Good lord, I let two whole weeks of October go by without posting anything Halloween-y! Shame on me. Let’s fix that.

As some of you know, one of my yearly traditions is the 31 Days of Halloween Movie Marathon. The challenge is to watch 31 horror movies--one for every day of the month--up to Halloween. Ideally, they should be movies one hasn’t seen before, but that gap gets harder to fill every year. Plus, I just want to see some of my old favorites again. This year, however, I am a few days off schedule. Partly because of planning and the number of hours in a given day. But mostly because I made the ill-timed decision to start a new television show. You may have heard of it. It’s called Supernatural.


Via Giphy

I wasn’t expecting much. I figured it would be entertaining in a dumb, snarkable kind of way. But here’s something I recently realized: somewhere between deciding to actually watch this properly, then getting hooked to the point of wanting to continue watching more episodes because it’s a lot smarter and more self-aware than I expected, and getting gut-punched by Season 2 in general, and by Episode 17, “Heart,” in particular (it’s about werewolves)--I have become a FAN of Supernatural. Because you know, I was kind of holding it at arm’s length before, mostly because of all the Problematic Issues people have warned me about. However, I was intrigued because so many of my favorite people seem to love it despite those issues, so I wanted to know what was so special about it.

The most basic of plot summaries: Supernatural is a road-trip across the continental US in a midnight-black 1967 Chevy Impala, stopping at all your favorite horror tropes along the way. It’s got werewolves, vampires, demons, ghosts, zombies, cursed objects, urban legends, abandoned places like asylums and cabins in the woods--it’s very much a horror kitchen sink. Our central protagonists are the brothers Winchester, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles), Hunters who seek out supernatural beasties and lay waste to them where they can. Their mother was killed by a yellow-eyed demon when Sam was exactly six months old; one side-effect of this was Sam being gifted with psychic abilities, the full implications of which haven’t been explored yet (at least not where I am in the show now--NO SPOILERS). Papa Winchester raised the boys like a drill sergeant, putting weapons and arcane folklore into their hands from a very young age. So the Winchesters have issues. But they are very good at killing monsters.

( Saving People. Killing Things. Family Business. )

Episode IV: From Farm Boy to Rebel Fighter (A New Hope)

Hey guys! As I mentioned before, I'm doing the Ernist Rister order for this rewatch. Since it's numbered weird, I'll list "Part X" in the title to indicate where I am in the rewatch, list the "episode" number in a sub-heading, and do a wrap-up summary of "The Story So Far" each time to keep from getting lost. There will be Unmarked Spoilers all over the place, so tread carefully if you're one of the few people who hasn't seen these movies.

I'm also rereading the novelizations of all six movies, in the same order, at the same time. I've read them before except for The Phantom Menace and The Clone Wars, so what I'm hoping is I'll be able to share more background stuff that wasn't in the movies, comment on how things change when they're added back in with the re-edits of the original trilogy, and how it affects the characters' journeys. For this entry, I'm gonna focus on our establishing character moments by looking specifically at two of them: Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.

Yes, I'm watching the re-edits this time, because I have Points to make regarding story structure, pacing, and character development. Also, I cheated and watched the theatrical version of A New Hope beforehand. Oops. But what's interesting about that is, since it's been almost twenty years since I watched the director's cuts of any of these movies, I'm looking at it sort of fresh. There was a lot that I'd forgotten about the re-edits and exactly how things changed, and while it's extremely disorienting the first time you see it--rather like someone has invaded all your childhood memories and rearranged the furniture when you weren't looking--it's actually not that bad. Well, not this one anyway.

Let's do this!


(Image taken from Giphy.)

The Story So Far:
Young Luke Skywalker, after stumbling across a mysterious plea for help from the beautiful Princess Leia, gets tangled up in the Rebellion against the Empire. In the process, he loses his only family--his aunt and uncle, who raised him--but befriends Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, space pirate Han Solo and his co-pilot Chewbacca, and the captured Leia . . . only to discover Leia can pretty much rescue herself. Because she's awesome. He witnesses Kenobi's murder by Darth Vader, the Sith Lord who also killed his father (or so he's been told), and joins the Rebellion. Finally, after the rest of his strike team is killed or incapacitated, he (with Han's help) destroys the Death Star battle station and is welcomed back as a hero. Vader, however, survives.

( Meet Your Heroes... )

(Cross-posted to rhoda_rants.)