There Will Be No Halloween This Year

That is not a typo. There will, in fact, be NO Halloween this year!

(As in Michael Myers' Halloween movies, not Oct. 31st's Halloween holiday.)

Apparently, Dimension has let the rights to their franchise expire, so Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton's botched execution idea for Halloween Returns will never come to fruition. Well, not unless another studio reels in the free agent serial killer and decides to bring those two moviemakers back into the fold, anyway.

All's I can say about this is that after Halloween: Resurrection, a.k.a. the Michael Myers reality show gone wrong, and those two porn-gore fests that Rob Zombie tried to pass off as legitimate Halloween reboots, I'm actually kind of glad that Dimension no longer has Mike's rights because I highly doubt that they had his best interest at heart.

Michael is an elusive, tight-lipped, stalking, affluent boogeyman anomaly with zero attachments, not some oversized superhuman mama's boy redneck with the typical serial killer backstory, and it's about dang time that some studio decided to take him back to what he was in '78 before he ever even had a younger sister, back when he was just some random detached whackjob killing babysitters on Halloween night. It wasn't until the pressure of the sequels gave him a real backstory, and frankly, set the franchise on a downward spiral.

I don't mind that he had that backstory, but when you're forcibly trying to tie in family to this guy, as was the case from parts four through six (a long-lost niece, really?), it becomes a hindrance rather than just a sidenote. And frankly, I preferred not knowing so much about his lineage. He was creepier back when that was the case!

Anyhow, I, for one, am on the side of whoever wants to start from zero with this masked madman. Here's hoping that whoever takes on his rights from here on has an actual gameplan for the lunatic, and doesn't try to force him back into another ridiculous familial backstory. And please, definitely no more cults, Busta Rhymes or Rob Zombie's!

'Nuff said.

5 Star Wars Questions

Like seemingly everybody else in the world, I recently went to go watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In 3-D, no less. AND... in a theater with recliner seating. If you're going to geek up, at least do so correctly, am I right?

Anyway, it was awesome!

*Spoiler alert from here on down.*

But, five things about the movie kind of stayed with me, as they were never really answered...

1) They didn't reveal Rey's parentage. I get that we're supposed to think that she's Luke's daughter (and that's how they're reeling us back for the sequel), but it's never explicity stated, so she could just as easily be a Kenobi descendant or Han Solo and Leia Organa's second child/only daughter.

2) Who left her at Jakku and why? Did it have to do with a certain Jedi massacre?

3) Why did R2-D2 wake up when he did? I guess Luke programmed him to do so, but what was the trigger for it?

4) How the heck did Poe not die when he and Finn crashed, their ship sunk into the sand and then the whole darn thing exploded? He clearly wasn't anywhere else on that dessert landscape! (They never really explained that part and it drove my O.C.D. self crazy throughout the rest of the film.)

5) Is Kylo Ren (a.k.a. Ben Solo) even still alive? I'm assuming he is, but who knows because Starkiller Base exploded and he seemed to be on it at the time.

By the way, and it's neither here nor there, but I thought BB-8 was a nice droid addition to R2-D2 and C-3PO. I think J.J. Abrams did a superb job with this first film, and I really hope he can keep it up for the sequels. I can't wait to have all these questions -- maybe even the Poe one? -- answered two years from now. However, if Abrams does me like he used to week in and week out during his LOST days, then I'm expecting to get them answered never... and that would SUCK.

PS: Whether it's the Siths, the Galactic Empire or the First Order, these space folks can't get any peace of mind, huh? May the re-awoken force be with them all!