I Have A Bad Feeling About This

"I have a bad feeling about this."

                 -Every Star Wars Character

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was a success, right? It created the hype, critics loved it, it made the money and it has a healthy 84% score in Rotten Tomatoes. But was it really a success?

I love Star Wars, grew up with it, loved The Force Awakens and get excited every time I see a new movie coming up. But to be fair, many people complaint about TFA because "it didn't have 'character development'". And yet, those same people had no issue with Rogue One having absolutely no character development and a pretty uninteresting protagonist. Jyn Erso seemed to be a great original character, but it turn out to be a missed opportunity. What made Rogue One a success or enjoyable movie is it's setting.

We have the Empire and it's prime, we have a lot of character that we last saw 30 years ago and, of course, Vader. The third act alone makes it for the other hour and a half that came before. With that said, I have a bad feeling about the upcoming Star Wars spin offs. 

LucasFilm and it's properties belongs to Disney now. So does Marvel. Marvel has been a success. Star Wars is being a success. Disney like to repeat itself. We've seen it before. Marvel might be a success. But we can all agree that all the MCU movies have the same plot with different characters and, because of that, the first one in each series is usually the best. Because when you see the same thing with the same characters for the second time it stops being good.

I know all Marvel fans will argue about Captain America, and I will argue back that first and second movies have totally different setting (which is helpful) and third one it's not a Cap's movie at all. But that's not the point. The point is: when Disney success in something they repeat themselves.

This means that the already confirmed spin off about Han Solo will feature a bunch of unimportant characters, that Han will be exactly as we remember him from A New Hope (meaning he will no evolve as a character), and more importantly, the movie will end up exactly where Luke and Old Ben Kenobi meet the smuggler. For me, this is bad news.

I want the cinematic universe of Star Wars to grow and show us things that we haven't see yet in the big screen. But seeing what Solo was up to the week before meeting Luke it's not interesting at all. This will lead, yet again, to a great finale where he outrun whatever bounty hunter is looking for him (ahem Boba Fett), just to end up in the infamous Cantina. But, what about the rest of the movie? Well, if Disney does what Disney does best, it will be a slow set up, where they'll throw a bunch of recognizable names of people and planets, see a good amount of memorable characters from previous film and have no arc for the main character whatsoever. 

I want to see Solo in action. I want to see him become the infamous smuggler. I want to see him years before A New Hope, meeting new people and gaining his reputation. Pretty much the adventure that gain him his "fame". I don't want to hear about it, I want to see it. Yes, it will be cool to see a young Mark Hamil at the end next to an aged Ewan McGregor, but seriously Disney, put some brains into it. 

The same destiny will face the yet-to-be-announced spin off that fans are hoping it to be about Boba Fett or Kenobi. The problem, again, is that if it is Fett, the ending will be right when Vader calls him to offer him the Solo job. And if it's Kenobi it will end when Ben save Luke from the sand people. It'll be a never ending gag of Star Wars movies connecting directly into another movie. Yes, it was great and worked just fine in Rogue One, but it better not happen again for future films. 

Then again, I have a bad feeling about this, and something tells me that Disney will go through the safe route and give the fan something to go bananas at the end just so they ignore how average was the rest of the movie.

House of Cards Is Wasted On Netflix

House of Cards is wasted in Netflix

By: David Maldonado

"House of Cards is wasted in Netflix". That's the conclusion a co-worker and I got to after giving up to the hype and started watching the award winning series. 

A little over a year ago, when HBO release their HBO Now streaming service, HBO CEO Richard Plepler said about binge watching: "There is something very powerful about having a conversation in the culture occurring for 10 weeks[...]". That day he put words to my thought and reserves about binge watching TV shows on the streaming platforms. 

Yes, it's good to be able to catch up with our favorite shows all at once but, what are we missing with this? Right now we are at the top of the hype with "Game of Thrones". Episode nine is coming and we all know what that means. And here we are, waiting for it. These are, probably, the best ten weeks of the year. Every Monday morning when I get to work I spend at least half an hour talking what happened the previous night on the show. I can't wait to meet with my co-workers and talk about theories of what may come next.

That is the conversation Plepler was talking about. Annoying everyone in social media with post about the show. Talking to strangers on Starbucks because you heard them talking about your show and you want to exchange arguments. TV really can bring people together. But that doesn't happen with the Netflix culture.

Netflix shows are great, there is no denying. But we all watch them at a different pace. And with this we can't talk about the last episode we saw because we might spoil the show to others. Now, some series are not that great and the best thing you can do is to watch all episodes in one seat. That way you can enjoy them better. Good shows like "Bloodline" or "Frankie and Grace", are better if you binge watch them on a weekend. Because they lack the excitement of bringing back the viewers. And when you analyze the whole thing as one, they happen to be good.

Then you have other cases like "House of Cards" and "Daredevil". These are shows that every episode is better than the last one and in every one of them there is a twist or an event that move forward the story. Then again, when we watch them we can't call our best friend or our brother because he was busy that day and didn't watch it. Or even worse, he or she already watch it and will reply to you something like "oh just wait to see what happens next". I don't care next! I care now! I want to discuss what I just saw and analyze it and enjoy the little twist or the backstabbing wound.

This is the best era to watch TV series. We are getting good ones. But when they stream all episodes the same day they are depriving the viewership of the conversation. We can't talk the shows until the other person has finish it and by then you probably forgot the best parts of every single episode. Then we say "oh yes, it was an awesome season", but that's about it. No details, no anxiety for whats coming next, no speculation.

At the end, we just watch it on our own for ourselves, our enjoyment and we forgot about how one show can unite people. So I go back to my initial statement, "House of Cards" is wasted on Netflix. Because all episodes are so well written and acted that it's worth it to wait a little bit to enjoy the plot twist, to talk about how Frank Underwood can get away with this one. We could have had 13 weeks a year of talking about "House of Cards", just like we talk about "Game of Thrones". Instead I'm here ready and excited to watch episode 4 of season four and you're probably thinking "Oh, wait till you see wham happens next". And to I say: just imagine the conversation we could just have about that last episode.