"Star Wars: The Force Awakens"

Star Wars

            It is my 300^th entry on blogger and I am going to use this entry to talk about the biggest movie in the world “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”.  It will be an early start to my annual reviews of movies from 2015, and maybe I will get some sympathetic traffic to here from people randomly googling these kinds of things.

            Since this is the kind of movie that is really big and you could go thru it scene by scene to talk about things I liked or didn’t care for I will do my usual thing of disjointedly asking questions, critiquing, and giving out compliments.  SPOILERS obviously, overall I thought the movie was a solid 8/10, with a hearty recommendation from me.

 

Remember, this whole franchise is built around coincidence and destiny.  And an awesome score.

            People like to point out that the plot is (in an outline) the exact same plot as “Star Wars: A New Hope”, but I would posit that it has a lot of points and scenes taken from all of the original trilogy, which is fine.  The original trilogy is 38 years old, taking that same story outline and presenting it with modern effects and dialogue, and using that basic story to kick off the new franchise is a good idea.  It is akin to saying, “This is what we are going to be doing from here on out, this is how we are going to do it.”

            However there is some grander subtext at work here too.  The main character is a scavenger who makes their living picking thru the remnants of the old franchise, and the main villain’s central personal crisis is whether he will live up to the classic iconic villain.  It is almost like the movie is picking thru the old franchise to find the best workable bits and is terrified of not living up to the legacy of the original films?  Am I reading too much into this?  Probably not, they draw attention to this all the time in the movie, I feel this was exactly what they intended.  There is a literal shrine to Darth Vader in the bad guy’s bed room.

 

"I feel the pull of the light"

            Let’s talk about one of the things I really liked, Kylo Ren.  Kylo is the best villain in Star Wars.  He is powerful, he has a goal, you understand his motivation, you understand his inner conflict (say what you will about Darth Vader, if Luke did not say the words, “I feel the good in you” the audience would have seen ZERO evidence of Vader turning into a good guy), and he acts like someone who is powered by rage, fear, and pain.  My favorite scene with him is the final lightsaber fight in which he pounds on his wound to work himself into greater levels of frenzy, that is some brutal violent shit right there.

            His armor is cool, his lightsaber is cool, and he kills the most beloved character in the franchise.  The only thing missing from that scene is Han saying the words, “I love you” followed by Kylo saying, “I know” and then kicking Solo’s body in the blackness.  Also, have to love Chewbacca’s reaction, he has just seen his best friend murdered by (what I imagine) is his god son, he probably baby sat Kylo, had the family over for Life Day (HA!) and now he is trying to kill the kid.  That is some emotional baggage.

 

Boy was my character oversold in the marketing.

And now for something I didn’t like, anybody else think that the stormtrooper Captain Phasma was a huge waste? I can't help but think some script pages got lost or something got rewritten.  For instance, when that random stormtrooper has that electro-tonfa and fights Finn... Why not make that Phasma? It would make sense that she would call him traitor, it would even make sense that she would have that kind of unique weapon on her person (working with Kylo all day I imagine she mentally preps for the day he decides to hack her to pieces and so she keeps around a weapon that could block a lightsaber long enough for a retreat).

I also did not like how easily she is captured near the end. Han, Chewie, and Finn take her hostage and demand that she lower the shields... And she does. I kind of expected a marine captain to not just roll over and lower the defenses to the single most important military asset in the galaxy. It would have been cooler had she just said, "You're going to have to kill me." Then Finn doesn't (because he knows that would be brutal and accomplish nothing), and they keep her prisoner, then they find Rey, have her try to use the force on Phasma and then just have the Captain pull a Jabba and say, "I am not so weak minded." Then have her do something clever and escape down a garbage chute.

You might be saying, "Well, then how would they get the shields down?"  To which I reply, "Just have the plot move forward the same way with the group planting charges." Dropping the shields ultimately wasn’t enough, so why not just skip that scene all together?  Having them forced to use the charges to let the Resistance attack thru would be fine, it has the exact same impact on the narrative and echoes "Return of the Jedi" even more so.

With those two changes you take a character that barely has any lines and fights no one, and instead turn them into someone who is clever, tenacious, has unique armor, an anti-lightsaber weapon, and is resistant to the force. She becomes a cunning dangerous adversary that promises to be a recurring threat in future movies. As it stands she is literally thrown in the garbage.

She is apparently returning in the future but I can’t see why they should bother, she is already a joke.  Single biggest disappointment in the new movie.

Now a positive thing, Finn is now my favorite character in the franchise, more or less summed up by his first interaction with General Leia, as she tells him how brave he is for defecting from the first order.  Turning your back on the military dictatorship that is the only life you have ever known because you see the violence and suffering they are inflicting on the galaxy is brave, and without Jedi powers he fights Kylo Ren, a fight he cannot win.  He is also a great straight man to Poe and Han’s wise cracking, a position that is always underappreciated (honestly without the straight man most comedy just falls flat).

As for Rey, Poe, and BB-8?  I love them all.  Each is fun in their own way and they do not step on each other’s toes at all.  While Finn is my favorite, any one of the human characters could have been the hero in their own movie and would have worked great.  If these are the type of hero the new era promises then I happily await more entries.

 

Couldn't we have just had a fleet of Star Destroyers?

Now something I dislike, The Star Killer Base is the absolute worst kind of writing in a sequel.  Upping the stakes by increasing the destructive yield of bad guy’s weapons.  It is lazy.  WE HAVE AN EVEN BIGGER DEATH STAR.  Yawn.  The conflict and drama between the characters is what I am here to see, not just more planets getting torched.

If they had to have something like this, then it should not be in the first movie.  Hint at it.  Have rumors of a new Death Star being built and the Resistance not knowing where it is, have it show up in the 3rd movie as the big thing that dwarfs all other confrontations before it.  Showing the hologram of how the base is a 100 times larger than the Death Star comes off as comical in this movie, if it had been built up to it over multiple films it would have been terrifying.

The Star Killer Base is the thing I dislike the most about the movie and it does bring it down for me.

How is Harrison Ford still so devilishly handsome?
Unattainable standards for male attractiveness in films, I am being oppressed.

 Something I like, the returning original cast members.  While Luke is barely there at all he unquestionably looms over the whole film and looks the part as the hero who completed his journey to Jedi master.  The story in which is betrayed by the knights of Ren (how cool is it that there appears to be an entire clan of Dark Side Force users?) is legitimately sad, he was supposed to have been the guy to return order to the galaxy and he just couldn’t manage it.

Han, Chewie, and Leia are all great.  I did find it strange that in the 50 years they have been working together Han never fired Chewie’s crossbow, maybe they should have had Finn fire the crossbow, and since he is a storm trooper you could have him say something like, “This thing is so much more accurate than my old blaster” to joke about how Stormtroopers never hit anything.

C-3PO is used appropriately, he pops in to ruin the moment between Leia and Han (just like he did in “Empire”) is funny, offers up some exposition, and then steps back into the back ground.

Harrison did his best performance in a decade, fully embracing and saying goodbye to the best character he ever played.  Really, when it came to the old cast they did everything right, showing how they changed and where they went since the happy ending of Jedi, and using them as launch pads for the new cast.

General Hux, I actually think he is a pretty good character.  They do not directly compare him to anyone in the original trilogy, he gives one impassioned speech, and otherwise serves as the calculating counterpoint to Kylo Ren.

 Something I did not like, the politics.  I had to look up what was happening in the movie’s political conflict.  And while it makes sense after I look it up, the fact that it made no sense in the movie hurts the film overall.  It is not necessary I suppose as the movie moves very fast and is not about Space Politics (that should be left for Star Trek), but it is the motivation of General Hux, and General Leia, and the impetus of the story, so maybe making that a little clearer to the audience should be a priority.

One last thing I do like, everything else.  The music, the effects, the costumes, the action, and the pacing.  If Disney were to put out a statement talking about how happy they were with the film and how they want to continue to be the mainstay of pop culture, I would just nod and be happy.  Much like Marvel, Star Wars is a huge franchise that will reach millions and millions of people, this film promises that the franchise will be committed to fun, adventure, and good characters that kids and adults all over the world can watch and love and serve as a common cultural touchstone for all the right reasons.

While this movie is not perfect, it didn’t have to be, we have decades to explore an entire galaxy of adventures, and a company that wants to put the people who love that universe in charge of making things people love.  Hooray.

Score: 8/10

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Some Netflix Reviews (pt2)

Three movies I watched on Netflix this weekend while playing video games.

I ranked them least to most spoiler ridden.

The People vs. George Lucas (2010)

6/10

            I am unsure, but I might have seen this, or just numerous clips of this before, and considering it was made before Disney bought the Lucas empire, both of those things probably lessened the impact of this content dramatically.  That being said this movie does have a very deep exploration of the nature of fandom in popular culture and the sheer size and cult like fervor that caused backlash against George Lucas in the last 15 years.

            I recommend this movie if you enjoy discussions of popular media as much as you enjoy popular media, especially if you like to pick apart different things (like me).  On the other hand, if you have heard enough about the prequels and the turmoil involved then you should give this a pass, because while its content does use "Star Wars" as lexicon for talking about broader ideas like marketing and the auteur theory... Mostly it is about "Star Wars".

I somewhat love this poster.  It very much captures the tone of the movie.

Odd Thomas (2014)

8/10

            The trailer to this is god awful.

            I kind of loved "Odd Thomas".  It is the sort of thing I would write (though, you know, markedly better) with a super sarcastic and self aware tone, coupled with a supernatural mystery that is tight and works. It is like "John Dies at the End" but with a better budget. I am so sad that do to legal troubles the movie will not be a franchise, but it makes me want to read the novels (which I found wonderful, thru the whole movie I kept saying to myself "this dialogue sounds like it was lifted from a novel", and I was right).

            The stakes of the conflict consistently raise, the effects are cool, and even in the context of a small town the locations of conflict vary considerably: Pool Party, junk yard, abandoned prison, mall, dinner, Church, etc.  It is cool.  Best comparisons I can make would be to "Jack Reacher" and "Constantine".

Shit poster. I do like that Anton Yelchin is becoming a big wheel in genre movies (Star Trek, Fright Night).

Oldboy (American version; 2013)

?/10

            This god damn thing has me confused.  I appreciate it on a technical level, though I have no affection for director Spike Lee so I am unsure how much of the credit should go to him.  Especially since I have heard this movie is so similar to what it is remaking.  It is one of the hardest R movies I have seen in a while with graphic violence, hard language, issues of substance abuse, and a LOT of sexual abuse.  I feel people should watch it because it looks pretty, and has some interesting ideas.  That being said... I kind of hated the story and I can only really explain why by making this section of the review full of spoilers for the movie, and a lot of the movie is built on a twist, so if you don't want it spoiled feel free to go watch the movie.  If I had to compare it to something, "The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo" because of the subject matter, and a similar unfulfilling twist ending ("Girl" was considerably better in overall plot), but a good technical side.  I should also say that there is a lot of good acting on the part of Elizabeth Olsen and Josh Brolin.

            Spoilers: The movie starts with an alcoholic businessman failing to land a client because he is a douche, not going to his daughter's birthday because he had to try and land a client, and then getting kidnapped.  He finds himself in a cell made to look like a motel room, with only the TV and regular deliveries of Chinese food to keep him company.  There he learns of the murder of his wife and that he is the open and shut suspect in the investigation, DNA evidence having been taken from him and planted at the crime scene.  He then spends the next 20 years in his cell trying to better himself, watching martial arts shows, training, and writing letters to his daughter that he plans to deliver upon his escape.  Then he is let go.

            He is then told by a mysterious voice to solve the mystery of his imprisonment and in return he will receive wealth and the means to secure his freedom and innocence in the murder of his wife.  Along the way he gets help from an old friend who owns a bar, a young nurse, and people from his past.  Turns out the vastly rich and powerful man who is responsible for his imprisonment was the brother of a woman the protagonist had bullied in school.  The Protagonist had reviled a family secret that had so shamed the whole clan that it led the patriarch to try to kill everyone, and only failed to kill the son.  This is because the son, much like the daughter had been in a long running incestuous relationship with the father and blamed the murder spree on the shame of the protagonist's revelation.  Honestly as far as motivations go it makes evil-sense even if it is not the logic of healthy Earth minds.

            But then the movie goes crazy.  The villain, as part of his ultimate revenge, reveals the full scope of his manipulations, that the young love interest of the protagonist, a woman he has already slept with, is the protagonist's daughter.  The protagonist then begs to be murdered while the villain kills himself, after that the protagonist gives his wealth and a letter to the daughter not explaining things, and then has himself locked up in the motel cells again.

            Here is the thing, this plan is just too elaborate and doesn't really make sense.  The villain sees the incest his father was committing as a perfectly healthy expression of affection, and only blames the protagonist for the public shame he cast on the family, so ultimately the plan results in the protagonist feeling private shame and being free of the societal scrutiny... See how that is backwards?  If the bad guy doesn't see anything wrong with incest, how can getting someone to commit incest a revenge?  Really, the plan should be to reveal to the protagonist his ideas that incest is okay, have the protagonist agree, and then reveal this to the public so he has to live with the same public shame, like the villain's family did.

            What is more, this movie takes place (this version) in the American South, incest is not quite as stigmatized, especially accidental incest.  It is pretty clear this is not the raping or indoctrination of a child into a sexual relationship, but the result of a massive misunderstanding... So a lot of blame is off the characters, it could be that the protagonist would be able to come to terms with it, and while sparing the daughter the confliction of it, breaks off the relationship like he did in the movie but not punishing himself (he was imprisoned for 20 years, I think he paid his dues ahead of time).

            Then there is the deity like levels of manipulation that the villain is able to accomplish.  His plan could have failed 10,000 times, at one point the protagonist is fighting 2 dozen people all of which are armed with the intent of killing him, he makes it out (with a bowie knife in his back).  If the protagonist had died, or been rendered comatose by trauma, would the bad guy have just shrugged his shoulders and forgot the 20 year tantric revenge plot?  What if the daughter had just died in car accident when she was 12?  What if the father and daughter not been attracted to one another?  What if the protagonist had just bothered to Google anything having to do with himself to instantly dispel one of the key plot points of what was happening?  It breaks credulity, keeping me from enjoying the movie.  Also, I kind of saw it coming, so..."bleh".

            In conclusion:

            Technical stuff = Great

            Story = Bleh

Lame poster.  But better.

Hero vs. Protagonist

            People do not understand the terms, "Hero" and "Protagonist".  I keep hearing people describe Walter White of "Breaking Bad" as an Anti-Hero, mostly because he does criminal activity for understandable reasons.  Yeah he is not a "hero" at all.  He is a villain.  He is a villain protagonist.

            To be fair this is a problem created by a cultural norm started with a lot of older movies.  The norm was to portray the good guys in the protagonist role, giving them clear motivations, causing people to think that motivation = heroism, and that main character = hero.

            Truth is, bad guys have motivations, they make decisions just like everyone else in the world and can be motivated by simple or complex needs and desires just like a hero can be.  Luke Skywalker is a hero, he does the right thing for the right reasons (though gains complexity as he does endanger himself and his friends for the sake of trying to bring his father back to the light side), Han Solo starts as an anti villain, does the right thing for the wrong reasons (saving the princess for reward).

            On the other end is Walter White who starts as an anti-hero, doing a bad thing for a good reason (cooking meth to pay for his care and to leave his family something after his death), then moves into full blown villain as he does things out of pride and greed overlooking extreme violence or committing violent acts to continue with his criminal lifestyle even though he doesn't need to.

            Villain protagonists are not common and so people tend to call the main character the "hero" of the story when that is more and more not the case.  TV is a cluttered medium, and in order to gain traction with an audience TV is taking steps toward more and more violent, nefarious, or just evil characters.  This has made things much less heroic.

            Look at the nominations for best series, "Breaking Bad" (show about the complex world of drug dealing), "Homeland" (terrorism), "House of Cards" (political intrigue and dirty dealings), "Mad Men" (ADVERTISEMENTS, is there a greater evil?), "Game of Thrones" (Dark fantasy with mass murder as a series highlight), "Downton Abbey" (Classism and idol rich).  Compared with 2000: "ER" (doctors saving lives), "Law and Order" (cops and lawyers fighting crime), "The Practice" (more complex, lawyers seeking justice and paychecks), "The West Wing" (ultimate romanticized political drama), and "The Sopranos" (the mob).  Things have gotten a lot darker, with only a couple shows analogous to each other and most modern shows taking after the tone of "The Sopranos" more than any of the others.

 

I have cancer, that makes it okay for me to hurt people in the pursuit of massive wealth.

Just for my own amusement to illustrate my position I am going to list a few of each type of character alignment.

Hero (right thing, right reasons, right methods):

Movies: Luke Skywalker "Star Wars", Hercules "Disney's Hercules", Batman "The Dark Knight", Atticus Finch "To Kill a Mockingbird"

TV: President Bartlett and pretty much the whole cast of "The West Wing", Doctor Green and pretty much everyone from "ER", Ned Stark "Game of Thrones", Hank Schrader "Breaking Bad"

Comic Books: Superman "Superman", Captain Marvel "SHAZAM"

Anti Hero (right thing, questionable reasons, questionable methods)

Movies: Batman "Batman", James Bond "Skyfall", General Patton "Patton"

TV: Jack Bauer "24", Walter White "Breaking Bad" (Initially), Tyrion Lannister "Game of Thrones", Stannis Baratheon "Game of Thrones"

Comic Books: Wolverine "Uncanny X-Men", Jesse Custer "Preacher"

Anti Villain (wrong thing, right reasons, questionable methods)

Movies: Tyler Durden "Fight Club", Will Munny "Unforgiven", HAL 9000 "2001: A Space Odyssey"

TV: Saul Goodman "Breaking Bad", Theon Greyjoy "Game of Thrones" (Very Close to Villain)

Comic Books: Black Adam "52", The Authority "The Authority" (Initially Anti-Hero), Magneto "Uncanny X-Men"

Villain (wrong thing, wrong reasons, wrong methods)

Movies: Joker "The Dark Knight", Hannibal Lecter "The Silence of the Lambs",

TV: Tuco Salamanca "Breaking Bad", Walter White "Breaking Bad" (Later Seasons), Ramsay Snow "Game of Thrones", Gregor Clegane "Game of Thrones"

Comic Books: Apocalypse "Uncanny X-Men"

30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 19

            I decided to do the 30 day movie challenge as a blog series as it ties into my blog activities rather easily and I am once again not blogging my usual series with regularity in spite of saying that I would.

            Today is "A Movie that I wish I had seen in the Theater".  And now the prompt is just kind of useless.  I do not need to see a movie in the theater to enjoy it.  Theaters are expensive, they have people in them that complain when you crack wise too frequently, and while it is cool when an entire theater full of people clap or cheer at an especially cheesy awesome scene or speech, the fact is that I can have just as much enjoyment watching a movie with friends at home.  In fact the only thing going to a movie in the theater does: is remind you how you are there by yourself, and how much that makes you a loser.  All that being said, "Star Wars: A New Hope".

Funny Caption Goes Here

            In addition to being the most up to date special effects piece of the time, with the best musical score in a movie up till that point (I hesitate to say for certain, but it may be the best original score for film of all time), most importantly, "Star Wars" changed things.

And in turn, nerds changed it.

            You want to know why trilogies became such a big thing?  That was "Star Wars".  What to know why science fiction went through a renaissance (The "Star Trek" franchise, "Conan: The Barbarian", "Blade Runner", "Ghost Busters", "Back to the Future", etc.) in the 80's?  That was "Star Wars".  I can say that I don't know what people thought about the movie initially, but I would like to imagine them going in with skepticism and interest, and leaving more than a bit wide eyed.

            I have a personal running joke about the new "Star Wars" movies, imagining what they would have been like had then been written and directed by a real master of Science fiction and fantasy, like J.J. Abrams, Joss Whedon, or god forbid George Lucas of 77'.

Its like a pitch for a nerdy buddy cop flick.  Whose for this being the pairing for Booster Gold and Blue Beetle?