Rogue One: A Star Wars Story; A Parent Review

20 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by in motherhood

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A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

“Wait, why aren’t there more yellow words?” Lily whispered to me as we sat in the theater on one of our days off from school. This Star Wars movie was starting differently than all the others; there wasn’t an explanation of the story’s setting scrolling up the screen as in past Star Wars movies. I had been hesitant to bring my daughters to this movie, since the reviews said it was more warlike than the previous movies. But let’s be honest; the other movies had plenty of lasers from blasters firing across the screen. I still can’t believe I let Lily and Emmy watch Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin Skywalker transforms into Darth Vader. There is definitely a lot of darkness in that movie. So in then end, I took them to see Rogue One: A Star Wars Story on our day off from school.

It was very interesting to this lifelong Star Wars fan to get my daughters’ perspective about Rogue One. WARNING: Some of our conversation includes SPOILERS!

The beginning of the story begins when Jyn Ers0 is a little girl. It is obvious from the beginning that her family has a secret. Barely ten minutes into the movie, Jyn becomes motherless. Her father is taken away by the bad guys and Jyn is left with a gruff caregiver. We don’t really know what happens to Jyn at this point, and the next time we see her is in prison. The movie bounced around from setting to setting in the beginning, and it made for a very confusing plot at first.

Lily really wanted to see more of a backstory on Jyn and wanted to know more about her as a little girl. Although this would have made the movie much too long, in a way I agree with Lily. Jyn’s childhood is a mystery, and if we knew more about her character, her actions as an adult would be even more heroic.

Emmy, on the other hand, wanted to see more of something entirely different! To Emmy, Star Wars means light sabers, and there was not enough “swordplay” for Emmy. The fact that all the Jedis were dead or in hiding at this point in the Star Wars saga didn’t convince her about the lack of lightsabers.

At the end of the movie, (this really is a spoiler!) the Death Star is destroying the base that the rebels have overtaken. Our two main characters are swept up in a fiery golden glow. When I was lamenting that they had died, Emmy said, “What? I thought that was love!” No, honey, that Death Star ruined any chance of love!

Some people have said they they liked this movie more than The Force Awakens. Personally, I really liked both movies, but each movie had a different vibe. Are you a Star Wars fan? What do you think?

 

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Dirty Laundry

05 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by in Miscellaneous

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Have you seen this “life lesson” floating around on Facebook? A young wife keeps commenting about her neighbor’s dirty laundry–literally. The neighbor is constantly hanging up dingy sheets on the clothesline to dry. The wife wonders why the neighbor can’t seem to learn how to get her laundry clean, until her husband washes the window and voila! The neighbor’s sheets become white and clean. All along it was the windows that were filthy dirty. See what happened there? The wife was being so judgmental about the neighbor’s laundry when she should have been cleaning up her own house.

Every time I read that story (a lot of my Facebook friends apparently think it’s a good lesson) I think about my dirty windows–literally. On sunny days in November, I kept thinking I should wash my windows, especially the bay windows in front of the house along with my kitchen windows. These are the windows we look out of most frequently, and they are very dingy! November was such a beautiful month this year; warm and sunny. It was a very unusual November for Chicago, and it would have been the perfect time to wash my windows.

covered-bridge

And yet, between Lily’s birthday and Thanksgiving, November flew by. It’s December already. The first couple days of December were cold, but still fall-like. Yesterday, however, the view out my windows changed drastically.

snow

And I thought to myself, a bit belatedly, CRAP. I guess I won’t be washing these windows this week. There’s really no lesson here, unless it’s about my own laziness. I should have been “making hay while the sun shines” or something like that. The best I can hope for now is that we have a mild, sunny day in December. Who knows? It might happen. Otherwise my dingy windows will have to wait ’til Spring.

Just don’t judge me by my dirty windows, and I won’t judge you by the way you wash your sheets!

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