I went back and watched Star Wars Rogue One and then finished Andor, which is essentially a prison pic where no one wears shoes.

This whole sad thing is exec produced by the star, Diego Luna, by virtue of the massive Latin audience he brings from Netflix: Narcos, along with a thick accent.

And then there are the wealthy politicians trying to support the resistance, a completely fictional concept.

It’s a piece of shit designed to appeal to large audience segments like veterans watching Federation aircraft in space and looking a lot like F-18s, as featured in Top Gun.

I’m especially fond of the John Wick element, where fighters on both sides are mown down, like wheat. Meanwhile, those of us who actually care about such things are reading Big Serge:

One of the first critical decisions that Brusilov made was that his attack would have no center of gravity or schwerpunkt. Instead, he instructed all five of the field armies in his Southwestern Front (again, the Russian term for an army group) to plan offensives in their own sectors, and furthermore each Corps was ordered to prepare its own attack. Thus, rather than concentrating reserves and firepower to hammer on a single section of the frontline, Brusilov planned to activate virtually his entire front, attacking along a line some 200 miles wide, practically from Pinsk in the north (modern Belarus) all the way to the present day border between Ukraine and Romania…

Brusilov was working on a shoestring budget of heavy artillery shells. His solution was to conduct extensive reconnaissance and use his artillery in a suppressive, rather than overtly destructive role. He assigned his air forces (perhaps 100 planes) exclusively to reconnaissance duty, making extensive flyovers of the Austrian lines and creating thorough sketches of the enemy defenses…

Brusilov, working on a tight ration of shells, targeted specific hardpoints, with careful coordination to end the barrage just as his infantry arrived at the enemy trenches…

The Russian bombardment was focused and short lived, and the defining experience of the Hapsburg troops was bewilderment when the shelling abruptly stopped and Russian troops began to spill into their trenches…

Brusilov’s offensive managed to bash huge breaches in the Austrian line (in some sectors, the entire first belt of defenses was captured on the first day) so that by the middle of June the Russians had already pushed 60 kilometers into Austrian lines in some places…

The problem was that Brusilov simply did not have a clear vision for how to exploit his success. The ideal operational target would have been Kovel – a major railroad intersection which would slice the Central Powers’ transit in the theater in two if it were captured. Unfortunately Brusilov did not receive clear direction from Stavka, and he opted to spend the crucial days of mid-June consolidating his gains rather than exploiting the hole that he had created.

I’ve never gotten over being lied to about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, so excuse me for never buying the bullshit from Star Trek, which was only possible as time travel and therefore duly ignored. And what do you do with the copies of the people just beamed down to the planet?

By prequeling the prequel they could put out a series on the cheap using the most recent film. Bernays would be proud.

The Sharas and many others made a lot of money writing great books about what happened during the Civil War. Military history offers lots of victories and tragedies which deserve to be told, HBO’s Band of Brothers is another example of great story-telling by the people who were there.

Andor is just more Star Drek from people who’ve lost their way in the universe.

Stormtroopers were trained in methods which were colloquially called Infiltration Tactics. First, the base tactical unit shifted from the company (several hundred men) to smaller units like the platoon (perhaps 50 men). These smaller groups would then conduct their advance irregularly, that is to say, more spread out and making proper use of cover. This was the end of the “charge”, as such. Rather than units of many hundreds attempting to rush across open ground to assault the enemy position, smaller units would work their way forward at a judicious and measured pace…

Fire and movement is, to this day, an absolutely essential and basic infantry tactic. It involves the cooperative action of the unit (be it a squad or a platoon) split into two elements. A “firing element” suppresses the enemy position by firing upon it, covering the approach of the “maneuvering element.”

And what is the point of white body armor if they’re going to lie down and pretend to be dead at the first shot from a blaster?

You’ll see no laser swords because it takes forever to put them in, as such things do not actually exist.

They’re already too busy in edit pretending gravity doesn’t exist. If they’re ignoring gravity and escape velocity, what other important things might they not be telling us about?

Societies who venture into space must have vibrant economies in order to afford the investment. NASA has been usurped by venture capitalists, but Russia and China continue their programs, with the latter placing a satellite behind the Moon, and launching a successful robotic mining effort of H3 for their fusion reactor.

The US buys Russian Soyuz rocket engines to launch our satellites.

It is no accident that our science fiction is also second rate.

As to actual Evil Empires, no one comes close to the British for imposing death, slavery and subjugation on four continents for hundreds of years, and so it is proper the worst of them speak as though from one of its universities. In reality, the UK military has recently humiliated itself on several continents. Her Majesty’s government even failed in their support of the Confederacy in the Civil War and the defence of slavery.

Gandhi was trained in law at London’s Inner Temple and lived in South Africa twenty years before returning to Gujarat and disposing of the British Empire by personal example of will. There’s your Cassian Andor.

Star Wars, by dispensing with the historical record for the fantastic, has nothing to say about where we’ve been, what we’ve done and where we are going. It fails to resonate and does not qualify as art in any sense. Perhaps by presenting us with hopelessy broken people lorded over by assholes, we can learn to accept our plight, or maybe it’s just college-educated assholes projecting their hatred of us.

In the old days, the boardrooms made movies out of great books, but people don’t read, anymore. The next Bret Easton Ellis came and went, unnoticed. 600 million Chinese watched an NBA game last year, and no one watches pro basketball. If you view the Star Wars franchise from the perspective of a Chinese peasant, it begins to make a little more sense. The Empire sure looks like a fascist totalitarian government. China and Disney have invested in a Shanghai resort and Andor is a prison flick, for sure.

I’m not sure how a worn out American theme park works here. Probably about as well as an over-used science fiction movie.

Squid Game comes from South Korea because they remember fascism.

The reality show version did not go well.

I’m starting to get it, now. If your series is to be seen by people in many countries, you must avoid telling the story of anyone, lest someone be triggered for having their culture appropriated.

And the characters must be authentic to CRT standards. And the men cast as heroes must look like sixteen year-olds with no shoes, to weaken their appearance as much as possible. Putting men in prison for a whole movie is a side gig which will be very popular.

I don’t remember seeing a lot of black guys in that prison.

Women would love a channel where they could look at men in prison.