Movie Nation

Steve Gleason is a smart, articulate and self-aware retired NFL star whose life on the field was defined by one play — a blocked 2006 punt that came to symbolize his team’s and his city’s comeback from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

It was his post-playing days life that raised his profile from New Orleans Saint punt-blocker to national spokesman for people, like himself, who suffer from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS, the motor neuron illness that was named “Lou Gehrig’s Disease” after it killed the famed New York Yankee in the 1940s.

But as “Gleason,” a documentary built out of Gleason’s efforts to make a video diary for his infant that grew into a vivid study of the progression of this deadly disease and how a smart, thoughtful person reacts to it makes clear, the guy is no saint, no matter who he played for.

There’s something to be said for making a documentary about someone dying from a deadly disease, and not putting a halo on them or their noble suffering.

Refreshingly, for such portraits, Gleason and his wife Michel curse and struggle with his increasing dependence on her and other caregivers. They easily make scatological jokes when Steve loses control of his bowels and requires enemas. They weep as their struggle grows more overwhelming, as Steve tries to get across who he was to the son, Rivers, born in the early stages of the disease, growing up with a father who needs video to be able to pass along life lessons to a kid who will only know him as a dependent in a wheelchair.

We watch plucky Michel physically wear down from the demands of looking after Steve, and we see Steve deteriorate from the illness and the wear of starting a charity that lobbies Congress, raises cash for electronics that allow ALS sufferers to communicate when the illness has robbed them of speech and brings attention to the disease and to Steve, presented as a public face of ALS.

The folks he and his wife assemble and call on — Team Gleason — give you an appreciation of the burden this illness places on one and all. And it makes you shudder at what those who aren’t famous, aren’t well-off, must endure.

Look at the photo above. Is the average person facing the trauma, fatalism and expense of ALS going to Machu Pichu for photo ops? No.

The Seattle native gets to hang with Mike McReady of his favorite band, Pearl Jam, and interview Dave Grohl. But when Congress lets Medicaid cut funding for gear that gives ALS sufferers a more complete life, Gleason’s charity steps in to fill the gap and his name goes on a bill that gets that funding restored.

Steve tosses around “hero” a lot, pondering what that means, and the film that Clay Tweel (“Finder’s Keepers”) assembled from all this footage, carries that question further.

The Saints unveiled a statue of Gleason blocking that punt a year after his diagnosis, six years after the block itself. Would they have done that without his illness, without the attention he determined to draw to it?

Gleason didn’t start the stunningly successful and far better known “ALS Ice Bucket Challenge,” he merely joined in and helped organize the New Orleans event that went for a “record” number of those dumping buckets over their heads for charity.

As Steve pursues a course that echoes his charity’s motto, “No White Flags,” we hear him talk about how others in his condition choose not to do this or that, to let their increasingly circumscribed, pain-filled and burdensome lives end. The implication? The real heroes are the ones who deal with the consequences of his struggle, his caregivers.

The film’s unblinking and unfiltered look at the indignities and horrors of ALS and its impact on a loving marriage is without parallel. Steve, communicating through a computer, criticizes his wife, tries to engage in discussions about his needs and all Michel can do is apologize and shrug it off.

“This is our life, this is what it is,” she says, stoically.

They are doing what thousands of others do, families without deep pockets, big support systems and cameras catching their every utterance, struggling to hang on — for a new treatment, for a possible cure, or for an end to their awful burdens.

“Gleason,” perhaps unintentionally, shows us that hope can be a heroic thing, but that real heroes are those who keep others’ hopes alive.

MPAA Rating: R for language

Cast: Steve Gleason, Michel Varisco
Credits: Directed by Clay Tweel. An Open Road/Amazon release.

Running time: 1:50

“Indignation,” the latest Philip Roth novel to make it to the big screen, hangs on a trio of absolutely delicious if somewhat delusional confrontations — big scenes between its young hero, a secular Jew debating his Protestant academic dean about faith, privacy, sex and assimilation.

That hero, another version of Roth for those who read most novels by the “Goodbye, Columbus/Portnoy’s Complaint” author as at least a little autobiographical, is a self-possessed college freshman from Newark, standoffish, deep into the atheism of Bertrand Russell and able to hold his own with a senior academic despite being the 19 year-old son of a Newark butcher.

And the scenes — pitting Logan “Percy Jackson” Lerman against the actor/playwright Tracy Letts (“Killer Joe”), are laugh-out-loud marvels orfirony and dark comedy. Young Marcus Messner has asked to change dorm rooms. And Dean Caudwell uses their interview as an interrogation, to probe young Messner’s refusal to “learn how to get along with people,” to question his “tolerance” and to figure out what or whom Marcus turns to for spiritual comfort.

“I am sustained by what is real,” the kid declares, before launching into a defense of Bertrand Russell, an assault on the small 1950s Ohio college’s requirement that students attend chapel and umbrage taken at the dean’s assumption that the kid’s father is a “kosher butcher.”

The rest of “Indignation” isn’t much to latch onto. But these scenes give it heft, or at least entertainment value.

The big theme here is “even the littlest mistake” can have consequences. The Korean War is on, and Marcus goes to the funeral of a friend killed in action and meets others who are fodder for the draft. But he is off to college and its promise of a deferment.

That’s where he becomes smitten by Olivia Hutton, or “the unceasing movement of Olivia Hutton’s leg,” he narrates. She’s a bobbysoxer prone to sitting with one leg carelessly draped over a chair while reading in the library where Marcus has his student job. She’s blonde, and without saying it out loud, Marcus appreciates her shiksa appeal .

Because he wouldn’t. Marcus makes a big deal out of getting away from his smothering, stereotypical Jewish parents but not about the “coincidence” of being roomed with two other Jewish kids in the dorms, out of the dean’s assumption that his father is a kosher butcher but bristling at the notion that he is somehow “hiding” from his Jewish identity.

You know, that whole self-loving/self-loathing Philip Roth thing.

Olivia, the experienced and alluring gentile siren, is played by JCanadian starlet Sarah Gadon.

Their one and only real date ends with an unexpected and under-motivated (as far as Marcus is concerned) act of oral sex. And that so befuddles him that he puts enormous academic energy into figuring out why this happened, what is going on with her (“I think it’s because her parents are divorced.”) and how he should act around her.

And Olivia, showing a damaged vulnerability that suggests she’s a little off, takes that badly.

“One little mistake” has consequences, and they ripple into arguments with his roommates, debates with his dean and onward and outward.

The story, framed within a Korean combat scene, plays like a Proustian parody of 1950s potboilers as filtered through the Semitism-centric prose of Roth. Producer-turned-writer/director James Schamus hits his Roth-marks, but fails to make the material sing, or particularly relevant. It all feels dated and entirely too pat to be much of a challenge. 

But Lerman (“Fury”) is game and handles the wise-beyond-his-years/guilt-ridden Marcus with skill. Gadon has less to work with, but is gamely gamin when need be, and her Olivia is smart enough to keep Marcus on his heels.

And those scenes with Letts are worth the price of admission, even if the movie overall drags, dry and not nearly as droll as Roth must have intended.

MPAA Rating:R for sexual content and some language

Cast: Logan Lerman, Sarah Gadon, Tracy Letts
Credits: Written and directed by James Schamus, based on the novel by Philip Roth. A Summit release.

Running time: 1:50

Laika is not an animation studio to coddle and over-protect children. The studio that scared kids and challenged younger viewers with “PAraNorman” and “Coraline” gets back to what it does best with “Kubo and the Two Strings,” an imaginative, scary and wonderfully rendered stop-motion fright about a little Japanese boy battling witches and a ghost with only his banjo to protect him.

It plays like a classic folk tale, with a hero on a quest, supernatural threats and super friends to help him pursue three magical talismans. But it’s an original script. The only film I can think to compare it to is a Chinese folk tale film — “Life on a String” — about an aged musician whose playing was so lovely he could stop armies, mid-battle, with his tunes.

In Asia, they take their banjo-picking seriously. In Japan, it’s called a Sanshin or Shamisen, in China, a qinqin or sanxian.

“If you have to blink,” our young hero narrates, “do it now.”

Kubo is a mesmerizing storyteller, a boy who accompanies himself on the magical Shamisen his mother gave him. She saved him from death at sea, and from a worse fate before they fled in a small boat. Kubo lost an eye, as an infant, to a hated villain.

Their escape cost his mother much. Her injuries are taking her memories, so Kubo walks from the cave where they live each day to tell his stories, actually the same story, and his banjo causes the origami he has created to illustrate it to spring to life.

The hero of his tale must find the Sword Unbreakable, the Breastplate Unpenetrable and the Helmet Invulnerable to battle giant origami sharks and crabs and a fire-breathing origami chicken.

“Got to have some comedy,” an old villager (Brenda Vacarro) counsels.

Whatever he does, though, must take place before nightfall. “Never, ever stay out after dark,” Mother preaches.

Of course he does, and of course that’s when the witches and the ghost find him and renew their pursuit of his remaining eye.

His quest to “the very edge of the Far Lands” is the same as that of the samurai of his story — get the sword and the armor, so you can fight back.

The toys of his childhood — a wooden monkey doll (Charlize Theron) and an origami samurai, help. So does a samurai beetle, voiced with daft bravado by Matthew McConaughey, a hero sure of his “indespensibilities.”

“Got to have some comedy,” after all.

The stop-motion animated art has found digital, technological shortcuts since the glory days of the California Raisins, whose studio gave birth to Laika. But the texture, the tactile beauty of the puppet-like characters, model sets and hand-crafted props live on and make the stop motion art distinct from the digital animation that displaced traditional hand-drawn cell animation.

Kubo’s yarn-like hair hangs over his eye patch, the monkey’s fur blows in the breeze (there’s a lake to cross) and the witches, voiced by Rooney Mara, have a menace above and beyond what mere digital drawing would have given them. They wear capes and porcelain masks and vast, black hats, like Guy Fawkes in “V for Vendetta.”

They are truly chilling, and Kubo and his friends must battle these sword-wielding ninjas repeatedly before facing a villain with the voice of a certain boy wizard’s nemesis. Listen, too, for the voice of an Asian American TV icon in a supporting role.

The story’s energy flags, here and there, but the life-lessons are rich, the brawls are epic and you and your children will never look down on banjos again. “Kubo” and his two strings (actually, he has three) rock.

And Laika has a second masterpiece to park alongside “Coraline,” the best animated film of the summer, and perhaps of the year. 

MPAA Rating:PG for thematic elements, scary images, action and peril

Cast: The voices of Charlize Theron, Art Parkinson, Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes, George Takei, Rooney Mara, Brenda Vacarro
Credits: Directed by Travis Knight, script by Marc Haimes, Chris Butler . A Focus release.

Running time: 1:41

It seems like only yesterday — OK, it doesn’t, because really it was 2001 — that the video game creators of “Final Fantasy” sought to put their vision of their universe and their “story” in a big screen movie.

My memories of “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” are hazy, but not the hate mail. Oh, those video gamers and their fumbling grasp of the distinction between a movie, placed in wide release, and a game that they’re already invested and immersed in.

Animated characters — not remotely photo realistic — fought and chased each other hither and yon in a tale that made little or no sense, with or without the rules of the (badly) computer-animated gamescape it’s all set in.

Fifteen years later, another Japanese-made, “Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV” makes it to theaters, a quantum leap forward in animation and design, if not a great leap in motion capture technology or in story.

The images are more flexible, more tactile and more mobile, though the faces still lack much expression, and none that anyone could call nuanced or subtle. The settings are striking and photo real, on a par with the fantasy and sci-fi cinema’s state of the art.

But take away the advertorial nature of “Kingsglaive,” ignore its utility as a cheat sheet, prep for the players of various corners of the game world it depicts, and deal with it as a story with characters and incidents anybody not into the game would watch, and it’s the same old “Final Fantasy.” It remains a misshapen mash-up freighted with sci-fi fantasy exposition and a back story so convoluted that a mere two hour movie cannot make heads or tails from it.

This one dwells mostly in the realm of fantasy, a universe of medieval castles and armor and steampunk sci-fi weaponry and creatures, a world where  the Kingdom of Lucis  faces new treachery at the end of an uneasy peace with the Niflheim Empire.

There’s a magic crystal — of course there is — and the only warriors King Regis (voiced by Sean Bean) trusts to defend it are his Kingsglaive “empowered by the magic of their sovereign.”

There are tusked wildebeest warhorses, and when somebody shouts “Release the DEMON!”  they’re talking about war crabs — crabs that spit out a hailrstorm of fireballs.

The stakes are high, and there’s been a lot of intermixing of Lucians and Niflheimers in the “hundred years of peace.” But anti-immigrant backlash rears its head.

“We don’t need any of you immigrants jumping around, playing war hero!”

And since there are immigrants, there’s a “wall.” Who says video game film adaptations can’t be topical?

The dialogue, delivered by actors like Aaron Paul and Lena Headey, who didn’t do the motion capture “acting,” is generic “Get back here alive! That’s an order!” and “You speak of matters beyond the wall.”

There are good soldiers, “immigrants” who must prove themselves, an evil prince, all given tongue-tangling names like Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, should you choose to try and remember them.

Only one name matters for movie fans, the city under threat. It has the silliest city name this side of “Resident Evil” and its “Raccoon City.” They call it “Insomnia,” here. Though this “Final Fantasy” is a sure cure for that.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for fantasy violence and action throughout

Cast: The voices of Aaron Paul, Sean Bean, Lena Headey, many others
Credits: Directed byTakeshi Nozue , script byTakashi Hasegawa . A  Sony release.

Running time: 1:50

The art of the “Karma’s a bitch, bro” letter has seemed a lost one, and this “FU” kiss-off from Gracie Law  to Warner Brothers CEO Kevin Tsujihara is notable only for its rarity.

She was laid off during the bloodletting of 2014, when the studio’s release slate was lame, though perhaps not the debacle it has sometimes seemed this year.

Law is no longer employed there, the stakes for her are low and Tsujihara is primed for a piling on. “Suicide Squad” is dying, and Law claims that “Wonder Woman” is a debacle in the making. That’s why this open letter is trending, the DC disasters of the recent past and the near future.

There are a lot of fiasco films in her list — “Jupiter Ascending,” “Jersey Boys,” “Pan,” “Point Break.”

“People lost their jobs and you decided Pan was a good idea.” My favorite line from the note.

The studio has traditionally tied its fate to reliable filmmakers, but the Wachowskis and Eastwood are well past their due date. And poor Zach Snyder is never going to be the New Spielberg. Ever. Giving him that much of the DC Comics franchise is a mistake, pure and simple.

But Warners’ reputation for working with talent, attracting talent and keeping the brilliant on the studio’s roster is still there. So there’s nothing happening that a blockbuster “Sully” or revived “Justice League” or “Wonder Woman” couldn’t gloss over.

The point of Law’s letter is that a lot of good people got sacked because the braintrust in charge is relying on a formula that only works when you have great talents to lean on. David Ayer (“Suicide Squad”) is not Kubrick. Who is? Eastwood isn’t even Eastwood any more, no matter what “American Sniper” earned.

Will the feeding frenzy take out Tsujihara? I could see that. But these recent flops or near misses don’t change the fact that Warners is the class of the league. Disney/Marvel/Lucasfilm may be eating their lunch, at the moment. But culture will tell, and eventually the best and brightest will be lured to WB, because most of them already go to Warners first with their big ideas. If that is no longer the case, Tsujihara should go, and he ought to be the first to realize it.

A very bad second weekend for “Suicide Squad” — a 70% plunge — will not know Warner’s latest DC adaptation off the top spot at the box office. It will still near $42 million in ticket sales by midnight Sunday, based on Friday’s take. The film set the August opening weekend record and is already over $221 million, or will be by Sunday.

Will it be enough? Nothing to chase it off the screen for the rest of the summer, so maybe.

But Seth Rogen’s dirty, sassy little “Sausage Party” cartoon is sending the sophomoric sophomores back to college with a grin. It is headed toward a $32 million opener. Those aren’t Pixar numbers, but that’s a hit, a great big hit, and suggests it will out perform his last live action comedy — “Neighbors 2.” Frat boys should be making group outings to that one for weeks.

“Florence Foster Jenkins” opened on half as many screens and will manage a $6 million weekend, according to Deadline.com. That’s good, and it should be selling tickets well into September. That audience will take a little longer to find it.

“Hell or High Water” and “Anthropoid” are doing decent per screen numbers in very limited release (“Hell” opens wider next weekend).

“Bourne” and “Bad Moms” are holding steady and will make money at least until Labor Day. Will “Moms” make  it to $100 million? It’s at $71. It could come close.

So the plunge in “Suicide Squad” has begun. It set the August opening weekend record last Sunday night $135 million, but it was headed towards $144 at one time.

And this weekend, with Thursday night late shows gone, it’s looking like a $44 million weekend. Not terrible, but pretty darned steep for a fall-off.

Late shows last night? They were a big ol'”Sausage Party,” with midnight shows piling up well over $3 million.

The guru predicts it’ll do $24-25, and Deadline.com is projecting something closer to $30 million. An R-rated animated comedy? It could happen.

“Pete’s Dragon” looks like a re-boot whose time hasn’t come. Will it clear $20? For a kids’ film opening in August, not bad. But surely it cost too much to make it to the break even point, based on that. Not a bad movie, reviews will help.

Meryl Streep’s “Florence Foster Jenkins” should find some fans. Mid $teens? Maybe.

It all goes back to the Wit and Wisdom of Spock — classic Spock. Whatever each and every one of us does to “stretch,” to “get out of our comfort zones,” there’s a lot to be said for doing that which we do best.

Therefore, Cameron Crowe.

Flipping past showings of his celebrated ouevre, I can’t help but feel that his masterpiece, “Jerry Maguire,” is one he slipped by us. And by “us” I mean critics.

Because a whole generation of us just love or loved this guy, largely based on his biography — enthusiast turned music writer in the ’70s, married a gorgeous rock star (since divorced), made “Almost Famous” about those experiences. A lot of us identified with that movie.

The one time I interviewed him, he was in Toronto, wounded and beginning the downward spiral that has been his film fate ever since by promoting damaged goods — “Elizabethtown.” I was interviewing him, but he sat on a comfy sofa, on his knees the whole time, and instead asked me heartfelt questions about what he could do with emotional, misshapen mess of a movie.

I was honest enough to tell him it didn’t work, but that I wouldn’t change a frame. Love wins, and the long romantic phone call between Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom was magical, even if their careers never recovered from it. And you know what? Any time I channel onto “Elizabethtown” I stop and watch. Any and EVERY time.

His movies, the best ones, are more about feeling and scenes and characters and texture than coherence. “Jerry Maguire” is gooey and warm in the same ways “We Bought a Zoo” or even “Aloha” is. But it also has Renee Zellweger weeping “You had me at ‘Hello,’” it has Cuba Gooding Jr. chewing up the screen and teaching Tom Cruise how to exult — “Show me the MONEY!” Slipped it right past us and the Oscar voters.

Feelings and scenes and characters and texture and MUSIC matter when it comes to Crowe.

That’s what I’m getting from his Showtime TV series, “Roadies,” that Crowe brand of warmth over story beats, affection for a world and the people in it over character arcs.

It’s about a road crew on tour with a fictional band, and it is overflowing with music and musicians and the people who love them. “Greatest job in the world” one and all chirp, if asked, especially by the British bean counter (Rafe Spall) who makes them justify their jobs and their lives as he cuts staff to turn the Staton House Band’s road show profitable.

There’s a nice sexy chemistry between the world weary rock road warriors in charge, Bill and Shelli — played by Luke Wilson and Carla Gugino. And the rest of the crew is colorful enough to get by, even if all the boys still say Imogen Poots. Blue Collar Comedy Tour star Ron White as some legendary roadie condemned to join Taylor Swift in space for a First in History show? Inspired, or at least “out there.” Crowe loves Southern accents (See “Elizabethtown”).

The warm fuzzies come in when you fall into the texture Crowe, who covered this world for Rolling Stone, among others, for years and years. There’s a guitar tech (Peter Cambor) riffing through a metallic cover of “So Into You” during soundcheck in Atlanta. Because, it’s an Atlanta Rhythm Section song. “Oh Atlanta” (Little Feat) underscores a pre-concert montage

There’s a groupie stalker (Jacqueline Byers) forever sexing her way backstage, despite restraining orders and security precautions. Dollops of rock history are doled out.

A rock star daughter (Taylor Marie Frey, daughter of Glenn) is one of Bill’s “girl in every town” regulars. Luis Guzman as the road crew’s bus driver? Perfect.

There’s a  sound mixer’s system check ritual “Song of the Day” played on the PA that reeks of Crowe’s famous playlists/mix tapes.

Everyone avoids saying the word “Cincinnati” on the bus, because, you know — roadie ritual re: The Who’s deadly concert riot there in the last century. Eleven people died back in ’79, and the word “Cincinnati” is cursed forevermore.

The guest stars — second on the bill for the shows– include Buckingham and Mellancamp, and Reignwolf and Lucius and The Head and the Heart and Jim James. Rainn Wilson plays an online critic who gets his comeuppance when the roadies slip him a mickey — “a fifty year old man dressing like a teenager.” Sounds like a Miami movie critic I know.

The tour? “It’s like a Fellini film crossed with an episode of the Monkees,” Lindsay Buckingham opines. “And I mean that in a nice way.”

It’s oh so Crowe, and adorable and funny and romantic and wistful and sexy and rock and roll.

No, it’s not for everybody, and maybe I’m being sentimental about the road not traveled. Judging from Rottentomatoes, that could be the case.

But it is Cameron Crowe pursuing his first, best destiny. And it’s on Showtime, festival seating kids. I’m there.

Oh, to be a defense contractor in a time long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

To be a Lockheed Martin or Halliburton with some sort of Emperor/Imperial Senate “no bid contract” arrangement.

Because all those rubes want is fresh versions of the Death Star. And if that’s what they want, we’ll take their money, every time, even though the end result IS EXACTLY THE SAME every single time.

“Rogue One” is a “Star Wars” story set in the “Star Wars” universe but not part of the Luke-Leia-Han-C3PO continuum. Another way of approaching “A New Hope,” a new angle. So there are going to be overlaps in the mode of rebellion, the people rebelling and the means of quashing that rebellion. And there are going to be differences. But that doesn’t excuse the repetition that’s already settled in over these movies.

Same damn Death Star.

But seriously, why is no senator getting up and making a big speech about Government Waste?

These Death Stars cost a mint, every one of them. High taxes create rebellions. Ask any American.

And the number of habitable planets out there is limited. In this universe, most of them seem to be deserts, with a few frozen ones, jungle worlds and alpine forest Edens tossed in. Who could waste a whole habitable planet by blowing it up?

And it’s not like “Make an example of Alderaan” or whoever is working. Folks are still rebelling, still scoring X-wings on the intergalactic black market arms trade.

So here are five alternate threats that the New Idea Deprived “Star Wars” reboot should consider. Because enough with the Death Stars, already.

The big New Notion? Kill civilizations, not planets.

1. BOMBS — “Star Wars” was born in the Neutron Bomb era of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The idea was to bomb the Russians or Chinese or both with weapons that left structures standing but wiped out populations. It wouldn’t take many of those to cripple a civilization, and it wouldn’t take many more to send it into a death spiral. Fleets of Imperial bombers have to be prevented from seeding the atmosphere with big bombs that will end sentient life. The ticking clock finale has bombs being destroyed, neutralized or, in acts of self-sacrifice, prematurely detonated by heroes.
2. VIRUSES — Send witting or unwitting carriers of manufactured plagues to infect this planet or that rebel base. The infiltrators/carriers are their own ticking bombs. Paranoia peaks because we don’t know who is infected, who will die and what it will take to prevent the contagion from working on one and all. “It’s a (cough cough) TRAP!”
3.  MACHINES and MINIATURE MENACES — The buzz in space travel circles is about miniaturization. Create a needle-in-the-haystack menace, droids/drones delivered in unsuspected packages to rebel planets. Detecting, tracking, determining friendly droid from foe could be made exciting. Give these machines Stephen Hawking’s worst nightmare — learning, adapting at digital speeds. “2001” and “Terminator” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation” posited this. It’s in the zeitgeist. Why wouldn’t AI be a most realistic threat?
4. ASSASSINS — This isn’t a big stretch, considering the Role of the Sith. But make the big threat a legion of disguised assassins, clones even, sent to inveigle their way into close quarters with this rebel leader or that one. Then, by any means necessary, they kill that rebel leader. This has “Terminator” tie-ins, but let’s leave time travel for another day.
5. INTERNAL DISSENT — Revolutions come undone when they’re betrayed. Think Castro and Che, Washington and Benedict Arnold, Lenin and Stalin. It’s “Captain America: Civil War,” only with legitimate life-or-death differences in philosophy.

These are just suggestions. As millions of “Force Awakens” fans demonstrated, and millions of comic book film fans and “Star Trek” fans and “Taken” fans for that matter underscore, it ain’t originality that lines them up around the door.

But if SOME of us are bored to death by the endless parade of Death Stars, and finales with cities being disintegrated up into a flying cloud of debris in the sky, it won’t be long before the less savvy catch on to the tiresome plot recycling that these films practice, and stop showing up.

Got other suggestions? Post them as comments below. We can work out the payment from Disney/Lucasfilm later when they see the error in their ways and steal our suggestions.

The new trailer to this Christmas’s new “Star Wars Story,” “Rogue One,” gives us a tantalizing international (and Oscar winning) cast, with flickers of Forest Whitaker, Felicity Jones, Donnie Yen, Diego Luna and others.

The tone is straight “Heart of Darkness/Empire Strikes Back.”A “rebel recruiter” and other characters we haven’t seen before, in name or in type, pop up.

The dialogue? “The imperial flag reigns over the galaxy.” Ugh. Unwind that one if you want.

A new weapon (Death Star, ya think?) is in “imminent” danger of being tested. And it um, must be stopped.

So, there’s novelty in this, sure. But it certainly gives a hint that it will be same old same old “Star Wars” plot and story arc, even if the characters are fresh.