Peter T Chattaway

Award-winning writer with a special interest in film and faith, and in the Bible movie genre specifically. 'Aqaba is over there. It's only a matter of going.'

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

#ToyStory 5 is the first movie in the series to get a PG rating (for "some thematic elements and rude humor"), rather than a G rating. In the past, "thematic elements" has sometimes been code for political or religious messaging (An Inconvenient Truth, Facing the Giants, etc.).

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@_martcha @DavidPoland It's showing in two Vancouver-area theatres, at least, which is only 2-3 hours' drive north of you if you've got a passport. (It's kinda weird how they call Richmond "Richmond" and Langley "Vancouver" when Langley is actually further from Vancouver than Richmond, but anyhoo.)

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

Kewl.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

.@paramountplus Could someone please explain to me why the first season of #StarTrek the original series has just one episode?

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

All of these criticisms of #TheLastJedi are spot-on, but I'm still inclined to cut the movie a *little* slack because it was dealing with a stupid "mystery box" setup bequeathed to the franchise by JJ Abrams in #TheForceAwakens. Rian filled the void badly, but JJ created it.

[Sean W. Malone | That’s just, like, your opinion. @CitizenAmedia]

I've made this point so many times and it never seems to sink in.

There are innumerable problems with TLJ, but the biggest by far is this. And the movie's defenders never seem to be able to understand it at all. They'll argue with the strawman version all day, claiming that their taste is more sophisticated and deeper because they like a darker, broken, washed up Luke and anybody who doesn't like it just wants childish levels of moral simplicity.

But the OT isn't actually childish in that way. Luke is complex and he has a real arc throughout that story.

And because he has a specific and well crafted character arc, when he shows up in TLJ as the polar opposite of the man we knew, that is pretty jarring. It's jarring, not because it's impossible to write a story where Luke went from the hopeful hero who struggled with but ultimately rejects the dark side and redeems his father in the process to a sad husk of a man years later.

I might question the wisdom of that direction more than other directions, but I can think of several ways to do it well.

That’s never been the problem. The problem is that none of Luke's character change is earned or explained within the film, so it makes zero actual sense. And when I talk to TLJ fans about this, they'll deflect and say that Luke being a hermit is explained by his failures with Kylo as if *that* is the core issue I'm concerned about. It's not.

Luke self-imposing exile after trying to kill his own nephew makes some sense.

What makes no sense at all is how Luke's entire OT character arc was completely reversed and undone in between RotJ and TFA, such that he'd ever even remotely consider killing his own nephew over a vision (remember how a key part of his early Jedi training involved learning to separate force visions from reality and how he literally lost a hand learning that lesson?), let alone actually begin to take action.

No excuse gets you around this problem.

All of the the character changes that would have had to have happened leading to Luke having any intent whatsoever of killing Ben and then to display the level of absolute cowardice thar is required for him to run away while he knows Kylo Ren is out there trying to glorify Vader and join the dark side, is just missing from the entire sequel trilogy. There's zero explanation for how Luke went from a hero who wins through refusing to kill his father and who instead offers him charity, compassion, and redemption... To a guy who would get so freaked out by a little nightmare that he tries to kill his nephew and then runs away, leaving him to become Vader 2.0.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@MichaelFKane I think this plot hole might cancel out with another one: how did Luke do so much Jedi training in the time it took Han to fly from one system to another?

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@megbasham Kinda old-school how he's just using classic rainbow colours. None of the extra colours that were added 5-10 years ago for gender-identity reasons.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@WajahatAli Not sure I'd call Andor woke. And I have no idea how we gauge whether a thing "flopped" on streaming. Critical buzz isn't the same thing as commercial success. (As for Black Panther... it gave the target audience what it wanted. At least the first time 'round.)

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@HollywoodInToto Loved it when he appeared on Ben Shapiro's show a few years ago.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

https://t.co/Yq66mqUl1L

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

Marcia Lucas, a key figure in the reinvigoration of 1970s Hollywood -- and one of the co-creators of #StarWars -- passed away the same week a new crop of young filmmakers eclipsed the latest Star Wars movie, which has now itself become a symbol of Hollywood stagnation.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

https://t.co/jvBlYpiNlj

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

#TheChosen Season 4 Episode 2 -- the longest episode to date (not counting end credits) features Simon's confession of faith, the "change" to his name, reconciliation between disciples and division within families, and more. Link in the next tweet.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

Remember how #SoundofFreedom kicked #IndianaJones's butt three years ago? It's feeling a little like that's what #Backrooms and #Obsession are doing to #StarWars now.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@BayAreaSprts @jaredsthumbs @emilyjashinsky They can participate in trans sports and gender-neutral sports. Trying to force them into one side of a binary category that is supposed to be based on sex and not gender is... complicated.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@jaredsthumbs @emilyjashinsky If you believed "everyone should have a chance to participate" in women's sports you wouldn't keep *anyone* out. Or, more to the point, you wouldn't advocate for sex-segregated sporting events in the first class. Acting awards are increasingly gender-neutral. Why not sports?

[Nathan Douglas @bazinian_rite]

It's been five years since the Kamloops announcement. Among many questionable actors, the @nytimes still has not faced or acknowledged any accountability for its role in promoting a rash, confused narrative around that event.

I don't normally post about politics and my personal life (and having been punished for it in the past, on here and offline, I do so with some trepidation), but I feel a need to express why this particular outrage still makes me tremble with sorrow (and if I'm being honest, anger).

https://t.co/y6UVTwjs7E

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@suzukisapers I just find it funny how Andor takes itself so seriously as a story about fighting fascism etc., and then every now and then someone mentions Palpatine and you're reminded that there's a cackling wizard with bad prosthetic makeup behind all this.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

In seven years, #TheMandalorian went from being "the thing that shows #StarWars can still be good, actually, despite the sequel trilogy" to being the latest sign that the franchise is out of life and needs to die.

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@suzukisapers Andor is good, but is it Star Wars? It's got none of the pulpy space-fantasy adventure that has always been essential to the series, and every time someone mentions Palpatine you can't help thinking the show is a bit embarrassed that it *has* to mention him...

[Peter T Chattaway @ptchat]

@amsacramone @WriterJonLeaf Ah. Well, I've heard many people make claims like this non-facetiously, so I'm easily triggered. (And I have a bad knack for not recognizing facetiousness online. But I do love the fact that "facetiously" has all six vowels in alphabetical order. As does "abstemiously".)