Ranking the Star Wars Trilogy Films - Episode I: Rise of a Menace

 

 

I've been meaning to tackle this particular project for a while. As a fan of science fiction (I even studied it in university fercryin'outloud)... how could I not address this franchise at some point? 

Star Wars is surely the most commercially successful 'Science Fiction' property ever created. Even people who have never seen any of the films and don't give two Tattooines about any of it... still know what Star Wars is and can most likely identify the iconic characters.  

The appeal of Star Wars, in my mind, comes down to its relatable simplicity flirting with a sense of magical, otherworldly adventure. This is a classic storytelling formula: the "big evil oppressive force" against "grassroots resistance", and the hero/viewpoint character being someone not even initially involved in the conflict or action. Our lead character is destined as a "chosen one" and so grows along with the adventure. Harry Potter and The Matrix have almost as little in common as you can possibly imagine, yet both follow this type of narrative progression. A New Hope is likewise just this fairy tale told with spaceships and laser swords...  and yet so many of the characters, imagery, dialogue and scenes in that film (and its immediate sequels) are so culturally iconic and endlessly quotable. Why? It's the connection with the audience, the groundedness while being taken away on a grand adventure that sells it... 

...when it works. Because there is an awful lot of awful Star Wars that has been unleashed upon that same audience. 

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Full disclosure: I like but don't love Star Wars. Hey, I'm a big Star Trek guy... and their recent severe awfulness is far more painful to me than any "meh" Star Wars product ever can be. As such, I'm not really the type to nerd out about this specific universe. Revisiting an old planet from the Prequel Trilogy, seeing a particular spaceship design or meeting a character referenced once on a TV show... it's going to bounce off me without even a blink. Over any kind of deep lore, I'm more interested in the storylines, the acting or just how these films visually dazzle.     

Anyways, lets jump into this. Quick disclaimer: this review will be divided in (likely four) parts, and will only be the films belonging to the three trilogies. I'm not including Rogue One or Solo (I haven't seen either and you'd have to pay me actual money to review Solo). There is surely a bundle of retro-continuity I'll also be missing with my ignorance of the Mandalorian show or the Andor one... sigh. Look... I'm sure they're probably both good shows but coming back to my comment about the lore: I just don't care. I'm just not a big enough fan of Star Wars to get into that stuff... consider me a detached critical outsider, and as such an objectively fair one.

 

I will get more into the details and history of Star Wars as we go through the films. We're starting bad, of course, so bring the noseclips. Oh, and there will be spoilers for all films (I mean, duh)... just in case you haven't seen any of these and yet are reading this article for some reason. Hey, you do you I just appreciate you checking out my work. 

May the force be with us. 

 

 

 

#0. The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

 

That ranking is not a typo.

 

Okay okay okay, one can argue an unfairness to include this one. It's a struggle to regard it as canon within the franchise... or just as a film... or even just as a barely comprehensible work that (somehow) exists. 

Cards on the table, half the reason I'm even doing this big Star Wars review is so I can talk about the Holiday Special... because boy, there just isn't anything like it. This goes far beyond the galaxy of "so bad it's good" since there's nothing close to redeemable about it. No, it belongs isolated within its own 'universe of terrible'. Such things of this measure require unique definition.

The obvious target for arrows is the cynical half-hearted cash grab it clearly was, especially considering the time and place. How involved George Lucas was in the production of the special is notoriously debatable, as he sure has tried to distance himself from the whole affair since this monstrosity aired (hilariously spoofed by Red Letter Media's Rich Evans in costume as Lucas at a convention buying copies of the special just to destroy them). By most accounts, it was Lucas' idea to have the story revolve around Chewbacca's Wookie family and to have them interact without subtitles. While that amazingly isn't the worst thing going on here... was still a really, really, really bad idea. GRRRRGHNNNN!!! (that's Wookie for: this special is fucking horrible).

From a distance, the datedness of the whole affair stands out the most. Variety television shows were still common in the late 1970s and so a televised spectacle of dancers, acrobatics, singers, musical acts and comedy skits all blended together in a single run-time didn't seem as comically haphazard or insane as it would now. If anything, The Holiday Special has so many other problems that this misplaced format might be the only charming thing about it... at least until you actually watch those segments.

Dissecting this from an objective critical lens will lead to madness... a critical failure in reason that even Plato could not resuscitate. Fortunately, I possess skills (masochism apparently) uniquely akin for this level of intolerable jibberish. As such, I will just propose as many problems with this nightmare that come to mind before all the last bits of joy and sense escape my mind for better sledding. Here goes:

 

Problem #1: It tries to be both a variety show and an exciting Star Wars tale (failing at both)  

I'm not sure if you could call it overly ambitious or just pure cluelessness... but the way this was filmed and produced just doesn't fit. The variety show bits strangle the story (such as it is) to a complete halt, eliminating any attempts at tension or excitement. Or audience awakeness. The "story" itself is probably supposed to be silly? But even just as written, this isn't silly in a cute or fun way.... it's silly in a "random clown blocking the entrance to a train you really have to catch" way, and the dope keeps bouncing on a balloon giggling while dozens of people scream in frustrated confusion. 

The variety show stuff? Even how dated it is... just wow. This would've really impressed people in the 1920s if Technicolor had stolen a very crummy time machine. It's baffling this was even aired...

Problem #2: It's BORING

There are just so many long stretches in this thing where all you're watching are furry characters shuffle around a house, meow and growl at each other (remember you have no f*ing clue what they're saying), turn on video screens and slowly open gifts. To quote MST3K and Rifftrax legend Bill Corbett: "It's uh, an interesting idea to watch a farm animal open a present. Not sure I'd build a show around it". 

Problem #3: The opening credits

Man, the special even begins like a weird mess. For whatever reason, it starts with images introducing the characters as the actors who portray them. "Harrison Ford as Han Solo!" etc. Okay, it's a variety show, it's supposed to be a spectacle and perhaps a bit of fun, like Groucho Marx donning the greasepaint and cigar one final time to whip off killer one-liners on the Ed Sullivan show or something (that probably never happened, but you see what I'm getting at). 

But, then the credits introduce Chewbacca's family with the captions: "His wife, Malla! His father, Lumpy!" Huh....? In your credits... why are you switching from announcing real people portraying their iconic roles... into purely fictional characters nobody watching this has ever heard of... somehow playing themselves??? What does this mean? To flip it, this would be like if in one of the Muppet films the credits read: "Kermit The Frog!" "His wife Miss Piggy!" and "Miss Piggy's puppeteer, Lance Johnson!", then showing Lance in a plaid shirt grinning goofily.  

Problem #4: Your main actors (understandably) phoning it in 

This is most obvious with Harrison Ford, who while filming must've been counting the seconds he could be done with this mess and hit the bar. I hear ya, man. I couldn't watch this cluster-disaster without a beverage or seven either. Mark Hamill dials up the dopey wide-eyedness to 11 (his glow under the production lights could be a rescue beacon for people lost in the woods), while Carrie Fisher... well I only hope the distant planet she was clearly visiting while on camera was at least a pleasant one. 

Problem #5: The painful comedy bits

Here's where the special really breaks its ankles and stumbles hard into the bottom of an oozing septic ditch. Harvey Korman was a well respected comedic actor, his hilarious turn as Hedley LaMarr in Blazing Saddles surely proof of that... but here? He's beyond unbearable. Korman appears in three different sketches: in drag(?) as a four armed alien hosting a cooking show (Whose Line Is It Anyway did this shtick waaaaaaaay better)... then he returns as a malfunctioning android in a "how to" video for installing some computer thing, which the child Wookie is watching and mewling (...don't ask)... and then finally Korman is a bar patron with a cup-head (seriously) hoping to romance Bea Arthur. Sure why not. He pours a beverage into the cup-top of his cuphead. This actually happens! It was filmed. It exists. ......just baffling.

Problem #6: The music

You have circus music composed by off key farts (really), Jefferson Starship singing "We Built This Wookie" (okay not really, but that bad joke far surpasses anything this show could come up with), Bea Arthur doing a showtune about her bar closing that goes on way too long (and is still by far the best performance of the special), and of course the infamous bit at the end with Carrie Fisher chorusing about "Life Day" with a horribly dazed and awkward smile. Words do not do it justice... it's regrettable to bash Fisher for many reasons but this musical number is truly unforgivable in its dreadfulness. Watching it gives the sensation of being stuck in a time warp wherein the song never ends. That Sarlacc pit is starting to sound pretty good by comparison.

Problem #7: The... WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

So here's a scene where Art Carney (an Academy-Award winning actor... that fact must've been awarded an asterisk after he appeared in this) offers some kind of computer disk to the elderly Wookie, named... Lumpy? Grumpy? Bumpy? Humpty Dumpty? Anyhow, Carney tells Dumpy how this disk is a great show he'll enjoy wink wink nudge nudge say no more... and I can't believe that was a sentence I just wrote. 

This leads into a sensual musical number sung by an attractive lady, while the grandpa Wookie Mumpsy is clearly "getting into" what he sees... nudge nudge say no more (please say no more). For the love of anything holy, can you imagine watching this in 1978 with your kids, and then having to awkwardly explain this to them? You see, Timmy, it's like when two droids love each other very much... 

But geez, what were the creators going for by having this in the story? Is it supposed to be funny? (it isn't). Genuinely erotic? (it really isn't). Also, children have kinda always liked Star Wars you know! They'd probably want to watch a Star Wars thing, which this purports itself to be! Just.... wow. Astonishing.  

Problem #8: The production

It's not like any big studio will ever be in a rush to digitally clean up this thing (all versions that exist are bootlegs from that '78 broadcast) but even video quality aside... every scene rolls as though shot in a single take with much of the dialogue and blocking improvised. Some credit, there is a nice matte painting of the Wookie tree house (although without a landing pad how the hell all these characters keep getting up there is a damn good question)... but the rest of the special impresses by appearing to have the budget of a mildly successful children's program. It's the same flat shot no matter which performance... a problem when the overall intent of this thing (one assumes) was to visually captivate and entertain.

 

I could keep going... you can write a book about how batshit crazy this whole thing is, but staying here forever picking this thing apart has to be a form of madness and there are way better films to talk about related to this franchise... like you know, any of them (and this is the same franchise that unleashed Jar Jar Binks upon us, don't forget).

Watching The Star Wars Holiday Special is a truly bewildering, baffling experience that will leave you weirded out and very, very confused. The sensation of watching it, while unforgettable, is mostly just incredibly painful... your brain trying and failing to understand what it is beholding. While watching I had to pause every few minutes just to recollect my sanity... it's the first thing you misplace while experiencing such a thing as this. 

Perhaps the only persisting aspect of the Star Wars Holiday Special is how nothing remotely like this will probably ever be allowed to be released again. While the idea of a bizarre monstrosity like this blindly sent into the wind by a billion dollar film studio is amusing... it is for the best this never happens. Trust me. This is truly among the worst movies that can ever be watched.  

 

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With that wreck out of the way, next time I'll look at what are, in my opinion, the three worst REAL films within the trio of the trilogies. It'll be very very bad, but well above this special bottom floor.

 

This Week In Pizza: One Night Only

 

 

The unforgettably scary first year of the COVID-19 Pandemic was filled with tragic stories of so many businesses and restaurants shuttering permanently. Despite the bleak reality of those times, somehow not every story to emerge from them was so darkly drenched in negativity. 

In the Beforetimes, Riverside residents Luke and Brianna Pollard would host weekly dinner parties for family friends... parties that eventually evolved into homemade pizza nights. When COVID restrictions and lockdowns first hit in March 2020, Luke's usual gig of construction work and visual art dried up almost entirely. With all this and a young growing family (and growing further considering wife Brianna was pregnant at the time), Luke continued making pizzas just "as a good way to maintain a sense of normalcy". 

Starting up an actual restaurant (while a dream) wasn't really the plan until one day Brianna asked her husband how large his pizzas usually were, and within an hour she had ordered a bunch of custom boxes and informed him how they were going to start selling these pies from their backyard. The name "One Night Only" had been a running joke during the pizza dinner party days, and in Luke Pollard's words "I also thought it sounded kinda rock n'roll". Indeed, the Instagram account for One Night Only far predates ONO becoming any kind of business... the earliest posts just being a fun gallery of homemade pizza fare.

At first the Pollards just reached out to their friends with a tiny menu and asking if they'd like to purchase a pizza one specific night of the week. The response and resulting word of mouth was overwhelming: with ONO becoming featured in Toronto Life and BlogTo as "Toronto's best kept pizza secret" within just a few months... their limited number of pies selling out consistently every week. Eventually the support (and demand for more) grew to the point where a non-straight-out-of-our-backyard location was possible, and they opened a little corner spot on the quiet stretch of Pape Avenue just a few blocks south of the Danforth. This did little to cool off the hype, with famous blogger/culture reviewer/something internet guy David Portnoy paying them a visit in 2022 for an online video grading Toronto pizza. 

Well, I'm surely not as famed a pizza reviewer as Portnoy (he actually has a Wikipedia page, whereas I just have a Wookie I drew on a page)... but I do have my specific qualifications on this subject (bizarre as they may be). So! There's no denying the One Night Only story is a damn uplifting tale of succeeding in the most challenging of circumstances. Is the pizza itself as uplifting as the tale of its inception? Or is it more... heartburning? Ah? Hmmm, maybe there's the reason WC Street doesn't have a Wikipedia page. 

ONO's pizzas come in only one size: a 16 incher that would probably translate into an XL at your typical pizza chain. They also offer slices but that's definitely a "get there before they run out" type of deal, and since I don't live especially close to Pape/Danforth and am allergic to mornings... a full pizza appeared the safest bet. I also ordered this pizza four hours ahead of time, as while ONO's opening hours have stretched into four days a week now... they still only produce a limited number of pizzas per day and so I chose my time slot early in the afternoon to definitely not miss out. 

Another consistency is the simplicity of their menu: while the operation has grown from the backyard porch days the limited menu has remained. There are only half a dozen options and nothing (beyond a potato cream pizza) that is particularly eccentric. Well, if you've read my pizza endeavours before, you'll note that I tend to forgo the simpler or traditional options in favour of seeing how a place's creativity shines...

...no I didn't get the potato pizza. I mean, sheesh. I went for the spicy pepperoni offering you see above: mozzarella cheese, pickled jalapenos, pepperoni, with some grated parmasean and bits of basil on top to finish it.

One thing I've noticed about certain Toronto (or in general) pizza-makers is how they love to talk about the process of making their dough. Chris Getchell of Descendant likens his to a focaccia, Slowhand is going for a San Fran sourdough mixed into the Detroit rectangle style... even my buddy who makes terrific pies in his backyard wood-burning oven can chat your ear off about this stuff. Pollard is no different, describing his process in detail even though ONO is a take on a thin, bubbly New York style. The result does speak for itself: this is a tasty foundation firm enough to hold everything together, but flexible to be folded if that's your slice-eating game as well. It is on the chewier side but not because of dryness, rather the bread density. 

 

 

Besides, the sauce was what first grabbed my attention anyhow. It's terrific: vivid and tomatoey, different hints of secondary flavour (olive oil and garlic most notably), a lingering taste and very much a presence throughout the pizza. This isn't an overly saucy pizza either, nor is it a doughy or cheesy one: there's exceptional balance between those three key elements and they work together in equal measure. I can't say much about the cheese, only that you don't get much buttery flavour from it but as texture it excels at its job. 

Going into the toppings... those are indeed little pepperoni cups. What's the difference, one may ask? With the little cups, the edges tend to curl up when baked and get crispy, while pools of oily flavour fill up in the center. These are another winner, delicious when picked off and eaten by themselves (be careful not to overdo it, trust me I know from experience). As for the jalapenos... if you're looking for a scorcher this is not the pizza for you. Since they're pickled, a lot of the heat is going to be leftover in the liquid and what's left is more of a subtle sting. As such, most of the flavour of these peppers bleed into the rest of the pizza... giving the entire pie a very modest punch. The jalapenos are tasty as is, but fairly overshadowed in this particular assortment of ingredients. In this form, you'd probably notice them far more on a white sauce pizza.

A quick comment on the basil and the dip you see. The basil is a very nice finishing touch, giving a herbal fragrance to each bite (and the little strips ensure wide distribution). Now for the dip, which was complementary... very much less like a typical aioli thing and more like a thick dill sour cream. Not a flavour to overwhelm the pizza with spice or garlic (not that there's anything wrong with that), it's instead, like the basil, a finishing creamy touch with just enough of that grassy, sweet dill to give it more dimensions beyond just creaminess.

 

Time for the verdict. Gee... this might be one of the more positive reviews I've ever written, eh. Wonderful backstory of a small local business finding success, meanwhile the pizza has zero major faults? I can't find anything to seriously complain about... the only thing being that I strongly suggest reheating any leftover slices in a pan on the stove, low heat. The toaster oven did dry it out somewhat and it became aggressively chewy, while thin crust pizzas almost always reheat better on the pan anyhow (the bottom may get semi-crunchy, but the slice still remains excellent in this form). 

One Night Only wasn't a "Holy F*ing Cow!" experience, like the very, very best pizzas in Toronto will bring about. But still, this is a great goddamn pizza I'd grade somewhere in the high 'B++' range, or just barely an 'A--' (it's tricky because anything in the 'A's' for me has to somewhat blow my mind.... it's a tough high standard!). Regardless of those semantics, this probably makes it into the Top 20 on my list of pizzas in Toronto... highly recommend checking them out (but plan/order ahead!). 

 

Also, take better photos of it than I did. Blame the early sunsets of winter.