Hello and good day to you loyal blog readers. It is time for me to start the thing that I am starting so let’s start.
Thursday night was a great night. I finally saw The Force Awakens and it was good. I may even venture to say I thought it was great. I went to see the movie again on Friday so obviously I didn’t think the movie was BAD, but I did go see The Phantom Menace something line nine times in the theater, so you may find my judgement a little suspect, but there were circumstances of opportunity for Episode I that haven’t been open, at least to me, since.
I won’t spoil any plot points from the movie in case either of my regular readers hasn’t seen it yet. I will only speak of it in general terms. First off, I love the new characters. Finn, Rey and Poe Damaron are a lot more dynamic and likable than anyone from the prequel trilogy and BB-8 is adorable. I don’t know if it’s just coincidence, but BB in French sounds like “bébé” which is the word for baby and at times he acts just like a toddler (but not in a groan-inducing way).
To be fair, the plot is anything but original. The basic plot reads a lot like A New Hope with a little Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi thrown in for good measure. But the way it’s executed, I didn’t feel like I was just watching a fancier version of an old movie. I could have lived with the whole rathtar sequence being excised from the movie as it doesn’t truly serve the plot, but that’s my biggest complaint.
Unlike every other movie, there were no new themes from the score that I found truly memorable after two viewings. I’ll need to hear more of it to see if there’s something I’m overlooking.
To offer a differing viewpoint, my friend Frank didn’t enjoy the movie as much as I did. In fact, he nearly walked out on it at one point. He was really upset. His qualms have to do with an event that happens in the movie so I can’t go into detail on why he didn’t like it. This is just proof that not everyone loved the movie.
Okay, other than that, I can now say I’m finished with my Christmas shopping…mostly. I may pick up a few extra trinkets next week for the games at a late Christmas party, but the bulk is bought. Now I just have to wrap them all. Praise be to the fellow who came up with gift bags and those fold-out gift boxes. They save a LOT of time.
After a few more games played under my belt, I think I’m ready to say that Lords of Waterdeep is my favorite game of the year…or did I say that last week already? I really dig it. If I had to rank my top ten games as of this moment it would be:
10 – Imperial Assault
9 – Firefly: The Game
8 – Medieval Academy
7 – Pandemic: The Cure
6 – Elder Sign
5 – King of Tokyo
4 – Dice Town
3 – Takenoko
2 – Dark Gothic
1 – Lords of Waterdeep
Firefly and Imperial Assault would be higher on my list if I had a group to play them with on a regular basis. The same goes for Mice and Mystics and Krosmaster Arena which didn’t make the list at all. They’re just not the type of games I think would go over well with my mom and niece.
I think that’s everything for this week. Merry Christmas everybody! We’ll talk again next Monday.