It might help to re-frame your approach to it as a 40s noir detective movie with a sci-fi setting, rather than as a whizz-bang action franchise like Star Wars/Indiana Jones.

What's worse is meeting people who claim to love Star Wars, then proceed to shit all over it. I feel like it's especially bad around TFA - every time I hear/read someone dismiss it as a "shot-for-shot" remake of ANH, I turn into Inigo Montoya. "I do not think that term means what you think it means…."

I always kind of get it confused with Summer Rental. Poor John Candy, all the man wanted was a little peace and quiet on his vacation.

Funny, the first thing I think of is the giant bear scene….

She talked about it briefly during her recent interview on WTF, had nothing but good things to say about working with Aykroyd & Candy, IIRC. She and Aykroyd were more of a yuppie couple, though they were all city folk on vacation in the woods.

My exact words (to myself) were: Sweet Baby Jesus!! There's something weirdly disturbing, or disturbingly weird, about this makeup job…it reminds me of a Conan O'Brien "If They Mated" with Robin Williams and William Shatner.

Been listening to Everybody Works by Jay Som, really good chill dream-pop album, and belatedly getting into the last Paul Simon album, Stranger to Stranger. Then, this morning, I heard about this new Alice Coltrane compilation coming out from Luaka Bop, and now I've listened to this song, like, three times in a row: …

Drunk is so damn good.

I think they apologized with their checkbook.

This is much better than my description! (Man, do I suck at the Elevator Pitch….)

I hope it's all an elaborate ruse, but I fear that Disne/Lucasfilm just decided, for whatever poor reason, that they're no longer in the Billy Dee business.

They did apologize for this…I can't find the link, but there was an interview with Abrams shortly after TFA came out where he admitted that he'd made a huge mistake by not shooting a Leia/Chewie moment after Han's death.

Bloodline is a political, Leia-centric novel about the political scene between ROTJ and TFA. It explains how the First Order comes to be after the demise of the Empire. And it's not nearly as boring as I'm making it sound.

I also recommend Bloodline, and the new Marvel comics. I just read the Han Solo series this weekend and really dug it. They're basically filling in gaps between the first two movies - Luke trying to find out more about the Jedi, Vader finding out that the pilot who blew up the Death Star is named Luke Skywalker, etc…

Oh, I'm sure we can Scarif up a few more…

Oh God. I was on a small town film festival jury once…the horror…the horror….

These kids definitely didn't see enough terrible 90s movies, back when you'd just go see everything because tickets were $4.

I feel a lot more sympathetic to the prequels than I used to, but they're still kind of a mess. Poor Jake Lloyd; it's not his fault that they should've cast an older actor. When you see any BTS footage, there's sooooo much greenscreen - hard for a seasoned actor to deal with, let alone an 8 year old noob. Also, all…

Oh man, I remember a friend of mine at the time who was a grown-ass man being super, insanely excited about little CGI Yoda flipping around all over Christopher Lee. And I was just like…"but it's not real!" And of course I hear myself defending the "realness" of a puppet….

Probably a tie between Junior (the Arnold Schwarzenegger-gets-pregnant movie) and The Chase, a terrible Charlie Sheen movie that I feel pretty sure was my suggestion. I also made my friends go with me to see Playing God, because David Duchovny circa 1995. The fact that these people are still my friends truly speaks…