Jar Jar Abrahams Wants To Kill My Childhood And This Is Odd Because I Never Did Anything To Him As Far As I Know
OK, that's enough of the "virtues of critical thinking" and "oh isn't moderation just wonderful" posts. Nope, I'm going on a merciless ad hominem attack rant that will achieve precisely nothing but I don't care, you can't stop me, and it's Christmas. So there. J. J. Abrams knows diddly-squat about good storytelling.
Tuesday 29 December 2015
The Force Awak... well, not really
Spoiler-free review of The Force Awakens. I'm not sure it's possible to spoil a bad film though.
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The rest of the film suffers heavily from what I call the Babylon 5 syndrome
ReplyDeleteOh no you didn't!
Seriously, though I don't think I'm as angered as you, I agree. The film is vacuous. At least the prequel trilogy was trying to go somewhere new. It was the execution that was atrocious.
That said, I like the new characters (including BB) and if the next movie focuses on them and tells a story that hasn't been done already, then The Force Awakens will likely go down being looked upon with favour.
I don't have the emotional investment in this. The original Star Wars hit the theaters when I was 13 and I loved it. Same with Empire, and Return of the Jedi was still fun, but I really grew up on Trek and went through enough ups and downs with that franchise that I know I'll be able to safely ignore Star Wars if it gets reduced to nothing but a theme park. Any fan rage I had was spent a long time ago.
I think this one easily stands toe-to-toe with the best of the series.
ReplyDeleteIt's dramatic and the characters are consistent with the story and with themselves.
There are the usual holes from it being a space fantasy rather than hard SF, but that's consistent with every other Star Wars movie, so no points docked for that.
Yeah, of people I've talked to so far, opinions are very mixed from mine up to the extreme opposite. Every other review I've read has been gushing though, and I don't understand why.
ReplyDeleteAs I said I think Star Wars is and should be a fairy tale that happens to be in space, just as Battlestar Galactica is a political drama that happens to be in space. Problem is that this one did not feel even close to that, more like someone trying to do an honest-to-goodness attempt at a sci-fi who doesn't know the first thing about science.
I think you've hit upon why so many of the reviews are so positive. It's because they're written by people who don't know the first thing about Star Wars. They look at it and think, this feels very derivative, but the fans should love it.
ReplyDeleteHmm, possibly, but I'm more cynical. I suspect bribes to newspapers.
ReplyDeleteIt's basically a remake of ANH, so how one can hate this movie and love that one is puzzling. Anyone who thinks Star Wars is evidence that Lucas knows how to write a solid plot, SF or otherwise, needs to go read David Brin posthaste.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure SW hyperspace works by threading the plot holes that pervade the entire universe. :-b
Anime has probably numbed me to the sheer ridiculousness of the entire Star Wars franchise.
ReplyDeleteGreg Roelofs Well, it's a remake that's been hacked into pieces and stuck together by Dr Frankenstein, and moreover had all the fun sucked out of it with a hoover. Sort of like doing a serious version of Ghostbusters but keeping the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man.
ReplyDeleteNever was anyone who created something so loved hated so much by so many as George Lucas.
In my view, this movie serves 3 different purposes: 1) it's a huge, nostalgic, cameo-laden tribute to (the visual style of) the original trilogy, 2) it sets the stage for whatever comes next, 3) it still needs to be a blockbuster movie with a satisfying ending and a somewhat finished plotline.
ReplyDeleteConsidering this, I applaud the effort. I enjoyed myself.
Rhys Taylor I don't see it that way; I think Filip Hráček pretty much nailed it. I'm more than willing to see what the whole 3(?)-movie arc looks like before I render final judgment.
ReplyDelete(And for the record, I certainly don't hate Lucas; I simply don't have a lot of respect for his storytelling. Luke going to the Dark Side "by accident" - i.e., by taking shortcuts to save his friends - would have made for a far more interesting and nuanced story. Jar Jar as the galaxy's most incredibly talented Sith Lord would have been awesome, albeit still annoying as hell. An 8-year-old slave kid without the knowledge or wherewithal to create an advanced AI would have been, you know...slightly believable. Oops, deep breath, "it's just a fantasy, it's just a fantasy..." I'll shut up now. :-) )
To be fair I'm not sure a film review has ever changed my mind about a film, and I'm not expecting this one to influence anyone either. There's not much that can change my mind about a film I like or dislike.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor Your critic is pretty good, though I ended up being a bit more indulgent with it overall. To start with, while I did grow up with Star Wars, I feel it's ok to lose a bit of the "fairy tale". After all, you can't make a '80 film in 2015.
ReplyDeleteThe problem, though, is that IMHO one can see the great film that almost was.
- A stormtrooper growing a conscience. How does that happen? That's a good story!
- The New Order as an aggressive political faction within the weakened Empire (which is in an uneasy truce with the Republic, both sides are probably war-weary). And the Republic backing the Resistance would only help them gain influence in reaction.
- Btw, some bits on the Republic, so we have at least a bit of emotional investment there. And did their entire fleet was on the home base? And no ship attempted a blind hyperjump? Come on, capship-vs-capship just look better.
- The bad guy still being a (strong but still bumbling) apprentice, this had potential. Including his unhealthy cult of personality. Why the mask? Well, because Vader had one! Show that, film, show that!
I could continue for a long time, but you get the point. By changing all those details around, it could have been great.
If it had been told by a competent storyteller, in fact.
Sigh.
Elie Thorne I agree on all points except losing the fairy tale aspect. To me this is like trying to do Star Trek without the utopian ideals : it just doesn't work. Also, consequences be damned, the prequels did feel like they were in keeping with the spirit of the originals to me. I don't understand people who hate the prequels but love this movie. That makes no sense to me at all.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor For me the prequels were bad for a completely different reason. The vision, imagination, and overall story was there. Each movie took us to new places and showed us new things. It was the execution that was terrible. Bad script (though the original trilogy is hardly a landmark of screenwriting), terrible pacing, but mostly a gross over-reliance on CGI that left almost all the actors with no sense of place. Hardly anyone (despite brilliant actors) seemed to ever know where they were or why.
ReplyDeleteThe Force Awakens is the opposite. Great execution with snappy dialogue, grounded acting, and solid pacing, but no vision or imagination.