Qasem Soleimani was killed by an American drone strike last night. Many people declared it to be the start of World War III. Many of the same people who loved it when Obama would drone our enemies are outraged that Trump has done the same thing. That’s partisanship for you. It’s a hell of a drug.
It’s been about 22 hours since and World War III has not yet broken out. If it does, I’ll be sure to update this post.
Seeing as how peace is fragile and war could break out any minute, Lisa and I decided to go to the movies today. We saw two films at the Alamo Drafthouse, Uncut Gems and Rise of Skywalker. Talk about mood whiplash! Uncut Gems was gritty and claustrophobic while Rise of Skywalker was definitely not.
In fact, it’s hard to say what Rise of Skywalker was. This weekend, I’ll probably review the movie over at Through The Shattered Lens, since no one else has done it yet. For now, I’ll just say that, when I was growing up, there’s no way I wouldn’t have seen the new Star Wars movie the day that it opened. With Rise of Skywalker, I waited two weeks because I instinctively knew it wasn’t going to anything special. It’s not terrible but it is forgettable and that’s something that no Star Wars film should be.
The prequels were an obvious mistake from the minute the words “trade routes” appeared in Phantom Menace‘s opening crawl. The sequels have turned out to be a mistake, though not on as huge a scale as the prequels. To me, Star Wars is Rogue One, New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and the first season of The Mandalorian. The rest of it can be forgotten.
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