It's been way over 12 parsecs since the last Star Wars blog (complaint) of mine, but perhaps this may be a better venue to air them out. Yeah... all of them. Probably better than one-off Facebook messaging gripes about plots and mishandling of characters and judgement calls and etc... That can get tedious for some no doubt, hearing from me yet again another whine about Jar Jar or lineage of the Skywalkers.
So I'll drop them all into this neat little pile of 'stuff no one but me and a few others really care about'. Perhaps it was Mark Hamill saying it best of late. Even with his very public prognostications of how the handling of his Luke has been mishandled, he's even ended all those rants with "hey, in the end it's just a movie and I hope people like it".
Went to see The Last Jedi with my son, as is tradition to do. That was opening night, or in official terms pre-opening night. But you get the picture. We're fans, have Star Wars stuff laying around the house and on the walls and on the shelves and in the toy boxes and always have, since a long time ago and far, far away. We're believers and dreamers of such things, and these characters and this place and their struggles have long been captured our in souls. It was, then, a perfect way to connect with a son of my own and it remains so even today.
We had our usual after viewing beer and talked about this and that, the good the bad and the rest. The thing that struck me? Not a ton of holy cow! moments. Yes, it was full of great effects and all that is OK (more on that later), but it sort of left us both kinda fishing for things we liked.
It was just sort of 'there'. Nothing really happened, which is what I used to complain about (among other things) with Episode I; it's really unnecessary and nothing happened of consequence to move anything forward. Or maybe it was just the Jar-Jar factor.
About those prequels...what was lacking in the prequels? A good script. Dialog. Conversation. People don't talk that way to each other, so it came off like a parody of a movie trying to act like a movie - instead of just being a movie. It was and could have been a powerful story, but the end result was replacing actual words with a MAC running a special effects program. Nothing intriguing or personal to say here? We'll just add some explosions instead. No powerful moments between characters? We'll just put some action there instead. Ugh.
Yes, I'm oversimplifying, but it is my blog.
Replacing people's feelings and emotions and dialogs and connections with 'some cool special effects' is a horrible mistake. The tension from what you CAN'T see but can maybe hear or maybe cut around is going to be more palpable than the actual showing of it. Once you show it to me, I can then judge whether or not I care about it, am afraid of it, nervous about it.
Yes, the walkers in the latest film look really cool and really real. I dig that stuff. But if they shot Empire Strikes Back now? We'd see a giant wampa that would tear limps off people, jump around the camera, make us dizzy, would jump 40 ft in the air and run 30 mph and throw things for miles and... you get the gripe here. Empire was the best Star Wars movie. And it had a 20 minute fight scene with frame by frame miniatures and an hour with a puppet.
It also had the best dialog, the best whit, the most tension, the deep reveal, the character development and earnings and getting to know this person and that one and what they may have seen or heard before this film got here. You wanted to soak it up, and wanted to revel in it. You wanted to like them, hate them, learn more.
Now, none of that is here. I don't care about Poe or Rey and I'm not afraid of Kylo Ren or General Hux.. none of them. For me, the worst thing has happened. I don't care about Star Wars anymore.
Yes- I'm being dramatic here. But that's the feeling from seeing this latest film, twice now. And I really had to talk myself into seeing it again. And maybe that's the biggest issue. I saw TFA in the theaters 6 times before it came out on DVD, which I bought pre-order on Amazon. And THAT movie didn't have a lot of new stuff in it. But at least it still had some character moments.
It might be said that maybe I just don't like the moments this film had. Maybe. That's fair. But Disney is replacing grit with polish, evil with toys, darkness with glimmer, drama with excitement (not the same thing).
It's become an action movie.
Star Wars was never an action movie. Never a Sci-Fi movie. It could have been a western- it was a Princess and a dreamer fighting tyranny. It was a boy and his horse or his car or his space ship. It was never about space. It just happened to be in space.
This franchise started with a dreamer who was bored and wanted action, only to learn that action has consequences and real people die. It had a girl who grew up raised in a royal family and with politics who was forced to follow what was right and fight for others instead of her own well being or want of privilege. A scoundrel with a checkered past and a checkered present who constantly fought against his own good heart to make a living and fun along the way. An evil man who's past decisions and desires rake his soul with the regrets of the past and the resolutions of the present.
Maybe this new series of Star Wars movies will be the answer. The original cast members are gone or old and disinterested in continuing the Star Wars thing. The fact is, this concept of fighting an all-powerful "Empire" and against all odds thing- maybe that's the part that needs to go. TFA was very very much A New Hope. TLJ was in a very very large stretch was still a little Empire Strikes Back, at least in that the bad guys are even more powerful and the good guys are in retreat and things look hopeless. But that's the biggest stretch I'll ever make to giving credit to this film.
Maybe the next Trilogy can just be about this character or that one. Maybe, just maybe, it can be a western, that just happens to happen in space.
So anyway, back to this one.
Second viewing yesterday. Since I've been complaining to others about my thoughts on this film, I thought at the very least I should go again, and see if my initial feelings were still accurate. And perhaps my bitching and moaning about it for weeks tainted my second viewing, but I may never know, since I'm not feeling the love for this one.
Too many ugh moments. BB-8 driving an AT-ST? Just no. Leia doing her best Mary Poppins? OMFG. What's happening here?? The actress is gone, and this was a prime way to let her go, and they not only kept her, but had her do this ridiculous reviving in space (where no one can hear you scream and you can't BREATHE), then fly back into the wounded ship, then spend half the movie in a coma, then wake up, then STILL be alive at the end of the movie. Somebody in some conference room in Disney HQ made them do this.
And when even Kylo himself doesn't know what he wants to be, how are we supposed to know? Do we laugh at him, feel for him, hug him? We definitely knew Vader was a bad guy.
Casino scenes. Never mind the ginormous stretch of plot to even be there and go there in the first place. Geeesh. Really?? Code breaker? Why not just have had that guy on the rebel ship to begin with? And then go the planet, Finn is all enamored with chips and bright lights, then this whole subplot to save a bunch of mistreated animals and saying it was all worth it... seems Finn forgot about Rey very quickly. And the whole animals crashing through the casino and the chase scene was dumb and unnecessary and so so Disney. Kids will love it!!
I could go on with the whole bitching and moaning thing about the plot holes, the inconsistencies, the 'that's such a dump idea' type stuff. In the end, here's my number one issue:
Too many liberties with Star Wars land.
The red lightsaber was the first shot across the bow. It doesn't glow, it's on fire. It's not a lightsaber. So, for a thousand generations Jedi guarded peace, the prequels had Jedi literally EVERYWHERE... and all of them traditional lightsabers in various colors. And yet, 20 + years in the future, one bad Jedi dude has made the anti-lightsaber, and now all the stormtroopers have lightsaber-like weapons of their own. Travesty.
Luke acting very very un-Jedi. Whoops, I trained someone who then went to the dark side so I'm just gonna hide out here instead and not care about my family anymore. Actually, I can sort of buy this premise a little, but Rey showing up and within hours can best Luke in a dual and can use the Force at will. At least do a little bit of that character development ala Luke's where she is impetuous and runs off before getting fully trained and could therefore be dangerous. They did do a little of this, but again - go deeper. Less dumb sea creatures you get green milk from and more emotions. We, the audience will care more about your movie if you do.
This film could have taken a couple of key things that we were left wondering about from the last film and did something with them. It's almost like what George Lucas said and did back in the 90's, telling his fan base he didn't care what they thought and was gonna do whatever he wanted with his creations. Like - let's build up who Snoke is and where he came from and all this mystery (there's a billion YouTube videos on fan theories) in this first movie, then let's just kill him off in this one. Whaaa??
Thing is, you can make the things you wanted to happen and still keep to what's 'real' within the Star Wars universe. The whole conversations between Rey and Kylo- these could have handled as snippets of voices calling to one another as in TESB or ROTJ. Instead we get Kylo without a shirt on and stupid jokes. Disney-style. Or Star Trek style- take your pick.
But once you start making people breathe in space and start changing characters mid-stream and creating and changing things because you can sell toys vs. make a movie better, that's when you fail.
I could just be progress and I could just be getting old and crotchety. But that's not it entirely. I like cool space movies. But the charm and whit of the past Star Wars movies is gone I'm afraid, and it's sad for me. And in the end, the idea that since we're making a new Star Wars movie we HAVE to use every tool that's now available to make a movie, vs. perhaps taking the fact that we CAN'T just show whatever we would want to means we have to tell the story in other ways is what's missing. Because now we don't need great characters or dialog, all we need is a room full of Macs and beautiful movie posters from the marketing dept.
For me - it said a lot that even the trailers for this film weren't very exciting.
Ultimately, I can't just sit back with some popcorn and turn off my brain and be entertained. I can do that with Guardians of the Galaxy or Godzilla. But this is Star Wars. This is my baby. I've raised this kid from it's youth and now others and making him do bad things. It's personal.
For the next film to be good?
Hey Disney- you must unlearn what you have learned.
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