Star Wars (moderate spoilers)
Jan. 2nd, 2016 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blimixWe finally saw "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" last night.
I'm going to discuss it, in ways that are moderately spoilery, behind a cut.
These are impressions I had during the movie: Things that were noticeable enough that they struck me while watching, rather than waiting to be fridge logic. (Anita Sarkeesian does a good job covering several of the fridge logic issues, good and bad.)
** SPOILERS BELOW **
I was very happy with this movie. I could count the number of things about it that displeased me on one hand. (It wasn't perfect, and that's okay. It didn't have to be perfect; it just had to be a good Star Wars movie, and it did that quite well.) To count the number of things that pleased me, I'd have to watch it on DVD with a pause button. Oddly, this puts me in a position in which I can recount more of the former, because they were few enough to be memorable.
First, the obvious positive, that every decent person has probably already raved about: Rey is a great heroine: Super competent, and still quite human. To paraphrase Mia, she did not have a moment in that movie that would have embarrassed a reasonable male character in her place, which is an awesome test for a female character. She was never objectified (by the characters or the costumers), nor treated differently for being a woman. The film also showed women in various leadership and combat positions, all of them written and treated respectfully. This all pleases me greatly.
I loved that (as Grim delightedly pointed out) Finn was scared. Terrified. Bravery necessarily involves overcoming fear; the fearless hero cannot be brave, and their heroics are the less impressive for it. Doing the right thing even though you are terrified of doing it? That's what takes guts! Like Rey, though for different reasons, Finn is role model material.
I also liked how Kylo Ren had problems with anger, fear, and impulse control. Even ordinary people may do horrible things when scared and angry. Take that and add serious military power and Force aptitude, and you know his potential to do seriously nasty shit is through the roof. That's a great way to make a character viscerally scary, at least to those in the audience sufficiently familiar with human nature. (Edit: The fact that he was a bit of a screwup mitigated his scariness.)
The callbacks to, and occasional lampshading of, the original movies, were appreciated. Those bits made the movie feel like it was written by fans, for fans. They may have gone a little overboard on all that, but I didn't mind. Why yes, Chewbacca's laser crossbow is cool. BB-8 acting like a fanboy to R2-D2 was adorable. And it might have been my imagination, but the stormtrooper sounded (amusingly) resigned when he said, "Aaaaand, I'll drop my weapon."
On to the problems: Kylo Ren obviously had to live to be a recurring villain, but was only saved by an absurdly improbable deus ex machina. WTF? Any professional writer should know better. The fact that R2-D2 had the rest of the map was also a deus ex machina, which completed the vast majority of the heroes' quest for them. Having C-3PO mention the possibility doesn't excuse it, and was such clumsy, blatant foreshadowing that he might as well have put a neon sign on R2. For that matter, the map itself was a terrible Macguffin. There's no reason anyone would make such a map, nor break it into scattered, hidden pieces, regardless of whether they wanted Luke found. (Not to mention the absurdity of a map that is useless if it is not fully complete. Luke isn't a multi-part geocache!)
The main, imminent threat was for all purposes another Death Star, just bigger and more powerful. Seriously? That's astonishingly lazy writing. (Even the second Death Star was more creative; its shtick was that it apparently wasn't yet an imminent threat, so that it would look like an easy target before it was complete. The "trap" was letting the Rebellion think that they were facing a similar situation, which they could just win by pulling the same stunt again while the Imperial fleet was away.) And my immediate thought upon seeing it: Where did they get all that metal? All the labor to build it? "That's no moon" had implied an enormity of effort and resources (and threat) worthy of a galactic empire, but this new scale just broke my suspension of disbelief.
Han solo, notorious scoundrel and unreliable smuggler, attracts the attention of everybody in Maz's establishment as soon as he enters. Whoops! But then, nothing comes of it, other than two people noting his presence, and one friendly interview. Come on! You know that if Malcolm Reynolds (who, let's face it, is Han Solo with slightly better conscience and impulse control) had attracted that much notice, he would have had some uncomfortable fast explaining to do, then failed to talk his way out of a confrontation until Zoe intimidated his would-be assailant into backing down, and would have finally gotten help from someone who didn't even want to be seen with him, and who couldn't be rid of him fast enough. "Everybody goes silent and looks up at Han" gives a huge narrative promise, on which it fails to deliver.
Rey is in enemy territory, climbing down a vertical wall, then pulls a lever. I just had to lean over and whisper, "Who puts a lever there?"
Kylo Ren has apparently killed the entire new generation of Jedi in training, who were until that point his compatriots; but then during a duel with Rey, he makes an obviously doomed proposition to her regarding Dark Side training! Couldn't he have tried turning, rather than killing, some of the adepts he hadn't just antagonized? (Now that I think about it, that exact problem runs in the family.)
I'm not including abuses of science here. This is space opera, not science fiction, and if they want to have someone manually switch out of light speed just above ground level, or use up the sun, or whatever, that's fine with me.
And do remember, despite the flaws, I loved tons of things about the movie, and had a great time watching it.
Gratuitous, irrelevant link: What if Harry Potter, the chosen one, had turned out to be a squib, how do you think history would have turned out differently? An alternate universe fanfic, in summary form. Still fairly long, but notably thoughtful and engaging. (Thanks, Sami and Tara!)
I'm going to discuss it, in ways that are moderately spoilery, behind a cut.
These are impressions I had during the movie: Things that were noticeable enough that they struck me while watching, rather than waiting to be fridge logic. (Anita Sarkeesian does a good job covering several of the fridge logic issues, good and bad.)
** SPOILERS BELOW **
[Spoiler space...] [Spoiler space...] [Spoiler space...] [Spoiler space...]
I was very happy with this movie. I could count the number of things about it that displeased me on one hand. (It wasn't perfect, and that's okay. It didn't have to be perfect; it just had to be a good Star Wars movie, and it did that quite well.) To count the number of things that pleased me, I'd have to watch it on DVD with a pause button. Oddly, this puts me in a position in which I can recount more of the former, because they were few enough to be memorable.
First, the obvious positive, that every decent person has probably already raved about: Rey is a great heroine: Super competent, and still quite human. To paraphrase Mia, she did not have a moment in that movie that would have embarrassed a reasonable male character in her place, which is an awesome test for a female character. She was never objectified (by the characters or the costumers), nor treated differently for being a woman. The film also showed women in various leadership and combat positions, all of them written and treated respectfully. This all pleases me greatly.
I loved that (as Grim delightedly pointed out) Finn was scared. Terrified. Bravery necessarily involves overcoming fear; the fearless hero cannot be brave, and their heroics are the less impressive for it. Doing the right thing even though you are terrified of doing it? That's what takes guts! Like Rey, though for different reasons, Finn is role model material.
I also liked how Kylo Ren had problems with anger, fear, and impulse control. Even ordinary people may do horrible things when scared and angry. Take that and add serious military power and Force aptitude, and you know his potential to do seriously nasty shit is through the roof. That's a great way to make a character viscerally scary, at least to those in the audience sufficiently familiar with human nature. (Edit: The fact that he was a bit of a screwup mitigated his scariness.)
The callbacks to, and occasional lampshading of, the original movies, were appreciated. Those bits made the movie feel like it was written by fans, for fans. They may have gone a little overboard on all that, but I didn't mind. Why yes, Chewbacca's laser crossbow is cool. BB-8 acting like a fanboy to R2-D2 was adorable. And it might have been my imagination, but the stormtrooper sounded (amusingly) resigned when he said, "Aaaaand, I'll drop my weapon."
On to the problems: Kylo Ren obviously had to live to be a recurring villain, but was only saved by an absurdly improbable deus ex machina. WTF? Any professional writer should know better. The fact that R2-D2 had the rest of the map was also a deus ex machina, which completed the vast majority of the heroes' quest for them. Having C-3PO mention the possibility doesn't excuse it, and was such clumsy, blatant foreshadowing that he might as well have put a neon sign on R2. For that matter, the map itself was a terrible Macguffin. There's no reason anyone would make such a map, nor break it into scattered, hidden pieces, regardless of whether they wanted Luke found. (Not to mention the absurdity of a map that is useless if it is not fully complete. Luke isn't a multi-part geocache!)
The main, imminent threat was for all purposes another Death Star, just bigger and more powerful. Seriously? That's astonishingly lazy writing. (Even the second Death Star was more creative; its shtick was that it apparently wasn't yet an imminent threat, so that it would look like an easy target before it was complete. The "trap" was letting the Rebellion think that they were facing a similar situation, which they could just win by pulling the same stunt again while the Imperial fleet was away.) And my immediate thought upon seeing it: Where did they get all that metal? All the labor to build it? "That's no moon" had implied an enormity of effort and resources (and threat) worthy of a galactic empire, but this new scale just broke my suspension of disbelief.
Han solo, notorious scoundrel and unreliable smuggler, attracts the attention of everybody in Maz's establishment as soon as he enters. Whoops! But then, nothing comes of it, other than two people noting his presence, and one friendly interview. Come on! You know that if Malcolm Reynolds (who, let's face it, is Han Solo with slightly better conscience and impulse control) had attracted that much notice, he would have had some uncomfortable fast explaining to do, then failed to talk his way out of a confrontation until Zoe intimidated his would-be assailant into backing down, and would have finally gotten help from someone who didn't even want to be seen with him, and who couldn't be rid of him fast enough. "Everybody goes silent and looks up at Han" gives a huge narrative promise, on which it fails to deliver.
Rey is in enemy territory, climbing down a vertical wall, then pulls a lever. I just had to lean over and whisper, "Who puts a lever there?"
Kylo Ren has apparently killed the entire new generation of Jedi in training, who were until that point his compatriots; but then during a duel with Rey, he makes an obviously doomed proposition to her regarding Dark Side training! Couldn't he have tried turning, rather than killing, some of the adepts he hadn't just antagonized? (Now that I think about it, that exact problem runs in the family.)
I'm not including abuses of science here. This is space opera, not science fiction, and if they want to have someone manually switch out of light speed just above ground level, or use up the sun, or whatever, that's fine with me.
And do remember, despite the flaws, I loved tons of things about the movie, and had a great time watching it.
Gratuitous, irrelevant link: What if Harry Potter, the chosen one, had turned out to be a squib, how do you think history would have turned out differently? An alternate universe fanfic, in summary form. Still fairly long, but notably thoughtful and engaging. (Thanks, Sami and Tara!)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-03 05:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-03 06:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-03 12:38 pm (UTC)-Botia
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-03 06:46 am (UTC)I'm also hoping that despite his apparent demise, Han's not out of it, and there will be flashbacks in the next movies to Han and Leah's clearly tumultuous relationship that led to breeding the next Darth Vader.
--Beth
/me has vivid memories of going to see The Return Of The Jedi on opening weekend and twice being turned away when we got close to the box office to be told "Sorry folks, there's no more tickets"
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-03 07:05 am (UTC)Maybe there'll be more animated installments, in which we see R2-D2's quest for all the rest of the map pieces. (Or maybe they didn't need gathering: Luke just put most of the map in R2 for safekeeping.)
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-03 07:09 am (UTC)Perhaps I should have said, "despite his apparent demise, Harrison Ford is not out of it"
--Beth
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-03 01:19 pm (UTC)But my favorite thing about the restraint-loosening, blaster-dropping Stormtrooper JB-007 is exactly who's under that helmet. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-03 04:20 pm (UTC)On the end of Kylo and Rey duel - I took the gulf opening between them as symbolic. At this point it seems not unlikely that the two are blood relatives (of some degree), separated wildly by circumstances. Not subtle, but makes a certain amount of dramatic sense.
On R2's map, and the map in general - my current assumption is that both parts were left by Luke, with the intention that they would only be found and assembled under very specific circumstances. I'm not sure whether R2 was "doing stuff" on a network somewhere to find his pieces while in "low power" mode or if he had it since parting with Luke (as seen in Rey's visions), but either way he woke up only when a powerful Force user (and possible Skywalker) arrived at the rebel base. My reading is Luke ideally didn't want Rey ever dragged into the fight, but if she *is*, the best thing is to come find him then. Even though he'd really rather be left alone forever.
On "welp, it's a bigger Death Star" - yeah, okay, they even lamp-shade that it's kind of lazy in the scene where the Rebels plan their attack. "There's always a way to blow it up." I'm willing to waive the apparent laziness in light of needing, after the prequels, to make a film that really really "feels like Star Wars" before hopefully branching out further in the next two installments. We'll see.
On weird science - yeah, given this is more fantasy/myth than SF I have no problem with sucking up suns to power hyperspace lasers. The only thing that actually bothered me from a scientific perspective at the time was the destruction of the Hosnian system being visible to the naked eye from presumably different systems entirely. It moved the plot, but makes space seem ridiculously small.
It's true that the Last Order, which is otherwise assumed to be a semi-hidden remnant of the Empire, having the resources to build Starkiller doesn't make a lot of sense. It would've been a planet to start with, but there's at least as much metal as several Death Stars in there. They're clearly conscripting/brainwashing everyone they can get their hands on, but still. Eh.
On Kylo not turning more people - I thought maybe he did? In Rey's vision, there's clearly a small group of people standing with Kylo amongst the bodies of the others they'd been fighting. I'm assuming he did turn a handful of Luke's students who aided in his revolt - these may indeed be the "Knights of Ren" mentioned once or twice, though we never see them in the present. Maybe next movie. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if "Knights of Ren" was an honorific made up by Snoke for a rag-tag bunch of malcontents, designed to help Kylo feel important and useful.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-03 06:47 pm (UTC)I am curious as to why a map to Luke Skywalker is worth the apparent risk of seeking it. He's already out of action; Ren has nothing to gain by killing him, except perhaps for a chance to make a doomed attempt at emotional closure. The protagonists never established why they're seeking someone who doesn't want to be found. Every person who hears "map to Luke Skywalker" reacts with rapt attention, implying more backstory than the mere fact that he's a legend to them.
As for the vision, it went a bit too quickly for me; I'm sure I missed some important implications.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-03 07:31 pm (UTC)None of that goes against what you said about R2 and the map, though. It's definitely a very Macguffin-y macguffin.
As for the value finding Luke at all, presumably both sides hope/fear that he can be convinced to have another go training new Jedi, and that one such might stand up to Ren and Snoke successfully. He's been out of action, but he's a *potential* unique asset that the First Order wanted to pre-emptively deny the Rebellion.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-03 05:59 pm (UTC)In retrospect I could see that they had used alot of the same plot points as previous movies.
Han's Death - Obi Wan's Death
The writers decided for this movie to write something we already knew, hopefully in preparation of taking us someplace new.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-03 06:22 pm (UTC)Also, Han / Obi Wan / Qui Gon. Toward the end of the first movie in each trilogy. (Because we may dislike the villain for blowing up a planet or star system, but it's not personal for the audience and the other characters (aside from Leia, for whom Alderaan was quite personal) until they kill a beloved character.)
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-03 08:44 pm (UTC)