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When people ask me if I’ve seen the original Star Wars trilogy, I always say yes, because I did when I was pretty young. But I realized recently that I don’t really remember much of it—Star Wars is such a force in pop culture that I can’t remember what I actually remember from watching the movies and what I’ve just internalized from hearing about them so much. So I decided, in preparation for watching “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” to rewatch the first trilogy.

I’m excited to talk about “A New Hope,” but it first needs to be acknowledged that I watched the 2011 remastered edition, which is a mixed bag. The whole movie is touched up to look better in graphic quality, and the effects are better, particularly some really cool explosions (I couldn’t tell how many of those were remastered, despite looking at online videos about it—some of the more colorful explosions might’ve actually been the original ones). Still, is it necessary to correct everything? In 1977, when the movie first came out, it won the Oscar for best visual effects. In a way, it takes away from that accomplishment to ‘update’ the movie with 2011 effects.

By far the most egregious changes, though, are the addition or changing of scenes. Everyone talks about the “Han shoots first” controversy, and yeah, it’s pretty silly that they would change a scene to have Greedo shooting at Han and him dodging it prior to shooting back. To begin with, Han shooting first fits with his ‘rogue outlaw’ type of personality. Even ignoring that, though, Greedo had his gun pointed at Han the whole time, so shooting is pretty justified in the first place. At least it all happens so fast in the 2011 version that you can’t really tell.

There are many scenes that are extended, like an interaction with Luke and his old rebel pilot friend. None of these are particularly terrible, but they add to the runtime, and there are lags in the story, so I would’ve rather had it without them. The most annoying changes are with the graphics that look so obviously different from everything else. That Jabba scene was pretty unnecessary (I believe it was originally a deleted scene in the 1977 version) in the first place, since Jabba is introduced later, and it’s unnecessary table-setting for the next movie. It mostly just looks bad, though, too computer-animated and silly. Same goes for the unnecessary aliens added in the background of certain scenes that are just distracting.

So yeah, the remastered edition is mostly silly, and I kind of would’ve rather seen the original, but it’s really not that important. I got the essence of the movie.

Anyways, now we can talk about the actual movie! Let’s start with the beginning. I love how the movie begins with R2-D2 and C-3PO and just follows them around for a while—I’d always kind of assumed it’d start with a boring exploration of Luke Skywalker’s home life, but his first appearance happens when the droids meet him, oddly enough. I just like how the movie immediately throws you into its world without explanation (well, besides the scrolling expositional narration, which is cool in and of itself). I also completely forgot how cool of a character Princess Leia is—she’s kind of the leader of the rebels! Luke might be the ostensible protagonist, but a lot of the plot hinges around Leia, as evidenced by her name being the only name in that opening narration.

It’s also interesting to see how each element of the Star Wars mythology is rolled out over the course of the three movies. In this one, for example, there’s no Yoda, or Jabba the Hutt (treating that one scene as a deleted scene), or Ewoks. “A New Hope” is a pretty contained story. Luke stumbles upon some droids, who lead him to Obi-Wan, who trains him and makes a deal with Han and Chewbacca to basically save Leia. They get the Death Star architectural plans and blow it up. It’s pretty simple; there are plenty of opportunities for future world-building, but most of it is just hinted at. There are cool hints, like when Obi-Wan tells Luke about how his father fought in the clone wars, and how Darth Vader trained under Obi-Wan before turning to the dark side. The prequels may have turned out poorly, but it’s really cool, in theory, to explore that backstory.

It’s pretty great just watching the relationships developing between these characters. Han Solo is by far the most interesting character, the necessary sarcastic skeptic critically missing from the prequels, and he and Leia have a great antagonistic relationship that hints at flirtation. Even Luke, who can be pretty damn whiny and boring sometimes compared to the others, has some good moments—whenever the characters are all happy together, I become way more attached to them. I particularly like the scene when they just barely escape death from being crushed by walls, and they’re all laughing and cheering. I also really like how each character is so different, each representing a completely different galactic milieu. Luke is a poor farm boy with latent mystical powers. Han is a self-absorbed money-hungry lone wolf. Leia is a rebel princess. Obi-Wan is a wise old Jedi Knight. Chewbacca is, well, an animal! They’re all from such different backgrounds, and watching them come together is seeing an intersection of vastly different cultures.

I think I was a little afraid I’d be underwhelmed by Star Wars. After all, it was made in 1977, and I’m naturally not going to be as affected by it as kids at the time. So yeah, it didn’t fill me with an evangelical zeal. I wouldn’t even say that I loved this movie; I’d say I really liked it. But it still holds up. I think part of the reason younger people won’t appreciate the movie as much—aside from the dated visual effects—is that so much of Star Wars has been ingrained in pop culture that everyone takes it for granted. Like, I can’t imagine seeing this movie when it first came out, seeing all those amazing costumes that would become iconic. R2-D2, the Darth Vader mask with the breathing, the Stormtroopers, the whole concept of the Force, the lightsaber…these are all references that people get even if they haven’t seen the movies. But if you imagine yourself in the 70’s, this must’ve all been revolutionary.

I’m so excited to keep exploring this world.

It’s frustrating to see biopics fall into the same traps over and over, but “Straight Outta Compton” falls into many of them. It’s more enjoyable than many—funnier and more entertaining than the typical template of a genius white British man—and the subjects are more engaging and interesting than most biopic subjects. In general, it’s a good idea for a movie, and that idea makes it uncommonly interesting even when the movie lags.

And I think that’s the biggest problem: the movie lags a lot. It’s 147 minutes, but from the pace of the first half, it seems like it should only be 100, 120 at most. By the end, when ostensibly heartbreaking things are happening, I just wasn’t feeling sad because I’d generally lost interest in the movie at that point. I heard people behind me afterwards talking about how they were crying watching Eazy-E dying from AIDS, so maybe the movie had its intended effect on some people. But even though I thought Eazy-E was interesting, even though Jason Mitchell was one of the standouts of the cast, I just wasn’t invested anymore.

I think it’s also partly because Eazy-E getting AIDS feels like just another superfluous subplot in a movie full of them. There are countless cameos, like Keith Stanfield as Snoop Dogg and Marcc Rose as Tupac. Some of them are neat (I love Stanfield), and there’s always a little kind of thrill to seeing the origin of something great—like when Snoop Dogg and Dre sit down and make “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang.” Still, it’s pretty silly to pretend that that song was completely free-styled. More importantly, these cameos don’t add anything to the movie besides the slight novelty of seeing recognizable rap stars just starting out. There are so many things that the movie tries to deal with, from the death of Dre’s brother to the death of Eazy-E to the conflict with manager Jerry Heller (a great Paul Giamatti, though he’s so likable that his supposed betrayal didn’t even bother me), that it all just feels like too much, especially because it almost totally sidelines DJ Yella and MC Ren, two of the founding members of NWA.

So many biopics fall into this trap of being too cluttered and unfocused, and at this point, I’m honestly just left wondering why it’s so hard. “Selma” did it perfectly, focusing on a small slice of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and building a compelling story out of it that never lagged. “The Imitation Game” mostly did it with the fun thriller-type plot of trying to break the code, and even though that movie isn’t great and falls into a lot of different biopic stereotypes, it made the right call when it came to having a strong central plot. But most of the other bland biopics that come out are just so long and so unfocused.

I think I have a theory for part of the reason why that happens so often: filmmakers feel like creating one central narrative is changing history too much, molding it into a simplistic linear plot format. This is the precise time that changing history for the sake of a movie is necessary, though. Sure, there are times when a movie does it way too much and is insulting to the actual events and people it’s trying to depict, like with “Saving Mr. Banks,” but generally, changing history to make a structurally strong movie is necessary.

So you’d think that the source of the problems with “Straight Outta Compton” is its strict dedication to history, but it’s also clear (even without me knowing much about the real-life subjects) that the facts have been manipulated. For much of the movie, Ice Cube, Dre, and Eazy-E are treated as kind of flawless rap legends, these civil rights heroes who don’t have many issues of their own besides the environment they grow up in. The individual characters’ histories with violence and misogyny aren’t really tackled; when characters do get in a physical fight, it’s either not the main characters’ faults (like when Eazy-E gets the shit beaten out of him by Suge Knight) or they’re doing it to protect the people close to them. The first half, while being a lot more engaging than the second half, still suffers from crafting a too-perfect rise to fame arc, with lots of scenes of crowds just worshipping NWA.

Still, there’s a lot to like in the movie, especially in that first half. The actors are pretty well-chosen; though O’Shea Jackson, Jr. is probably the weakest of the three leads, he’s such a spitting image of his father (the real Ice Cube) that it doesn’t matter. Besides, he’s strong whenever he gets to be angry, like when he destroys Bryan’s office, one of the few scenes that acknowledges the real-life subjects’ violent acts. Corey Hawkins is also pretty great as Dre, conveying a young person’s vulnerability and passion when he’s just starting out and commanding authority once he’s established himself as a star. I have some reservations about his reductive characterization as the ‘nice, good-humored guy’ of the movie early on, especially knowing about Dr. Dre’s assaults, but he still makes for a likable and interesting protagonist.

Most of the standout sequences of the film are in that first half. There’s the emotional scene when Dre learns that his brother was killed, and his friends comfort him. There’s the single long take of NWA partying in a hotel room that’s perfectly shot by director F. Gary Gray, recalling a “Boogie Nights” or “Goodfellas”-style scene of excess and offering an unexpected reference to “Friday” with “Bye, Felicia.” And, it should be said, the movie works well for its musical elements, because these are some pretty great songs. It’s just fun to watch “Gangsta Gangsta,” “Boyz-n-the-Hood,” “Dopeman,” and “No Vaseline” being performed and recorded.

By far the most effective and impactful scenes of the movie, though, are the ones that detail police brutality. Sure, maybe it’s not exactly nuanced—every single cop we see is unabashedly racist—but there’s something visceral and real about seeing all the black characters being shoved to the ground and handcuffed simply for existing. When NWA is told by the police not to perform “Fuck tha Police” at their Detroit concert and they do it anyway, it’s a genuinely thrilling moment. That whole scene is intense as the cops chase NWA down and arrest them, and the five of them all laughing together in the back of a police truck is a pretty perfect image. I can’t tell you whether NWA deserves to be put among the champions of racial equality, but it was pretty inspiring to watch in the film.

In fact, “Straight Outta Compton” probably would’ve been a lot stronger if it stuck to that: the production of the “Straight Outta Compton” album and the controversy NWA faced for their groundbreaking violent themes. There are isolated sequences of the film that are absolutely gripping, and there are a lot of good ideas here. The problem is that it’s all crammed into one overlong package. By the end, all it inspires is indifference.

The Last Lecture is a book and lecture by Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon who has since passed away from cancer. It was founded on a tradition of professors being able to give on last lecture at the university on a topic of their choosing.

Randy wrote and spoke about how to accomplish your childhood dreams but it was also meant as a lasting legacy and lesson for his children.

For me this is my last post. I am graduating in December with a degree in communications and moving to Chicago for a new adventure. As I sit struggling through my last finals week there is a certain amount of satisfaction and enjoyment I have of this final finals week. I believe and have always believed I was meant to go to a large university and I was right, higher education isn’t for everyone, but it was for me. I look at all the things I’ve done but still question my expertise. I wonder if the work I’ve done in classes was really enough for a degree, to be universally acknowledged as having an amount of expertise in a subject matter.

That is that what I’ve learned here. Upon graduation or during school there are always things to learn and if you only learned the subject matter that is printed on your degree, your education is not whole. Being at the university has shown me what makes a friend for life and what a friend is that just passes through and to hold onto the people that will help you in life, not just for a day. There are people that are not worth keeping in your life and that’s okay. Everyone isn’t for everyone and energy should be focused on positive relationships not negative ones.

I have also learned you don’t have time you make time for the things you want in your life. If you want to be part of a club, have a social life or spend time on something outside of studying you have to make time for it. With the amount of work and readings classes handout you could spend time on little else. The University of Michigan has taught me so much about balance and prioritizing, because something will always try to take away time and we must make time for the things we love.

Lastly, I’ve learned failure is natural and it is how people cope with it that can define them. Coming here people told me it will be a hard adjustment to become “average,” because everyone is going to be smart and accomplished. The adjustment to being around other smart people was not difficult in the least. It was refreshing in all honesty. What was hard to adjust to wasn’t comparing myself to other people but comparing myself to the standards set by the university and the level you had to achieve at to get an okay grade. I failed classes, and many of my friends did poorly in classes that they needed to do well in. What people need to learn is to be okay with failure, to learn that it does not define everything but is a genuinely upsetting set back, but not something to be wallowed in. Roll around and be sad about it that’s fine but also learn to get up and figure out how to do better next time. Learning to be flexible and adjust to the wind so that a small problem stays small and don’t spiral has been one of my greatest lessons here. We all fall down sometimes and need to learn how to pick ourselves back up again but the staying down is what we need to fend off.

There is just so much to learn, and I hope your time at the university has been as magical and challenging as mine. Thanks for reading, Maria out.