Surely his ’70s moment is Malick’s Days of Heaven?

Mad #209, March ’79

New York was in very bad shape then, but “most rotten decade” isn’t really fair. Some of the greatest culture and social fabric and political heroism happened here during those years, and they’re a very fond memory for a lot of people.

So it’s sort of based on the premise that the Abrams movies happen, but only in a peripheral way. I actually think that’s an interesting hedge.

We’re getting into a cultural zone where critics and audiences seem to have polar-opposite reactions to things — Joker; Star Wars VIII and IX, and other examples of movies or television where the two Rotten Tomatoes stats (critic and audience scores) are inversions of each other. Given all the “leaks” about how…

I, and my friends who are fellow middle-aged die-hard Star Wars fans, are just baffled by the critical and YouTube reaction The Rise of Skywalker is getting.

Of course we did. They’re well-integrated (particularly the race stuff). Nobody made Trump re-tweet that image of himself with Rocky’s body.

It was immediately a dynastic story, from the moment at the dinner table when Luke starts discussing his father in the context of Obi-Wan and his own fate. The Joseph Campbell elements were overtly put there from the beginning and they include all the legacy elements about birthright etc.

My audience cheered heartily.

It’s a great movie, and a great Star Wars movie, and a perfect end to the saga, and I honestly can’t figure out why the entire Internet is acting like a bunch of high-school-lunchroom mean girls (“That sucks!” “You suck!” to the new kid etc.).

“How does Ben get a classic TIE from the Endor moon to Exegol without a wayfinder or, more importantly, a damn hyperdrive?”

YES

That made perfect sense. It was like the end of WWI -- just a setup for what came next -- or like residual peace-keeping forces in Afghanistan or Vietnam. Brilliant, actually.

THANK YOU.

He had a visible concubine in Revenge of the Sith (in the “opera” sequence).

Right, because nothing like that ever happened in Homeric myths, underlying classical mythology, eastern dynastic legends, Norse mythology, or actual, feudal human history. (Or in Shakespeare, or countless other immortalized fantasy and sci-fi stories.) The interweaving of familial dramas with warfare and politics has…

Thank you! See my remarks above (or below, as the case may be). The hatred of this movie baffles me -- it comes across as herd mentality at best and perversity at worst.

I totally love this movie. I’m a totally devoted Star Wars fan who’s seen all nine of them in the theater when they first came out (starting when I was eleven), and The Rise of Skywalker was a perfect conclusion — it saved the “sequel trilogy” so it finally hangs together and makes sense, and, more important, it ties…

Thank God! I thought I was alone (see my remarks from last night directly below/above/whatever).

I thought it was great, and I’ve seen all nine of them in the theater when they first came out. There was some bum dialogue, but there always is...and there were a few elements that were haphazardly thought out, but there always are.