"The Force Awakens" (with SPOILERS)

20 years worth of time and a whole lot of EU material to build from.

 

I think that R1 is strikingly similar to a comic book movie, and I think that people who regularly watch those movies - not me, as I find them almost interminably boring - will have internalized the tropes of those movies enough to very quickly pick up on the signals in the action. They spent the first hour assembling a team of quirks and types, not necessarily developed characters, and then spent the last third blowing shit up while the quirks/characters carried out the convoluted steps of a mission I had long since lost interest in the particulars of. The movie is basically a Jyn Erso origin story. I guess you could say the same about "A New Hope," but it wasn't as choppy. We spent a long time on Tattoine, and our introductions to the other members of the team, Han/Chewie and Obi-Wan, came through Luke. In a post-"Avengers" world, we would have needed 15 minutes of Obi-Wan brooding in dark shadows.

 

I guess there could be stories there, but I don't think I'd find them interesting. We already know Vader's story from start to finish and we know Palpatine's story from at least its midpoint to finish. I'm just not sure there's much left to flesh out that would be worth two hours and $50.

 

Our introductions to the other members of the team in Rogue One bear more resemblance to how Luke joined up with his compadres than the way they assembled the team in, say, The Avengers or Suicide Squad or even the upcoming Justice League. In those films, you had someone like Fury, or Waller or Batman actively recruit these characters to form a squad - "I'm putting together a team." Jyn's group comes together much more organically, within the framework of the plot, in much the same way it did in A New Hope.

I agree the characters were archetypes - the quirky pilot, the blind zen Force master, the heavy gunner, the charming rogue, etc. - but they were always archetypes in Star Wars. You kind of expect that going in. And, not for anything, but it would have taken six hours and probably three films to make these seven people into fully-developed characters.

Again, this is pretty much Saving Private Ryan in space, with a bit less character development. I don't think we got a scene like Hanks had with Tom Sizemore in the Church or Damon talking about Alice Jardin falling out of the ugly tree and hitting every branch on the way down.

 

Spoiler

There's a really cool function on this site that allows you to post spoilers and makes it extremely easy for people to avoid them if they wish.

 

What do I look like, a magician?

 

Right. And it's a bit of a problem with a movie that isn't going to become a franchise. (This was a problem in "Inception," as well, I think.) One thing about "A New Hope" is that we met most of the team through Luke. It was a little disorienting here. And I think the director obviously realized that it might be, because we got captions on the screen for the first time in a "Star Wars" film telling us where we were. (Part of that, also, is probably an acknowledgment of how obsessive fans have become about things like planet and base names.)

 

I think Cassian, who we met in the alley, and Bodhi are the only ones we didn't meet directly through Jyn, right? I didn't find it disorienting. It made sense to meet Cassian before he joined up with Jyn because upon meeting her, he shifts away from being a cold-blooded killer (#CassianShotFirst). He couldn't have killed that guy in the alley if we had met him through Jyn, and that was important to explaining his motivations for joining her on the final mission.

Not trying to convince you of anything, it just didn't bother me that we met two characters separately from Jyn.

 

Watched the original on TNT over the weekend and it dawned on me that pretty much every single solitary line of dialogue can be found printed on a T-shirt or a coffee mug somewhere.

For a movie and a franchise that's regularly lambasted for its scripts, that's pretty remarkable.

 

Although that's part of the reason why every line of dialogue can be found printed on a T-shirt or coffee mug: It's so bad that it's kitchy.

 

Things I liked:

Much more gritty. Real sense of danger from storm troopers and machines. OK maybe not the generic white storm troopers.

Scenes of the ships from the lang view on the planets/moons. Made them seem more real.

Lots of nods to previous Star Wars movies in sets, scenes, dialogue and characters. Real attempt to set this film in that universe.

Lots of humor. Especially K2 or whatever his name is.

Things I didn't quite get:

Imperial weapons director White Cape seemed more like an ambitious bureaucrat than villain, but I guess that's the point.

The Death Star was badass here, but with all the talk of its weapon, I'd like to know what's under the hood to move a moon-sized ship in super hyper speed or whatever. Though, I guess the Death Star would lack some ooomph if they said they were going to blow up Alderan as soon as they got there in 23 years.

 

As a space nerd, I have to set aside lots of things. The Death Star moving is one of them. But it's not nearly as tough to get past as the whole weightlessness thing. I mean, I loved this movie—it might be my favorite of them all—but when Darth Vader is standing in an open cargo bay door looking into space... AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!