Hello, everyone. For those of you who don't know, some time ago Disney, after acquiring the Star Wars franchise, announced they would be making new movies in the series. In response to this, I wrote a blog titled The Upcoming Star Wars Movies previewing episodes X-XII. This is a continuation of that. This time I'll be covering the tenth movie, Episode VII: Ghost of the Phantom Menace.

Anyone who wants to avoid spoilers should leave now.

When the second Star Wars trilogy began one of the biggest issues critics had was that Lucas had apparently traded good plot for special effects. You can rest assured that in this first installment of the fourth trilogy absolutely nothing falls short of expectations. So far it looks like a true masterpiece.

The basic plot of Ghost of the Phantom is a revival of episode I, "The enemy no one can see", in a quite literal sense. The entire movie is about Darth Sideous' ghost flying around and messing with Luke Skywalker, a now out-of-work Jedi. After the empire fell, Luke had nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Having been busy with fighting the empire for the last few years he had no work experience or skills with which to find gainful employment. To worsen matters, with the only governmental agency in the galaxy gone, there was no one around to monitor trade or form diplomatic ties between the planets.

This lead to widespread war with no real goals established or strategy involved. There was simply much too much going on from every direction in the galaxy for anyone to properly meet and discuss what issues needed to be addressed; every planet wanted something different that almost always conflicted with at least one other planets's demands.

Even on each individual planet there were dozens of groups trying to gain power in that time of instability. War and strife were ubiquitous throughout the galaxy in every system, on every plant, and in every region, state, and city.

Naturally, with no formal establishment around to secure peaceful talks and negotiations between the planets, problems only went from bad to worse due to inadequate infrastructure and a heavily split public. (All previous workings, facilities, and entities in public welfare had been run by the Empire, and were all destroyed with the fall of the Empire as an act of completely removing the tyrannical force from every last crevice in the galaxy) Within years the galactic economy fell and caused the planets to fall into utter ruin.

Starting a new society proves to be an infinitely greater challenge than destroying the previous one ever was.

The story follows Luke while he tries to find a job and keep others from thinking he's insane as he's constantly haunted by the ghost of Sideous who takes every opportunity to humiliate the once great hero in front of his family and friends as vengeance, which inevitably causes Luke to become aliented from both the general public and his closest companions. In one scene toward the opening of the movie, Sideous repeatedly possesses Luke and forces him to smile broadly and do jazz hands while speaking at a funeral procession for those lost in the effort to destroy the Empire, much to the angry dismay of those in attendance.

That's about all I have to share on the upcoming movie. The expected release date is 2021. Thanks for reading.