Hey everybody, welcome back to Tanner's Books
and Beyond and day 23 of VEDUS!
Today I began The Empire Striketh Back, which
I am already liking much more than Verily
A New Hope, mainly because it feels like a
much smarter adaptation already.
Now it probably helps that this play is much easier
to adapt as well, mainly because it is a lot
of character development during the movie.
I mean, we have a lot of action set pieces
at the beginning what with the wampa attack
and the escape from hoth and all the AT-ATs,
and then at the end with the escape from Bespin
and the duel between Luke and Vader.
But in between all that most of the stuff,
while it's very important, it's mainly character
work, and that's something that Doescher excels
at and that's something that the Shakespearean
style excels at.
So Doescher makes some very smart moves.
First off he shortens the Wampa attack to
two very short scenes, and that's good because
that means he has time to save to work on
the character stuff.
A lot of the stuff in the first act focuses
on Han and Leia's relationship.
The play starts off doing my favourite thing
about this series, which is is externalizes
the internal monologues of the characters
so that we are privy to all their deeper thoughts,
and we're able to se the growing relationship
that Han and Leia have with each other - except
it's not really a relationship, it's just
the two being fond of each other and trading
barbs when they're actually speaking with each other.
It's a relationship very similar to Benedick
and Beatrice from Much Ado about Nothing,
which makes it really easy and really fun
to watch it play out in this kind of style.
Now moving forward, of course, there are still
several big action set pieces.
Those are hit-or-miss in this style because
it's hard to imagine how it would be played
out onstage, but I'm not worried about those.
I don't think they're gonna hamper this play
because this is a movie that focuses mainly
on developing the characters and the story,
and as a result I think that's going to make
for a much stronger play.
As for From a Certain Point of View, I was
actually able to read TWO stories from this
(and I'll explain why in a moment).
The first story is "Verge of Greatness" by
Pablo Hidalgo, and this is a really good story
that takes place from the dual perspectives
of Tarkin in the present (as well as a Tarkin
in the past) and also a Krennic in the past
the moments before he was vaporized at
the end of Rogue One.
It's really interesting to see those two perspectives
and see how much those two loooaaathe each other!
I mean, Tarkin describes Krennic as an architect
trying to be a politician, and then Krennic
describes Tarkin as a politician trying to
be an architect, and they both say that those
two dual roles are going to lead to their
ends, and it's funny how they're both pretty much right.
Of course, the story is mainly from Tarkin's
perspective, so we get a lot more of his inner thoughts.
We get to see how he has essentially treated
his every action as a political maneuver,
and he's been doing so for the past twenty years.
Now we get to see some of his ambitions as
well, mainly because he is now in command
of the world's largest planet-zapping space
station, so he's basically thinking he's on
par with the Emperor when it comes to power.
Of course he doesn't say anything out loud
and he doesn't say anything to the subordinate
who comes up to him and is like "Hey man,
hey, you could totally make a big for power
over the galaxy and no one would mind and
I'd totally help you with that," - doesn't
say anything to that guy, he doesn't even
think it explicitly in his own thoughts, but
Hidalgo is able to convey that yes, this is
exactly the kind of thing Tarkin is thinking of.
Tarkin is exactly the kind of person who as
soon as he gets this much power he's thinking
"how can I use this to become a co-owner of
the galaxt with the Emperor; how can I use
this to Usurp the Emperor and essentially
take over the entire galaxy for myself.
You know, it would've been really interesting
to see how far Tarkin could take his ambitions...if
he wasn't so egotistical that he got himself
blown up at the end of the first movie.
Anywho! The reason I actually read two stories today
instead of just the requisite one is because
the first story ended on one page, and then
the second story started on the exact opposite
page, so I was right there in its field of
vision, and it's only one page long because
it's not technically a story per se, it's a cartoon.
It's called "Far Too Remote" by Jeffrey Brown,
and I'll have it appear now!
Dang, that is some good stuff, and I would
also like to point out that that scene is
now entirely canonical.
And that concludes today's VEDUS update, and
now I'm a little but ahead of schedule!
Which is definitely a nice feeling.
As per usual you can hit the subscribe button
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also check out some social media that I've linked below, and until tomorrow I'll see you all *snap* later!
*funky music*
