Solo Makes Star Wars Unimportant - And Fun

I was not excited for Solo: A Star Wars Story. The Last Jedi exhausted me to a degree I never thought possible with this franchise. I wasn't mad. I was tired of it all. The Prequels ignited a burning inferno of passionate rage in me that lasted over a decade. The Last Jedi quieted those embers to dust and smoke. The problem is very simple: Star Wars is stuck up its own ass! The franchise has become this recursive loop of redefining its legacy over and over. So now it seems to have no legacy. When a work of art stops talking about anything other than itself, it becomes boring. We've spent so much time arguing about why Star Wars is so important that we missed the easy truth: Star Wars isn't important. It never was.

The last thing I want to write is another post about "what even is Star Wars, man?". I've written that same shit like ten times now, and I'm bored. The obsession around keeping the movies true to their heritage has poisoned this Disney reboot. Disney has been painfully insecure with these new movies and it makes everything awkward. I even liked what The Last Jedi had to say about the fandom and (again) the legacy of this series. But I don't see Star Wars for a cultural essay. The new Star Wars movies have put so much energy into proving that they are Star Wars that they didn't have time to actually be Star Wars! So how come Solo makes it all look so easy?

Solo is not a movie that needed to be made. Nobody needs to know how Han Solo met Chewbacca or won the Millenium Falcon or even what the Kessel Run really was. It's a fan service prequel in the most blatant and pandering way. Maybe for that reason Solo is the most relaxed and lightest Star Wars movie in a long time. It knows what it is, and it isn't high art. It's a SciFi heist flick with a touch of old Westerns and a singing space fish. That isn't a cultural touchstone that will define a generation, and it shouldn't be. Because the only thing Star Wars needs to be is fun. Not important. Fun.

God of War Needs More Hugs

God of War (2018) is doing something that a lot of people refuse to ever do: take stock of itself and its problematic past. The game never straight-up repudiates the old God of War series, but it definitely seems embarrassed by its previous entries. Kratos in 2018 is a quiet, depressed man, where the Spartan in 2005 was a screaming asshole. New God of War wants to be subtle, emotionally complex, and to push its character into being a fully dimensional human being. They even removed the sex minigames. I respect the goals here. Maybe we could try to fix Duke Nukem or Shadow the Hedgehog next?

The problem for me though is that Sony Santa Monica still wants Kratos to be "cool". This is the character's origins conflicting with the new game's goals. In 2005, all Kratos needed to be was an angry avatar of teenage boy id. You pressed Circle and Kratos made things dead in spectacular ways. Or he banged naked chicks with repulsive low-poly boobs. He wasn't a real person and didn't need to be one. In 2018, we expect more from our gaming protagonists, so Kratos can't "just be angry". He's got a son now, he has responsibilities. Kratos needs to get the kid dressed and off to school and maybe later, if he's still got energy, our war god can slay a mythological creature now or then. However no matter how much of a real person Kratos can become, he still has to be cool. And nothing is cooler, apparently, than emotional abuse.

In God of War I really enjoyed the gameplay. I appreciate the reasonably-sized world map. I liked the bosses, especially the Valkyrie superbosses which are the best part of an already good game. The whole style is like that bloodier Zelda that I always wanted the God of War games to be in the first place. (The loot and crafting systems however can go die in Ragnarok.) But I hated Kratos. Kratos starts this game sealed-up in his own edgelord bullshit, unable to even pat his son, Atreus (AKA: "BOY!") on the back. He can't apologize, he can't really open up, and he doesn't "do hugs". He's stuck as a bitter authoritarian, unable to crack a smile. Kratos continues to act out this stunted ultra-masculine fantasy, even as this behavior is clearly toxic.

God of War (2018) tries to make Kratos a good father, and it fails. Because it couldn't make him a good mother.