Month: December 2015

Narrative Innovations of The Force Awakens

~ Eric ~ 3 Comments

I have mentioned in the past that I really love all of Star Wars, so there was no question that I was going to enjoy The Force Awakens. I could go on for hours about all the wonderful things in it (and I have).

But then people started posting all these complaints about how this movie is just A New Hope all over again. Ignoring for the moment the easy response to this that Star Wars is supposed to be cyclical, I still find this complaint to be extremely superficial. It ignores the amazing new things that TFA brings to Star Wars that none of the previous movies had. Since I am a writer, I am particularly focused on characters, and I wanted to take a blog post to just examine the main characters and the narrative innovations they bring to the Star Wars universe.

Spoiler warning. We are definitely entering spoiler territory. Continue reading →

Recent Teen Band Movies

~ Eric ~ Leave a comment

While I try not to use the term “guilty pleasure” – because it implies that there are things we should feel bad about liking – I admit that I don’t quite understand my enjoyment of teen romantic comedies. With a few notable exceptions, I hated most of the movies targeted at me when I was a teen. They didn’t really speak to me about my own life experiences, and often rang quite hollow. Continue reading →