother when it’s fixed properly, something I couldn’t do to a loaned booked. While my bookshelf has its share of books outside comics, guides and other random assortments, I do have a wish to give something new a proper shot. This seems to be turning into a more personal post than intended, but hey, maybe that’s a good thing once in a while.

After some discussion with a book reviewer I across the pond I am familiar with, she came to a conclusion that I should go outside my field of preference, at least for a duration of few titles, and give Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books a go. I come to these things late, as usual. I can’t say I like Pratchett’s works, though the opposite is true as well. I simply have no relationship with Discworld to speak of, less anything to Pratchett himself. How I approach his works, or anyone else’s for the matter, is through neglect of the author. Pratchett doesn’t matter when it comes to his work, the works are enough on themselves. Just as I discourage idol worship with game developers, I extend this to directors, actors and writers. Though I must admit writers do gain a bit more respect from my part on how solitary their work is, but even then the best writers work with their editors or professionals in the field to build their book’s contents the best possible way. While pretty much all Pratchett fans I know have recommend to start elsewhere than from the beginning, I have always preferred to do so. The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, for better or worse, shall serve my entry to the Discworld.

World that has, for all intents and purposes, died with its author.

Pratchett’s daughter has no intention of continuing his father’s work in any way or form. Licensing existing works are another thing altogether, but no new stories are to be written. All this seems a terrible waste. Discworld has been such an influence that even someone like me, who has never opened a book in the series, knows something about the disc-shaped world through cultural osmosis. Things like the world sitting on top of four elephants (one of which has to lift his leg to allow the sun to continue its cycle due to how complex it is), which sit atop A’Tuin, a giant turtle that is swimming across the space. The world has its own rules and magic is much a thing as anything, and bananas don’t grow on trees.

It is of course understandable. A lifework like Discworld garners respect on its own and expectations for each entry were astronomical, from an outsider’s view. Sales numbers probably talk for themselves when it comes to the success and popularity of the Discworld novels, though this would where the argument that it has succeeded because the series just has been that good steps in (and would not be applied elsewhere due to dislike.) Pratchett probably had incredible load on his back with each entry to meet up with the expectations and (apparent) level of quality of his works in general, and we could assume that only he could write what many would consider a true Discworld novel. This, of course, would be bull, as the probability says there is a writer who could match his level and could deliver a proper Discworld title, perhaps even better. It would be a tall order and difficult any way you’d look at it, especially considering how harshly fans of any franchise  with singular creator treat outsiders. Pratchett as a creator will probably stay a a unique writer in the history fantasy novels, but all in all he isn’t the only one, nor he will be the last one of his caliber. It’s largely a matter of time before his niche is fulfilled, though that may not be anytime soon.

Whether or not a world should be laid to rest with its author is a debatable subject with no one true answer. Star Wars, for example, did find better stories when it was outside Lucas’ hands, though Disney’s run with the franchise has left me a cold turkey. Similarly, while the original Star Trek is still a superb show, it was other writers like D.C. Fontana who made Trek more what it became than Roddenberry himself in the end. Then again, Roddenberry and Lucas were able to create worlds, but not write in them very well. That didn’t seem to be the case with Pratchett.

To take this into direction games, just to keep things more in-line with the blog’s tone, using a game’s main director as a comparison point would do. Much like people expect writers to deliver great novels after another, a star director is expected to deliver high-quality games. The most recent example of a complete outsider beating the original creators at their own game would be Sonic Mania, which some have argued to be the best 2D Sonic to date, though I’d give it few years to set in before supporting or opposing such a claim. Retro Studios’ Metroid Prime is another example, where a third-party beat the original creators, and the latest Metroid II remake shows further how Nintendo does not understand the franchise.

Perhaps it would be better the leave Discworld at it is as a monument to its creator after all.

I may come late to popular things, but if the two first novels manage to caught my fancy, there are forty-five other books for me to read. I can understand my friend never wanting to finish the last book in the series, as then she would have to face that there is anywhere to go afterwards. She may read a page or two per year, but even that pace would slow down as she reads on. Indeed, it is a sad thing to see something you love coming to an end.

Stuck in the past

What does Star Trek and Star Wars have in common? Both have slew of prequels to them. The idea really is solid; explore how things came to be and see what sort of stories could be made within a certain set of time. The problem with either franchise is that there are definitive elements within those worlds that dictate how certain things must be in their prequels, otherwise the stories would not make sense or even connect.

Star Trek Discovery is supposedly set ten years prior the original television series. One would expect them to follow how the series then should look, albeit updates here and there. After all, Star Trek is a pillar of modern western popular culture in many ways. However, pretty much everything was moved to the side in favour of visuals that follow more along the lines of the nuTrek movies, or the Kelvin timeline as its now called. For a common couch potato this all fine and dandy, and requires little suspension of disbelief. However, for even a light fan of the series, the visual just don’t sit right. All this is of course because the series is developed under a license intended for an alternate timeline Star Trek, not under one that’s meant for the mainline.

There is no problem in making a prequel in itself. The problems rise if the creators want to have freedoms that are not tied too much to pre-existing stories. Especially with stories that are set between set events. Essentially, you’re boxing yourself between a rock and a hard place when it comes to creative freedoms. If you’re not willing to utilise given tools and take advantage of the existing stories, then it’d be better just find someone who can.

This isn’t a hardcore fan’s perspective either. A story of any sorts requires at least some level of respect towards it, otherwise the end product will most likely end up being schlock at best.

A good example of a story shoved in-between two other stories would the Shadows of the Empire. While it was a well made marketing decision to create a Star Wars phenomena without a movie, it did stand on rather good story that utilised elements from Empire Strikes Back that would lead into Return of the Jedi. All the while creating something new.

Say you want to write a story for Star Trek without being hampered down by existing restrictions. That’s an impossible task, but the most freedom you would have if you were to create a sequel story. This would allow you to have pretty much all the freedoms to do whatever you want, with the only restriction being the overall history and relationships between factions. Nevertheless, you could still have Klingons as enemies with a good reason despite there existing an alliance between Federation and them.

Star Wars’ prequels movies didn’t exactly suffer from being boxed between stories, like STD does, but what they suffer from is spoiling and devaluing the original trilogy. For example, Empire Strikes Back has less impact when you’ve seen Anakin becoming Darth Vader. Vader himself changes as a character if you don’t make a mental distinction between trilogies.

Under Disney’s rule, we’re getting new prequels all the time, for the better or worse. Rogue One‘s story was something we’ve seen few times over already, and due to this SW‘s Expanded Universe had to reconcile how things went down between events and who really stole the plans. That, and you couldn’t have anyone alive at the end. That didn’t stop them mucking up the storyline though, as the end of the movie contradicts the opening of A New Hope.

The question that is required to be asked if we even need to see these stories unfold. The fact that Death Star’s plans were stolen isn’t an important story in the end, but what happened afterwards is. The same thing happened with Death Star II’s plans. We didn’t need to see many Bothans die on-screen to understand how heavy their losses were. Mon Mothma does that well enough on the screen with her acting.

For Star Trek, we don’t really need to see the Earth-Romulan war, despite plans existed for it during Enterprise and fans wanting it. There really isn’t need to see what happened between the period of the Original Series and the movies. These would be best explored in supplemental materials, where the fans could enjoy these events the most. This is due to the nature of Star Trek itself; it’s not a story about wars. Deep Space Nine being an exception rather than a rule. Even then, DS9‘s war was naturally developed aftermath of finding a stable wormhole.

Hell, if STD wanted to tell a grim story about Federation warring, the staff could’ve introduced a new enemy and make heavy questions if a society like Federation can exist in its high-horse haven like state when reality does not match it. The Original Series does this to an extend, especially with Kirk, who constantly has to fight to uphold his ideals in a human way. This is the exact opposite to early The Next Generation, where the cast was completely idolised without much shred of humanity. That all came down after the Borg invaded. In retrospect, it could be even argued that Federation was taken down a peg by the Borg and made them realise how their own society had moved towards a more terrible direction.

A natural progression of a story is forwards. Episode VII made the right direction to move forwards in Star Wars‘ canon, whereas we can debate if seeing a film about younger Han Solo was ever needed. If you’ve ever read Han Solo at the Stars’ End, the answer is Yes. However, those who know the book also recognize that Solo in this book is very much a different beast from modern Star Wars’ take on him, especially if the rumours of the solo Solo movie’s original take was to make him an Ace Ventura-like. Midnight’s Edge unsurprisingly has a vids up on the whole issue.

Boxing yourself tight into a prequel takes a certain set of mind, one that has to be able to to utilise given resources, not make up whatever shit you want. Whoever owns Star Trek in the end, be it either CBS or Universal, they really need to move forwards and do a new The Next Generation rather than trying to milk with remakes, prequels or reboots.

Music of the Month; Imperial City

The music was written based on a painting of the Coruscant’s Imperial City by none other than Ralph McQuarry

If there is one thing that modern Star Wars is lacking is in the music. Both Episode VII and Rogue One had terrible music Outside John William’s previous scores, there is not a track that stuck to anyone. Prequels be damned, Duel of Fates is one of the most loved tracks in the whole franchise and has been used widely within and out the franchise. However, most people overlook, or simply don’t know, about Shadows of the Empire‘s soundtrack. No, not the game’s, but the book’s. Composed by Joel McNeely and performed by the Royal Scottish Orchestra, the soundtrack stands out if given a good listen. McNeely made sure to make the music its own rather than trying to imitate William’s style, something modern Star Wars tries and fails miserably. Worth a listen and can be purchased cheaply. Why Disney hasn’t hired McNeely to compose for them is a mystery. If you have a computer from the early 2000’s or mid-1990’s lying around somewhere, you can access enhanced content on the disc that you otherwise couldn’t on modern PCs. Technology has advanced and left things in the past.

But enough about a disc I found while cleaning my boxes. You might’ve noticed last month didn’t have a review or a mecha themed post. I’ve got no excuses, I couldn’t really muster a good topic and forcing one (again) felt rather tiresome. To say that I’d rather put a topic on hold before it has properly matured would be partially lying, but all that really means I’ll aim to post two mecha related posts this month. On the review, I’m still intending to do it on Huion GT-220 v2, though the first problem is with this that I need to show some results on it. My confidence on what I can do on it is very low, so whatever results I would end up showing will be basic. I’ve been using it about two months now, and I’ve gotten pretty good grasp on how it works. However, as with any tool like this, it’s highly dependent on the user’s own skill and the software used. Skill, which I completely lack, as I’ve stubbornly refused to move to digital, except for CAD work. My God how doing CAD drawings is a breeze compared to pen and paper, though I would always recommend any designer or CAD plotter to start with those to get the core basics of what’s needed down.

I’ve had my few weeks of vacation and I’ll be returning to work next week, but that barely concerns any you readers. I’m mentioning this only because this most likely affects the time I have for looking up subjects and writing, but that has been the case for the last two or three years. So, we’re returning to form.

This summer saw no larger entry as there was no topic that really stood out. If you’re looking for something longer to read, there are those Fight!! Iczer-1 and âge related posts that you should check out. Can’t say they’re definitely worth your time, but if you’re interested in them, sure why not. For what’s it worth, this also means I don’t need to put effort into a post that people might find too long. The denizens of the Internet barely read blogs nowadays as it is, and if they do, it seems that they prefer everything in shortform. Video blogs and podcasts have taken their place in a large way, as one can just put it on in the background and do something else while listening some yaps bickering about a topic. I should jump into that boat and start changing my old, longer posts (mostly the Monthly threes) into voiced blog form. I just need to get my voice into right condition and remember not to pronounce V and W as the same letter. Well, blame me being Norther European for that. I know I’ve been talking about this a lot and I just should get my ass to it. I would need a different editor for it though, I hate to listen to myself. Maybe I should give writing prose a try again, it’s been years since I’ve done that.

I’ve been wondering if there is a need for a content shift on this blog. While the core element would stay the same, I’m wondering whether or not it would be worthwhile to begin writing about other events that graze design, service or product. Like with the recent debacle with Marvel’s writing staff posting a group selfie while drinking milkshakes. Marvel and their staff haven’t been able to take much criticism as of late, and this whole thing shows how anything that opposes one’s view is seen something diabolically evil. Which of course is utter bullshit. What Marvel should concentrate is fixing their comic’s content and stop their readership bleeding to competitors. Marvel’s comics have lost the larger readership and Marvel movies have taken their place. The movies, for all the faults they have, are superior to what their comics are now. Maybe the 1990’s and early 2000’s really made too much of an impact on Marvel that they can’t recover from. First step would be to lower the comics’ price and get them back to general stores. That would require the content to be changed as well, but at this point it would only be an improvement.

Criticism is a thing that we really need to allow to be given. Even when the explanation is lacking or non-existent, any and all producers of works need to analyse their work and see what’s wrong with them. You should never assume that the consumer is in the wrong, even when they probably are, and see whether or not there is validation in their statement. Especially if your work is making you money. The people who pay for your products are the ones responsible where you may be, and these are the people who ultimately pay your bills and bring food to your table.