Category: Entertainment

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People are still arguing over whether the Lost castaways were “in purgatory the whole time?” The finale was very clear on that: everything on the island happened. The afterlife didn’t come into play until the final season.

That last season featured glimpses of what looked at first like an alternate timeline in which the plane didn’t crash. It turned out to be a shared afterlife experienced by everyone who had ever been to the island, once they had all died –- some of them during the show, some years later, as Ben and Hurley acknowledged when they regained their memories. And that wasn’t a state of purification so much as a gathering point, so they could all meet again before moving on, because what they’d done and experienced on the island had been so important.

Everything on the island, before the island, and after the island, for all six years of the show, was in the “real” timeline.

The finale may not have answered every question, but it spelled that one out pretty clearly.

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The first time I played mobile Minecraft, I ended up stuck in a tree all night, trying not to move so the skeletons wouldn’t shoot me down. Every time I ventured down to try to finish my shelter, I got killed and re spawned in that tree, so I finally just set the phone down and waited for daylight.

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It’s been ten years since we first went to WonderCon, back when it was still in San Francisco. At the time I thought it would be fun to come back, but maybe not every year. As it turns out, we’ve kept going back yearly, only missing one! It’s effectively replaced SDCC for us, between the difficulty in getting tickets and hotels and just how overwhelming the event can be, especially for a kid.

WonderCon has been held in Anaheim since 2012 (except for one year in LA), and this year’s event ran Match 23-25. We mostly explored. None of us made it to any panels or signings, and the main floor has gotten big enough that it’s hard to see everything. There were costumes to wear, art to look at, toys to try out. The kiddo kept coming back to the fidget spinners and mystery boxes.

Cosplay

The kiddo wore his Minecraft Spider Jockey costume from Halloween. Katie repaired it and enhanced it, and it was a big hit. Everywhere we walked, we could catch people saying “Hey, Minecraft!” to each other. Lots of people wanted to take photos as well, though by mid-afternoon he was tired of it and declined a lot of them. I didn’t do anything complicated, though I did wear Steve’s outfit to go along with it.

Kid in a skeleton costume with a boxy head, wearing a cardboard-box spider as if the skeleton is riding it, as a Minecraft spider-jockey. And me dressed as Steve.

Katie brought back her Whitney Frost costume on Saturday. She got recognized a lot more this year than last. Did Agent Carter Season 2 hit Netflix between then and now? Has Madame Masque been more prominent in the comics? Then for Sunday she wore an alternate Kara Danvers (Supergirl) outfit that she’d intended to wear on the second day of Long Beach that we weren’t able to get to.

Woman in a purple dress, off-center 1940s hair, and a crack of darkness spidering its way down her face Woman in an office shirt with glasses and ice cream

As for the general cosplay scene, there’s still a lot of DC, Marvel, Disney and Star Wars. And mash-ups. Lots of mash-ups. Samurai Spider-Man, Doctor Strange/r Things, Hogwarts of Westeros… Our full photo gallery is up on Flickr.

Hotel

After last year’s parking debacle (it took an hour to get from the convention center to the parking lot way out at Honda Center), and with a complex costume in mind, we decided to get a hotel this year. The cost was reasonable, especially compared to San Diego. Not only is WonderCon smaller than SDCC, but I suspect a larger percentage of attendees are local.

And let me tell you: it was worth it. We stayed at the Red Lion, right across Harbor. We were able to store the giant spider in the room, and take it to the con without dealing with a shuttle or walking for miles carrying the boxes. When J. got too tired to deal with the convention, I took him back to the hotel to hang out while Katie continued to explore. We could even put the kid to bed at something close to his usual bedtime!

Getting Around

Badges were mailed out ahead of time, but we still had to go to Registration on-site for the child badge (free with a paying adult, but you can’t pre-register kids). Fortunately, since we got there late in the afternoon on Friday, there was no line to speak of. And this time neither badge’s RFID state got messed up in the process!

They weren’t checking bags on the way in like Long Beach did last fall, just scanning badges and keeping an eye out like usual, so movement in and out of the con perimeter went smoothly. It was also cooler than we expected (and cooler than LBCC), which was good because of all the walking around, but a bit annoying because none of our costumes were really suited for jackets!

The yellow-sign judgmental religious protesters who’ve plagued these events for the last few years (the worst was probably the jerks harassing the line to get into LACC in 2016) never got closer than across the street as near as I could tell.

As far as food goes, I was kind of underwhelmed by the food trucks this year. The lines were just too long and the price too high for what you get. The convention center food was bland enough that J. actually refused to eat a hamburger. Oddly enough, IHOP has stepped up its game since I last went there.

Anyway, if you’re still reading this: thank you! I’m not sure who actually looks at personal con reports these days. I’m still writing them partly for completeness, partly to provide context for my photo gallery, and partly as something I can look back at for myself when I’m trying to remember, “hey, which year was it that X happened?”

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I’ve seen The Last Jedi twice now. I’m still not sure how I’d rank it, but the performances are way better than most of the prequel trilogy, and the story is the first theatrical Star Wars to break new ground in ages.

I’ll admit there’s a lot of stuff that happened that I didn’t like, but it made sense within the story context, and it was done in an interesting way. And there was a lot of cool stuff too…including a ton of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it details that I missed the first time through.

What do you mean, “Like?”

I learned years ago that “stuff happened that I didn’t like” and “it was badly made” are two separate comments on a movie, TV show, book, or other work of art.

Do I like the reason Luke left? No, but it makes sense. (A lot more sense than him joining the Dark Side with a resurrected clone of Darth Sidious, TBH.) When you think about it, it’s probably the best explanation they could have come up with for why Luke would decide that he’s part of the problem and remove himself from the galactic stage. It would have to be something majorly traumatic that he would blame himself for.

Do I like that the Resistance command don’t trust each other enough to share plans? No, but again it makes sense under the circumstances, and it feeds into the themes.

Structure and Hope

The Last Jedi feels different from the other Star Wars films. It’s a lot of separate threads that seem mostly unconnected but come together toward the end into a clear picture. Rey’s journey is critical, as is Kylo Ren’s, as is the link between their journeys. Luke’s reasons for being on the island, and his triumphant return, are tied deeply into the plight of the Resistance as it battles the loss of hope, which we see in the slow attrition of the fleet chase, the breakdown of trust within command, and finally the point where they’re reduced to one small band making what could well be a last stand.

And the trip to Canto Bight? For all the whining about it, I think it’s thematically more important than the chase. It shows people taking advantage of both sides of the conflict, and it shows ordinary civilians being oppressed…and that epilogue.

The First Order does everything they can to snuff out that spark of hope, and almost succeeds…but it flares again. We see it with Luke, and with Rey, but their actions only preserve what’s left. It still feels like a hollow victory until we see the epilogue and realize that the spark has taken hold, and is growing again — and that’s inspired as much by one kid’s encounter with Finn and Rose as the legend of Luke Skywalker.

Take out Canto Bight and you take out the epilogue. Take out the epilogue and you’re left with an unremittingly bleak story. Bleaker than Revenge of the Sith…but only* because we already knew where RoTS had to go.

Uncharted Regions

This is the first time since 1983 that there’s been real uncertainty about the future in a Star Wars movie. We didn’t know where The Empire Strikes Back was going, or Return of the Jedi. The prequel trilogy had a lot of surprises along the way, but we knew it would end with Anakin turning to the dark side and helping wipe out the Jedi, Palpatine becoming the Emperor, and the Republic becoming the Empire. I loved Rogue One, but again, we knew what it was building up to. And The Force Awakens was too focused on bringing fans back into the fold with familiarity to break new ground.

The Expanded Universe quickly set up a new status quo and told episodic stories within that setting. Some changes would stick over time, but you knew at the end of the day Leia was rebuilding the Republic, Luke was rebuilding the Jedi, and so on. Eventually they broke out of it and started making big changes with New Jedi Order, and subsequent stories that moved toward the more distant future of Legacy, but it was only a secondary canon, blessed but less official than the movies.

Now? We have no idea what might happen next. We can hope that the First Order will be defeated, because that’s the kind of story Star Wars is, but we have no idea what the cost will be, or who will make it through to the end, who might redeem themselves or turn to darkness.

And I have to wonder if that’s part of the backlash: Star Wars has been a familiar place for decades, and now that certainty is gone.

Cool stuff

So, some of those great details that I didn’t notice the first time through:

  • When Leia floats through the ruined bridge, she passes through the hologram of Snokes’ flagship, disrupting it just like Holdo’s hyperspace maneuver does later in the movie.
  • After Luke’s projection is finished, he sees two suns and the Force theme swells. The first time through I was so caught up in worry about Leia (tied up with Carrie Fisher’s death) that I didn’t quite notice. The second time through, I knew what was happening with her, but I just lost it at this moment.
  • The kid with the Resistance ring at the end doesn’t grab his broom and lift it – the broom moves to his hand.

*Well, that and Lucas didn’t manage to convey as much emotional heart in the prequels as he did in ANH or the other directors did w/ Empire & Jedi. They all felt slightly detached. And I’ve seen the actors in enough other movies to know it wasn’t their fault.

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