Coming soon!

Whew, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Stay tuned for posts about my travels to London, Ireland, and Iceland this summer.

Happy Holidays from the Kunz Family (2020 edition)

Here's our family holiday card, sent out in January as is our custom, because who has time to send one in December? (Answer: literally everyone else.) It's a longer one, inspired by Dave Barry's annual Year in Review, but hopefully it's worth it... Welcome to the Kunz family holiday card! Grab your mask, hoard your toilet paper, and prepare to relive all seventeen months of 2020 with us...

JANUARY

2020 dawns, and the Kunz family is excited for the new year. Abigail returns home from her Latter-day Saint mission to Zimbabwe and begins processing applications to date her. The rest of the family is glad to see her after a year and a half’s absence. On a less positive note, nobody bothers to invest in Zoom, Charmin, or Purell, which turns out to be a grave mistake. But hindsight is 2020, a phrase we are officially retiring after this year.

FEBRUARY

2020 is shaping up to be a promising year. Ryan and Breanne announce the upcoming birth of their first child and prepare for a trip to Ireland. Connor and Claire get ready to go to Hawaii. Eric looks forward to sports. Quinn plans to complete his senior year. Dillon looks forward to a thriving social life at BYU. Reilly sees no reason that anyone would repeatedly shove a cotton swab into his brain, while Briana gets ready to do something other than keep their two young boys inside for months at a time. Meanwhile, 2020 laughs evilly, strokes its white Persian cat, and prepares to unleash a giant death laser at people’s plans.

MARCH

COVID happens! Everything is canceled, including concerts, movies, church, sports, social gatherings, friendship, fun, and emotional well-being. 2020 gets canceled so hard it may as well be Johnny Depp’s career. Quinn goes home from high school one day and never goes back. Travel plans are kissed goodbye. Speaking of kissing, Abigail meets a guy named Matt just before being trapped at home; he moves into the guest room above Eric’s shop to be near her, because a little worldwide pandemic isn’t going to get in the way of true love, or something. (Ew.) Connor and Claire also move in with Eric and Trisha for the lockdown; Trisha is secretly totally fine with this whole pandemic thing.

SECOND MARCH

April is subsumed into a second March, which is a bit like second breakfast, except with fewer hobbits and more soul-crushing anxiety. Ryan and Breanne settle in to work from home, joking that it sure would be weird if they had to do this for another month, but what are the odds of that? Abigail and Matthew, with nothing better to do than get to know each other, figure it’s about time to get engaged. Reilly, a physical therapist working in senior services, takes his first COVID test. (Don’t worry; it’s probably the only one, right?) Dillon moves home to stay safe.

THIRD MARCH

Connor and Claire (along with their cat Sybil) embark on a journey to North Carolina to take a new marketing job. Their car gives out halfway there with a broken transmission. (A day later, the CDC adds “broken transmission” to the growing list of COVID symptoms.) Ryan and Breanne buy a house, thereby achieving a major adult milestone and joining the exclusive community of people who get to complain about the cost of HVAC repairs. Reilly takes more COVID tests.

FOURTH MARCH

We’re not sure what happened during this month, which month this was, or even that it did, in fact, happen. Let’s move on.

JULY, MAYBE?

Abigail and Matt get married, thereby doubling the total non-running athletic ability in the Kunz family. All the family attends the wedding except for Reilly and Briana, who are trapped in Montana by strict quarantine requirements at Reilly’s job. With the tax season deadline extended until approximately June of 2150, Eric the CPA uses his free time to build a playhouse in the backyard for the growing roster of grandkids.

AUGUST

Ryan and Breanne welcome baby Matilda, who’s basically the literal incarnation of a tiny Disney princess, if Disney princesses were also poop firehoses. Dillon, after his careful efforts staying home all summer to avoid catching COVID, goes back to school and immediately catches COVID.

SEPTEMBER

Quinn gets his mission call to Reno, Nevada. Unlike missionaries called to foreign missions during this period, he looks forward to actually setting foot in his assigned mission. Reilly and Briana’s four-year-old son McKay starts preschool. Newly endowed with such learning, he becomes an expert on any given topic. (He quickly joins Facebook, where he fits right in.)

OCTOBER

Eric, Trisha, Matt, and Abby all catch COVID. Trisha uses her quarantine to finally get into Harry Potter. (Nobody tell her Snape kills Dumbledore, please.) Matt loses his sense of taste, which explains why he thinks the prequels are the best Star Wars movies. (I kid, Matt. Welcome to the family!) And Eric, seizing upon any sporting event still happening, watches BYU football soundly defeat anyone still willing to play them, including the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers and the Provo High School Bulldogs.

NOVEMBER

Quinn does a home missionary training center, which is just like the traditional experience but without the real MTC’s overwhelming sense of personal freedom and exciting variety of leisure activities. He eventually escapes and heads off to Reno. Somewhere around this time, Reilly takes his 30th COVID test (still negative, but at least the cavity leading to his brain is nice and wide now).

DECEMBER

Reilly and Briana’s other little boy, Nico, learns to walk when motivated by French fries across the room, thus demonstrating one of the great universal truths of the human condition. And with the holiday season comes a worldwide source of hope, joy, and brotherly love in these trying times: season 2 of The Mandalorian. Christmas also happens. All joking aside, it’s been a rough year for a lot of people, and we feel for all those who’ve struggled. We hope 2021 is a better year for everyone—and if it isn’t, we hope we each can all be a little better instead. And if not… there’s always 2022. Probably.

Happy Holidays from the Kunz Family (2019)

Originally sent out at the end of January 2020.

2019: A Poem

Twenty-nineteen was a year like no other

For the Kunz siblings, spouses, father, and mother.

Here’s our Christmas card then—(sort of) in time!

A couple months late, but who cares? It rhymes.

ERIC's new hobby is rustic and gritty:

Taking old structures and making them pretty.

He fixed up our cabin and the chicken coop, too—

Like Chip and Joanna, but with no camera crew.

TRISHA has worked to learn some more Spanish,

Conjugating all the verbs she can manage.

Now she can inquire of her amigos Mexicanos:

“Me llamo es Trisha; ¿dónde estás los baños?”

RYAN and BREANNE vacationed in Sweden,

A watery, meatball-filled garden of Eden.

But what’s the biggest event in their lives, you may ask?

Breanne let Ryan grow a mustache.

A new sweet infant brightened the days

Of REILLY, BRIANA, and their son MCKAY

This youngster brought joy when he smiled and cooed

His name’s Baby Yoda! (They had their second child, too.)

CONNOR and CLAIRE got themselves a new cat.

It’s mostly for Claire, to be precise about that.

She’s needy, eats paper, and stares at the air.

(To be clear, I mean mostly the cat, not Claire.)

DILLON's expanding his artistic pursuits

With painting, songwriting, and poetry to boot!

So maybe next year this newly minted bard

Can write the dang family Christmas card.

After many long months, ABBY's back from her mission

And headed to school to pursue her ambitions.

She preached the true gospel with all of her power

And Africa’s great, but so are hot showers.

Speaking of power, QUINN's begun his ascension

In a rise to that’s fraught with intrigue and tension

To a position of influence and prestige (in a fashion)

As Rigby High Table Tennis Club Co-Captain.

So there you have it, our card long-awaited.

What happens next year, when our story’s related?

How will we chronicle all that transpires?

One thing’s for certain: writing poems make me tired.

Star Wars: My Definitive Ranking of Every Film

Well, The Rise of Skywalker is finally out, and with it comes some modicum of finality. The Star Wars saga has come to an end (for the third time), giving us four decades’ worth of lightsaber clashes, speeder chases, groundbreaking special effects, and bad feelings about this. We’ve had three eras (the originals, the prequels, and the sequels, with a few standalone films thrown in there). So it’s time to rank them, starting from the worst.

(Note that this list does not include the Ewok made-for-TV movies or the dreaded Holiday Special, just the feature films released in theaters. Other than The Mandalorian, which is here in sort of an honorary capacity because it’s as good as most of the films, the list does not include TV shows. That’s why you’ll see The Clone Wars movie on here, but not the actual show the movie was meant to introduce.)

All of these, plus the stand-alone films. All poster images here are owned by Lucasfilm.

This shouldn’t have to be said, but this list is totally subjective, and even my list changes over time. Even if you disagree with my reasoning, I hope you can respect the consideration that went into it. Feel free to comment with your own ranking; there’s no wrong order.

Let’s start from the bottom and work up to the top…

12. ATTACK OF THE CLONES (2002)

Every Star Wars film has its weaknesses. For AOTC, those weaknesses are more numerous than the faceless CGI clone troopers that fight faceless CGI battle droids in the film’s final act. Or maybe it’s just a few major weaknesses that overwhelm the film. The major problem with AOTC is that the entire film—and by extension, Anakin Skywalker’s entire arc—hangs on the strength of his love story with Padmé Amidala. And nothing in Star Wars, not even Jar Jar Binks, has ever been more groan-inducing that Anakin Skywalker’s clumsy attempts to woo Padmé (except maybe her inexplicable attraction to the psychotic murderer who won’t stop telling her how much he hates sand).

Like the rest of the prequels, AOTC was written by George Lucas rather than a dedicated screenwriter, and you can tell. The dialogue throughout feels like it emerged from a freshman screenwriting class. The plot is convoluted: some random Jedi named Sifo-Dyas (who goes unexplained until an episode of The Clone Wars much later) had something to do with hiring a secret clone army; meanwhile, the Sith Lord Tyrannus (Count Dooku), hired a bounty hunter named Jango Fett as a genetic template, and C-3PO gets his head swapped with a battle droid. No Star Wars movie is high cinema (with one possible and controversial exception), but after AOTC, anything is an improvement.

11. THE CLONE WARS (2008)

You probably forgot about this one, didn’t you? It should never have been a movie. This film actually began life as several distinct episodes of the then-upcoming The Clone Wars TV show that were stitched together into a movie. So while the actual TV show that followed actually turned out to be pretty good (and remains well-beloved these days by the fans), the movie itself suffers from a serious identity crisis. Is it a movie? Is it a long pilot for TV show? Is it something in between? Nobody quite knows.

10. THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999)

TPM suffers from many of the same problems as AOTC, though its lack of a terrible romantic subplot elevates it above its immediate sequel. I won’t say anything about Jar Jar Binks that hasn’t already been said, except I can appreciate what George Lucas was trying to do in trying to inject some childlike levity into the film, and I apologize on behalf of all the fans for the toxic response to the character. (I was just as bad as anyone.)

The film has a few redeeming qualities: the Podrace, despite its overly-CGI’d cartoon characters, is a really fun sequence; Liam Neeson gives a standout performance as Qui-Gon Jinn (one of the many prequel actors who do their very best with the stilted lines given to them); and we got to meet Darth Maul and hear “Duel of the Fates” (still one of John Williams’s greatest tracks). Unfortunately, the film is still too much of a mixed bag to rank higher on this list.

9. REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005)

This is the best of the prequels, though that’s not saying much. John Williams’s score is some of his best and most haunting, and the action rarely lets up. The Order 66 montage, where the clone troopers turn on their Jedi commanders across the galaxy, is one of the franchise’s most arresting scenes. The final battle on the lava planet Mustafar is thrilling, though it frequently feels over the top. A few key performances carry the film, most notably Ian McDiarmid’s Palpatine. And yet Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the dark side (the process on which the entire plot hangs) feels a bit too sudden and the dialogue is still too stilted for me to truly love this film.

8. THE RISE OF SKYWALKER (2019)

I can’t figure out where to put this movie. There are parts that I really like, and parts that didn’t sit right with me. (I imagine that’s how the non-toxic The Last Jedi critics sometimes feel about that movie, which is totally fair.) I can’t figure out if it goes above or below The Force Awakens. For now TFA is one rank higher because it, for all its lack of originality, is a much cleaner, less rushed film. Maybe this one will rise, like its titular bloodline, over time. But the thing that bothered me the most was simply how TROS played it too safe, working too hard to string together a plot from a checklist of fan service pulled from the Internet’s loudest The Last Jedi haters. It’s like JJ Abrams let Reddit write the screenplay for him. (See my original review here.)

TLJ showed us the importance of leaving tired Star Wars clichés behind: we were never going to have another family lineage reveal as powerful as the “I am your father” from The Empire Strikes Back, so why continually try to imitate it? Even Abrams knew that no reveal will ever be as shocking as that one, but he tried anyway, resulting in a reveal that feels as inevitable as it is narratively weak. TROS decided that tired clichés are the way to appease the haters, making Rey the heir to yet another dynastic bloodline rather than letting her be special in her own right. Why couldn’t the Force just choose her because of her individual character rather than her lineage? I did enjoy a lot of the film, though its unwillingness to take narrative risks—and its desperation to pander to the masses—ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth. We’ll see how well it ages for me. Maybe in a year or so it’ll be higher.

7. THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015)

This is a good film. It’s slick, thrilling, visually striking, and full of fun characters. Rey’s introduction, several minutes without a word of dialogue, is excellent. Her accompanying musical theme is one of the franchise’s best. The chemistry between Poe and Finn is instant and engaging. In a universe where A New Hope had never come out, TFA even would be a great film. But in the universe we live in, it doesn’t contribute enough of its own to the Star Wars mythos to rank any higher on my list.

6. A NEW HOPE (1977)

What can I say about the original Star Wars film that hasn’t been said? This is the film that captured a generation and never let go. Later movies, starting with the superior-in-every-way The Empire Strikes Back, improved upon its formula, but perhaps in some sense, you can never beat the original. You can certainly never beat certain scenes. We will never be able to top the moment Luke Skywalker stares off into the sunset or replicate the climactic trench run.

5. SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (2018)

Solo’s biggest weakness is its need to explain how every detail of the Han Solo legend came to be, apparently over the course of one crazy weekend. So it never adds anything essential to the overall saga. Taken on its own, however, it’s a lot of fun. It’s a space Western with a killer soundtrack, great action scenes, fun characters, and a lot of great little moments, like Lando dictating his memoirs. The Kessel Run sequence remains of my favorites; it’s one of those great scenes that draws enough nostalgia to “feel” like Star Wars while blazing new territory.

4. ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016)

This movie starts out a bit rocky and takes a while to find a cohesive narrative. Jyn Erso is never a particularly well-drawn character, and her sudden shift from apathetic criminal to true believer is never quite earned. Luckily, she’s surrounded by a cast of characters who are far more interesting than she is. If the movie had spent the first act building up those characters a bit more rather than taking us through a convoluted tour through Rebel and Imperial politics, it might be a perfect movie. But when the movie does find its footing, it’s some of the best that Star Wars has to offer. What I loved about this movie—aside from the third act, which is the best battle scene in any Star Wars film—is the film’s willingness to kill off all of its main characters. Sometimes narrative risks pay off. (TROS could learn a thing or two from Rogue One on that.)

3. THE LAST JEDI (2017)

Bear with me for a minute, please. The most polarizing Star Wars film is also the one that requires the most critical thought to enjoy—and holds the most reward for those willing to check thirty years’ worth of “here’s how I think a Star Wars movie should go” at the door. (No wonder the critics almost universally loved it; they’re not encumbered by loyalty to obscure lore—or the need for Luke Skywalker to continue to serve as a vehicle for wish fulfillment.) Some parts of the Internet like dismiss TLJ as “garbage” and “trash,” but those who deride it in such terms would do well to give it a more thoughtful watch—or at least explore a wider vocabulary. Sure, it’s not perfect. Even I don’t love the Canto Bight storyline, though if you pay attention it becomes clear that the arc is all about making Finn, previously lukewarm about his commitment to the Resistance, finally choose a side.

But so much of it is brilliant that I give the weaker parts a pass. For example, Luke’s arc, derided by haters as inconsistent with his original trilogy portrayal, is one of the most interesting arcs in the series. Those haters make the mistake of oversimplifying the hero’s journey, assuming that Luke’s growth as a young man leaves nowhere to go but up. That sounds pretty boring to me. Instead, TLJ reduces a hero to a flawed but relatable human being, giving him a redemption arc worthy of a Jedi Master—dying to hold off the entire First Order while upholding the time-honored Jedi ideal that, in the oft-ignored words of Ben Kenobi, “there are alternatives to fighting.” (Read more about my thoughts on TLJ here, here, and here.)

2.5: THE MANDALORIAN (2019)

This isn’t a movie, so according to the rules of this list it doesn’t get a number of its own. But if it were, it would be #3 here on my ranking. How great was that finale? I love that show. Music, action, visuals, characters—it captures what drew people to Star Wars in the first place. And Baby Yoda.

2. RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983)

My complicated feelings toward Ewoks notwithstanding, ROTJ is a great film. The first act starts out as a slow burn, but the Sarlacc battle is one of my favorite action scenes from the original trilogy. The second act explores the dynamics between the main characters, and the third act is nearly perfect (if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief regarding the possibility of a bunch of teddy bears taking down a superior military force). After one of the series’s most emotionally charged lightsaber battles, Luke Skywalker resists the call of the dark side and realizes what his father couldn’t: that fighting isn’t the Jedi way—followed by Darth Vader’s sacrifice for his son. (Of course, once you resist temptation once, that doesn’t mean the temptation goes away for the rest of your life, making TLJ a necessary sequel to Luke’s ROTJ arc.)

1. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980)

This will always be the best Star Wars. The music is superb, debuting one of the most iconic leitmotifs in film score history: the Imperial March. Luke, previously little more than a whiny farm boy/audience surrogate/vessel for adolescent wish fulfillment, has to face failure for the first time. The action is better, the story is darker, the characters more compelling. The scene where Yoda lifts the X-wing out of the swamp is about far more than a frog-person using telekinesis on a spaceship; it’s about faith. The Han/Leia romance will always be the best romance in the series. The “I am your father” reveal will never be outdone. This is the film that takes A New Hope’s winning formula and runs with it, twists it, and delivers an end product that improves upon the original in a film that will probably never be topped in Star Wars canon.

'The Rise of Skywalker': The Only Review You Need to Read

SPOILER-FREE SECTION

Two years ago came The Last Jedi, an iconoclastic wedge of a movie that split the fandom violently in half. Some, like me, praised it for the way it upended tired Star Wars tropes—like the its suggestion that you don’t have to be from some famous space wizard family to be special, to name just one example. Anyone, from a desert scavenger to a humble broom boy, can have a spark of greatness in them.

Others didn’t like it as much. They felt cheated that it didn’t immediately answer questions raised by The Force Awakens. They had lots of other issues as well—some legitimate and some… less so. I’ve written at length about how I consider much of TLJ’s criticism to be unfounded, but you can read about that here and here, if you really want. (It should be noted that the majority of critics, people paid to think critically about movies without being beholden to obscure lore or personal head-canon, agree with me.) However, I won’t discuss that here, except where it pertains to the new movie.

And that brings us to The Rise of Skywalker. It’s How The Last Jedi Should Have Ended: The Movie, created in a clear attempt to win back the fans who felt alienated by TLJ—for better and for worse. If the franchise were a cheating spouse, TROS would be the extravagant gift with a note begging for you to forgive them. (They’ll even sleep on the couch.)

First, let me make it clear that I did enjoy TROS. I can appreciate a good movie and still be conscious of its faults. There was a lot to like, even a few parts I loved. John Williams is at the top of his game (and even gets a well-deserved cameo!). Finn, Rey, and Poe finally get to be together, and their group dynamic is a lot of fun. The movie moves along at a breakneck pace, so you’re never bored. (Or at least, I wasn’t.) Both Rey and Kylo Ren’s arcs are well done and conclude in logical places (though Rey’s arc does diminish her TLJ arc, where she learned to “let the past die” and look forward). There are a few scenes that were perfectly executed—but those include heavy spoilers, so I’ll discuss them below. The action was great, and the visuals, particularly in the finale locales, were haunting.

I simply felt that the movie’s desperation to walk back the so-called “damage” done by TLJ was a bit transparent, even cowardly—it’s almost like JJ Abrams and company made a list of the loudest TLJ complaints and did everything short of declaring the last movie non-canon to check each box. There’s no need to pander, Disney. When you try to please everyone, you risk making a compromised product.

Well, let’s dive into spoilers, shall we?

SPOILERS AFTER THE IMAGE

So you didn’t like the way Luke carelessly tossed aside his lightsaber in TLJ? Don’t worry, he catches it this time (as a Force ghost, no less) and reminds Rey that a Jedi’s weapon is to be treated with respect. Angry that Kylo Ren smashed his helmet as a symbolic rejection of the past? It’s all right; he has it repaired right off the bat. Still mad that Snoke was killed off without a laboriously explained backstory? Take a deep breath; TROS gives you the Cliff’s Notes version. You hated Rose for interfering with Finn’s fruitless self-sacrifice at the Battle of Crait? Fear not, this time she stands dutifully by and lets him go down with the ship. (She’s also mostly sidelined, just to be safe.) Bugged that Admiral Holdo’s lightspeed-ramming maneuver “broke” the established laws of space combat? Good news—they make a point to explain that it won’t work again.

And of course, were you frustrated that Kylo Ren revealed that Rey’s parents were nobodies?

Well, the glass is half full for you, because actually they chose to be nobodies to protect her, and she was actually the descendant of a famous space wizard family after all. She’s the granddaughter of Palpatine (presumably, Palpatine had a kid before he got all crinkly).

I was irritated by that, I’ll be honest. I really like the idea that you don’t need to be a Skywalker or a Kenobi or a Palpatine or whatever. That’s something that annoyed me about the old Expanded Universe (now Legends), the pre-Disney books and comics where Luke, Leia, and Han always seemed to be the ones who had to save the galaxy again.

However, Rey’s choice at the end to be Skywalker rather than a Palpatine felt like a compromise between those who feel like I do and those who want her to be someone famous. She’s still from a famous space wizard family—but at least she gets to choose which one.

I’m all right with that. If we have to appease the people who really needed her to be related someone (ANYONE!), I’m glad that, to paraphrase a famous non-space wizard, “it is our choices…that show what we truly are, far more than our [heritage].”

STRAY SPOILERY THOUGHTS

• I thought Kylo Ren’s arc was very well handled—especially the scene where his memory of Han Solo appears to him, mimicking the scene where Kylo killed him, except with different results.

• My wife and I laughed when he strode toward Rey, soaking wet like an emo Mr. Darcy, though.

• The part where Luke lifted the X-wing was pure fan service, but it got me. I may have teared up a little. (However, I know for a fact that the door of Luke’s hut in TLJ was made from a wing from said X-wing, but I guess we’re going to ignore that.)

• The scene where all the reinforcements show up when all hope is lost was a lot of fun, but I think I would have liked it more if I hadn’t seen it done a little better in Endgame earlier this year. And perhaps if the trailers hadn’t spoiled that for us already.

• Hux died as he lived: the butt of jokes.

• So Palpatine survived by…mysterious Sith alchemy? And the Death Star survived somewhat intact by… You know what? I’m not going to get caught up in that. It’s space magic.

• Speaking of space magic, I can hear the self-appointed guardians of Star Wars lore getting mad at the “hyperspace skipping” scene, but who says hyperspace technology hasn’t evolved? Same with Force ghosts. Who said that those who have gone beyond haven’t figured out new ways to interact with the physical world (like Luke grabbing his saber and Yoda lighting a tree on fire in the last one)?

• Anybody have a full list of all the Jedi whose voices were heard encouraging Rey? I did like that part.

• The Knights of Ren looked like pretty bad dudes, but Kylo Ren took them out pretty quickly. That part where Rey Force-teleported her saber to Kylo, though? That was cool.

• Leia’s death confused me a little bit. I guess she projected herself across the galaxy in some form to help Kylo, and either the effort of doing it or the shock of Kylo being stabbed killed her? I suppose the filmmakers would have liked to make it more clear, but I respect that they had to work with the footage they had and didn’t want to CGI more Leia again. (Other than the flashback to Leia’s training, which was fine.)

• I also wanted Threepio’s sacrifice to have more impact. Getting his memories back at the end was a bit too easy.

• Chewie got a medal! Finally.

• That same-sex kiss between two background characters at the end isn’t going to make anyone happy. LGBTQ advocates will declare it a half measure, while others… well, the conservative-looking people next to me in the theater actually let out audible cries of disgust. You can’t have it both ways, Disney. You can’t please everyone.

So that’s the end of the Skywalker Saga, then. The Disney era has had its flaws—but so did the originals, no matter how thick the nostalgia-covered lens with which we view them. And at least they’re not the prequels. It’s been a fun ride, bumps and all.

And besides—no matter how we feel about this movie, we still have Baby Yoda. And what a blessing that is.

PS: Totally random, but if regardless of how you feel about Rian Johnson, director of TLJ, you should see his latest movie Knives Out. Some people didn’t like his style—subversion of tropes—for Star Wars, but that style makes for a really entertaining murder mystery. Just putting that out there.

The Last Jedi: Looking Back

I found this old post that I never published because I was tired of beating a dead tauntaun, but here goes. Originally written December 15, 2018.

Well, it’s been a year since The Last Jedi split the fandom more violently than Admiral Holdo crashing through the Supremacy. I still love the movie, and those who didn’t are still just as angry. So I’m going to sit down with a hypothetical dissenter (who will supply many of the arguments I’ve heard parroted over the last year) and I’ll do my best to debunk their arguments with a year’s worth of reflection.

Let’s get one thing clear. There’s a difference in those who hated TLJ. There are lots of reasonable, totally-not-racist-or-sexist fans for whom the movie just didn’t land. And there are the nutjobs. It would be doing the reasonable dissenters a disservice to lump them with the idiots who sent Kathleen Kennedy, Rian Johnson, and Kelly Marie Tran death threats. However, the arguments I’m about to face will come from both contingents of TLJ detractors.

So, let’s get started.

DETRACTOR: You’re an apologist! Or worse, a shill!

I’ve stopped caring if you agree with me, but please realize that art is subjective. It’s difficult for some to wrap their minds around the forbidden notion that an intelligent person can like TLJ, but it can be done.

DETRACTOR: It disrespected the franchise!

Definitively an opinion. If you were hoping for a slavish buffet of fan service or a dutiful bullet-point list of answers to your questions, then sure, maybe.

DETRACTOR: It was so full of plot holes and lazy writing!

Please tell me about plot holes, Mr. Random-Internet-Guy-Who-Thought-Batman-v.-Superman-was-a-“Modern-Masterpiece.” A plot development that wasn’t fully explained is not necessarily a plot hole or lazy writing. And a character action you didn’t agree with isn’t necessarily poor characterization. Keep that in mind when we talk about Luke in a couple paragraphs.

DETRACTOR: Leia flying in space was stupid.

It was a Force pull. No different than Luke Force pulling his lightsaber in the cave on Hoth, except she was pulling on a much larger object—the Raddus—so it makes sense that she would move toward it instead of vice versa.

DETRACTOR: Okay, sure, but it looked stupid.

It could have been filmed in another way, yes. I’ll give you that. But that’s it—there’s precedent for people surviving in space in Star Wars—watch Rebels, for instance.

DETRACTOR: The hyperspace ramming scene didn’t make sense in the context of Star Wars. Why not just ram a few X-Wings into the Death Star next time?

It’s clearly a one-in-a-million maneuver. It’s about timing—jump to hyperspace too soon and you miss your target; jump to hyperspace too late and you crash into your target at sublight speed. Simple enough.

DETRACTOR: TLJ ruined Luke Skywalker. Luke defeated Vader and then spared his life. He’s a great warrior. Why would he refuse to fight?

Well, no. He could have defeated Vader, but he realized how he was straying close to the dark side and stopped. In TLJ’s climax, Luke’s fight—or lack of one—is the truest expression of Jedi ideals. Don’t believe me? To quote Yoda: “To Obi-Wan you listen!”

Remember when Obi-Wan said, “There are alternatives to fighting”? Or when Yoda himself said, “Wars not make one great” and “A Jedi uses the Force for defense, never for attack”? Or Mace Windu: “We’re keepers of the peace, not soldiers.”

When the Jedi gave into the their martial urges and became warriors, leading soldiers in the Clone Wars, they lost sight of who they were, and it led to their destruction.

DETRACTOR: Luke still died for nothing, though.

If by “for nothing” you mean “by holding off the entire First Order so the Resistance could escape—all while maintaining a fiendishly difficult Force trick and upholding the Jedi’s ancient pacifist spirit”—then sure, I guess.

DETRACTOR: So why would he regress, then? Why would he become a jaded, nephew-murdering creep?

You think that once a weakness is conquered, it stays conquered forever, never rearing its ugly head again? It’s refreshing to see a hero struggling with something real—the resurgence of weaknesses of youth, which he must conquer anew. I’m sorry if Luke Skywalker is no longer a pristine vessel for vicarious wish-fulfillment, but his trajectory in TLJ feels real to me. I’ll take a flawed hero over an overpowered bada** any day.

Character development doesn’t have to always be in an upward direction. Don’t confuse it with leveling up—you can develop a character without just making him more and more powerful.

And let’s not forget that he didn‘t kill Ben—he only thought about it for the briefest of moments. Who among us hasn’t nurtured ill-advised impulses from deep within our darker natures—Luke just had the misfortune of being caught while doing it at the worst moment.

DETRACTOR: So he refused to kill an evil mass murderer like Darth Vader, but he could kill an unarmed child?

First, Ben was an adult in his 20s, not a child. Second, Luke saw in Ben a repeat of all the horrors committed by Darth Vader and the Emperor, destroying all he’d ever built. And for just an instant, he was tempted to stop it before it started. It’s like the old question: would you kill baby Hitler, if you knew what he’d grow up to be?

DETRACTOR: Okay, but you have to admit the alien breastmilk scene was unnecessary.

Maybe. It served the dual role of trying to scare Rey off while showing that Luke had returned to his roots—remember the blue milk from Tatooine?

DETRACTOR: And Rey? She didn’t get any character development. She’s just a Mary Sue.

It was a said day for conscientious discourse the day the Internet discovered the term “Mary Sue”—and a happy day for angry misogynists who could now use it as a catch-all for any female character they didn’t like. As I said earlier, don’t confuse leveling up with character development. Her development is all about learning to let go of the past (her need to return to Jakku, to know who her parents were, to belong) and face the future. I don’t really need to see her Jedi training—we’ve seen that before. So she’s a prodigy who has a lot of innate skills without having to go through some kind of Rocky montage to learn them. So what? It’s not like she blew up the Death Star on her first try, then had like a week tops of training with Yoda, and somehow emerged as a powerful Jedi, right?

DETRACTOR: What about the jokes? Those were stupid.

They didn’t all land, it’s true. Mostly I’m talking about visual gags with BB-8, whom the filmmmakers turned into a ninja. Those were unnecessary.

DETRACTOR: And the Canto Bight storyline?

It had some pacing and tone issues, but overall it was a necessary part of Finn’s arc. Remember, he was never 100% committed to the resistance after The Force Awakens. We assume he should be a Rebel by the end of the movie, because that’s how Han Solo was presented, but when TLJ begins, he’s mostly just interested in finding Rey safe. Then he sets off on this adventure with Rose and DJ as the angel and devil on his shoulder, respectively—one telling him to dedicate himself to a cause, and the other telling him not to join. Sure, their attempt to save the Resistance went awry, but that storyline brought Finn’s arc to a good place.

“You were always scum,” sneers Phasma.

“Rebel scum,” replies Finn. That’s the moment when he finally chooses a side.

DETRACTOR: Okay, but what about the bombs in space/slow-speed space chase? Rian Johnson clearly has no idea how space works.

So, sound in space, explosions in space, starfighters making sharp turns despite having nothing but forward thrusters, spaceship engines being on the whole time despite Newton’s Third Law, and ubiquitous artificial gravity don’t bother you—but you’re drawing the line at bombs in space?

DETRACTOR: If the movie really were good, you wouldn’t have to put so much thought into defending it.

So you’re saying you’d rather have your cinematic experience free of thinking? People like you are the reason they made five Transformers movies, five Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and eleventy billion Fast & Furious movies.

DETRACTOR: ... [mutters incoherently about SJWs ruining Star Wars]

TLJ brought Star Wars where it needed to be: out of the tropes it’s been mired in for years and into the heart of a new generation of fans. I just wish the old generation would calm down about something that was—and always has been—made for the young and young at heart.

DETRACTOR: Fire Kathleen Kennedy! Star Wars is dead! Ruin Johnson destroyed my childhood!

Sigh.

Read my previous posts on the topic here:

“The Last Jedi: The Only Review You Need to Read”

“In Further Defense of the Last Jedi”

Fantastic Boats and Where to Find Them: Our Scandinavian Trek

Time for the annual Kunz Europe Trek blog post. Let’s get right into it, ja?

Stockholm!

STOCKHOLM

Our trip began in the lovely city of Stockholm, Sweden—a bustling fusion of the old and new atop fourteen islands on the mouth of the Baltic Sea. It’s a city full of history and culture, founded by Vikings in the Middle Ages. Both Norwegians and Swedes love their Viking forebears, whose legacy lives on wherever you look. They’re not allowed to openly raid and pillage anymore; instead, they just charge you $20 for a burger.

The oldest part of Stockholm is Gamla Stan, the Old City. Back in the Middle Ages, this was Stockholm. I’m not sure they had all the tourist shops selling souvenir Viking mugs back then, but I’m no historian. Still, if you’re after an immersive walk back in time, the quaint, medieval-style buildings and narrow, cobblestoned roads are something to see. (Surprisingly, there’s also an excellent, modern-looking sci-fi/fantasy bookstore tucked into an ancient row of shops. I think it’s just called Sci-Fi Bookstore. The Swedish are nothing if not straightforward.)

Meatballs, obviously

On our first night, we stopped at Meatballs for the People, recommended as one of the better purveyors of genuine Swedish meatballs in the city. We put our names on the waiting list and came back an hour and a half later to sample some truly excellent meatballs. Now, much of Scandinavian cuisine involves fish, which is basically meat’s version of salad, but meatballs are a notable and tasty exception. (I think they may have had fish meatballs among the many varieties available, but we passed.)

In the morning, we went for a run to one of Stockholm’s many parks. Scandinavians are very active—no matter where you are in the city, there’s always a jogger or a cyclist trying to pass you. It’s a wonderful thing. They could teach Americans a thing or two about getting off our butts and exercising. Speaking of butts, Europeans paradoxically also seem unwilling to give up their smoking habits. Sweden isn’t as bad as some European countries in terms of cigarette use (looking at you, France and Italy, which are Little Tyke cars driving around in giant ashtrays), but come on, guys.

A church in Skansen.

Stockholm is built on 14 islands, so the canal tour was a must. After that, we visited Skansen, which is like This is the Place (if you’re from Utah), except larger and Swedish. It’s a bunch of original Scandinavian buildings transplanted into one spot and populated by guides in period clothing who will happily tell you about how Sven Kjieldsen or Lars Svenssen lived in this tiny one-room farmhouse with his family over the winter, eating nothing but frozen fish.

Next came one of our Stockholm highlights. Djurgården was once the king’s private hunting ground; now it’s a public park. We rented bikes and explored the shores, riding past grand mansions and watching boats sail through the bay.

Biking around Djurgården.

The next day was full of beautiful old buildings and one really cool ship. We saw Stockholm’s main cathedral, where the princess of Sweden married her personal trainer a few years ago. (True story.) We also toured the royal apartments, the treasury of Sweden’s crown jewels, one random Swedish king’s collection of statues, and a museum dedicated to the old Stockholm castle, which burned down in the 1600s. (The chief fire watcher, who had one job and apparently sucked at it, was executed by running the gauntlet through hundreds of soldiers who had permission to beat him as hard as they could with clubs.)

(Another true story: Stockholm was founded in the Middle Ages by a guy named Birger Jarl. “Jarl” was just a title for high-ranking Scandinavian chieftains. Some historians think he was technically a king, but my guess is they don’t call him that, because nobody wants their city to have been founded by a dude named Birger King.)

And then came the Vasa, which might have been both of our highlight of the trip. In 1628, the king of Sweden really wanted to show the other powers in the area not to mess with him, so he had a giant warship built. The Vasa was the pride of the Swedish Navy, its hull decorated with hundreds of intricately carved statues, each gunport adorned with a roaring lion. It’s five stories tall, not counting the masts, and must have been a truly awesome sight sailing out of the Stockholm harbor to go kick some Danish butt…until, that is, it capsized before even making it out of the bay. It was built far too narrow and high, so it took on water and sank to the bottom. About 30 people drowned.

333 years later, the Vasa was raised to the surface. It’s still remarkably preserved. I’m a firm believer that every trip to Europe needs at least one moment where your mind gets blown, and for me that was when I walked in and saw this once-mighty warship, a titan of wood and rope rearing up to do in death what it never could in life: strike awe into the hearts of people from far beyond Sweden’s shores.

The museum itself is pretty great, too—you can walk through a replica of the gundeck, read the stories and see the bones of the people who died, and get up close to see the intricate carvings on the stern. It’s worth a trip to Stockholm just to see the Vasa.

But that wasn’t the end of our Stockholm adventure. In our quest to find the best Swedish food, we were led to La Neta, which the Internet called the best Mexican food in Sweden. This might sound like an easy claim—like having the cutest outfit in a nudist colony—but it was as good as pretty much anything I’ve had in the States.

I should mention that not everything was a source of wonder and joy: Stockholm provided us with the first negative Airbnb experience either of us have ever had. We’re familiar with the camera’s ability to add a hundred square feet to any Airbnb dwelling, but this one was more than just smaller than it had appeared: the broken couch looked like a sinking ship, the pillows were has lumpy as gunny sacks full of dead cats, and the mattress had actual bloodstains on it. (Fun!) We took one look at the place and bought our own sheets, pillows, and blankets, hoping that the Oslo place would be a bit better.

OSLO

Our Airbnb in Oslo was a huge step up. But we didn’t stay there for long before dropping off our stuff and heading off on a hike. Kolsåstoppen is a scenic overlook over the Oslofjord. Whichever Norse god is in charge of weather (I think his name is Freyr, but I had a really good joke in mind if it were Thor) blessed us with a clear blue sky that day as we hiked up and took in the vista we would be exploring over the next few days.

The view from Kolsåstoppen

Our Airbnb was right next to Vigeland Park, a lovely park full of sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. Vigeland was a sculptor who promised to spend the rest of his life beautifying Oslo in return for a stipend. Whether he succeeded mostly depends on your feelings toward nudity. The sculptures include hundreds of nude figures engaged in a variety of different activities, some of which are left to the imagination. I call this one “First Day of School”:

He’s probalby wearing an invisible Fjällräven Kanken backpack.

The centerpiece of the park is this weird obelisk full of naked people. I’m fine with nudity in art (we did go to Italy last year, after all), but I also have no problem with clothing.

The Vigeland obelisk

The next day, the weather turned decidedly less welcoming. Which was ideal for a few more museums, and less ideal for certain outdoor activities, which I’ll get to momentarily.

The Viking Ship Museum

We saw a lot of boats on this trip. Seriously, we should have called this trip Fantastic Boats and Where to Find Them. In addition to the aforementioned Vasa, we saw two of the best-preserved Viking ships in the world, as well as a third ship that didn’t look quite as seaworthy these days; the polar exploration ship Gjøa (your guess is as good as mine as far as pronunciation goes); and the Fram, the ship that carried Roald Amundsen to Antarctica on his daring journey to claim the South Pole. (That was after it had already taken the explorer Fridjolf Nansen near the North Pole, where it was trapped in the ice for five years. That ship has seen more than any Instagram travel influencer.) We also had the chance to see the Kon-Tiki, the raft Thor Heyerdahl used to prove that ancient South Americans could have settled Polynesia, but by then we had seen enough boats to last us a while.

The story of the race to the South Pole is fascinating. It involves two men—the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and the Englishman Robert Falcon Scott. Both desperately wanted to be the first man to set foot on the Earth’s southernmost point, and each took a harrowing journey to get there. Amundsen brought sled dogs, while Scott brought motorized sledges that immediately crapped out when they tried to start them in the freezing air. Most of the Amundsen’s dogs died along the way (and were eaten), but Amundsen made it to the Pole first, leaving Scott a letter to deliver home in case he (Amundsen) didn’t make it back. But that proved unnecessary; Amundsen returned a national hero. After a grueling journey, Scott and his men arrived at the South Pole, only to find the Norwegian flag flapping in the freezing air. I can’t imagine the disappointment he must have felt as he turned around to go home, but it only got worse for him: he and his men were trapped in their tent for weeks on the return journey while a blizzard raged outside. Their bodies were found several months later.

You could walk around the Fram’s deck, exploring its cabins and imagining what it would be like to brave hostile conditions, get trapped in the ice for years, and eventually kill and eat your sled dogs. (They do not sell sled dog jerky in the gift shop.)

The Fram

Speaking of hostile conditions, we had a tour of the Oslofjord scheduled for that morning as well. We had hoped it would be enclosed, with nice dry seats, like our tour of the Stockholm canals a few days before… but alas. The fjord tour was to take place from the upper deck of a small sailing ship, with only a tarp to protect us from the elements.

That, it turned out, only enhanced the experience—at least for me. We cruised around the fjord, getting a good look at lonely lighthouses and clapboard houses hugging the sides of stark green islands. There’s a kind of cold, austere beauty to the Oslofjord. The rain lashed the ship entire time, but it wasn’t hard to imagine myself as an explorer or Viking (or at least, something other than a tourist who had paid 330 Norwegian krona to sit on a boat in the rain).

While on the boat, the guide mentioned a ruined monastery on an island named Høvedoya. So of course the next day we took a boat out there and explored it. The monks here were apparently beholden to a rule where they had to get up and dawn and go to bed at dusk, which sounds fine until you remember that during certain parts of the year the sun rises at 4am and goes down at 10:30pm.

Høvedoya monastery

While in Oslo, we also met up with my famous YouTuber cousin Zack (Jerry Rig Everything, 3.7 million followers) and his famous YouTuber friend Dan (What’s Inside, 6.5 million followers) . Zack had seen my Instagram and messaged me, telling me he was on his way to Oslo right then to do something for his channel, filming Mercedes’ new car or building a rocket or something. So we had dinner. (See, Mom, I do hang out with my cousins.)

We were only in Scandinavia for slightly less than six full days, but we packed a lot in there. If you have a week to spare to take a look at beautiful scenery, cool cities, and lots of boats, you know exactly where to go.

Happy Holidays from the Kunz Family (2018)

Welcome to the Kunz family Christmas card, which we’re actually getting out before Christmas this year, so you should be proud of us.

Eric has been exercising his carpentry skills, transforming an ancient, filth-ridden chicken coop into a cabin that serves as the epitome of rustic comfort. He will probably soon have an HGTV show of his own. Jury’s still out on whether it will be called Coops to Castles or Cabin Fever: Ultimate Upgrade Edition.

After two more of her children got married this year, Trisha is enjoying being a mother-in-law to three daughters-in-law and a nana to little McKay. She secretly wants more grandkids, but she needs to be patient. Those will come in time.

Ryan Kunz and the lovely Breanne got married, traveled the world, and pretty much lived the dream. Ryan is having trouble remembering all that, however, because he just had double hernia surgery and is realizing exactly how many activities require abdominal muscles—including breathing, coughing, sneezing, twisting, eating, existing, and—somehow—writing the family Christmas card.

Reilly graduated physical therapy school and is taking Briana and McKay out to tend to the needs of a remote frontier community in Montana. Reilly will help the residents regain movement, manage pain, and maybe cope with arrow wounds, dysentery, and snakebites. (Oh, what was that? They have a Target there?)

Connor and Claire underwent several major life transitions, including marriage and getting an adult job. They live in a quaint old schoolhouse that’s super cute and possibly haunted. Their real estate agent assures them that the creepy little girl who sometimes stands behind them in the bathroom mirror is just a charming quirk that old houses have.

Dillon is still at BYU, where he recently organized a spur-of-the-moment, 100-person lightning tournament that culminated in the referee actually breathing fire. He’s trying to apply that same ingenuity, organization, and energy to dating, though it’s getting expensive to bring along a fire-breathing circus performer to each date.

Abigail is on a mission in Zimbabwe, where she preaches the gospel, washes her clothes by hand, and plays games with little children. In only a few months there, she has dealt with cholera, street riots, water shortages, robbers, and eating rice for every meal, none of which are made up.

This year, in addition to helping Dad fix up the chicken coop, Quinn collected all six Infinity Stones, making him the most powerful being in the universe. Plus, he won the family ghost pepper ramen challenge while his brothers nearly died, which is probably more impressive.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year from the Kunz family!

For Cotopaxi: The Pain Bagnat

Imagine if your typical American tuna sandwich gained a soft spot for fine wines, started driving a Peugeot, and discovered old Gérard Depardieu movies….

Read the rest here.

For Cotopaxi: Watermelon Feta Blueberry Salad

Another blog post where I got to have fun with a recipe and inject my own style.

Imagine that watermelon feta blueberry salad was brought to this country by the Pilgrims, enshrined in the Constitution, and carried west by Lewis and Clark, entwining it with the fate of this great nation. 

Read the rest here.

For the Flat Creek Blog: Hiking from Driggs to Jackson Hole

Here’s a post I did chronicling a 24-mile hike across the Teton mountain range. Enjoy.

Read it here.

For Cotopaxi: beef Strogie

I write for Cotopaxi's Aventuras blog. Sometimes that involves taking something as mundane as a recipe and adding some spice—figuratively speaking. 

Read the "Beef Strogies" blog here. 

Solo: A Spoiler-Free Review

What a time to be a Star Wars fan, right? 

Or at least, it should be. We’re getting a new movie every year, but it’s making us a little entitled. Which leads me to a quick point I need to make to give some context to my review. If you'd rather just read the review, skip down to the big header down below that says "REVIEW."

Solo arrives in theaters in a rather tumultuous time in Star Wars fandom. There’s a chunk of the fans who watched The Last Jedi and immediately burned with an irrational hatred so fierce that, instead of moving on with their lives, have made it their life goal to sabotage Disney’s efforts and, by extension, the moviegoing experiences of the rest of the fans. Declaring that Disney ruined their childhoods (as though a childhood is such a fragile thing that a single movie can ruin it), they see themselves as a ragtag force of rebels trying to restore the glorious age of pre-Disney Star Wars filmmaking, or something. (The fact that the era they’re pining for included Jar Jar Binks, Darth Vader screaming “Nooooooo!” and the entirety of Attack of the Clones should tell you a thing or two.) 

In the weeks before Solo was even out, they managed to review-bomb the movie, saturating it with one-star reviews full of hatred that would make Emperor Palpatine proud. As I’m writing this, the audience score continues to tumble. The funny thing is, half the negative reviews are from people who clearly haven’t even seen the movie are are just fulfilling their self-appointed mission to be cinematic wet blankets. 

That’s not to say the movie is perfect. It definitely has its flaws. But it's important to note that I'm no Disney hater, and any criticisms I have still come a place of love. 

Okay, now the review.

REVIEW (NO SPOILERS)

Solo is fun. It’s a low-stakes, smaller-scale, safe movie. Where The Last Jedi boldly deconstructed the weary tropes that had made themselves part of the saga (and earned the ire of a lot of previously mentioned fans), Solo plays it very safe. It’s the Ant-Man of Star Wars movies. I didn’t walk away with my mind blown, but I sat in my seat for over two hours, relishing the glimpses of locales I’d never seen on screen, watching Han Solo and Chewie get into trouble, and just enjoying a diverting detour into the galaxy I love. I’ll probably see it again in theaters. 

A lot of people have wondered, “Who asked for this movie?” Do we really need a Han Solo origin story? The answer is…well, no. If you’re hungering for a checklist of the origins of each piece of the Han Solo myth, you’re in luck. Want to know how he got that blaster? Check. How he got the name "Solo"? Check. How the Falcon went from bachelor pad/cape museum to hunk of junk? Check. He even shoots first at one crucial moment.

We don’t really need to know how our favorite smuggler became the person he is when we meet him in A New Hope, but that doesn’t mean the ride isn’t enjoyable. Solo is a treat for hardcore fans, who will recognize the little references scattered here and there. There’s a lot to reward those who’ve read the books and the comics, enough to make the sometimes predictable journey worth it. Hey, they mentioned Aurra Sing! Hey, I know that outfit Beckett is wearing! Hey, is that the Imperial March playing in an in-universe Imperial recruiting ad, except in a heroic major key? Hey, is that the idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark sitting in Dryden Vos’s collection? Is that a Sith holocron there, too? It’s a treasure trove of fan service, but as we learned when Darth Vader cut through a hallway full of Rebels in Rogue One, fan service done right can be a lot of fun. 

And then there’s the Kessel Run sequence, which is just a blast. I had a stupid grin across my face the entire time. It felt like Star Wars in its most pure form—thrills, humor, striking visuals, and the right dash of familiar John Williams themes. 

As far as other things I enjoyed, the new droid L3 gets of lot of really funny lines. (And one or two slightly disturbing ones.) The action scenes are very well staged. Donald Glover is spot-on as Lando (maybe a little too much, like he's doing an uncanny Billy Dee Williams impersonation). Even Alden Ehrenreich, who’s gotten a lot of flack after the trailers for not being a younger clone of Harrison Ford, channels enough of Ford’s roguish charm to convince you that he’s a younger, more naive version of the character we love.

Solo is a fun, sometimes forgettable, often thrilling tribute to the fans. It’s not likely to be anyone’s favorite movie in the saga, but it’s not going to ruin anyone’s childhood, either. 
 

PS—OKAY, HERE'S A SPOILER OR TWO

Can you handle a spoiler? Scroll down...

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You ready? Okay.

So, Darth Maul, huh? Those who haven't been following the books and TV shows in the last few years might be surprised to see Maul alive and attached to legs. In the Clone Wars TV show, he managed to recover from an acute case of getting chopped in half, attached himself to a set of mechanical legs, and eventually took over a good chunk of the galaxy's crime syndicates. His former master, Darth Sidious, sought him and out and defeated him. Since then (this movie takes place 10 years or so before A New Hope), he's been lurking in the shadows in preparation for his time on the TV show Rebels, where his story picks up again. But Maul's appearance aside, the thing I found most surprising was that they're setting up a sequel. 

So that's something. 

Heaven on Earth: Gimmelwald, Switzerland

This post was adapted from a segment in last year's blog post about my trip through Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Certain passages were adapted into a more serious contemplation of spirituality and nature. Enjoy!

To some people, heaven is a literal but unseen plane of existence, the dwelling place of the divine. To others, it’s a fleeting but attainable prize for the here and now, glimpsed in a sunrise or through the shining curtain of a waterfall. To me, it’s both—and I found them in Gimmelwald.

Above the village of Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland, there lies a hamlet cut off from the inexorable flow of time by a five-hundred-foot sheet cliff. It’s insurmountable but for a dutiful cable car that makes hourly journeys up the mountain. Below, Lauterbrunnen bustles with all the trappings of modernity, but above, the hamlet of Gimmelwald, home to less than a hundred permanent residents, is a place apart.

You’ll find no cars in Gimmelwald, only a few golf carts that traverse a winding road up to the larger resort town of Mürren. Even the largest buildings are creaking, overgrown cabins, and through the trees up the slope you can glimpse cheese-making huts peering down at you. The verdant flanks of the mountain are speckled with cows, the bells around their necks tolling the coming of morning as surely as any rooster call. But even if Gimmelwald were stripped of its quaint charm, it would still be a place I could never forget.

For me and my companions, our initial ascent in the cable car was marred by sinuous veils of rain that hid much of the scenery from view. Still under the cover of an insistent deluge, we made our way to the Hotel Mittaghorn, a dark old edifice run by a nearly deaf old Swiss gentleman named Walter. The coin-operated shower was located in a separate room, but what the hotel lacked in convenience it made up for in homely appeal. Walter—the only employee for most of our stay—made a mean breakfast of sausage and eggs.

In the morning, after we were awakened by the crescendo tinkle of cowbells as the dairy cows made their way underneath the hotel window, we saw what the rain and mists had hidden from us the day before. Our bedroom window framed a view unlike anything I’d ever seen, a massive cliff practically pinstriped with waterfalls, rising from the valley below like a snowcapped bulwark of basalt.

That was when it sank in for us that in Gimmelwald we had wandered into a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. It was as if our front porch was a portal to another world, a panorama of natural majesty whittled from the bare rock by a masterful Creator.

That point was driven home for me as the day progressed. The morning continued with a morning run up the trail to the neighboring town of Mürren, and later a hike down from the Männlichen station down to the resort town of Wengen. That hike provided us with our most stunning view yet. I would never consider myself cultured enough to be an expert on great literature, but I do dabble from time to time, and the descent brought to mind a passage from Frankenstein, where the eponymous doctor wanders the Alps in search of solace after abandoning his creation:

"Still, as I ascended higher, the valley ... was augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, whose white and shining pyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the habitations of another race of beings."

For me, instead of seeing evidence of some alien race, I saw the unmistakable fingerprint of the divine. The endless vistas lent me a newfound appreciation for the glories of the natural world—and for the powers behind them.  

It’s hard not to look out on the majesty of creation and not feel some small measure of reverence. Even the most avowed heathen feels it, even if they choose to ascribe it to another source. There’s no doubt that the mighty glaciers and jagged peaks and filaments of water cascading down the sheer face of the mountain were created by natural processes, entirely explainable by science, and yet to me the evidence of a supreme Creator isn’t in the sights themselves but in the irrepressible, undeniable deference to the divine we feel when we gaze upon their wonders.

I’ve always been a religious person, but I sometimes struggle to connect with my conception of the divine while sitting in a pew. God can seem a little distant when someone forgot to turn down the thermostat or the kid in the bench in front of me is wailing for his Cheerios. That kind of worship will always have a place for me, but in places like Gimmelwald I can seek the heavens in both a figurative and literal sense.

In the Alps, I felt detached from the fallen earth to which I had been born and could almost stretch my fingers, like Adam in the famous Michelangelo masterpiece, to meet the outstretched hand of God. Atop that mountain cliff in Switzerland, it was as though a mere five hundred feet above the valley floor could lift me to touch the firmament itself.

How Was Your Trip? (Italian Honeymoon Edition)

It’s that time of year again, when I undergo my millennial duty to go on a European vacation and exhaustively document it on social media. This year, however, it was the honeymoon, the lovely Breanne Anderson and I having just joined ourselves together in holy matrimony. We could think of literally no more romantic place on Earth than Italy, so we thought, Hey, let’s go see if the gelato really is as near-narcotic as people say it is. 

We flew into northern Italy, into the city of Milan. And so began our adventure…

Milan

The actual city of Milan rates a solid thumbs-sideways. There’s nothing wrong with it—it’s just another generic European city where everyone is smoking and driving comically tiny cars. (Seriously. Europe is basically a giant ashtray underneath an armada of Little Tykes cars.) It’s somewhat charming in its own right, but Milan is best appreciated before you have a chance to take in the more vacation-friendly Florence or Rome. As a jumping-point to the scenic Lake Country, Milan is great (though next time we might stay right in Varenna, on the lake itself). But by itself, it’s pretty skippable. Sorry, Milan. I’m sure lots of people like you, and you’re good at stuff. 

Attractions seen in Milan: Sforza Castle, Milan Duomo

Lake Como

You know that scene at the end of Casino Royale where James Bond catches up with the bad guy at an exotic lakehouse and shoots him in the leg? (It’s a great scene.) Or how about that scene in Attack of the Clones where Anakin tries to woo Padmé by comparing the smoothness of her skin to the roughness of sand? (It’s a terrible scene. I’ve tried that, and it doesn’t work.) Turns out both scenes were filmed in the same place. It’s this villa here:

All of the worst scenes of the worst Star Wars movie were filmed here, which makes it sort of a holy place, in a weird way.

That fancy house sits on the shore of Lake Como, a lovely little postcard-generating body of water about 45 minutes north of Milan. Breanne and I took a water ferry from the town of Como to the little village of Varenna, which is a honeymoon destination if there ever was one. You can stroll along a sunlit promenade, hike up to a castle with stunning panoramic views, or get lost while trying to find the tourist information center in order to locate said sunlit promenade and castle. We did all three, and we definitely didn’t spend enough time in Varenna.

Check out the stunning beauty here in Italy. (Also pictured: the town of Varenna and accompanying scenery.) 

Attractions seen at Lake Como: The lake, lots of fancy houses, possibly George Clooney’s house, Vezio Castle

Florence

Florence is, in short, a wonderful place. What is about this city that earned a hearty recommendation from every Italy traveler on Facebook while I was planning the trip? What is it about Florence that earned it spot as our favorite city we visited? Maybe it’s the fact that it’s full of sights, all packed into a helpful, walk-friendly handful of square miles. If art is your jam, Florence has you covered. If cool old buildings are your thing, Florence comes through. Food? Got it. Shopping? Got that, too. Quaint little medieval-looking streets? Check. More gelato than you can possibly eat? Challenge accepted. 

The centerpiece of any Florence experience is the majestic Duomo (Italian for “cathedral”), which was designed by some Renaissance guy sometime between 1000 and 1986 AD (after a while, all that stuff gets a little hazy). It’s a striking example of early Renaissance flavor, or possibly Baroque. I don’t remember, but its super amazing. The architect eschewed the typical white marble of other cathedrals in favor of an exterior that’s a striking maroon, dark green, and eggshell white.

The interior of the Duomo’s dome is an arresting 360-degree panorama depicting, among other things, the final fates of the wicked. It’s just like Where’s Waldo, except instead of a man in a striped hat you can find goodies like a frog-man beating a guy with a club, a winged goat demon devouring people whole, and some poor soul being flayed alive in graphic detail. Those Renaissance artists sure did a lot of thinking about the final fate of the wicked. I bet they were real fun at parties. 

This is the happy part of the underside of the dome. 

And this is the scary part. 

No trip to Italy would be complete without acknowledging the contributions of Michelangelo, who labored tirelessly so future tourists would have lots of stuff to visit. No, seriously—everywhere you look there's something else he designed, painted, or sculpted. The guy was a master at everything he put his mind to. It’s surprise he’s only my third favorite Ninja Turtle.

This is the tomb of Michelangelo in the Santa Croce cathedral. The three statues represent painting, sculpture, and architecture all mourning his loss. There's no indication that Michelangelo was buried with his nunchucks, which is a shame. 

We visited the Accademia, the Uffuzi Gallery, and several other places loaded full of art. We saw Michelangelo’s David in all his naked, 13-foot-tall splendor. We saw more Madonna and Childs than I knew existed. Now, I like art. But I like it in small, digestible quantities. After several days of seeing the some of the greatest art in the Western world, every random naked Greek statue starts to blur together and their explanatory plaques all sound exactly the same:

Madonna and child, ca. 1323, Florence. Marble. Created by Italian sculptor Luigi Supermario under the patronage of Lord Tywin Lannister, this work represents the artist’s early attempts to merge Baroque neoclassicism with Renaissance neo-hyperthyroidism. We swear this Virgin Mary is totally different from the 139 others you’ve seen.

Side note: No matter where we went, many of the nude male statues were missing certain bits. I found this fascinating, despite my new wife’s exasperation every time I pointed it out. Apparently, someone freaked out at all the nudity and tried to take action. (Nobody let my mom in there, did they?) 

On that note, let’s talk about another of Italy’s major contributions to Western society. If you’ve never had gelato in Italy, especially Florence, you’ve never had gelato. It’s a sort of really soft ice cream, hand made from angel tears and 100% real fruit. (I think it’s organic, too. They only use free-range, pesticide-free angels.) We started off with gelato once a day, then progressed to twice a day, and we were up to three times a day by the time we left. I think both of us were secretly okay with four times a day, but we were reluctant to voice that opinion. 

My favorite flavor was the fragola, or strawberry.

Our most invigorating experience in Florence came when we rented bikes and attempted a nice, pleasant ride through the city streets. I guess I had in mind an experience similar to the one I had in Austria last year, where there are dedicated bike lanes and the only danger is from absurdly fit septuagenarians who want to run you over. In Italy, however, I suspect motorists get tax breaks for each cyclist they maim. Whatever their incentive, I’m confident that drivers in Italy are actively trying to kill you. We learned this quickly as we wove through the narrow streets, dodging cars, motorcycles, and Florence’s cute little half-sized buses, which are still more than large enough to render any cyclist suddenly two-dimensional. Breanne compared it to a game of Mario Kart, which was an unsettling comparison for me given that I consider it a major accomplishment if I get anything other than last place in that game. Nevertheless, biking was one of our highlights. It really did get the adrenaline up. 

Attractions seen in Florence: Duomo cathedral, dome, baptistery, bell tower, and museum; Accademia; Ponte Vecchio; Medici chapels, Uffizi Gallery; Galileo museum; Piazza Michelangelo; Palazzo Vecchio; Palazzo Pitti and gardens; Santa Croce

Rome

Speaking of wanton bloodshed, our first stop in Rome was the Coliseum. I apparently missed the memo that the purest tourist experience is as part of a gigantic tour group. We experienced them in Florence, but it wasn’t till Rome that tour groups really got on my nerves. It’s hard to get anywhere without a legion of squealing schoolchildren blocking your path. Once we got in, however, we saw the Coliseum is a grand old edifice so like our modern sports stadiums that while you’re pressing through the throngs in the lower levels, you can easily forget you’re not at the LaVell Edwards Stadium at BYU at halftime, trying to score an overpriced hot dog. Then you wander up into the sunlight, where you can imagine gladiators going to the deaths or Christians being fed to lions. Or in my case, you can imagine tour groups being fed to lions. Are you not entertained?

The Forum was less crowded, maybe because the Coliseum was too packed for most people to escape. It’s one of Rome’s most visited sites, and for good reason. The Forum was once the political center of Rome, bursting with temples, palaces, and thoroughfares. There’s enough left over that you can still fill in the gaps in the rubble with your mind, imagining a glorious empire at its zenith. It’s really quite something to behold, and I say that without an iota of facetiousness. Check this out:

There's a super famous Percy Shelley poem that makes the rounds in pop culture every few years. It was on Breaking Bad and one of the Alien movies. Anyway, it's what I was thinking about when I saw this place. It goes like this...

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

We visited the Trevi Fountain, because I was informed it was in the Lizzie McGuire Movie and was therefore a must-see.

Another highlight of Rome is St. Peter’s Basilica. This may just be the most impressive church in the world. It’s so huge that you could fit at least six of the Salt Lake Temple right inside, by our estimation. (We live in Salt Lake City, so that’s our most readily available comparison.) Not only that, but every inch is covered in ornate scrollwork or gold or marble or some towering statue of a saint. 

This picture doesn't really do it justice. 

Less impressive, unfortunately, is the Vatican Museum. This sprawling complex had its moments, but we happened to be in Rome during Holy Week, which meant we were basically sharing the city with all of Catholicism, most of whom were in line with us. The Vatican Museum walks you through all the fancy art the Catholic Church mysteriously ended up with over the millennia (maybe all those ancient empires just left their priceless artifacts in the lost and found, who knows?), terminating at the Sistine Chapel. During peak season or Holy Week, visitors can stand in line for an hour or two for the privilege of squeezing even tighter into narrow corridors, vaguely aware of the art they can glimpse over other visitors’ heads. 

I did enjoy the map room, where the crowd eased up long enough to enjoy these incredibly detailed room-high maps, which put any fantasy map I’ve ever seen to shame. 

You can't see it here, but every little town is represented with a unique cluster of tiny buildings, each artfully detailed. It's incredible. 

You can see the detail a bit more in this one.

I imagine that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel to evoke a sense of reverent awe. Unfortunately, by the time you’ve been herded like cattle for upwards of two hours through densely crowded rooms, the chapel instead evokes a feeling of a very full bladder, accompanied by anger and vaguely murderous impulses directed toward the people blocking the exit.

Contrast that with Ostia Antica, a well-preserved port city an hour from Rome, where the crowds were sparse, the sun was shining, and you could basically walk wherever you wanted. You could sidle up to the bar in the ancient tavern, climb up onto the roof of the surviving apartments to get a better look, or walk along the mosaics in the public bathhouse. The atmosphere there is so relaxed that there was literally a class of high schoolers having some sort of talent show in the ancient amphitheater, which we discovered after wondering why a quartet of long-haired hoodlums were lip syncing to System of a Down in the middle of a bunch of Roman ruins.

You pretty much have free rein of the place, whether it's the sprawling cityscape...

...the ruins partially reclaimed by the earth...

...or the elaborate mosaics.

The Castle of the Angels, overlooking the Tiber, is also worth a visit. It used to be a fortress, then it was a hideout for the popes, and now it's a museum. 

At the top of the castle is the Archangel Michael, depicted in the act of heroically slaying tour groups. 

This is obviously a bust of the great Roman Emperor Voldemortus Tomriddlus.

Oh, one more thing in Rome. 

They wouldn’t let us take pictures of the Capuchin Crypts, so I’ll supply some pictures from Google. We’re still a little hazy on how all these bones ended up there, but at some point some fun-loving person decided to take the bones of the deceased Capuchin monks and arrange them in interesting patterns. The result is some rather macabre art. 

Nothing weird about this. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons.)

Nothing at all. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons.)

The creepiest part is the sign over the door:

What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.

I think that's a good place to end the blog post, don't you? Sleep well tonight. 

Attractions seen in Rome: Pantheon, Coliseum, Forum, St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel, Castel Sant'Angelo, Spanish Steps, Capuchin Crypt, Trevi Fountain, Ostia Antica

A Leap from the Lion's Head

Originally posted June 29, 2015.

At the climax of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana (played by Harrison Ford) and his father (played by Sean Connery) have reached the ancient hiding place of the Holy Grail just in time to be captured by the Nazis. In order to motivate Indy to retrieve the Grail (which bestows mystical healing powers to those who drink of it), the head Nazi baddie shoots Indy’s father. Realizing he has no choice but to brave the three devices of lethal cunning that bar the way to the Grail, Indiana Jones sets out into the booby-trapped temple. He gets through the first two challenges and reaches the third. It appears to be an impassable chasm, yawning menacingly in Indy’s path. 

“Impossible,” he mutters to himself. “Nobody can jump this.” 

He recalls the cryptic instructions his father gave him for passing this obstacle: Only with a leap from the lion’s head (which is carved near the brink where he stands) can he prove his worth.  

Indiana gazes uncertainly at the gap between himself and the far end of the chasm. Outside of the temple, his wounded father gasps with what may well be his dying breath, “You must believe, boy. You must believe."

Indy can shy away from the challenge, but that will cost him dearly. Only with the Grail’s power can he save his father, and only by taking a literal leap of faith can he advance.

How many of us have been at this same spot? How many of us have faced our own bottomless chasms, too terrified of failure to move forward? I know I certainly have. For years, I was poised on the edge of that abyss, doubting that God would sustain me. Specifically, I showed a distinct lack of faith that my Heavenly Father would one day allow me to find my eternal companion.

This perhaps isn’t the time and place to fully expound upon the length and breadth of my insecurities, but let’s just say that I’ve had my share of doubts that I’d ever find my mate. At the beginning, when the first of my friends started to get married, it started as a niggling little fear in the back of my mind, a whispered uncertainty that I would ever be as happy as the smiling couples whom I watched join their lives together in blissful matrimony. Later, it became a dull buzz of fear, an ambient clamor I couldn’t quite block out as more and more friends left me behind in their unhindered quests to get married. Eventually it amplified into a full-blown roar of panic in my late twenties when I realized I was among the last of any of my groups of friends to find The One. 

The doubts came. Through His authorized servants, God made the promise that I would find the right person someday, and yet I couldn't believe. God meant for some people to be happy, I reasoned, but not everyone. Some people would have the chance to meet their special someone, but that was a treat reserved only for the good-looking or the lucky. And I believed myself to be neither of those things. I longed to meet Her, The One, that special girl who would make all of my doubts flee. I know what it is to feel like half a song, a lonely melody that waiting in vain for a harmony to complete it. I know what it is to desperately miss someone I’ve never met, like being homesick for a place I’ve never been. For years, I sank into a morass of despair, watching my options shrink and my prospects dry up. My friends all got married and had kids. All the girls I’d liked and pursued found guys way better looking than me and got busy churning out children. 

I lingered for years on the edge of my own personal chasm. As the voices of people I loved quietly reassured me, “You must believe, boy,” I ignored them, unable to move forward. I saw only the depth of the gulf before me. 

And so I stood there where Indiana Jones stood, facing the same choice that lay before him: show a little faith, or never move forward.

Indiana, naturally, makes the right choice. With the admonition of his dying father ringing in his ears, Indy steps forward into nothingness . . . 

. . . and alights on a hidden bridge, perfectly sculpted and fashioned to blend in with the rock of the chasm. John Williams' epic score swells, and Indiana, his faith rewarded, walks across the bridge to the final chamber where the Holy Grail awaits.

There’s still another test ahead of him—he has to choose the real Grail from amid a host of impostors—but he has made substantial progress, putting his faith into action and seeing the rewards thereof. (Does he find the Grail and save his father? If you haven't seen the movie, I won't spoil the ending, but I find your lack of pop culture disturbing.)

As for me, there wasn’t ever a certain moment when everything changed, when suddenly the light flooded my mind and thrust the right path into sharp relief. It came slowly over the last year, when at some point I reached my darkest extremity and realized there was no way to go but up. Somewhere along the path, I realized that if I didn’t step blindly forward and take the leap from the lion’s head, if I never showed my faith by cheerfully going on with my life, I would simply never go forward. That was the beginning, the seed of faith from which sprang the kernel of hope.

From there came the moments when my faith was rewarded, when I stepped forward into nothingness and found myself supported by unseen forces. They were small things, like the day when I felt an unnatural surge of happiness for no reason, or the day when I came home frustrated and then found myself supported by kind, loving friends.  

That’s not to say I never have a bad day or a moment of weakness when I wonder why God is taking His sweet time leading me to my wife. I’d like to end this post by telling of the miraculous way in which I found my wife after showing my faith, the way in which I finally drank from my personal Holy Grail. But of course that’s not the end. No, there’s still more ahead for me, more trials, just like there was for Indiana Jones. But unlike before, I really do believe that this will end well. 

Yes, I still have my bad days, those times when I flirt idly with despair, but I can pull myself out because I trust God to lead me in the right direction. If you asked me for that assurance a year ago, I couldn’t have given it to you. But now I can say with a hard-won certainty that there’s someone for me, because I have received that promise from my Heavenly Father. 

I may not meet her soon, but most of the time I trust that God does have someone wonderful in store for me. I’m okay with a little waiting, because I know she is out there, probably navigating her own treacherous obstacle course in her quest to find me. And if she doesn’t mind gratuitous Indiana Jones references, I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.

And so on those hard days when I wonder what a guy like me has to do to get a girl, I remember the timeless advice from the lips of Sean Connery:

You must believe, boy.

Note from three years later: I met her. :)

The Greatest Movie Scenes of All Time

I like movies. One of my favorite feelings is the one you get when you’re waiting for a hotly anticipated movie and suddenly the pre-show ads stop, the lights go dim, and the previews start. And then, a few minutes later, the previews give way to the opening titles of the movie you've been waiting so long to see. You know what I mean? It's a great feeling. 

And so of course I've compiled a list of my favorite movie scenes. There's nothing particularly inspirational about this blog post, unless you’re brought to tears by majestic dinosaurs or poetry quoted by British secret agents, which is actually a definite possibility. Feel free to express your assent or dissent in the comments.

You'll notice that most of these movies come from similar genres, with the exception of The King's Speech, which resonated on a personal level in a way that most biopics and Best Picture contenders fail to do. I won't apologize for the content of this list; while it's true that I like a lot of expensive, loud blockbusters, you won't find any Transformers or similar cinematic drivel on the list. I have some standards, after all. 

As a final explanatory note, none of these scenes would reach any kind of cinematic height without the contribution of the music. I’m a huge film score buff, and I’m always conscious of the background music to any scene. As we appreciate these awesome scenes, let's not forget the contribution of the composer. 

And now, the list . . .

"Welcome to Jurassic Park” (Jurassic Park)

I enjoyed Jurassic World, but the first movie has something all of its sequels lack: a sense of unashamed wonder at the pure majesty of the creatures of Jurassic Park. Marvel with Dr. Grant and Dr. Sadler as they gaze for the first time upon the biological spectacle wrought by scientists. I’m convinced that if I ever am permitted to see actual dinosaurs—through some miracle of God or science, perhaps—I will fall to my knees in awe and weep softly. And the Jurassic Park theme will invariably start playing in my head. 

Tennyson (Skyfall)

From a franchise whose high points usually come from cool gadgets and hot women, this scene is surprisingly poignant. M deftly describes the necessity of MI6’s role in the changing world of espionage, her eloquent speech juxtaposed against the looming approach of the bad guy. As she starts quoting Tennyson, Bond appears, the music seething with tension. Maybe I’m just a sucker for cool voiceover scenes, but this gets me every time. 

Hotel fight (Inception)

Occasionally, certain movie scenes make me laugh aloud in the theater out of the sheer awesomeness of what I’m witnessing. This was one of those scenes the first time I watched it. It’s a little lacking in emotional heft when compared to the other entries on this list, but it makes up for it in terms of visual inventiveness and overall whoa factor. 

King George’s address (The King’s Speech)

As anyone who’s spent a few minutes in my company can tell you, I have a stutter. Because of this, I felt the fear of King George and felt my excitement rising at the slow building of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony as the king gained momentum in his rousing address. I felt his tension, his agony, and finally his relief at a speech well given. 

"The Hanging Tree” (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part I)

James Newton Howard, the composer, deserves most of the credit for endowing this scene with an emotional punch that seizes your heartstrings and doesn’t let go until the haunting music is over. Somehow we’re made to care deeply about the faceless extras flinging themselves to their deaths.

The fall of Sauron (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)

I gotta be honest; it was tough picking a single scene from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I made a rule for this post where I could only do one scene per film series. Runners-up for the best scene of the trilogy include the bridge of Khazad-dum sequence, Sam’s “There’s good in this world” speech, and about half the scenes in Return of the King. To anyone who’s ever struggled under the weight of a seemingly insurmountable challenge, this scene is more than just a bunch of crumbling CGI buildings. At long last, after all their toils and travails, Frodo and his companions have succeeded in their quest, and you can feel the overwhelming relief, joy, and exhaustion felt by the Fellowship. And then there’s the moment of realization when Aragorn and those outside the Black Gate realize that Frodo and Sam likely made the ultimate sacrifice. I watched this scene a few days ago while I was bored at work, and I had to stop it because I was actually tearing up and didn’t want my co-workers to think I was a pathetic weirdo with leaky eyeballs. 

The test drive (How to Train Your Dragon) 

The music in this scene soars as high as Toothless the dragon, and that’s a large part of what makes this scene so great. John Powell’s fantastic score proves a worthy complement to the scene’s action. There’s a real sense of danger as both Hiccup and Toothless plummet toward the ground below, but when they pull out of their dive at the last moment and spin headlong through a labyrinth of rock, you can’t help but cheer. 

Yoda lifts the X-Wing out of the swamp, The Empire Strikes Back

There are a number of scenes in the Star Wars trilogy that vie for the honor of most iconic, and you could make a pretty good case for any of them. But this one resonates because Yoda's timeless wisdom. Luke Skywalker watches incredulously as his downed starfighter is raised telekinetically by the diminutive Jedi Master, he mutters that he doesn't believe what he's witnessed. "That," Yoda intones, "is why you fail."

Final scene, Rogue One

Some of the the scenes above elicit feelings of appreciation for the grandeur of nature or the frailty of life. This last scene evoked feelings of OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH THIS IS AWESOME. It's been years since I literally giggled with pure, unadulterated glee in the middle of a movie, but the sight of Darth Vader finally kicking the kind of butt we've been waiting him for to kick for years reduced me into a ten-year-old again. That moment when the red lightsaber cuts through the gloom! The guy trapped on the ceiling! The terror on the Rebels' faces! I have literally watched this scene dozens of times. Pair it with the emotional moments that come before it, and you pretty much have the perfect movie ending. (I say pretty much, because that CGI Princess Leia still weirds me out.)

Opening, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

It's a standard movie trope: A group of space ruffians fight a giant squid monster in the background while a tiny alien tree dances to classic Earth hits in the foreground. Actually, there's nothing about this scene that was expected, which made it so great. There's a surreality to it that comes across as incredibly charming. And how cute is Baby Groot?

My Literary Top Ten

Originally published October 23, 2014.

As a writer, I am indebted to a number of literary influences over the years. These have steered me in the right direction as I embarked on my writing adventures, shaping my formative writing years and giving me something to aspire to. Without further ado, here are the ten books that have had the most impact on me, in no particular order. Sci-fi and fantasy books are well-represented on this list, but there's plenty for everyone:

Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand

This is the true, meticulously researched story of Olympian and World War II veteran Louis Zamperini. I marveled as he survived the downing of his bomber in the Pacific Ocean and the ensuing drifting at sea. I cringed at every new abuse his Japanese captors laid upon him. I thought the book was over when Louis finally came home. But I was wrong: Louis’s arc wasn’t complete until he confronted his tormentors years later and offered his forgiveness.

The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling

I just don’t trust people who are my age and haven’t read Harry Potter. What other defining aspects of your late childhood and adolescence have you willfully deprived yourself of? Sure, it’s a story of good and evil that’s been told a myriad of times before, but it’s a fascinating world inhabited by charming characters whose struggles, despite their sorcerous surroundings, are grounded in the real world. The magic isn’t confined to wands and wizardry; the real magic is in the way you grow to love Harry, Ron, Hermoine, Professor Dumbledore, Sirius Black, and so many others.

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

Sure, it’s a long journey, where sometimes you have to trudge through Tolkien’s cumbersome prose like Frodo and Same slogging through Mordor. But this is definitive fantasy; you can’t like any of the many derivative works—especially the film adaptations, which are some of the greatest movies ever produced by the hands of mortal men—without acknowledging that this is where it all began.

The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson

After I finished reading The Way of Kings, it occurred to me that this is how fantasy is supposed to be. Every fantasy writer should aspire to create a world that simultaneously manages to be this wholly original and yet so compellingly believable. If you’re not enough of a fantasy fan to pick up this hefty tome, just know that Brandon Sanderson knows how to do it right.

The Redwall series, Brian Jacques

My middle school writing was defined by these stories of daring heroism and dastardly villainy. Every story I wrote for years mimicked the Redwall books. Though they start getting formulaic after a while, the series offers a grand window for any young reader into the world of fantasy.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne

When I read this in third grade, it was the most ambitious reading project I’d ever undertaken. But Jules Verne’s classic instilled in me a love of science fiction and fantasy—a love of worlds created by asking what if? and answering the question the only way we know how.

The Star Wars trilogy, Alan Dean Foster, Donald F. Glut, and James Kahn

George Lucas wrote the stories, but he let others handle the novelizations of the movies. You may not even know these books exist, but they do. It’s one thing to hear the clash of lightsabers in a theater, but it’s another thing entirely to hear your favorite moments described with a fresh new voice.

The Book of Mormon

Including this one a list of literary influences might seem like a cop-out, similar to including Jesus on your list of people you’d most like to meet in history. Of course, you say, rolling your eyes. The Book of Mormon hasn’t offered much in the way of writing inspiration, but it has offered me insight into my place in the eternal scheme of things, a gift no other book on this list can begin to match.

Collected works, Dave Barry

It seems a jarring change of tone to follow the Book of Mormon with an author who prides himself on his repertoire of booger jokes, but I owe a lot of laughter to Dave Barry. Many of my early attempts at humor were attempts to imitate Barry’s jokes, as well.

A Walk in the Woods and other books, Bill Bryson

I discovered Bill Bryson later than I did Dave Barry, which was probably for the best. Where Barry is as subtle as a weasel forced down your pants, Bryson’s brand of humor is more understated, woven skillfully alongside astute cultural observations.

Honorable Mentions:

Into Thin Air and Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer

The High King, Lloyd Alexander

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

The Shannara series, Terry Brooks

Heir to the Empire and sequels, Timothy Zahn

Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card

Abandon All Hope: An Open Letter to Xfinity

Originally published June 9, 2017. 

Dearest Xfinity:

Not long ago, as my roommate was moving out, it fell upon me to have the utilities put in my name. My roommate had used your Xfinity Internet services, and he advised me, “Their Internet’s faster than the others’, but Xfinity is the devil.” I chose to give Xfinity the benefit of the doubt, assuming that “the devil” was mere hyperbole, and that your corporate headquarters were not nestled squarely in hell, administered by Satan from an elegant office with a good view of bubbling lava and sinners being flayed alive.

That assumption is now being challenged.

I started my quest for the internet by calling 1-800-XFINITY, where I was informed I would have to make a trip to the local Xfinity office.

And so I arrived at the Xfinity office twenty minutes from my apartment. Having spoken with the Xfinity representative on the phone, I was assured that the people here would give me everything I needed in order to set up my own Internet. Still operating under that naïve belief, I walked in the door and got in line. There I waited for perhaps forty-five minutes behind a queue of doleful folks shuffling along like shackled extras in a low-budget production of Les Miserables.

Eventually, I was called to one of the service stations. As the Xfinity employee there wrote down my information, a distressed-looking woman hovered behind me.

“Can I help you?” my Xfinity employee said to the woman behind me.

“Yes,” said the woman with a frown, “my cable box doesn’t work.”

“You’ll have to get in the back of the line,” said the Xfinity drone.

“I already waited in line today for an hour,” said the woman, struggling to maintain her calm, “and was told the cable box should work. Then I got in line again and they told me someone would come by my house in two weeks. Can I just get a new one now? I’m already here.”

“Get in line again and we’ll take a look at it,” said the Xfinity person.

“Go ahead and help her,” I said to the Xfinity person, mostly because the woman was looking at the Xfinity person as one might regard a burglar rifling through one’s safe deposit box in the middle of the night. If the woman had been exposed to gamma radiation, she would have already turned green, grown in size, and demolished the office.

“No, she needs to get in line,” said the Xfinity person, who finished giving me a packet of equipment and disappeared into the back, possibly to check on the giant cloning facility where they grow and program Xfinity employees.

I left, giving an apologetic glance to the fuming woman. Surely that sorry kind of customer service was a fluke, I thought. At home, I started to set up my Internet and realized Xfinity had not given me a router. After calling the automated helpline several times, I was told to go back to the Xfinity office and pick one up. Because I was about to leave for the Fourth of July holiday, I delayed until the next week, assuring my roommates that soon we would have Internet again and we could go back to our regular routine of streaming Gilmore Girls together while telling people we were actually watching Fast & Furious XVII: The Fast and the Führer-ious (the one where they build time-traveling sports cars to steal Hitler’s gold).

Several days later, I returned to the Xfinity office. This time, there were even more forlorn-looking people in line than there had been the first time—like the waiting room of an oncologist’s office, except without all the rampant optimism. I thought back to Dante’s Inferno and the famous sign over the entrance to hell that reads, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” But surely it wouldn’t be that bad. I’d wait a while, get a router, and go home. Like Hercules, I would brave the underworld and return with my prize.

I waited for about an hour and a half. If I had been a common mayfly, which lives about twenty-four hours, I would have just wasted about a sixteenth of my life in the Xfinity line, and my mayfly girlfriend would have run off with some other mayfly with a bigger thorax.

At last, they called my name. “I’m here to pick up a router and Ethernet cable,” I told the Xfinity employee, who was—to my dismay—the same employee who had reacted so coldly to the woman’s plight a few days earlier. (Or perhaps it was just a clone, and my theory about Xfinity employees being mass-produced somewhere was correct.)

“We’re all out of routers,” said the clone.

“I see,” I replied. Because this was exactly the answer I had been hoping for after waiting in line for 1.5 hours, I had to consider an appropriate response, by which I mean one that would not land me in jail. I asked, “What would you like me to do?”

“Call 1-800-XFINITY,” said the clone, dismissing me.

Imagining the clone burned to ash with lasers from my eyes, I left without another word. On the way home, I called the number.

“Thank you for calling Xfinity,” said the automated voice. “For billing and payment, press 1. For technical help, press 2. For more options, press 3.”

Wondering which button to push to submit a profanity-laden tirade, I pressed 2. A heavily accented voice eventually answered, and I explained my situation, including the long wait at the Xfinity office and my increasingly distant hope of receiving a router.

“I see,” said the customer service representative. “You need a router. Let me see what I can do for you.” After a minute of crackly on-hold music that bore a strange resemblance to early-2000s modem static, she returned. “You can pick one up at your nearest Xfinity office,” she said.

At this point, it was a good thing that thousands of miles and several circles of hell probably separated me from the representative. Speaking slowly, I said, “That’s where I just came from. They were out. And they told me to call you.”

“I see,” said the representative, who, as I was beginning to suspect, was one of the rejects from the latest batch of Xfinity clones, one of those whose growth tube had malfunctioned in mid-production. “Let me put you on hold.”

After a minute so, the line went dead, at which point I called CenturyLink.

I now have several suggestions for you to improve customer service:

First, hire more people to work during peak hours so we don’t have to wait in line for an hour and a half. Surely there are homeless people who will work for minimum wage, especially if all they have to do is tell people you’re out of routers or just can’t help.

Second, set up some kind of system when people check in so we know that at the end of our wait you might actually be able to help.

Third, re-read this letter approximately eighty times. You wasted about four hours of my time—I waited in line, drove so I could wait in line, and waited as I could be placed on hold—so I think it only fair that you spend an equal amount of time engaged in similarly meaningless pursuits. (If you finish reading this letter the specified number of times before the four-hour mark, consider gnawing your toes off. This would not help overall productivity, but it would still be more helpful than the service rendered by most of your employees I have encountered, and it would definitely make me feel better.)

I don't expect a reply, of course—I'm sure your upper management is busy, perhaps engaged in a fiddling competition over somebody's soul in Georgia or something.

Thank you for your time. Don’t forget to block out the next four hours or so. 

Sincerely,

Ryan

Why Trials Don't Have to Get You Down

Originally published August 19, 2016.

Imagine this: you’re giving a presentation in class. Or in front of your clients. Or you're trying to win the affections of that doe-eyed cutie who’s gotten your heart all a-flutter. Whatever the task, it’s crucial that you make a good impression, that you do your best to be witty and charming, or at least avoid sounding like a Porky Pig in the midst of a stroke. You open your mouth to speak . . . and suddenly, your words meet an unyielding wall. You struggle for a moment, trying at first to ease the words through, as though smuggling them past some fleshy blockade, and when that fails you resort to force. Your face scrunches up with the effort, but your mouth and tongue ultimately prove uncooperative. As the shattered fragments of your prepared speech finally eject themselves, piece by piece, from your mouth, you notice people are exchanging uncomfortable glances. Are you having a seizure? Are you reeling from some sort of demonic possession? Are your cybernetic circuits glitching? And how are you going to get through both the immediate difficulties and the ensuing embarrassment? 

No, it’s not any of those things. And as for getting through the immediate complications and deflecting the eventual humiliation, it’s tough. As a foremost expert on trying to be witty and charming while your mouth stalls like an old Buick at an intersection, I know a thing or two about the inevitable frustration.

I stutter. This manifests itself as an inability to get my words out when I want them to come out. It’s hardly a new affliction. The ancient Greek philosopher Demosthenes stuttered. (True story: he kept pebbles in his mouth in order to cure his impediment. Speech therapy has sure come a long way since then.) Bruce Willis, Joe Biden, James Earl Jones, Winston Churchill, George VI of Britain, and a host of other famous people have stuttered at some point. Being among such distinguished company, however, doesn’t exactly make me quiver with unbridled gratitude. 

It began at some point after my birth, as these things so often do. I don’t remember a point in my life where I didn’t stutter, so I sorta assume it was always there. We still don’t know exactly what causes it. A little later in life, when other kids asked me why I talked a little funny, I had several answers, blaming my disfluency on things like early-life alien abduction and severe trauma relating to my potty-training, but I still really don’t know what caused it. I went on an LDS mission, during which I met a self-professed shaman who told me—after she told a story about guiding spirits to the Great Beyond and used some sort of crystal to divine my aura—that some ancestor on my mother’s side had eaten some weird herb, which had consequently caused my disfluency problems. (If that isn't a reason not to eat your vegetables, I don’t know what is. You never know what impediments you may be inflicting upon your hapless progeny.) She was the second of four people on my mission who also tried their hand at addressing my speech problem or seeking to cure me, a group that also included a nice Pentecostal couple who tried speaking in tongues (that’s a trippy experience, if you’ve never heard it for yourself), a Navajo medicine man, and an old LDS guy in my last area. 

So I don’t know its causes. All I know is its effects. All I know is that in stressful situations, my tongue and lips go on strike. (No, I'm not going to give them more paid vacation. They should stop asking.) These stressful situations may include, but are not limited to: job interviews, introductions to new people, speaking in front of crowds, speaking in front of attractive women, or speaking in front of any human being I might conceivably desire to impress. As you can imagine, first dates are stressful. (Actually, “stressful” is only a good word to describe my first dates if it’s also the word you use to describe manned Mars landings.) If I’m allowed to get to know and grow comfortable around a person, my stutter tends to ebb, allowing me some freedom to express myself as I want, but by that time the damage is often already done. Incidentally, if you’re a girl/woman and I’m having trouble speaking to you, take it as a compliment. It means I wouldn't mind having you as my co-pilot on an eternal spaceship of love, if you get my meaning. 

For example, the other other night I was at ward prayer, a time-honored institution among LDS singles’ wards designed, apparently, as a sadistic experiment to observe the the pre-mating rituals of a group of sexually repressed young adults. I spotted a girl I’d seen a few times who had struck my fancy. I initially avoided her, because I wasn’t having a good day as far as fluency goes, and I didn’t want her first impression of me to be of a tongue-tied simpleton. (Sometimes I just charge in and talk to girls, but this one was cute enough that I hoped to postpone a first impression until a night where my vocal faculties were a little more cooperative.) However, the fates conspired, and at one point I ran right into her, face to face. I thought I might escape her notice if I didn’t make eye contact, but she cheerfully waved and introduced herself. “I’m Galadriel,” she said, which is obviously made up for her protection and not her real name, unless her parents were super big Lord of the Rings fans, in which case she deserves your sympathy. 

I opened my mouth to answer Galadriel. Predictably, my name refused to come out. The R sound can be really stubborn sometimes. I briefly considered telling her my name was something a little easier to say, preferably something that started with a nice, easy vowel, like Ichabod. But then I’d have to persuade everyone else to start calling me Ichabod, and if we ever got married or anything, I’d have to perpetuate the lie indefinitely, which would just get awkward. So I stuck with Ryan, which took a few seconds to get out. By this time the typical what’s-wrong-with-him look was beginning to contort Galadriel's pretty face, but she recovered quickly. “So what do you do?” 

Once again, the truth was wedged somewhere midway down my trachea. By the time I managed to say writer, Galadriel was looking at me with a sadly bemused look one usually reserves for a puppy with its head stuck in a fence. At this point, a little alarm in my brain was starting to wail, Abort! Abort! I wanted to get out of there—and maybe try talking to her again next week wearing a fake mustache and goatee. At this point, I could also pretend I was having some sort of medical emergency. There were also candles nearby in case I wanted to figure out some way to make it look like a spontaneous combustion. But I was committed, hesitant to light myself on fire, and not very good at faking a heart attack, so I blundered on. Eventually, the conversation ended, Galadriel waved and moved on to talk to somebody else, and I retreated. 

So that’s basically how things are a lot of the time.

Next, let’s get a couple of things straight. First, we do not use the word disability. It’s an inconvenience, an annoyance. Next, if you finish my sentences, I will probably fantasize about stabbing you through the eyeball with a salad fork, or whatever sharp implement happens to be within range. I may cover my annoyance and refrain from causing you any injury, but don’t think you’ve escaped my mental wrath. Finishing a stutter’s sentences deprives him of what little dignity he can manage. Let me do—

do—

do—

—it on my own.

See? You wanted to finish my sentences. You're probably wondering if you've ever been among those to rouse my fury in the past. You may have been. But it's okay. I am merciful, and so I will spare your eyeballs. For now. 

Also, do not exclude me from difficult situations just because you’re worried I might be afraid. I speak in church, I give presentations at work, and I teach Sunday School. My mouth may be afraid of those situations, but I’m not. And whatever you do, do not condescend. I can’t tell you how many well-meaning folks—especially the elders’ quorum president types—have treated me like a charity project of theirs, as though befriending the poor stuttering kid would help them cross off an item on their weekly benevolence checklist. I don’t need your pity. Your friendship is always welcome, but I don’t want it because you’re trying to score some compassion points with the Man Upstairs. 

Living with this . . . ahem, inconvenience . . . can be a little annoying. In addition to my difficulty in the aforementioned situations, it tends to lead to some mild to moderate self-doubt, especially when the women I fancy tend to pass over me in favor of guys who sound a little more like Ryan Gosling and a little less like a video you’re trying to watch on your grandmother’s dial-up Internet. 

And it was tough to be a missionary, believe me. How are you supposed to get out and there and boldly declare glad tidings of great joy when your vocal apparatus behaves a little like the Millennium Falcon with a broken hyperdrive? 

I’d be lying if I said that I never let it get me down. There have been many nights where I’ve punched my pillow like it was the 'roided-up Russian baddie from Rocky IV, pummeling it with all my fury in my desperate need to take my frustrations out on something. I’ve sat in my car and screamed with impotent rage; I’ve wept, wondering what I did to earn this trial. On those countless nights I’ve petitioned God for relief, only to receive apparent silence from the heavens. 

And that’s the end. My life sucks. 

No, I’m just kidding. My life is actually quite wonderful. There are billions of people out there who wish they could live as a stutterer with very few other serious issues in life. So I’m grateful for that. I could be fleeing from my life in the middle of war zone, sleeping on the streets and scavenging from dumpsters, or foraging for meager water in the middle of some desolate village. Or I could be stuck in a thousand less dramatic predicaments, like those poor souls whose job it is to clean up all the confetti in the stadium after a Super Bowl. The point is, I’m doing fine.

Part of that comes from the slow realization of the purpose behind the pain. I’ve gradually seen some of the good that comes from afflictions—avenues in life I’ve taken because of my difficulties, as well as lessons I’ve learned.

About five years ago, I wrote an article while working for the LDS magazine Ensign in which I detailed my struggle with a stutter and related some of the lessons I’ve learned. (You can read it here. The online version doesn't show the visuals, so I included that below.) Because it was in the LDS Church’s official publication and had to therefore appeal to a wide range of people, I had to strip the article of the personality with which I usually try to write. The resulting article is meant to score high on the inspiration scale but is about as entertaining as a hydrogen bomb’s instruction manual. (C'est la vie, I guess.) There was also the matter of length. An Ensign article can only be so long. (I did, however, manage to sneak the symbol of Star Wars’ Rebel Alliance into the Ensign, which I count among my proudest achievements.) 

That was me five or six years ago. I've aged well. 

The full article gets into a lot more depth, but the essence of the lesson I learned goes like this: sometimes God doesn’t release you from your trials. Instead of removing the burden, He strengthens the back that bears them, as the title of the article so pithily declares. I believe our purpose on Earth is to learn all we can so we can be entrusted with much greater blessings later, and only God knows exactly where to break us so he can reconstruct us into something new and improved. He strikes us right at the fault lines of the soul, knowing that when we rebuild with His help, we become greater than we ever were.

Not only that, but sometimes challenges open the doors to other opportunities. I don’t know I would have ever started to write if I never stuttered. When I was a kid, I realized I couldn’t communicate with my mouth as well as I wanted, so I poured my heart into using the written word to convey my feelings. These days, I’m no Shakespeare—I’m not even a J. K. Rowling—but I feel I owe what skills I have to my early frustrations with my speech.

Heck, if I hadn’t stuttered, maybe I would have played sports or something, and maybe I would have been a starting quarterback with dreams of playing college and maybe pro football, and then during my senior homecoming game I might have torn my Achilles tendon and dashed all of my future hopes, and then my high school sweetheart and I would have gotten married, but I would become bitter because of my lost dreams, and she and I would grow distant, and eventually we’d separate and I’d be an old man alone who dreamed all day of his high school greatness and told everyone within earshot of how good I used to be, and sometimes I’d just sit in the dark with my high school trophies and softly sob to myself. 

(Whoa. If you think about it, stuttering really helped me dodge a bullet there.) 

But seriously, there are plus sides to any inconvenience we face in this life. I had a religion teacher in college who suggested that for most of us, if we put all of our challenges into a hat and passed the hat around the room, we’d probably want to take back the original challenges God had assigned to us rather than risk taking on some unknown trials. I believe He knows exactly what it takes for each of us to attain our fullest potential, and our individually tailored challenges are proof of that. 

Even without a religious perspective, your struggles have benefits. You become a stronger person. You become more compassionate. (I have my moments, I suppose.) You become more conscious of others’ struggles, and—ideally—you seek to help them as well. 

Does stuttering kinda suck sometimes? Absolutely. Would I trade it away if I had the chance? Um, yes. Definitely. But am I grateful, in my own way, for my challenges? Yes. I am who I am today because of them, and being who I am today works for me.