Like Stories of Old
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Update + Next Up
🕑 Added 2025-01-23 10:02:02 +0000 UTCHey everyone!
I know this comes belated, but I want to wish you all the best for 2025! I spent New Year’s with my wife’s mother and grandparents who live in the south of France, which is actually a really nice place to be in the winter. It gets quite cold at night but during the day the sun shines bright and warm and you can almost smell the coming spring. We hiked around in nature and visited some old villages that we hadn’t seen before and that stood quiet and mostly empty so far removed from the tourist season. It was a great time and place to take a break, read a bunch of books, and come up with ideas for future videos, which brings me to:
Next up; I want to start this year with a short series of loosely connected video essays. The first one, releasing later this month, will examine the current state of the Jedi in the Star Wars universe. I feel they’ve been suffering from a bit of an identity crisis, as if Star Wars is unsure about what the Jedi are supposed to be in the modern era, and want to explore how exactly this came about, what it looks like, and how it can be resolved. Next month, I will build on some of these ideas with a video on Gladiator 2, a movie that, like the Jedi in Star Wars, I think also suffered from trying to be multiple things at once, albeit in a slightly different way with slightly different consequences. The third entry, then, will expand on another, more meta-level issue that I had with Gladiator 2 and some other recent movies; which is their in my opinion growing inability to accurate reflect the current zeitgeist and the true nature of society's current problems. I know this sounds a bit abstract and it’s still kind of foggy to me as well, so as I get closer to this one the exact emphasis of the analysis might shift around, might even ditch it altogether if it turns out to be nothing of substance, but for now, it's an idea that lives in my head and that I'd like to examine further.
Comments
Like Stories of Old
Same, I think it had a very interesting premise with a solid thematic foundation, one that I've seen pretty much nobody talk about yet, but at the same time, there's some glaring issues in its execution that made the whole thing a very mixed bag for me.
Like Stories of Old
Merci! Funny that you mention my video on the SW sequels because this one is a sort of spiritual successor to that one, in some ways even a response now that I have the benefit of hindsight. I would be curious to hear what part of that video you didn't subscribe to, feel free to DM or email me if you'd like!
SDG
I'm so excited you'll be doing some videos on G2. I was very excited for it to come out and then had very different feelings upon viewing. I'm looking forward to it.
Aleks
Happy new year (from the south(-west)ern France:))! I am very much looking forward to your video on Star Wars/Jedi. Huge huge huge fan/admirer/student of George Lucas and his Star Wars here. As such - and I hate to say it, especially in this space which fosters genuine good faith - it is really difficult to watch analyses of post-Lucas saga entries, as I cannot help but see such endeavours as attempts to legitimise a creative vision at the overall saga level, which is simply not there. There are numerous reasons&arguments for it, better left for other places/forums/occasions (not that anyone cares though:)). That said - I just love the way you create meaning and interpretations of all these things, the way you combine in-universe interpretations of the stories and their place as a cultural phenomenon. Your video on SW sequels is the only reading of the Disney-era developments that I can watch and go back to, even though I do not subscribe to it, which for me speaks volumes about quality and value of your work. Thank you for it all, and looking forward to your future endeavours!
