A Treatise on the Plausibility of Hyperspace Ramming

Certainly not a visual metaphor for Star Wars fandom.

I haven't written for this blog in a while, so I thought I would start with something easy and uncontentious: the believability of hyperspace ramming in The Last Jedi, of course.

P.S. Spoilers for TLJ!

P.P.S. Usually I try to write about nerdy stuff in a way that is accessible to lay persons. A little more background knowledge is assumed here, since the people I am trying to persuade are mostly people who have higher-than-average familiarity with the Star Wars fictional universe.


Preamble

I was surprised by the intensity with which many Star Wars viewers disliked the hyperspace ramming sequence. Personally, I found it a great visual and emotional crescendo for the film. The scene is inscribed, awesomely, on my memory.

As I watched I also wondered to myself, briefly, “Does this make sense?” Pretty quickly, I thought of a few ways in which hyperspace collisions might be fit into Star Wars lore, and I moved on. I wasn't sure that in a protracted debate with an avid Star Wars nerd (I myself am a relatively casual Star Wars nerd) I could prove that this mechanic perfectly fit into the Star Wars universe, but I was able to generate a couple of explanations easily enough to maintain my suspension of disbelief.

So, my goal here isn't to prove that if this sequence did break your suspension of disbelief that you are wrong. What I do want to show is that people who enjoyed The Last Jedi, or indeed enjoyed this scene, are also not wrong to have enjoyed it. It is not necessary to turn one's brain off, or to have total disregard for the continuity of the Star Wars universe, to like The Last Jedi.

I could accept the criticism that Holdo’s ramming attack should have been prefigured earlier in the film, in the manner of Chekov’s gun, though I was not myself especially bothered by the lack of setup. But it is another thing to say that the scene absolutely and transparently violates Star Wars lore.

And I'm still not claiming that in protracted debate with someone who knows more about Star Wars lore than I do, I wouldn't be convinced that hyperspace ramming doesn't make sense. But I don't think that movies have to absolutely, irrefutably make sense in order to function as works of art or entertainment; they only have to make enough sense to feel so plausible as not to shatter the viewer's suspension of disbelief, and I do think that plausible reasons can be given to support the occurrence of a hyperspace collision in The Last Jedi.


Two Arguments

I take it that there are, broadly, two reasons why fans of Star Wars didn't find the ramming scene to be believable. (1) If hyperspace ramming worked, we would have seen a lot more of it in the previous Star Wars films, because it would have been a useful tactical technique. (2) Hyperspace ramming is not possible, because the mechanics of hyperspace do not permit collisions between spaceships. I'll tackle these in the order I just presented them. What I'll argue is that: (1) It is possible to think of reasons why we wouldn't have seen much hyperspace ramming previously; (2) There are some reasons to believe that hyperspace ramming is possible, given how hyperspace seems to works in Star Wars.


1. Why Didn't We See Hyperspace Ramming in the Previous Films?

(A) Off-Screen Action – The first point I'd like to make is that there could have been hyperspace collisions, deliberate or otherwise, occurring concurrent with the plots of the original trilogy and prequels, with that action simply happening off camera. This makes sense from a film-making perspective, because space battles generally focus on the actions of the protagonists, who are unlikely to commit kamikaze mid-film. It could also be relevant that depicting ships shooting at each other in the background of battles is probably easier than clearly depicting ships make hyperspace jumps into each other. If a ship in the background of the battle for Naboo had done what Holdo did with the Raddus in The Last Jedi it might have been hard to tell why several ships exploded. On the other hand, Stars Wars viewers are used to seeing ships shoot at each other and can easily apprehend what is happening. So, hyperspace ramming isn't generally something a protagonist does, while it also isn't the easiest thing to depict in the background of a space battle with ancillary characters.

Nothing forces us, then, to believe that hyperspace ramming didn't occur off-screen during the space battles shown in Star Wars. For that matter, entire strategic actions could have occurred centered around hyperspace-ramming that simply weren't part of the main plot. For all we know, the Rebel Alliance did hyper-jump a captured Lucrehulk into an Executor dreadnaught at some point. Just because something isn't explicitly mentioned or depicted in a narrative doesn't mean it never happens in that fictional universe.

However, there are further reasons to think, not just that ramming might have occurred without our seeing it, but that it would have been rare, perhaps to the point of negligibility, which further explains why it did not show up in the earlier movies.

(B) Poor Use of Resources – Obviously, hyperspace-ramming as depicted in The Last Jedi can be very effective. But you're paying for it not just in the cost of the spaceship sacrificed, but it in the cost of its replacement ships, or with all the future utility you lose if you do not replace it.

For the Empire, it would not normally have made sense to sacrifice a ship to achieve the destructive potential of hyperspace-ramming, since the Empire usually possessed overwhelming firepower anyway. Why pay the cost of a lost ship when you can just use the ship's normal combat-systems and keep the vessel to use again?

For the rebel alliance, it would be reasonable to assume that each ship was precious. Given that they were underfunded compared to their enemy, the Galactic Empire, paying to replace a ship would have cost them a greater percentage of their resources and would put them at a further disadvantage in the long run.

That's not to say that it would never happen, but under most circumstances it would be markedly more economical to use the ship in its intended combat capacity for many years than to spend its whole cost at once for short-term gains.

(C) Personnel Loss – An additional cost to FTL (faster-than-light) kamikaze is that, if it were used spontaneously during normal combat, the entire crew complement would be lost along with their ship. If the hyperspace ram were planned in advance, the crew could be evacuated, but if the decision were made mid-battle, it would result in the loss of the whole crew. Ramming might still be used if it became clear that the ship would be destroyed in combat regardless. However, there would probably be limited time between the direness of the situation becoming apparent and the ship's actual destruction, leaving limited opportunity to make the decision to sacrifice all of its personnel and hardware. The ship might well be lost more quickly than that decision could be finalized.

(D) People Don't Like to Die – It would be challenging to order somebody who doesn't want to sacrifice themself to perform a hyperspace ram, especially if they are left alone in a ship to do it (thereby minimizing personnel loss). After all, the normal purpose of a hyperdrive is to take the pilot instantly wherever they want to go. It would be easy for the pilot to warp away into the farthest reaches of space, rather than fulfill their mission. At the same time, threatening the pilot with death for dereliction would be hollow, given the nature of the command. A pilot could be threatened with torture or imprisonment if they are caught after going AWOL, but I suspect that many people would still take possible torture over certain death.

That's not to say it would be impossible to find volunteers, especially in organizations like the Rebel Alliance, whose participants are motivated more by ideology than by fear or material reward. However, the Alliance would also have strong countervailing reasons to make minimal use of hyperspace-ramming because of its relatively limited resources and personnel, as discussed above.

We might imagine that a fighter pilot in mortal danger would decide that if death were inevitable, they might as well go out on their own terms and do more damage to their enemy, rather than be shot down. I suspect, though, that in many cases it would be hard to convince somebody that there really is no way out of death. Most people, even in dire situations, seem hard-wired by evolution to keep searching for a way out until the very point of destruction, and a space battle is probably not the easiest place to have a philosophical discussion about the inevitability of death.

(E) Mass Ratios – Here I'm getting (more) speculative, but it makes sense that only certain rammer-rammee combinations would be strategically sensible. My assumption is that hyperspace-ramming doesn't work fundamentally differently from sub-light ramming. Basically, it involves the transfer of kinetic energy, just like a bullet or cannonball. In fact, I suspect this would be even more so with FTL ramming than normal ramming, because such a high percentage of the destructive energy of hyperspace-ramming would come from the velocity of the ramming vessel rather than the ignition of explosive materials stored on the ramming vessel.

Smaller objects, traveling at similar velocities, carry less kinetic energy. For example, if a cannonball and a bullet strike an object at the same velocity, the cannonball will do more damage. So, if you crashed an A-wing into the First Order's Supremacy at lightspeed, it would presumably do some damage, but not nearly as much as a large capital ship like the Raddus. You could crash a fleet of A-wings into it, and maybe do significant damage, but then you've lost a fleet of A-wings. This reinforces the above point that hyperspace-ramming is inefficient economically, since you either have to sacrifice a large ship, or a large number of small ships, in order to take down a sizable target.

Yet, the target has to be a powerful enough threat that it cannot be eliminated by the same large asset(s) using conventional means. For example, If you wanted to take out an Imperial-class star destroyer, you would only ram if your ship were sizable enough to transfer adequate kinetic energy through ramming, but not large or powerful enough to survive a conventional firefight.

So, hyperspace-ramming would usually make sense only when it involves a moderately smaller ship jumping into a moderately larger ship. You wouldn't see an X-wing hyper-ram the Death Star, because it wouldn't do enough damage to be worth the resources lost. You wouldn't see a Mon Calamari cruiser jump into a Star Destroyer, because the two are relatively evenly matched in conventional firepower. So, another reason we could expect hyperspace-ramming to be rare is that there is a limited range of ship-to-ship matchups where it really makes sense.

(F) Range and Vulnerability – It may be that hyperspace-ramming must be initiated from, cosmologically speaking, fairly short distances. The only time we see the maneuver being executed, by Holdo with the Raddus, the ship enters hyperspace within conventional turbo-laser range, and it strikes its target just as it is entering hyperspace.

This fits with other events in Star Wars; in The Force Awakens, it is regarded as risky for Han Solo to make a precise jump with the Millenium Falcon, exiting hyperspace between Starkiller's shields and its planetary surface. And this may not actually be a tiny target. If Rogue One is any indicator, planetary shields sit high above the surface, probably above the atmosphere. In fact, we could reasonably expect this to be the case, since it would be problematic to put a planet-wide force field in the middle of the atmosphere, where it could interfere with the planet's weather and ecology by blocking the passage of atmospheric particles.

So, if precise hyperspace exits are very difficult to pull off, this means that it would be difficult to aim a hyper-ramming ship from a great distance. It might be easier, on the other hand, to line up the shot so that the target is struck just as the rammer enters hyperspace. This means that ramming attacks would normally be initiated from a zone in which the target is able to fire on the rammer as it lines up its shot, or where the target's supporting fleet is able to do so. In fact, in The Last Jedi, it is explicitly a matter of the General Hux's arrogance that Holdo is able to enter hyperspace. Hux dismisses the threat of the Raddus, smirks, and tells his crew to ignore it. If Hux and his crew had responded properly, the threat posed by Holdo's ramming attack might have been neutralized before it began.

With that in mind, hyperspace ramming could have been very rare because it was easy for a competent crew to defend itself against this kind of assault. If ramming ships needed to be within range of conventional weapons, and if it would only be used against a target that conventionally outclassed the ramming vessel, then the target of the ramming maneuver would actually have a decent chance of destroying its attacker.

(G) The Death Star – We might wonder specifically why the Rebel Alliance didn't use a large ship, such as a Mon Calamari cruiser, to hyper-ram the Death Star when it threatened their base on Yavin. This seems like an ideal ramming scenario. Since the Rebel Alliance was facing extinction, sacrificing one capital ship, or even several capital ships, to protect itself doesn't seem unreasonable.

One possible explanation is that the Death Star was too massive to be destroyed by a Mon Calamari cruiser. The radius of the Death Star was approximately 114 times the length of the larger Mon Calamari cruisers. This is roughly the same scale of difference as between an X-wing and an Imperial II star destroyer.[1] But, in fact, because volume and mass increase exponentially with the dimensions of an object,[2] the difference in mass between an X-wing and an Imperial II would be far less than the difference between a Mon Calamari MC80 and the Death Star. If we made the assumption that the X-wing is too small to be used effectively as an FTL-rammer against a star destroyer, then it would certainly follow than an MC80 would be ineffective against the Death Star.

It's also worth mentioning that, if my speculation about the need to make a close approach for hyperspace-ramming turned out to be correct, the Death Star would have had an opportunity to destroy any approaching ship with its superlaser long before the rebels lined up their attack; this doesn't even take into account the support fleet of star destroyers around the battle station. This is another reason that hyper-ramming the Death Star might not have been the preferred tactic.

And, integrally to the plot of A New Hope, the Rebel Alliance did have another option...the one they successfully executed when Luke destroyed the Death Star by firing down its exhaust shaft. As far as we know, the alliance had a cadre of Mon Calamari cruisers lined up to make a Light Brigade-esque suicide run against the Death Star if the first plan failed. However, the protagonist was successful.

(H) The Raddus's Support Fleet – Maybe it's a little harder to explain why the smaller ships in the Resistance fleet, which accompanied the Raddus in The Last Jedi, and which were destroyed one by one, did not turn around and ram the Supremacy much earlier in the film. This seems like another optimal time to implement hyperspace ramming, since the captains of those vessels were certainly going to die anyway. Moreover, the destruction of the support ships was not sudden and would have allowed time to prepare materially and psychologically, and the size difference between the support frigates and the Supremacy might not have been so great as to prevent significant damage being done by a hyperspace ram.

I think there are a few reasonable possibilities. One is that the ships were not in fact massive enough to do serious damage. Another is that it was assumed they would fail, since the First Order would have had time to fire on them as they were preparing to jump to lightspeed; after all, it was only the arrogance and incompetence of the First Order commanders that allowed Holdo's ramming attack to be successful.

Still why not try? If the ships were going to be obliterated anyway, they might as well have attempted a ramming run, even with a very low chance of success. The last plausible reason I'll suggest is that nobody thought of it...because it was a very unusual maneuver for all of the reasons I've discussed above, and everyone involved was under great duress. I think we could even reasonably infer that Holdo didn't really know whether her attack would work; it was a last-ditch move, thought of under desperate circumstances.

(I) Forward and In Review – What I've argued so far is that hyperspace ramming could have occurred in the Star Wars universe previous to the destruction of the Raddus, but that it would not necessarily have occurred frequently enough to show up in the narratives of the previous films. This doesn't strike me as a particularly odd argument. Lots of things presumably happen in fictional universes that don't crop up during the associated narratives. Usually there are extra-fictional reasons why certain things don't show up in the narratives proper. Why don't we ever see the hobbits use the bathroom in The Lord of the Rings? The author decided it wasn't relevant to the plot. Why don't we see Darth Vader force-throw objects at Obi-Wan when they duel in A New Hope? Presumably because the filmmakers hadn't thought of that force power yet. Some of this can be retroactively explained; we might say that Obi-Wan would have been able to deflect thrown objects, while Luke lacked the skill to do so, and Vader knew it. But it just isn't that unusual for a series of books or films to gradually incorporate new in-universe mechanics and possibilities with the assumption that they did occur in-universe before, but did not occur on-page or on-screen.

The argument I'll be approaching in the next section concerns the possibility of hyperspace ramming. It could be argued, not just that hyperspace ramming is unprecedented in the Star Wars, but that it would be impossible given how FTL travel is supposed to work in that universe. I will try to reply to this kind of argument, showing that we could reasonably accept hyperspace ramming as possible in Star Wars.


2. Is Hyperspace Ramming Possible?

(A) Concerning Material from Non-Film Sources – In this half, I will be drawing more on information from Wookiepedia, which is itself drawn from sources other than the full-length movies. I think it's worth pointing out that in the novelization of The Last Jedi, Holdo's ramming attack is explained by the Raddus's special experimental shields. Most of the arguments for the impossibility of hyperspace ramming are likewise based on material outside of the Star Wars feature films. I could easily accept that the film The Last Jedi should not depend on its novelization for its plot to make sense, but then by the same standard, evidence from outside the films against the possibility of hyperspace ramming should not seriously be considered. That is, if we start arguing against the possibility of hyperspace ramming based on outside texts, the use of external texts is a two-way street, and we would also need to accept the relevance of The Last Jedi's novelization.

Still, although I'm not sure it is necessary to do this, I will try to show that hyperspace ramming makes sense canonically, in terms of information available outside of the films, even aside from the novelization.[3]

(B) Evidence for Hyperspace Collisions – The first piece of evidence, however, comes from A New Hope. It is quite clear that ships traveling through hyperspace can collide with other objects in space. During Luke and Kenobi's escape from Tatooine, Luke complains to Solo about how long it is taking to calculate their lightspeed route. Han replies, “Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy. Without precise calculations, we'd fly right through a star, or bounce to close to a supernova, and that would end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?” (As seen in the escape from tatooine, 2:25-2:33)

If a ship in hyperspace can be acted on (can be destroyed) by a collision with other objects in normal space, we can reasonably assume that objects in normal space can also be acted on (destroyed) by ships traveling through hyperspace in the same collisions. To say otherwise, it seems to me, would violate the principle of conservation of momentum. Presumably, the Millenium Falcon has a lot more to worry about than a Supernova does, because a star or supernova is much more massive than the Falcon. So, although the effect of a hyperspace collision on a large celestial body would be negligible given the difference in mass, there would still be an effect however minor.

The possibility of hyperspace collisions, moreover, is backed up by the presence of hyperlanes in Star Wars lore. The Wookieepedia entry for hyperspace routes reads, “Those routes were regarded as safe, allowing starships to travel without colliding with a celestial body in realspace.” Given that hyperlanes are a major feature of Star Wars' extended lore, the possibility of collisions between objects in hyperspace and normal space is actually quite baked into the fictional universe.

And if there can be collisions between celestial bodies and ships in hyperspace, then in principle it should also be possible for a ship in hyperspace to collide with another ship in normal space. Of course, spaceships are much smaller targets than stars or planets, so it's likely that a collision of this kind would occur rarely. This jives well, however, with my earlier point that hyperspace ramming would have been rare because it would be difficult to aim at very small targets over great distances.

(C) Mass Shadows – It could be asked, though, how these collisions are possible at all? If hyperspace is not the same space as normal space, how can objects which do not share space collide? According to Wookieepedia, “A mass shadow was the gravitational signature of a large object in normal space. Since those shadows were potentially lethal to any starship traveling too near, it was necessary to avoid colliding with them.” How this affects the possibility of hyperspace ramming really depends on how we understand hyperspace shadows in the current canon, and there is relatively little information to go on.[4] If mass shadows are a byproduct emanated by massive bodies into hyperspace, like smoke from a volcano, then hyperspace ramming is not possible. If mass shadows are, instead, extensions of normal objects into hyperspace, like the sunken part of an iceberg, then it makes sense that a collision with the part of the entity in hyperspace would also affect the object in normal space.

I don't really think that this issue can be settled decisively; there is too little information available about a construct that is, at the end of the day, fictional. It would make some sense though, for there to be a two-way effect during a hyperspace collision. If the mass shadow, with which a ship would collide in hyperspace, is part of the gravitational field of the struck object, then the object itself could conceivably be affected by the violent modification of part of its gravitational field.[5] If earth, for instance, were suddenly subject to modified gravitational force, because of the disruption of its own gravity, different pieces of the planet could accelerate differentially, causing damage.

This is all rather disputable, but what I aim to show is not that hyperspace ramming would definitely work, but that an intelligent person could find it plausible enough that the presence of hyperspace ramming in The Last Jedi would not break the spell of the narrative.

A final possibility, to skirt the question of whether collisions in hyperspace could affect objects in normal space, is that Holdo hadn't actually entered hyperspace at the point of striking the Supremacy. Rather, she was still accelerating toward lightspeed at a relativistic speed, and that this was enough to destroy Snoke's dreadnaught. This is not really what is implied by the film, but it's at least worth considering that the film never explicitly states that the Raddus contacted the Supremacy at lightspeed.

(D) Interdiction Fields – Assuming that ramming at hyperspeed is generally possible, one might still object that it would be impossible in practice because starships in combat would raise interdiction fields to prevent other ships from traveling through hyperspace in proximity to them. According to Wookieepedia, “An interdiction field was an artificial gravity well capable of disrupting hyperspace maneuvers.” So, how could Holdo have rammed the Supremacy if it was capable of projecting an interdiction field?

Well, we don't really know how common interdiction fields were, we don't know if they were kept on by default, and we don't know how long it took to power them up. And, in the context of the film, the First Order had been allowing the Resistance ships to flee via hyperspace to make them waste fuel. So, even if the First Order possessed an interdiction field generator, it would fit acceptably with the events of the film if the field were not active.

But, that's not all! I think the existence of interdiction fields in Star Wars lore supports my argument in the first half of this essay, since it would provide another reason why hyperspace ramming did not appear in other Star Wars stories and would have been rare in that fictional universe.


3. Closing Thoughts

I've argued that hyperspace ramming can fit plausibly into Star Wars canon. Again, I'm not trying to convince anyone that they are objectively wrong if it didn't feel plausible, or if they thought of reasons while watching the film why it might not work and lost immersion. What I'm objecting to are the voices who took more extreme positions such as: (a) Hyperspace ramming is obviously and objectively impossible in Star Wars; (b) only an unthinking idiot could maintain suspension of disbelief; (c) the filmmakers must have been either stupid or apathetic to Star Wars lore.

Against these positions, I think I have made a reasonable case. It is evidently possible for an intelligent person, if I may be so bold about my own capacities, to think rather exhaustively about the possibility of hyperspace ramming and to come up in support of it. Perhaps there is some evidence I have not considered or some logical error I have committed, but it would be wrong to say that I went about this with no appreciation for Star Wars lore, or that I went about it idiotically. And so the same should be said for the filmmakers and other fans of The Last Jedi. While I don't think those who came to a different conclusion than I or who felt differently are idiots, I do think they are incorrect if they take the stronger stance that they are decisively right and that everyone else is stupid.

“But!” You may say, “But!”...If a movie requires a 5,000-word essay to explain howit makes sense, or to feel plausible, isn't that kind of a problem? Well, I would agree, and that's rather how I felt about Ridley Scott's Prometheus, for example. But I don't think that's really what's going on here.


When I first saw the ramming scene in The Last Jedi, I had the following set of thoughts:
– Oooooo! Pretty.
– Is hyperspace ramming possible, since it's in separate space, and we’ve never seen it before?
– Well, Han talks about hyperspace collisions in the first movie, so it should be possible.
– And it could be rare because it's wasteful and possibly hard to aim.

All this passed through my mind in a second or two. Then I went back to enjoying the movie. What I've attempted in the body of this essay was not to replicate the exact thoughts I had during the film. What I've done here, at some extended length, was to show that the brief thoughts I had during my viewing, which supported my suspension of disbelief, were neither obviously absurd nor in deep conflict with Star Wars lore. My feeling of the film's plausibility was maintained with a few brief reflections, which are after all reasonably consistent with a sincere interest in the intelligibility of the fictional universe that captured my imagination.


______________________________

1. The star destroyer is about 123 times longer than an X-wing, figures from Wookieepedia.
2. This is why a two foot long dog would actually be more than twice the weight of a one foot long dog.
3. Admittedly, I am choosing this approach in part because it seems that many readers did not find the explanation in the novelization very satisfying, and I can at least see why they would think that.
4. According to the Legends entry for mass shadows, the mass shadows are not collided with directly, but pull the ship out of hyperspace so that they collide with the celestial body in normal space. This would make it more obvious how hyperspace ramming works, since the ramming vessel would be pulled out of hyperspace and strike its target at a high relativistic speed.
5. And to reiterate – The mass shadow, at least, should be affected by the collision if momentum is properly conserved.

Maybe Han is Not an Idiot.

"Kid, I've been flown one side of this galaxy to the other; I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all powerful force controlling everything."

-Han Solo

I saw The Force Awakens earlier this week, and noticed that the new film borrowed a trope (well, several tropes) from the original. Specifically, as in A New Hope, it seems common for inhabitants of the Force Awakens galaxy not to believe in the Jedi or the Force. After the release of the prequels, it was pointed out by many fans (as in this Cracked video) that Han Solo's reluctance to believe in the force is a little weird, given that the prequels featured (a) a Jedi Order that was quite public and integrated into the Republic's governance, and (b) midi-chlorians, which provide a "scientific" explanation for Jedi abilities.

Whereas in the original trilogy, as far as we knew, the Jedi were a small group of mystic-hermits with conventionally inexplicable powers, in the prequels the Jedi were widely known, and their powers were scientifically explicable. So, it seems that either Han is a dolt for doubting the Jedi (as, perhaps, is Rey in The Force Awakens), or that the writers of the prequels did a botch job of making those films cohere with the original trilogy.

The trouble is that "bad writing" is rarely a satisfying in-universe explanation for anything, while thinking of Han as an idiot also doesn't fit very well with the character. At any rate, flying starships, and repairing them on the fly, both seem like activities that involve a modicum of intelligence. So perhaps we can muster some sensible in-universe justification for Han's skepticism about the force.

One thing to note is that I'm keeping my argument to evidence presented in the films themselves, for two reasons. Firstly, I just don't know the expanded universe very well. Secondly, from what I understand, the expanded universe is no longer considered part of the primary Star Wars canon.

The key to making sense of Han's doubt, I think, is to separate different degrees of skepticism about the Jedi. We could probably cut the cake differently, but I'll identify three degrees: (1) Complete disbelief in the Jedi; one doesn't believe that the Jedi, the Jedi order, or the force ever existed. (2) The Jedi existed, but their powers were exaggerated; one might believe that a bunch of warrior-monks with energy-swords were running around the galaxy, but not that they had superhuman powers such as telekinesis or force-lightning. (3) The Jedi and their powers were both real, but the Force was not; in this version, one thinks that the Jedi did exhibit unusual powers, like telekinesis, but doesn't accept the religious/metaphysical claims by which the Jedi explained their own powers.

Now, let's take a closer look at what Han says in A New Hope. So, glance back to the quotation at the top of this article. Han really only explicitly commits himself to the third of the options I've just presented. A little later, Han attributes Luke's deflection of laser-bolts to "luck." So, maybe he's also doubtful about the superhuman powers attributed to Jedi, which would place him in the second camp. I think it's implausible that Han takes the first position, that the Jedi never existed. If so, he might exhibit a little more surprise at the presence of Luke's light saber. Add to this that he never expresses doubt that Obi Wan was a Jedi. Han simply says nothing to indicate that he doesn't believe the Jedi Order existed.

So, Han probably accepts that the Jedi were real people, but may think that some of their feats were exaggerated, and definitely thinks that the Force doesn't exist. Is this so unreasonable? As my rhetorical question suggests...I don't think so. We may, after all, believe that Tim Tebow has accomplished some remarkable athletic feats, while doubting his attribution of those feats to the will of God. But that's sort of a silly analogy. The point is that, because the Force is invisible and seems to work exclusively through the actions of other beings, by some version of Ockham's razor, it's easy to attribute the actions and powers of Jedi to their own inborn traits, rather than to the Force. As far as we know, too, Han has never actually witnessed any of the Jedi's most remarkable powers. So, aside from hearsay, he has very little reason to think that the Jedi were more than warrior-monks with special swords.

"But what about the midi-chlorians?" you ask.  Don't they provide scientific evidence that the Force is real, so that you'd have to be either foolish or uneducated in order to doubt the reality of the Force?

Well, we might reply in a few ways:

(a) It's not clear how widespread knowledge of midi-chlorians was. Force-science may have been something everyone learned in middle school galactic biology. Alternatively, knowledge of midi-chlorians may have been kept mostly within the Jedi order, and this would make some sense: If there's an underlying physical property possessed by Jedi that allows them to use their powers, then they wouldn't want that knowledge to proliferate, since knowing how to neutralize a Jedi's midi-chlorians would enable someone to neutralize a Jedi's powers.

(b) It's also not clear how widely accepted the science behind midi-chlorians was outside of the Jedi order. We don't really know whether measuring midi-chlorians was more like measuring white blood cells or measuring thetans.

(c) Finally, one might accept that a high midi-chlorian count correlates with strong supernatural powers, but we could still doubt the religious meaning attributed by the Jedi to their powers. It doesn't seem unreasonable to think that the midi-chlorians themselves were the cause of the Jedi's abilities, rather than intermediaries between the Force and the Jedi. Just as white blood cells protect us from disease without channeling a mystical force, so might midi-chlorians give the Jedi unusual abilities without channeling anything outside themselves. The force, as far as we know in the beginning of A New Hope, could just have been a layer of mystical hokum super-added to solid science by the Jedi. Alternatively, the Jedi could have believed in the force as part of their religion before the science behind their powers was understood. When the midi-chlorians were eventually discovered, then the Jedi may have said, "Ah well, but it's really the force behind the midi-chlorians," in the same way religious believers in our own world still see the Will of God behind phenomena for which we now have conventional physical explanations. (I.e. Many theists now accept that the big bang began our universe, but keep God in the picture by placing it unverifiably behind the big bang). Admittedly, this kind of force-denial becomes harder to maintain by Return of the Jedi, when we've seen force ghosts and the like, but Han's remarks preceded those events.

If any one of these replies is plausible, then the discussion of midi-chlorians from the prequels may not, in fact, make it absurd for Han to doubt the existence of the Force. Midi-chlorians may not have been part of his education, Midi-chlorians may have been psuedo-science, or Midi-chlorians may have provided a sufficient explanation of Jedi's powers without any discussion of the Force. With this in mind, I think Han actually displays a sensible level of skepticism about the mystical components of Jedi doctrine. (This is not to say that Han was right, only that his belief was reasonable).

Have a magic sword, kid.

I'd note, too, that it makes sense for Rey, from the new movie, to doubt the reality of the Jedi and the Force. As far as we know, she has grown up on a remote desert planet without any formal education, and was born decades after the destruction of the Jedi order. She would have never seen a Jedi, probably never met anyone who had seen a Jedi, and would never have been taught about either the Jedi Order or about midi-chlorians.

...Over-thinking complete. 

Return of the Jedi Gets More Stupid Every Time I See It

In a splurge of nerdiness I haven't experienced in some time, I not only watched an episode of Dexter today, but also finished watching the original Star Wars trilogy with the little lady. We had watched A New Hope some time ago, and she enjoyed it. We tried to make The Empire Strikes Back a family movie night, but our elder foster daughter checked out pretty early, and the rest of our viewing was therefore disjointed. Also, I think the little one had trouble sticking with that one - it's a much more interesting movie when you are an adult, even if it is one of the greatest movies ever made.

Our viewing of Return of the Jedi marks a return to the atmosphere we had for A New Hope - one in which the little lady was completely interested. I know she's interested when she is making way too many damn comments and asking way too many damn questions. I don't resent her doing this - she is nine, and is more interested in things than her brain has capacity to fully comprehend - but man, does it get exhausting. I just get into the movie, and bam, I'm answering twenty questions just as the lightsabers come out.

This movie has always been the one I remember the least. About ten years ago, I bought all three of the original films when they came out on DVD for the first time. I barely remembered what happened in Return of the Jedi - the other two films were much clearer in my mind and far more memorable. I did, however, watch it and enjoy it thoroughly. Some parts were moving, others clever, and overall, I felt it was a fitting conclusion, more fitting than I remember it being, which wasn't hard - as I already stated, I didn't remember much.

I have watched it probably three times since then, and each time, I think it gets worse and worse.

Don't get me wrong - I enjoy the movie. As far as movies go, it isn't bad, but it also isn't really all that good. In terms of movie-making, it doesn't have as much fun with the characters as the previous films did, relying more on spectacle than anything else. The characters feel different, and so many of them take unexpected turns in their development. The goofiness factor rises considerably and things don't seem timed very well. Overall, there are some distracting flaws.

But let's not get ahead of myself - here's the play-by-play.

The movie begins, as I always forget, with Darth Vader arriving at the new Death Star and stating that the emperor himself will soon be joining them. The emperor has appeared before - one scene in The Empire Strikes Back, if I recall correctly - but the little lady doesn't remember this. I take this time to tell our foster daughter that the emperor will show up soon. She nods and understands. I hope I have eliminated some questions for later.

We then get to spend what is always a surprising amount of time at Jabba the Hutt's palace. I have for a long time touted this whole opening sequence as among the very best (I will no longer be doing this). It's an exciting, tangled web of a plan that seems to have been concocted over some long period of time. So long, in fact, that Luke has somehow become a verifiable Jedi Knight with abilities we never saw him acquire with Yoda. It's been so long, in fact, that Lando has wormed his way into the place as a guard, right underneath Jabba the Hutt's nose.

Wait, it's been this long? Have they really been spending this much time trying to free Han Solo? Aren't they fighting the Empire? Han Solo must be pretty freaking important to the Rebellion if they are going to spend this long trying to get him free.

About a third of the movie is over before this entire sequence ends, moving on to what is effectively another movie. Han Solo is no longer blind, Boba Fett dies in a silly way (the first over-the-top goofiness of the movie, and unfortunately not the last), Luke shows that he can hack and slash his way through any crowd, and we all get to stare at Leia in her golden bikini. All this opening sequence seems to do is reintroduce us to the characters and remind us that hey, the gang is back together again and still trying to worm their way out of tight spots. The only difference now is that Luke seems to be a tad pigheaded. Overall, the first third of the movie turns out to be more or less a waste of time.

Luke goes back to Yoda to finish his training ... the training that it seems he has continued since the end of the last movie. Wait, he hasn't gone back to Yoda, and he can use Jedi mind tricks and jump around like crazy? This is where the movie first becomes problematic in terms of time. I am not ignorant enough to ignore the time problems in The Empire Strikes Back, but as a friend of mine stated to me not long ago, the movie is so good that no one really cares. Here, the movie is not nearly as good, so we care, damn it. Sloppy movie-making makes me so angry sometimes.

We then find out that Leia is Luke's sister, and moments later, when something else is going on, we realize that Leia kissed him full-on, on the mouth, in the previous movie. I have no idea what was happening in the movie at this time - I was probably thinking only kind of seriously about vomiting. I just know that this news was sprung on us so quickly, without any lead-up and barely any hints. It kind of hints at it in the previous film, when Luke is able to communicate to Leia where he is located, dangling among the clouds, but that isn't necessarily a bond - it could be Luke using his mind powers that Yoda didn't teach him. But really, that's it - they just throw it at us, and Luke happens to guess it after just thinking really hard.

This is the first time in this movie that anyone with the Force seems telepathic, or able to see things they ought not to see. Sensing other Jedi's presences seems fair - if you are sensitive to the Force, it seems natural to sense a reservoir of it coming at you from some direction, I guess. But being able to glean thoughts, or see things for which there has been zero evidence? Come on - that's just lazy storytelling. How do we get Luke to realize he has a sister? How do we get Darth Vader to realize he has more offspring? Let's just make them figure it out by reading minds or something - they have the Force, after all!

At some point, they all get captured by Ewoks. A freaking JEDI KNIGHT gets captured by Ewoks and needs to make C-3PO look like he has magic powers to escape? And up to this point, the movie makes Luke look like a freaking pro. Well, except for when he continues to whine about "not being able to do it alone." Those moments bug me, but at least that's consistent with how he has acted ALL OF THE TIME up until this movie. Here's one of the biggest cases of the lack of continuity for the characters in this film - Luke is just no the person we expect him to be. Maybe it kind of works in the case of just this movie, but when your movie exists in a series of films, you need to be more careful. More sloppiness, guys.

It's about this point, after the Ewoks accept them into their tribe and Luke heads off to be an emo mess with his emo mess dad, that I start wondering what there is to care about in this movie. The drama seems to be centered around Luke and his relationship with his sister, a relationship that we do not care about in the slightest. It seems to have been introduced as a way to get more jealousy from Han, only to have an easy way to erase that jealousy at the end of the film. Why has this relationship been introduced? Just because it was alluded to in the previous film? And will it actually be important in the end, as Yoda seems to indicate in The Empire Strikes Back? Nothing pans out here - it ends up being all about Luke and Vader working out their severely messed-up relationship in which they keep trying to kill each other for no good reason.

The next twenty minutes of the movie shifts between the Ewoks doing more than they seem capable of doing, the emperor trying to make Luke angry and Luke refusing to be angry, and Rebel ships getting devoured by the Empire. It is not interesting.

The movie does have some surprises up its sleeve, though, as a few rather poignant moments follow. The first is when Luke seems to be hiding from Vader, only to have Vader threaten to turn Leia to the Dark Side, forcing Luke to get so angry he pops out and goes completely bonkers on Vader. The music works perfectly here, and they choreographed this brief bit of fighting perfectly, watching Vader look completely outmatched for the first time ever. It's jarring when Vader loses his arm, and even more so when Luke glances down at Vader's mechanical arm and then back to his, somehow overcoming his anger as he reminds himself that he is about to kill his own father. It's a phenomenal series of events in a movie plagued by spectacle and "hey, you know these guys, so let's just be goofy" dialogue.

This all gets ruined, though, if you are watching this on Blu-Ray, because when Darth Vader saves Luke from the emperor, he shouts "Nooooooo!" as he throws the emperor down what I affectionately call the electronic pit (don't ask). God, that just ruins the scene. Come on, Lucas, really? Was this entirely necessary? No, not at all - it just sucked the humanity out of the scene, a scene that works because we don't really see it coming.

At least, I don't think I ever saw it coming when I first saw the movie. Darth Vader, up until that point, shows no sign of "having a good side," as Luke puts it. As a matter of fact, why does he do this? We are given no reason, really, and I have gone back and forth on whether I like this or not many times. I am on the opposing side right now - Darth Vader is a ruthless killing machine throughout the first two films, so this sudden shift seems like a sentimental writer wanted a happy ending. More lack of continuity from the characters, I guess.

I think that's what gets me more than anything else - these characters don't bounce off of the screen like they do before. Luke is too confident and it sucks the drama from his story. Han is too good and respectable, even if he still bumbles through surprising storm troopers. Leia acts awesome but gets none of tough-girl dialogue we have come to appreciate from the last two films. Chewbacca makes a freaking Tarzan-yell when he swings on to the Imperial walker, finally crossing the line from just goofy enough to way too goofy. The story is decent and could have been carried by the characters, but it just doesn't happen here, making Return of the Jedi more disappointing than anything else.

Anyway, the Ewoks take down the Empire despite all of the odds being against them, a space battle takes place that we care little about because the Ewoks are so damn cute and the Luke-Vader story is way more interesting, and we get the happy ending we were hoping for. There is one more poignant moment in which Luke burns Darth Vader's body, another moment I will credit to John Williams more than anyone else. He manages to churn out amazing scores for all six movies, no matter how good or bad the actual movie turns out. Kudos to you, sir. Beyond that moment, however, we don't get much. The ending is nice, and as opposed to most people, I kind of like putting Hayden Christensen in at the end of the movie, mostly because it's the best acting the man has ever done. Seriously, he smiles in a more genuine way than he ever did in episodes 2 and 3, and since he never opens his mouth, he doesn't have that acting barrier with which to contend. We still get too many Ewoks, though, which made the little lady happy, but makes me want to die a little bit.

So, why write about this now? Well, it's because of how strong this feeling gets with each repeated viewing of this movie. Sure, it has never been my favorite - The Empire Strikes Back is too good for that to ever have been the case - but my disdain for it seems to grow considerably each time I end up watching it. Do other people feel this way? Do we give this movie a free pass because of how bad the prequel trilogy was? If you can answer those, post it in the comments below, because based on what I hear from other Star Wars fans, I feel kind of alone in how critical I am of this film.

Speaking of the prequel trilogy, that's what we get to show the little lady next, so that we can take her to The Force Awakens in December. Wish us luck as we watch Anakin and Padmé make stupid conversation in Attack of the Clones and watch intense fights get interrupted by terrible dialogue in Revenge of the Sith. Thanks for the memories, Lucas. You horrible, horrible man.

Nerdy Month in Review: July 2015

On the first of every month, I will recap my nerdy endeavors over the course of the previous month.

July was a hectic month from a non-nerdy standpoint, helping our little lady get through having her tonsils out and adjusting to another foster child in the house. We've also had some pesky visitors in the form of lice and mice, so I have been busy and will continue to be busy. Here is what I did manage to get in, though:

TV
The Little Lady and I have been working through Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. As of today, we have gotten about 10 episodes into season 2. We've witnessed the Avengers tackle Loki and his invasion of Asgard, the Kree, and right now, the Skrull invasion. The cartoon is epic, far more than the movies ever will be, so for anyone that wants to get into the Marvel universe, this is an excellent place to start (others might suggest the comics, naturally, but if you are like me and comics aren't your thing, then check out the cartoon). I wish they worked harder to get more female superheroes into the mix - we've recently been introduced to Ms. Marvel, a strong female superhero, and Wasp has been there since the beginning, but she fits too many ditzy female stereotypes to really count as a solid female superhero. The comic relief is consistently good, and the series does a good job of recalling intertwining storylines that began at the beginning of the series. Despite the complexity of the storylines, The Little Lady has had no problems getting what's going on until recently, when she got thoroughly confused on who was a Skrull and who was not.

In other TV nerdiness, Umberto MacJay and I are attempting to watch every season of Dexter and rank each and every episode. We spent one glorious afternoon discussing our rating mechanisms and how we are going to rank each episode and present it to all of you wonderful readers. The entire list will probably be available on this blog sometime in the Fall, but don't hold us too closely to that - this is a significant undertaking, and I myself am only about halfway through season 2. I have seen every season except for the final season, which fans were not crazy about, but I am going to withhold judgement until I see it for myself.

Video Games
Where to begin here? I have been playing a wide variety of games over the course of the month, mainly because whenever I finally get time to sit down and play one, it's been so long since I have actually played anything. As a result, I've done mostly gaming without any semblance of a story - Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. I already wrote at length about Super Mario 3D World and will spare you anymore details here (no, I have not yet beaten that STUPID OBNOXIOUS RIDICULOUS final level). Mario Kart 8 continues to be a challenge with the addition of 200cc, a ridiculously fast romp through the levels that forces you to change your entire racing strategy. It's like playing a brand new game after being so accustomed to 150cc and the Mirror tracks. I am still missing a 3-star, gold trophy on one of the Mirror tracks, and got 2 stars on one of them (I HATE not getting 3 stars - I usually quit as soon as I don't get first in a race as a result). But, I have enjoyed trying 200cc and silently cursing Nintendo for forcing me to change the strategy that I used over the course of an entire 8-game series.

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U is out and about again in my house because I purchased all of the DLC. Ryu has been a fun addition, and I have enjoyed whipping out all of my old Street Fighter moves when I use him (although really, I usually fall back on using the B button to use all of the special moves to ensure my victory). I wish they had added more locations in the new DLC - I miss the stages in Brawl and Melee so much, the newer versions haven't quite lived up to those - but overall, the game is still a blast to play in a living room full of people.

I spent a lot of the beginning of the month playing The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. It's easily one of the strongest entries in the Zelda franchise, and perhaps, at the moment at least, is my favorite of the overhead, 2D Zelda titles (not that it is really 2D, with its gorgeous 3D visuals). I am super glad they ditched the requirement of using the touch screen to control Link. I never finished Phantom Hourglass as a result - my hand would get cramped up eventually, and I always ended up doing things I didn't want to do eventually, because of the odd controls. A Link Between Worlds, while I am not even halfway through, has proven to be a phenomenally deep game. I just hope I have more time over the next month to play it.

The Little Lady has taken over LEGO Marvel Superheroes, although I got pretty far before she decided she was going to play it all of the time. Again, I wrote at length about this earlier, so I will spare the details now, but the depth of the game continues to amaze me. I could wander around LEGO New York City for HOURS and still not find everything, and that's a good thing. The Little Lady has also taken over Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and thankfully, she is no longer leaving all of her stuff lying around town. As the mayor of Koholint, my town in Animal Crossing, I want my village looking immaculately clean. She probably wouldn't have cleaned up the town except I pointed out that, if you go to the Mayor's Office, my secretary points out how absolutely annoyed all of the villagers are about it. Thanks, Nintendo, for making a game that encourages me to obsessively organize things - that almost makes up for changing my Mario Kart strategy.

Movies
Nothing much going on here. We have been having The Little Lady watch the original Star Wars trilogy, and yes, we'll probably show her the prequel trilogy because it is, after all, canon. Then we can take her to see the new one, whether she's still living with us or not. I continue to love how interested she is in virtually everything - it was so easy to get her into Star Wars and keep her interested. She still asks me sometimes why Obi-Wan didn't tell Luke the truth about Darth Vader. She seems very annoyed about that.

We went and saw Inside-Out and both my wife and I bawled while the girls were simply non-plussed by (spoiler alert) the realization that yes, some important memories can be sad and our emotions get more complicated as we enter our teenage years. Pixar's slogan should be "let us entertain your kids while you bawl your eyes out." That damn Lava short-movie didn't help - I honestly thought they would give us a sad ending to that volcano's tale for a few seconds, and thought, "Geez, Pixar, I thought you wouldn't stoop this low after the first ten minutes of Up." Don't worry, guys - it's Pixar, it ends happily, although you still might cry.

Books
After finishing Stephen King's It, I read the not-so-nerdy Faithful, the story about the 2004 Boston Red Sox in which Stephen King was a co-writer. The Red Sox are my one truly non-nerdy interest, although I needed to read Faithful to remind myself that I am still a Red Sox fan after such a horrible season up until now.

It is a good book if you think about it like a short story collection, but overall, it's a mess of missed opportunities and silly storytelling shortcuts, all in an effort to force out some sort of epic story even though there really isn't any need for it. Characters like Henry Bowers (a truly amazing King villain) and Beverly's father (King knows exactly how to take abusive, horrible people and make them somehow more disgusting) are far more terrifying than It, and the backstories and the little vignettes King tells are often far more fascinating than the main story. I want to like this book, but it's such a mess that I have to consider it one of the worst King outings I've read, probably the first one I have read that disappointed me (I haven't even come close to reading them all, and if it matters, my favorites so far are The Stand, The Shining and The Dead Zone).

I am now reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, something I am told I should have read long ago. As a nerd, it's probably criminal that I haven't read it yet, and so far, I am pretty impressed. Some of the comedy within it feels twinged with arrogance on the part of the author, a sort of "oh wow, look at how clever I am" sort of feeling, but enough of it is quite entertaining that I am continuing to read it each night before going to sleep. It's part of an anthology with three other books by Adams, so I'll probably read those too.

Coming Up in August...
My wife and I will see Ant-Man at some point, and I am sure I will just throw all of my wonderful feelings about the Marvel cinematic universe down in a blog entry at some point afterwards. I will continue to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well, hopefully getting through it by the end of the month, and I want desperately to work harder on The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, in the hopes that I can write a Game Profile about it. More Dexter is on tap as well, perhaps allowing me to write an entry about how well it humanizes such a dark character, and adds darkness to characters that are otherwise good. I have also been thinking a lot about online gaming and what it has done to the social aspect of gaming. I have an opinion that is probably in the minority of opinions on online gaming, but hey, I'm going to throw it out there anyway.

An Honest Defense of the LEGO Video Games

I think in most gaming circles, I would not be considered a "gamer," as most hardcore gamers interpret the word. Yes, I play video games, for many more hours than the average human being. Yes, I do buy some games brand new and play the heck out of them, my sights almost always set on that elusive yet tempting "100% completion" rating. And yes, in the words of a good friend of mine from my youth, I am "obnoxiously good" at learning how to play a game quickly and efficiently. I remember that particular conversation occurring over Soul Caliber 2 for the Gamecube. He had bought the game a week previously, and within about twenty minutes or so, I was beating him regularly with characters I was only trying out for the first time. As a result of all of this, most people, particularly those that do not play video games on a regular basis, consider me a "gamer," and I, too, refer to myself as such. Yet, because of what games I play, how often I end up playing those games, and my attitudes about gaming in general, in spite of everything I just wrote, the gaming community would probably not consider me a true "gamer."

It's sad, though, that such a community can only be open to those that play certain games. The online gaming craze that start in the late nineties has grown exponentially - now, some people only play games online. Moreover, the need for better and better graphics (which most people interpret as "more realistic") has captured the attention of the hardcore gaming community, as well as the need for "grown-up games," leaving gamers like myself out of the loop in many instances. And, while I could write forever about how sad and depressing that all is, that is not my goal here. No, my goal is to make an argument about a specific type of game, one that is regularly disregarded by those that consider themselves hardcore gamers. This type of game, despite its fun-factor and playability, gets labeled a "kid game," and naturally, anyone that plays this type of game is not serious about their craft. These games, for lack of a better word, are actually quite...

Awesome (because everything is awesome ... am I right?).

Alright, so I've really only got experience with two of the games in this series: LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Wii version) and LEGO Marvel Superheroes (Wii U version). A few summers ago, LEGO Star Wars was my jam - I played it nearly every morning (something I can afford to do over the summers, since I spend the rest of the year teaching). I was obsessed with collecting every single little thing I could, unlocking every character and trying them all, and watching the entire Star Wars story played out by what amounted to be mimes, since the LEGO characters were given no dialogue. The game was charming, fun, and catered to my need to collect things, no mater how insignificant those things are. Did I ever get everything? As is often the result of my tireless hours spent playing a single game ... no, I did not. I could have, damn it, but the summer ended, and my schedule became full from teaching, planning and grading. By the time I had time to play something else, I had gotten something new and my attention shifted away from my beloved LEGO Star Wars.

Several months ago, using an Amazon gift card (thanks, Mom and Dad), I ordered another LEGO game, since I had enjoyed one already. The Marvel movies, as much as they are able to keep things cohesive and consistent, couldn't quite put together the heroes I wanted to see together (the X-Men and Fantastic Four being shunted away in their own franchises for stupid reasons having to do with "rights" and crap like that). So, given my brief research into LEGO Marvel Superheroes, I was excited for the possibilities. I have not been disappointed - I just finished a level where the Human Torch fought alongside Black Widow and Hawkeye! This game, unlike LEGO Star Wars, has dialogue, but that doesn't detract from the fun: the one-liners are not only true to the characters in their more goofy moments, but also to my incredibly "punny" sense of humor (ask my foster kids - if they don't cover their eyes and shake their head in embarrassment over a terrible joke I have just made at least three times a day, I have not done my job). The game, like the Star Wars iteration, has plenty to collect, and will undoubtedly take up much more of my time than Star Wars did. This thought makes me happy.

Now, I can hear some of you now, groaning and wondering how on Earth I am able to call myself a gamer with any amount of dignity. "LEGO games?" you might ask, "How on Earth are these the tools of a mighty gamer? They're too easy!" On that note, I kind of agree. These games were certainly not designed to be incredibly challenging - as a matter of fact, just a quick perusal of lists online of games that are great as "starter games" for those people with zero or little gaming experience will prove that point. Nearly universally, these games are labelled as easy to pick up and play and enjoy. You don't have lives - you simply lose what amounts to money each time you die. The default game mode yields helpful hints regularly, prompting you to use a certain type of character or interact with a certain object. The controls are quite simple - just directions, and maybe two or three other buttons are used. Combat is straight-forward, with no crazy button combinations to worry about. For someone like me that has been playing games since I was 3 or 4, these games present little to no challenge.

So why waste my time on something so easy? I'll tell you - because it's fun. Sometimes "fun" is being challenged, and for that, I turn my attention to other games (particularly the classics on the Sega Genesis and SNES or the NES - some of those are freakin' impossible). But, sometimes "fun" is something lighter and friendlier, and after an entire school year of trying to make high school students care about algebra and calculus, I'll gladly take some time to play something easy if it means I mostly just get to be entertained. Although I wish Mr. Fantastic didn't constantly repeat the line "I really had to stretch my legs for that one!" (or something along those lines), I still chuckle every time it happens, and every time something ridiculous happens. Anyone ever want to see Wolverine make one-liners at the Hulk's expense? Done. Ever want an image as funny as Iron Man just wearing his helmet and a pair of spotted boxers? Done. And nothing makes Return of the Jedi more believable than making everything out of LEGOs (seriously, that is the only way those freaking Ewoks could have completely manhandled the Empire!). LEGO games bring out the fun parts of ever franchise it seeks to embrace.

And that's the key word - embrace. These LEGO games, perhaps more so than the more "serious" games based on the movies from these franchises, embrace some of the more wonderful things these franchises have to offer. We all know the Marvel movies can be fun - so, if you are in the mood for the fun from that franchise, pick up the LEGO version. The same applies to Star Wars. LEGO games, in my experience, show just how entertaining some of these franchises can be, without sacrificing what these franchises are all about. Mind you, I haven't played all of the LEGO games, but if the others are anything like the ones I have made time to experience, they must be just as solid in terms of their representation of the franchises they emulate.

Now, don't mix up my defense of these games with their quality - these games are by no means the "best" out there. The vehicle levels in LEGO Star Wars are downright unwieldy most of the time, and both games I have played have their share of glitches. Case in point - I fell into the water as Iron Man in a level on The Raft in LEGO Marvel Superheroes, and it respawned me on a slanted part of cliff that dumped me right back in the water, over and over again. Even when I switched to my other characters, I could look over at Iron Man and see him, again and again, spawning and falling into the water. These games are not artistic masterpieces, and there are bugs that probably should have been worked out, but that doesn't mean they aren't an absolute blast to play.

In the end, a game doesn't need to be perfect to be fun - sometimes fun is all a game really needs to succeed. And in that regard, the LEGO games are hugely successful at what they seek to do. If I want a good laugh and an opportunity to explore a digital world that is far removed from my own, I pop in a LEGO game and let the ride begin. If I want something more meaningful, I'll find a Zelda game. If I want a challenge, I'll break out a classic platform like Lost Vikings (GOD, that game is hard!). If I want something that's pretty to look at, I'll play a Batman game or one of the Super Mario Galaxy games. But, if I want something stupidly fun and entertaining that probably won't drive me to rage quit (here's talking to you, Super Mario 3D World and your STUPID final level), I'll pick up a LEGO game and be able to relax for a little while.

Well, relax until someone needs me, or I need to feed someone, or put someone to bed ... you get the idea.