[Star Wars fans were saddened to learn today of the passing of Kenny Baker at age 81. His long list of credits include Labyrinth, Time Bandits, and even Amadeus, but every piece ever written about him will focus on his longtime career as the soul of R2-D2. We previously told the story of the one time Anne and I met him, in 2002 at Star Wars Celebration II here in Indianapolis. If memory serves, he was the first Star Wars actor we ever met. The following is a modified reprise for the occasion.]
On a board far, far away…
My son has been staying with us this week, getting away from his isolated college apartment for a bit to enjoy better cooking and some human contact. Twice this week we plowed into our stash of board games and had ourselves some old-fashioned family quality time. While we were immersing ourselves in other, tinier worlds and their simpler structures of governance, obviously we couldn’t know this would end up an atrocious week for American civilization beyond our cozy, secluded walls.
Gimli. Sallah. Treebeard. Professor Arturo. da Vinci. Kingpin. All those names and personalities don’t prepare you for the fact that John Rhys-Davies will tickle you in the middle of your photo op.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Friday and Saturday, my wife and I attended the third annual Indiana Comic Con at the Indiana Convention Center in scenic downtown Indianapolis. Previous chapters in this special MCC miniseries:
* Part One: Costumes!
* Part Two: Cosplay!
* Part Three: Cosplayers!
The TL;DR rundown of our weekend experience: this was the best-run Indiana Comic Con to date. The showrunners evidently took notes last time, focused on their weaknesses, streamlined their processes, and exceeded our apprehensive expectations. We came away with a new set of happy memories, several cool books, another gallery of photos, a few minor suggestions for future years, and no sour complaints this time. A fine convention at last, would run through again, 10/10.
Right this way for pics of actors and comic creators we met! And more!
Best headgear of the year: Medusa from Clash of the Titans, giving me flashbacks to when I got scared watching the original at the drive-in.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Friday and Saturday, my wife and I attended the third annual Indiana Comic Con at the Indiana Convention Center in scenic downtown Indianapolis. In Part One you saw every viable costume photo we took on Friday, with the emphasis once again leaning toward Deadpool because that’s what we’re running into, other than hordes of intricate anime characters we oldsters don’t recognize. Part Two was a Saturday selection featuring Bat-related characters and, one last time, all the Deadpools fit to print.
In today’s gallery: cosplay, cosplay, cosplay! All the other costumes we saw on Saturday that looked great and didn’t evade or outrun us. Obviously this is far from comprehensive and I’m still kicking myself with all my mental strength for missing one lady dressed as someone I recognized from the Authority. At one point I dwelt on this weird idea of renting booth space next year and offering to take free pics of any cosplayers who feel they weren’t photographed often enough, just for free posting here as a fun public service — no judging, no body-shaming, no rejecting just because Anne and I have no idea who they are. But I’m not sure how many cosplayers experience that kind of letdown at such shows anymore. Social media operating as it does today, every con probably now has ten “photographers” in attendance for every cosplayer. My idea was a fun pipe dream for the few minutes it lasted. Ah, well.
Anyway: enjoy!
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Can this be? Rey and Kylo Ren working together? Say it ain’t so!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I spent two days at the seventh annual Chicago Comics and Entertainment Exposition, where Midwest comics fans in particular and geeks in general gather together in the name of imaginary worlds from print and screen to revel in fiction and touch bases on what’s hot or cool at this moment in pop culture.
We expected new costume ideas to abound thanks to the interstellar success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the whole new cast of iconic characters for us to watch, study, follow, debate, and impersonate. We saw veritable armies of Rey and Kylo Ren parading around the show floor and claiming it as their own. We caught a mere fraction of a fraction of the Star Wars fans on site.
Right this way for more Rey, more Ren, and BB-8 in three sizes!
Even the silliest pew-pew-pew effects sound glorious when you crank the speakers up to 27.
I have no current plans to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens six times as I did with one of its predecessors, but my son and I caught an encore for fun at one of the local IMAX theaters to see if the 3-D made any difference. It’s something we try maybe once every 2-3 years, not a regular part of our movie-going diet. I confess I dig IMAX screens more for their super-sized speaker systems than for any picture enlargement. In both TV and movies, JJ Abrams tends to be one of those directors who coach their sound effects team to deliver a booming, raucous performance in which you can feel the depth and the weight of every noise great and small. As a guy with lousy hearing who watches most TV shows with the captioning turned on just in case, I love a heavy hand at the soundboards.
After seeing the same scenes twice, I noticed slight shifts in a few of my opinions, along with a few other random observations beyond what I previously wrote over here and over there. I talked to a few relatives at Christmas gatherings today who still haven’t seen TFA, so I’m not the sort of elitist to assume that anyone who hasn’t seen it yet deserves spoilers as their punishment. If you’re like them and haven’t had the time or funds, please enjoy this courtesy SPOILER ALERT telling you politely to go away for now and save this entry for later.
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Hey, remember that time we had high hopes for every well-dressed new character in The Force Awakens?
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens! The previous entry was the requisite MCC review-not-review, but lighter on details this time for the benefit of those fans who want a fighting change to see the movie with as few surprises spoiled as possible. According to my son, some deranged Expanded Universe fans were invading random YouTube comments sections for videos that had absolutely nothing to do with Star Wars and were posting major TFA spoilers because they are bitter and they are twelve. Between the heavily armed loner gunmen we fear are waiting at the crowded theater lobbies and the entitled trolls waiting to type furiously at innocents at home, the cinema experience is strangely more challenging and less fun than ever.
That didn’t stop us, though. We had thoughts and I remembered to write down many of them. Here’s a COURTESY SPOILER WARNING in case you somehow overlooked the title.
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Still hiding out from rampant internet spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens?
Never fear! We here at Midlife Crisis Crossover know your fears. I spent part of Thursday and all of Friday hiding out from social media, shunning all peer contact, and busying myself around the house until it was our turn to see it Saturday afternoon. At last I can rejoin the cool kids’ kaffeeklatsch, already in progress.
But that doesn’t mean I have to ruin it for anyone else. Thus I’ve split my thoughts into (at least) two entries. First up: the light summary of impressions from my first showing, written in a manner that hopefully doesn’t compromise your own first screening.
That name again: Star Wars! Official merchandise and irrelevant products of marketing synergy are now available in literally every Walmart department! Star Wars: It’s Not Just for Toy Aisles anymore!
From time to time, the Star Wars saga crosses our minds here at Midlife Crisis Crossover. Occasionally it’s a serious thinkpiece; usually it’s poking fun; either way, it’s coming from a longtime affectionate immersion in that phenomenal universe. In honor of the upcoming release of The Force Awakens, the seventh chapter in the live-action film canon as rendered by director JJ Abrams and a cast of whippersnappers and old folks alike, we present the following suggested reading list of essays and gags from MCC’s past. These entries may be undiscovered experiences for new followers, pleasant reruns for our longtime associates, or the perfect drugs for anyone who’s fiending for any form of consumable entertainment with the words “Star Wars” in or on it.
For a virtually complete revue of every major Star Wars entry we’ve ever posted, you can follow MCC’s “Star Wars” tag and, among other omissions, take a tour of every convention and event we’ve ever attended that drew a large turnout of Star Wars cosplayers, including our experiences at Star Wars Celebrations II and III. And don’t forget we were just talking about it a few days ago, though that entry’s far too new for the “archives” label and is therefore disqualified from inclusion. Maybe if we do this again for Episode VIII.
Enjoy, rest assured this list contains no real spoilers for The Force Awakens, and MTFBWY!
The Star Wars Cinematic Universe introduces the first three members of its All-New All-Different Avengers.
Every Star Wars fan, whether casual or hardcore, has their mental wish list of stuff they’re hoping Star Wars: The Force Awakens should contain in order to become the greatest Star Wars film of all time. With a modest running time of 136 minutes, J.J. Abrams and company can’t possibly satisfy every single fan on Earth, but it goes without saying that my checklist is the wisest and grandest of them all.
John Boyega. Daisy Ridley. STAR WARS. Canon. Cope.
In the past 24 hours eight hundred million other internet users have posted their thoughts on the all-new Official Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer that premiered Monday night during ESPN’s Monday Night Football and was released online seconds later for those of us who don’t do sports. Hardcore fans have devoted every hour since then freezing every frame, enhancing every pixel, scrutinizing every living being or moving object, collating the data, and sharing results in hopes of extrapolating the plots of the next six Star Wars films, or at least guessing which toys they’ll buy next.
Now…it’s my turn.
Right this way for the greatest film study that matters only to me ever!
DC Comics house ad from The Flash #339, cover-dated November 1984. A lot of ’80s characters are no longer around, and it’s been decades since fans begged DC to bring back “legends” like these.
We live in an entertainment culture where we take it as given that all the best ideas were conceived before we were born, so trying to forge new universes seems like too much effort. Reboots used to be a desperation move, but anymore they’re the norm for luring in new fans — not just for work-for-hire companies with an intellectual property catalog to keep fertile and growing, but for artists, writers, and filmmakers all too happy to make a lifelong career out of perpetuating the lives and histories of worlds and heroes they didn’t invent themselves. It’s a living.
It’s easy to scoff at reboots when they’re happening to characters that don’t matter to you. If you’re a geek for long enough, though, sooner or later they’ll get to a universe you do care about.
I’ve been there. I remember the first time I had a universe yanked out from under me.
Right this way for memories and lessons about two universes with a lot in common…
Jedi M&Ms: they melt on Mustafar, not in your hand.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: a flashback to our four-day weekend at 2005’s Star Wars Celebration III in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. Part 1 was nearly three thousand words’ worth of anecdotes, bullet points, actors, friends, Star Wars creators, popes, and the worst line we’ve ever endured in our entire lives. Part 2 was a basic photo gallery of stuff ‘n’ things that were pretty exciting to us at the time. Now it’s all standard convention decor, but we were younger and easily impressed.
And now we reach the grand finale to this very special all-35mm MCC miniseries in a predictable fashion with predictable fashions. It’s vintage cosplay time! Here’s what the Star Wars fans of yesteryear were wearing before cosplayers divided sharply into two camps: those spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on painstakingly self-tailored tributes; and dudes in store-bought Halloween costumes. Enjoy!
Life-size X-Wing Fighter! Working engine and hyperspace drive sold separately.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: a flashback to our four-day weekend at 2005’s Star Wars Celebration III in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. Part 1 was nearly three thousand words’ worth of anecdotes, bullet points, actors, friends, Star Wars creators, popes, and the worst line we’ve ever endured in our entire lives. Part 3 is the inevitable cosplayer roundup.
Tonight’s episode: more scans of 35mm ten-year-old photos, now with more Star Wars stuff than ever in them — a combination of official Lucasfilm props on display behind lock and key, loving fan-made objects, and Star Wars playthings writ large. If Part 1 is a long nonfiction book, Part 2 is the glossy photo section in the middle of the book apart from the rest of the content. More things, fewer words. Enjoy!
Right this way for a short, easy-to-scroll-through photo gallery of Star Wars things!
He was burnout concert promoter Del Preston in Wayne’s World 2, a victim in Alien³, and the big-bad Dr. Fennhoff in Marvel’s Agent Carter, but to Star Wars fans with advanced memories, Ralph Brown is best known as panicky pilot Ric Olie from The Phantom Menace.
So far my Labor Day weekend on the internet has been all about (a) toy fans reveling in the Star Wars “Force Friday” merchandise onslaught, and (b) longtime cohorts kicking around Dragon*Con in Atlanta seeing lots of SW-related costumes, actors, and at least one novelist. I’m happy for everyone enjoying themselves for those various reasons, but skimming through all this STAR WARS STAR WARS STAR WARS STAR WARS STAR WARS has put me in a nostalgic frame of mind about a relevant occasion from our own past that I meant to dredge up four months ago for May the Fourth but delayed due to distractions.
Ten years ago last April, my wife Anne and I attended all four days of Star Wars Celebration III (“CIII” to our friends), the second and final major SW convention to grace the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis. As with the 2002 shindig (previously relived on MCC here, here, and here), our weekend was filled with costumes, props, things containing Star Wars logos, performers, crowds, terrible line management, and out-of-town internet friends given a great excuse to visit.
Sadly, my own write-up of the experience was atomized shortly after its initial posting due to a freak accident involving dumb stupid idiotic software that made it too easy for a trusting message-board administrator to delete dozens of threads with a single misunderstanding keystroke. Anne’s own version of events survived the purge and remains online as a minute-by-minute account more thrilling to those of us who were there, probably less so to outsiders. This, then, is the recap of her recap.
Mandatory Bat-villains: Ms. Freeze and the Riddler! Incredibly, we somehow didn’t photograph a single Joker at WWC this year. Not one.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
It’s that time of year again! Anne and I are at Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we’re so far having a blast even though parts of it resemble hard work and our feet feel battle-damaged after two days of endless walking, standing, lining up, shuffling forward in cattle-call formation, and scurrying toward exciting people and things…
My wife and I took an okay number of photos over the course of our three-day stay and will once again be sharing the most usable over the next several entries.
With the average con we usually have enough pics for themed entries of a solid size, but our WWC 2015 results turned out so fractionalized across a number of media, companies, and universes that not much else besides Marvel achieved a real consensus. DC and Star Wars each put in a modest showing, but after using up a few of those in Part 1, both universes fell short of supporting their own independent entries. Hence today’s senseless duplex of an entry. Enjoy!
Right this way for some DC and some Star Wars! Because they’re there!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context.
We’re not as thrilled about carnival rides as we used to be, and the State Fair almost never invites musicians I like. In between snacking experiments, our day at the fair tends to be all about sightseeing, particularly in the area of Stuff Young People Made. As you’d expect, year in, year out, those young craftspeople love them some Lego.
Under the auspices of 4-H, kids statewide have the chance to compete in building competitions of varying categories. Sometimes it’s all about what they can create from scratch. Sometimes it’s about who can follow manufacturers’ directions best. Sometimes I wonder if kids put together sets like this Lego SHIELD Helicarrier, tell the non-geek judges they totally made it up, collect their purple Grand Prize ribbons, and look like construction wizards to everyone they know. All I know is on Lego.com this set is priced twice as much as my used PS3 was. Gotta admit, though, it looks much cooler.
Miles Morales, Ultimate Spider-Man, prepares to spring into action.
This weekend the second annual Indy PopCon once again overtook our Indiana Convention Center with a festive mix of comics, gaming, voice actors, established actors, animation, podcasting, and various other manifestations of pop and geek culture in general. This year’s guest list also encroached upon a new entertainment frontier: the rapidly expanding world of YouTube stars. My wife and I had never heard of any of those who were invited, but we were outnumbered several thousand to one in that regard.
We attended Saturday only for a limited time for a number of reasons with a short itinerary and modest expectations, but we took photos as usual for You, the Viewers at Home. The first two entries will be costumes, because that’s one of those things we like to see and share. In our first lineup: characters from the synergistic worlds of Marvel Comics, Walt Disney Animation, and that faraway Star Wars galaxy. Oddly, exactly half the viable cosplay pics we took comprised personalities from their corporate domain.
This month in Star Wars #6: Boba Fett tries to prove he’s not a loser by going after Luke Skywalker. “Go big or go home,” I guess. (Art by John Cassaday and Laura Martin.)
Marvel’s takeover of the Star Wars comics license from Dark Horse is nearly halfway through its first year, having published a combined eighteen issues to date between three ongoing series and one miniseries thus far. In our household I’m the one with the lifelong comics habit, while my wife is the dedicated Star Wars fan. I have dozens of longboxes; she has a six-foot shelf overflowing with hundreds of Expanded Universe novels. Strictly speaking, Star Wars comics are among those few releases that hold potential interest for both of us. Her enjoyment of Dark Horse’s output outlasted mine by a wide margin, but we’re in a new era and a new universe now, with different creators, different priorities, and different results.
Fair warning for context: I’ve seen all six films multiple times (a couple of them way too many times), but Star Wars is not one of my primary geek specialties as it is for her. My perceptions of George Lucas’ favorite galaxy are skewed because I experienced the original film trilogy in the following order:
1. Heard about the original Star Wars from friends while my mom went to see it without me
2. Bought and read the Empire Strikes Back novelization from a school book fair
3. Saw Return of the Jedi twice in theaters, then read the Goodwin/Williamson comics adaptation
4. Years later, saw Star Wars
5. A decade or so after that, possibly after high school, saw ESB
Despite several attempts at reading random issues, I never got into Marvel’s original 114-issue Star Wars series, not even for Jax the giant green bunny. I read a smattering of Dark Horse works and liked a few things here and there, but I mostly bought them for my wife until and unless she told me to drop titles at her discretion. When I heard about Marvel’s acquisition and reboot using several of their top creators, I think I was more excited than she was. Then again, I’m not the one who just had thirty-odd years’ worth of treasured, memorized, extensively researched Expanded Universe history and intricacies tossed into a garbage chute by Lucasfilm Marketing. (Been there, done that, felt that pain. Welcome to my life as a fortysomething comics fan.)
In my skewed opinion as an old guy who likes comics more than Star Wars, Marvel’s current titles rank as follows from least best to definite best.
By the time this parade was over, Boba Fett, was gonna have someone put in the cargo hold.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This year marked the fifth time my wife and I attended the Indy 500 Festival Parade in downtown Indianapolis. It’s an annual date-day tradition for us — partly to see the floats and high school marching bands, partly for the famous names (even if the rest of the audience loves them more than we do), and partly because I love the sight of a bustling downtown Indianapolis (which needs to happen every single weekend ever).
The next six entries (to be posted over the next few days as quickly as time and attention span permit) represent a fraction of the pics my wife and I snapped.
The miniseries finale, then: stuff set aside from Parts 1-5. Center of attention in this batch: Star Wars! A bevy of costumed citizens from George Lucas’ far, faraway galaxy marched alongside the Speedway 500 Regiment, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood 501st Legion. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen an Indy 500/501st crossover, but anytime these two teams care to collaborate is fine by us.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 