Prospero

Warning: this article contains plot details of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”

WHEN George Lucas sold the rights to the “Star Wars” franchise to Walt Disney a few years ago, the space opera’s devotees were almost as excited as Disney’s accountants. The sale meant that there would, at last, be three more Episodes of the blockbuster saga which Mr Lucas began in 1977. And that wouldn’t be all. Never a company to under-exploit its intellectual property, Disney announced that it would release one new “Star Wars” Episode every two years, thus continuing the adventures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and their pals. But in the intervening years it would release supplementary “Star Wars” films which didn’t revolve around the main characters, and which weren’t designated as Episodes with a Roman numeral in the title.

IMMATURE, brassy, vulnerable and often sexualised, adolescent girls tend to travel in packs. Members of this exotic species speak in their own patois, peppering their speech with terms such as “like”, “’kay” and “ew” and presenting their statements like questions. It is easy to confuse their bonding rituals with hazing rites, particularly as both demand deference to an explicit yet unspoken pecking order. For a perfect rendering of these creatures in the wild, head swiftly to see “The Wolves”, one of the most charming plays on any of New York’s stages right now, both on Broadway and off. 

GOOGLE pictures of Jacqueline Kennedy and a set of rather impersonal, gnomic categories appears to help sort through the millions of photographs: “family”, “pink suit”, “fashion”, “wedding”, “funeral”. Her natural glamour and ruthless defence of her privacy meant that she was almost entirely consumed by the public in the form of myth and visual icon. And the more they consumed, the more ossified she became in her pop-cultural carapace. She must have made a daunting subject, then, for Pablo Larraín, the Chilean director of the new biopic “Jackie”.

IN “Planet Earth II”, a baby sea iguana flees from a pack of hungry racing snakes to the safety of the rocks above. Does it succeed? Viewers certainly care: the clip (above) has been viewed millions of times online, and the show is wildly popular, with more millennial viewers than “The X Factor”. From nature’s point of view, the result of this individual drama is immaterial; each day some of the world’s many iguanas will survive, and some won’t. But programme-makers have the power to decide what makes it to the screen and what doesn’t—and thus how human beings see the natural world. With conservationists warning of a mass extinction of wild animal species thanks to human activity, the decisions nature-shows’ producers make have repercussions beyond what simply makes for good televised drama.

ENDINGS are bittersweet. We have all wished that a book, film or television series could last a little longer; that Monica, Ross, Rachel, Joey, Chandler and Phoebe would visit Central Perk one more time, or that Jack Bauer would foil another terrorist plot. Multiple seasons and reboots may give the fans what they want (the first episode of Netflix’s recent “Gilmore Girls” reprisal (pictured), nine years after the last season, was streamed nearly 6m times) but they are usually a bad idea. Creativity is hampered—stories and characters are stretched into absurdity—as is the viewing experience. Why do executives and viewers continue to fall into the trap of never-ending narratives?

IN THE wake of a disaster at the reactor where they worked, two 60-something engineers are living out their autumn years in a cottage on the English coast. “Retired people are like nuclear power stations. We like to live by the sea,” says Hazel. She hopes that her routine of yoga and attention to facial hair will keep her young indefinitely. Her husband Robin, meanwhile, goes off every day into the exclusion zone to tend to his radioactive cows. This mix of the mundane and the apocalyptic is the backdrop of Lucy Kirkwood’s new play, “The Children”. 

FIDEL CASTRO, Cuba’s communist former dictator, died on November 25th 2016, aged 90. After a bloody revolution in 1959, he ruled his country with an iron fist until 2008, when his brother Raúl replaced him as president. The imagery of Mr Castro—particularly his beard and green fatigues—has long stood for heroic rebellion for many. But not all: in the hours after his death, Danilo Maldonado Machado, a Cuban graffiti artist and dissident, was reportedly detained by authorities after spraying a simple message on a wall in Havana: Se fue (“He’s gone”).

It seems the regime that Mr Castro installed still understands the power of propaganda.