Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

(2026)

This was my son’s first theatrical Star Wars experience. Knowing this, I sought to make it particularly special by going for the Screen X tickets. More on that later.

My son and I have been plowing through Star Wars stuff as chronologically as possible and we doubled our efforts so as to be caught up to the point in the timeline where The Mandalorian and Grogu is meant to take place. We failed spectacularly at this endeavor however, having accidentally watched several seasons of Star Gate instead.

I’m kidding, of course. We know the difference. One of these shows is fantastic and the other is just Star Wars. No, despite our efforts we’re only just finishing The Bad Batch (2021). It’s been a good show but we still have a long way to go before anything “The Mandalorian”. So we watched a recap to catch up and then went to see the film.

Naturally, my son attended in full Boba Fett costume, as one does. I wore my Boba Fett T-shirt. My wife wore a “Realm Makers” T-shirt which does feature a tiny little non-copyright infringing lightsaber on the logo. I hadn’t noticed the sub-atomic-sized lightsaber and now I’m in the dog house. Not really. We only have a cat and my wife wouldn’t want me to go to a cat house.

Someone praised my son’s costume and I said “Yep, he’s here to see his favorite movie! Mortal Kombat 2!” This was met with hearty guffaws and manly slaps on the back.

This was opening day so we were packed in like kipper snacks and had to sit amid people we didn’t know. The elderly gentleman I was next to was clearly only escorting his granddaughter to the show as was indicated by the fact that he was asleep before the film even started. He rested his head on my shoulder through the duration of the film. Such a dear.

So we start the film with some text. It’s not a minutes long scroll thankfully. Never was fond of those. That’s worse than telling instead of showing. It’s reading! I fully endorse reading! My God! Please read! But this is a movie we’re here to see! I’m not cramming myself into the room with dozens of other people all coughing and sneezing at me so I can READ! But this was just a couple of lines. No big deal.

I liked the 80’s feel to things in the film. There was some synthwave music that I liked but my wife felt was out of place for a Star Wars film. There was some stop-motion and decent melding of practical effects with cgi. I liked how much it was rooted in the Clone Wars animated series.

If you’ve not watched the Clone Wars through, it’s awesome. It only starts out a bit juvenile but it gets real after a minute. Trust me. Plus it sets so much up for later shows.

So here’s what I’ve heard and/or read about MaG since seeing it: It’s long. It’s repetitive. The characters don’t really grow. It’s just a bunch of stuff happening on screen that bears no pertinence to anything we’ve seen thus far. It’s soulless Disney hackneyed claptrap designed to sell more Grogu merchandise.

You’re probably expecting me to say “yes, but it was also fun.”

I try hard not to be a “toxic” fan. I try to be forgiving with a lot of films, often satisfied as I am with merely being entertained or even just distracted for a while. This film definitely serves in that regard. I was never offended or insulted by anything that happened. I’m pretty happy with any film that doesn’t feature Shia LaBeouf swinging through the jungle with a bunch of monkeys.

Star Wars: A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi (1977, 1980, 1983) have been a hard act to follow. Many of the kids who grew up with The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith (1999, 2002, 2005) accepted the prequel trilogy at face value and have grown up recalling the good feelings those films instilled even while many adults took issue. Now Star Wars is subject to the whims of a major soulless corporation controlled by a myriad of stuffed suits who have zero background with the source material, zero respect for it, and whose sole purpose is to use the IP to create new high-profit yielding opportunities.

There ARE passionate people involved like Jon Favreax and Dave Filoni. There ARE redeemable factors in The Mandalorian and Grogu and I’m certain these fellas are to be credited for those moments. But the influences of the soulless corporation are undeniable

I hate to get into this here but I’ve been avoiding the subject for a long time and I guess now is a good a time as ever. It’s my opinion that every time George Lucas delegated directorial duties to someone more capable such as Irvin Kirshner or Richard Marquand, Star Wars got so much better. A New Hope (directed by Lucas) has some similar script issues as had Episodes 1-3 (also directed by Lucas). Kirshner fixed a lot of those issues when he directed Empire. Lucas is too married to his terrible dialogue to make any changes during filming. Kirshner made it work by changing lines to make them sound more natural like Han Solo’s now famous line “I know.” in response to Leia’s “I Love You.”

Lucas wanted to get deeper and deeper into the mystical and rather devine aspects of The Force, while at the same time de-mystifying it with the introduction of midi-chlorians. Personally, I feel anytime the story moved away from The Force and the Skywalker Saga, the stories improved considerably. Obviously Jedi Knights were cool, and force powers were cool, but unraveling the mystery behind these concepts dilutes their intrigue.

The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker (2015, 2017, 2019) could have been decent if the corporation simply permitted a single director to finish the job instead of freaking out, getting cold feet, and switching directors and story elements half-way through production over and over again. This is ALWAYS a recipe for disaster and three disasters they were.

Much of this, I beleive, is due once again to something trying to live up to the original and it’s JUST. NOT. POSSIBLE. I’ve said this in regards to so many things! Trying to make something new that holds up to what everyone enjoyed about the original just isn’t going to happen. It’s coming out at a different time for VERY different people BY very different people.

Some people are going to be introduced to the IP through the new stuff similarly to The Mandalorian and Grogu being my son’s first theatrical Star Wars experience and they’re going to love it. Old stuffy adults, who want to have the same feelings they had when they were 12 years old seeing Return of the Jedi for the first time in theaters, are probably going to be sorely disappointed by most new Star Wars things because it wasn’t really made for them nor by them, generationally speaking.

My son was so excited by this film. This is his Star Wars. And I got to see this film through his eyes. He didn’t come into it with preconceived critical notions of George Lucas’ terrible dialogue, firsthand experience with the historical or cultural impact of the originals, or even awareness of the influence of greedy soulless corporations. He came into it wanting to see an armored weaponized badass kicking ass and a cute finger puppet doing funny things and that’s exactly what he got.

I agree with pretty much every criticism I’ve heard or read regarding MaG. I DO think the film was fun even with all these criticisms. But here’s the thing, I EXPECT it to be a different experience from the originals. I may not have been filled with a childlike sense of wonder like my kiddo sitting next to me but I thought there was some genuinely neat stuff to see. So I came away happy. That’s my take.

Poster art! …but scroll down for thoughts on Screen X!

As for Screen X:

If you are unaware, Screen X is a new theatrical presentation style which involves “wrap around” screens and multiple projectors.

The only IMAX film I’ve seen was a brief documentary about Antarctica. It was projected on a circular dome-like screen that expanded at a 45 degree angle over the entire audience. It was a special attraction at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. I was rather impressed and wondered what it would be like to see a Star Wars film on it. Granted, images that were not filmed on IMAX film were strangely stretched out at the edges of the screen. I knew this because a still photograph of some explorers was shown and the guy on the right of the photo had a nose that would put Cyrano De Burgerac to shame.

I may have seen The Force Awakens in IMAX. I can’t remember. I remember being disappointed it wasn’t projected on the back of a building-sized contact lens like the Antarctica documentary was.

I experienced DBox seats many years ago, long before they were incorporated into normal theaters. These are the seats that rumble and jerk you around during the movie. Universal Studios had a truncated Days of Thunder (1990) presentation that utilized these seats. Only occasionally is Days of Thunder filmed from a point-of-view camera shot. The rest is outside the race cars. It was kind of cool when it was POV but it didn’t make sense to be jerked around when I was just an observer. I imagine DBox seats would be more of the same but during a full length film. I’ll give them a try again eventually but it has to be for the right movie and I need to be in the mood to be jerked around. Maybe I’ll take the kid with me. He usually doesn’t stop squirming throughout the film anyway.

I do think it’s hilarious the blurb often attached to vhs and dvd boxes usually involves some critic comparing the film to a thrill ride and now we actually are making movies into thrill rides. The voice actor who played Hugo Durant must be having a conniption! These innovations are novel but I have yet to experience one that really blows my skirt up.

I once had the distinct pleasure of witnessing the Terminator 2: 3-D Battle Across Time show in Universal Studios. It was amazing! It had three screens separated by two cement pillars and the film projected was done in such a way that it look as though this futuristic war was just going on outside the building! And then!! AND THEN! This giant robot comes out and smashes those pillars! We thought the screens were off when we came in but those pillars were also 3-D projections! When the robot smashed the pillars and revealed that the screen had not been three separate screens but one huge wrap-around screen the whole time, the audience lost their friggin’ MINDS!!! People were actually ducking to avoid being hit by non-existent rubble! A phenomenal effect comparable only to the Swedish Chef blowing 3D holes in the walls at the Muppets in 3D show at MGM studios.

Screen X is nothing like that.

For one thing it’s not really a wrap around screen. It’s three screens that adhere to the boxy shape of the theater. So there’s a definite angle separating the images projected onto the left and right of the main screen.

The emergency exits actually cut into the left and right screens so if you are paying attention to the film as a whole, there’s a glowing exit sign and dark door-shaped abyss right there on either side.

It wasn’t all the time. Only certain epic scenes were extended to the side screens. This meant a projector light was popping on and off in your peripheral vision, either to the left or right of you, or both sides depending on where you were sitting. If the effect had been utilized throughout the whole film it may have proved slightly less distracting. As it was, I kept having to survey whether or not I needed to just look forward or swivel my head like I had courtside seats at a tennis match. Most of the time I should have just kept looking forward. There really wasn’t anything interesting going on on those other screens anyway.

It was also bright. Some scenes lit up the whole theater and you could see everyone in the room. It even woke up grandpa and he quit snuggling with me. Poor widdle guy woke up fwom his widdle nap? He was all tuckered out.

I imagine they (gnomes) might start filming movies with this attraction in mind and then keep the effect going for the whole runtime but I think for now I’ll stick to movies that are just projected on a screen in front of me. Call me old fashioned.

Now if I could watch a movie WHILE on a roller coaster, I’d be up for that. The kid too! I’m sure he rode the Adrenalin Peak coaster about 120 times while visiting Oaks Park in Portland. That would just about cover the runtime of The Mandalorian and Grogu.