Farewell And Adieu To You Fair Spanish Ladies

If the lead in sounds a bit ominous considering me taking last week off, then the click bait worked. I like it when you get engaged. Sue me. Not literally of course. Anyway, I engaged in my annual 4th of July tradition last night. I watched Jaws. I have go to movies for each of the four major American holidays. Christmas, among others, is A Christmas Story. Halloween, among others, is Poltergeist. Thanksgiving, among no others, is Planes, Trains and Automobiles. For the American Independence Day, it's the aforementioned Jaws.

I consider Jaws to be a perfect movie. Please note that I phrased that sentence to be purposefully subjective. I'm not saying it's a perfect movie. I have no way of knowing that. I'm saying that, to me, it's perfect. If there be plot holes, my tires are too fat and wide to notice them. It's among a quartet of perfect movies to me. The other three are Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, and The Shining. These movies are tractor beams to me. If I catch any of them in progress, I am hopelessly sucked into their orbit until the final credits roll, and they all have something in common:


For three of these movies, the connection is direct. Steven Spielberg obviously directed Jaws and Raiders, and executive produced Back to the Future. For The Shining, it gets a bit tangential. That movie was painstakingly directed by the inimitable Stanley Kubrik. While you will not find monsieur Spielberg's name in the credits, he was a friend and admirer of the master having completed his last movie, A.I. Artificial Intelligence. So while Sir Stevie didn't have any direct involvement in my final perfect movie, he assuredly appreciated it's greatness.

Even though I only listed four movies, rest assured that my list of all time favorites intersects with Mr. Spielberg with a frequency that defies the statistical probability of random occurrence. I even love the love letters to Spielberg like Stranger Things and Nope. So why am I writing this on a Star Wars web site? Well it's because we were robbed of our opportunity to have Steven Spielberg direct a Star Wars movie. He was rumored to be Lucas's choice to direct Return of the Jedi, but Lucas's beef with the Directors' Guild of America precluded that. This is meant as no disrespect to the late Richard Marquand, who directed my favorite movie of all time, Episode VI, but we are forever left to wonder what could have been.

Here's where the rubber really meets the road. My interest in Star Wars is waning faster than a crescent moon. Not that that really matters. I'm an old man that is rapidly aging out of the key demographic. My value to Disney is almost directly proportional to my interest in their products. That interest was definitely renewed with Jon Favreau's return of Star Wars to it's spaghetti Western and samurai roots, but that too has seemed to wane recently. As soon as the Ahsoka series concludes, I'm dropping my annual subscription to Disney+. I'll go month to month when season 2 of Andor airs, but I can't see myself continuing after that. The service offers me little value anymore. If Disney has any value in a customer like me, there is one rabbit they could pull out of their hat: course correct the universe and give Steven Spielberg a Star Wars movie.

Finally, and brining it back to the top, Robert Shaw sang Farewell and Adieu in two different movies 18 years apart:


"Sail back to Boston" is by far the better of the two lyrics.

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