Thinking About Mary (Sue) on Christmas

The idea that Rey is a Mary Sue is so ridiculous no one should even acknowledge it but what the hey? It's Christmas.  Let's go a little nuts and then roast those nuts over an open fire.  (The Force Awakens spoilers ahead, obviously)  You think Rey doesn't have any flaws?  I'll tell you who doesn't have any flaws.  Poe Dameron doesn't have any flaws.  Poe is a flawless human being if not a divine celestial entity who has chosen to walk among mortals.  He's the best pilot there is and he makes cool jokes in stressful situations and his best friend is an adorable robot.  That is, until he becomes best friends with a guy who fought for the other guy 20 seconds ago and then it's the Brotherhood of the Space Traveling Jacket up in here.  What?  Rey didn't train enough?  It's the Force, not calculus.  How much does she really need to study?  It's not trigonometry, it's a magical space do-what-I-want spirit god.

The Five Stages of Wookieepedia

One of the great things about Star Wars is the massive amount of imagination that went in to the even larger universe George Lucas created.  The world is huge and incredibly detailed.  If you paused one of the movies at any random point and threw a Nerf suction cup dart at the screen, anything you hit probably has a larger backstory than if you did the same thing with Lincoln. Fortunately there's a place you can go if curiosity gets the better of you and it's called Wookieepedia.

The Ewok in the corner is the inspiration for three different
Evan Peters characters on American Horror Story.

Curiosity

The time has come for an original trilogy rewatch.  You hit play on A New Hope.  By the time the credits roll on Return of the Jedi you've built up a million questions.  What sort of adventures did Han and Lando get up to back in the day?  Why was Leia a princess if she was adopted by Senator Organa in Revenge of the Sith?  Are rancors native to Tatooine or did Jabba have it shipped in?  Is Lobot the coolest or is Lobot the coolest?  Did they ever explain why Obi-Wan didn't recognize the droids?  Aren't parsecs a measure of distance?  Where did I lose the non-obsessive type readers? So you Google Han Solo and Wookieepedia arrives at the top of the screen, gleaming with a divine light like a guardian angel that knows a whole lot about Star Wars.

Discovery

At first you're disappointed, there's not much there you didn't already know.  Then you remember they cleaned the extended universe slate a little after they announced The Force Awakens.  You go the the top of the page and click the Legends tab.  This is the good stuff even if it didn't happen somehow more than your standard fictional events.  Apparently Lando and Han first met when Lando was looking for a pilot and found Han at the end of Boba Fett's blaster.  Leia's mother and Senator Bail Organa's wife was Queen Breha of Alderaan.  Rancors are native to a planet called Dathomir.  Lobot is the coolest.  They did not; get over it.  Yes, either Han was spewing bull about the speed of his ship or there's some other bull related explanation.  Probably around "rancor."

Excess

That's just the tip of the iceberg, or the mouth of the Sarlacc if you will.  Wookieepedia, especially the old school pre-Abrams stuff, goes so much deeper.  Leia married Han of course and they had three children, one of whom turned to the dark side and it wasn't the one named Anakin.  Luke married a reformed Sith assassin named Mara Jade and had a son who adopted an evil bug creature as a pet that tried to turn him against his parents.  All of these characters who have so far not been in any movies and basically don't exist in the Star Wars universe have a novella's worth of biography.

Fatigue

Eventually it all becomes too much.  No matter how curious you are about Luke Skywalker's non-incestuous romantic life no Wiki page is well written enough to hold interest for 30,000 words with glitchy ads that slow everything down.  And forget about opening multiple tabs.  And there's a Swarm War?  You don't care about the Swarm War.  No one cares about the Swarm War.  And why does Lando have to share the "cape" page with Count Dooku?  Lando's cape should get its own page. None of this makes sense.  Do you even like Star Wars?

Recovery

The good news is that you absolutely still like Star Wars.  Wookieepedia fatigue is only temporary. The original trilogy still and always will hold up and the prequels are what they are.
Depending on your age, you either never liked them or you have an unshakable nostalgic appreciation for them despite their flaws.  The even better news is that the universe is about to get a lot bigger and you won't need Wookieepedia to know how.

Everything Else That's Happening on December 18th

The big day is almost here.  It's so close you can almost taste it.  The most anticipated movie of all time except for that other one is coming.  At this point it's just a game of waiting and yelling "I'm already going to see it!" whenever you reach your limit of tolerable promotion, at which point the meter resets.  However, Star Wars: The Force Awakens isn't the only exciting thing that's happening on that day.  There's a lot more taking place on December 18th, some of which is pretty niche but still very meaningful for some people.  It definitely kind of means something to me and like three other people.

'Tell Me I'm Pretty'

You may recognize the name Cage the Elephant from their 2008 hit song "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked," but they're no one hit wonder.  What they are is my favorite band in the world.  Their entire self-titled album was a fantastic debut that established CtE as one of rock's greatest and most actually rock and roll bands.  Their next two albums were even better with the band coming into their own as a fuzzy, melodic, vaguely vintage force of nature.  Thank You, Happy Birthday is my personal favorite.  I've listened to more times than I could count, each time it's more beautiful than the last.  On the 18th they're releasing Tell Me I'm Pretty with producer Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys.  Auerbach seems to be bringing his blunt force blues to the band's neo-grunge sound.  Together they promise something extraordinary.

The End of 'The Soup'

There was a brief time in my young life when I watched a lot of E! for no respectable reason.  I never saw anything good with one exception.  When I happened upon The Soup I was surprised to find that it was sharp and hilarious and that it could get away with so relentlessly mocking everything else on the channel.  Every time I've seen it since I've been pleasantly surprised that it still exists.  It's a simple set up, just comedian Joel McHale standing in front of a green screen with a TV set over his shoulder.  McHale sets up a clip, the clip shows, then he makes the punchlines.  It couldn't be less complicated which is why it's been done over and over again but never as well as The Soup.  No one else could balance sardonic bite with charmingly under-produced silliness as well as McHale.  On the 18th it all goes away.  All of it.  Joel McHale will spend the rest of his existence in a storage locker quipping at reality shows that only exist in his head.

'Sisters'

If Sisters weren't the only other movie coming out the same day as the biggest movie of the decade it would be a massive deal.  It stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, two of the biggest names in comedy who just happen to have amazing chemistry together.  It's also written by a veteran rock star of the Saturday Night Live writer's room, Paula Pell.  That name probably doesn't mean much to you, but it might if you check out some of her favorite sketches that she shared with Vulture and even more so after Sisters.  Look, you're going to the movie theater anyway.  If you have the time and resources I highly recommend checking it out.

Three Things That Should Be In a Future 'Spider-Man' Movie

Just over a week ago the first trailer for the highly anticipated Captain America: Civil War was released.  One of the interesting things about this movie is that it promises not just nearly every hero already established in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but also introduces two high profile characters into that world: Black Panther and Spider-Man.  Of the two, Black Panther is the only one to appear in the trailer and he makes quite an impressive appearance.  However, we still haven't seen the new Spider-Man and there's a lot we don't know about him.  Although Spider-Man has already appeared in five movies there's also a few things from his history that we've never seen on the big screen.  Hopefully these things will show up when Spidey 3.0 gets his own movie in 2017.

Eating With a Mask On

Even friendly neighborhood Spider-People have to eat some time.  They also have to protect their identity so that their enemies don't come after their loved ones.  This presents a problem.  Fortunately it has a simple solution.  Spider-Man can just pull the bottom of his mask up, exposing the bottom half of his face and keeping the rest of his head covered.  Ever the consummate New Yorker, Spider-Man has been known to frequent the city's many illustrious street vendors in between stopping crimes.  Whenever he gets a craving Peter just pulls up his mask and chows down.  It's a nice way of humanizing the character and showing how comfortable he is in costume, while allowing a moment of levity in his famously hectic life.

"Face it, Tiger"

In the 50+ years of Spider-Man's history, there are two lines that every fan knows by heart: "with great power comes great responsibility" and "face it Tiger, you just hit the jackpot."  The former has been quoted incessantly but the latter has never been directly replicated.  It occurs when Peter meets his future wife Mary Jane Watson for the first time after a series of Home Improvement style facial concealments.  Peter previously had no interest in Mary Jane but his Aunt May set up a blind date anyway.  An unsuspecting Peter opened the door to get away at the same time she arrived.  Mary Jane called Peter "Tiger" a few times in the first three Spider-Man movies but the moment couldn't exactly be replicated because they knew each other their entire lives and Mary Jane doesn't appear at all in the most recent two Spider-Man movies.  Maybe there'll be a place in the next movie to pay homage to one of the most iconic moments in a long line of iconic moments.

A Good, Old Fashioned Team-Up

Spider-Man wasn't really a part of a team until the early 00's but he's always been the king of the one-and-done superhero team-up.  Most of Marvel's heroes live in New York but, as previously mentioned, none of them identify with the city as strongly as Spider-Man does.  He spends most of his time swinging around on patrol so he has the best chance of coincidentally being there whenever something goes down.  All throughout Spider-Man's history he's been known to happen upon another superhero while innocently swinging through the city.  He's known to banter with his villains during their fights but he really shines when he gets to josh around with someone who's more or less on his side.  Maybe now that he's joining a universe with a wealth of other heroes he'll finally get a chance to have a team-up in live action.