Let’s take a second look at ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’, the much-derided Star Wars movie that carefully (perhaps too carefully) tied up just about every little detail of Han Solo’s early life, from where he got his blaster to how he got his name, giving more attention to what’s happening on the sidelines.
Ryan Murphy, the creator of Glee and American Horror Story, has a new seven-episode series up on Netflix, so I gave it a look. Hollywood (co-created with Ian Brennan) turned out to be one of the more frustrating productions I’ve seen in a while. I found it so annoying, in fact, that I’m going to complain about it in detail. [Spoilers] abound.
Somehow, we were all convinced to abandon the idea of Utopia, to give up on the notion that the future would be better than today. The reason Disneyland’s Tomorrowland was allowed to become quaint and kitsch and eventually retro-cool is that it couldn’t be updated, because we’ve had no vision for the future since the mid-1970s. Or at least not for a future that’s nicer than our present.
Together, we at the Junk Shop have a great deal of knowledge about a great many things in the SF/fantasy genre … but there are some odd gaps in our nerd cred. Here we confess to completely missing out on classic shows or movies or whatever that are givens for most people in fan culture. Whether it’s lack of time or lack of access or just plan lack of interest, these are the normally-beloved things we don’t get.
There’s been this trend of late, blaming this generation or that for all the world’s problems — “Boomers destroyed the economy!””Millennials are killing [everything]!” “Gen Xers all want participation trophies!” — and that’s not what this post is about. What it is about is recognizing and appreciating the influences and factors that contribute to some of the trends and attitudes associated with certain generations, and pointing out why some of those generational groupings may be too broad and/or inaccurate.
