mid-quel

hugovk commented on the word mid-quel

mid-quel, n.

The Guardian, 13 December 2016:

This latest exhilarating, good-natured and enjoyable adventure from the Star Wars imaginary universe is written by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy, and directed by Britain’s Gareth Edwards; it comes from a time which now doesn’t seem so very long ago. The film’s action occurs some time between Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Episode IV, A New Hope. So it’s a mid-quel or a deja vu-quel. Character archetypes, mythic confrontations, desperate hologram messages, dads real and quasi-, uniforms and hairstyles are always rising recognisably to the surface. Like superhero films or westerns or romcoms, Star Wars invented its own recurring generic components, and to complain or even notice now seems almost as beside the point as recognising familiar chord progressions in the blues. It is noticeable that the newish motif of the defector or renegade, which featured in The Force Awakens, pops up again here.

January 5, 2017