Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Dec. 23rd, 2015 07:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avawatsonThis may or may not be the start of some new tag. You (might) know how projects around here go. Anyway, long story short, I have a MoviePass account. I have a netflix account. (Or access anyway.) Basically, I see a bunch of movies. And I usually livetweet my responses right after, but I thought, I dunno, that I would put thoughts into a more longform way. Blame Anna.
Anyhow, I considered dumping them onto tumblr, but god knows that place feels both very very small and very very large. And yeah, I'm straight up afraid of putting the wrong opinion into the wrong tag and winding up with internet-related PTSD. So here I am. A small corner of the internet, but one I have more control over. And I don't know if I will keep this up, but hey, I never do.
Anyway, enough bullshit. And as with everything longform I do, this one is of course, extremely overblown and overwritten and underedited. Whoops.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The short of it is that this was clearly an entertaining film, worth the time to go even for casually familiar folks, and a worthy post-Original Trilogy sequel. I say that as someone with a barely passable understanding of what happened in Episodes IV-VI, although I can at least name you the main cast's names, their familiar/romantic relationship with each other, and a couple of the planets. Where the SW universe generally loses me is all the politics.* The tax and tariff minutiae, the many many planets and political entities and structure. I believe most of this was what bogged down episodes I-III, and it makes my eyes positively glaze over.**
So it's good news that for casual watchers (I am not comfortable donning the cloak of fan in this context) that episode VII chucks all of that right out the door and settles on comedy, action, and archetype to deliver story. And JJ being JJ...yeah, he did pretty well. And I'm not surprised. It's JJ Abrams and he's been auditioning for this role for half his career. If this wasn't at least 90% of what he had always wanted to do with this, I'd be shocked.
*I'll confess that the SW universe has always lost me on one other thing, and that is its general aesthetic. It's highly...70s. The film grain, the hair, the dirty grunginess of...everything. Including the canonical tech. I can't explain why, but I've had a lifelong aversion to that entire decade and all things I associate with the 70s (even if they are from the 60s or 80s; this is all true, however dumb, and I'm just letting you know my biases). Maybe because I was born in the 80s and the previous decade seemed old-fashioned and Other to me as a child, but I've had a lifelong visceral distaste for it. Which makes going back and watching classic movies quite fun (I use the word sarcastically), because so many of them are from the 70s. Anyway. That's my hangup, one I need to actively repress on occasion, and you don't need to worry about it for the moment, because The Force Awakens manages to not press those buttons too hard for me. Thank god.
**Having said all that, and how the film seems to move at a good clip for most of it, how it remains engaging without making me impatient with lore and the most boring parts of worldbuilding, I'll say one more thing about my relationship with action/spectacle films. I think I'm starting to get to old for them. Or...maybe I'm not, but some movies make me feel like I am. Because I don't care that much about fight scenes if what comes between them is a bit shit. See: Avengers 2, the film that broke Joss Whedon. More about that another time.
Minor spoilers
So this is all to say that I appreciated the amount of characterization that got crammed in there. It wasn't perfect, but I liked Rey a great deal, and Finn too. (And Poe? I feel like I'm reading a hell of a lot more about him and his characterization on twitter than I did from the film, but hey, I like Oscar Isaac, and this was by far the lightest role I've ever seen him take on. I feel like I'm in a weird position to have seen him in stuff prior to and outside this franchise, which means I'm more familiar than some of his newfound fans. I feel very odd about that indeed.)
In particular, and this is one of my favorite parts about this film, period, I loved the total lack of romance in the film. I'm seeing a lot of Finn/Poe shipping (stormpilot, nice), but I didn't feel compelled by any means. Even despite Oscar Isaac apparently talking about playing his role as a romance. Which is a shame, because that was a brilliant bit of slashy PR.
I'm just so glad it didn't end with an unexpected passionate kiss. I'm glad that the feelings it attached to Rey were loneliness and stubborn independence and looking for a parental figure. And I can't imagine that the next two films aren't going to pick apart the mystery of her background and origin, but there's so much more there to delve into, and I'm glad. She's great. I'm glad for a whole generation of fans that she exists. I feel...a little pathetic for even saying that. But it's nonetheless true. This was a pretty good year for badass women in film. And she's an excellent addition to the pantheon.
Major spoilers
I wasn't spoiled for the film, but Han Solo's death didn't surprise me one bit. As soon as they came upon that bridge (which of course, none of these bridges ever pass OSHA regulation, intergalactic travel is nothing but handrails are impossible; who builds these facilities?), I was already seeing the scene in which Luke finds out about his father and loses his hand. Me, the not-fan. I was seeing a very classically SW moment play out, and it wasn't going to end well for Han. I think, in his way, Han knew it was coming too.
It would have surprised me more if Ren had come back with him, to be honest. But of course he didn't, couldn't really, narratively, and with that many people watching the bridge scene, it was like the whole symphony was playing at that point, and I was looking around as the note played out its crescendo.
I've read reviews praising the film for its pacing, but I felt that the film was getting more melodramatic than it strictly needed to, by then. I was running into the length of the film, I think, and maybe my not having eaten beforehand was starting to seem like a bad idea. I was acutely aware of its 2 hour+ runtime, and I was thinking about the back and forth shots as they were happening, that they were a tad overdone like dark brown toast. But then, I guess, the shots were important: Han, understanding Ren's choice and his own failure; Ren, trying to tell the Light Side in him to take a hike, desperately, if not resolutely; Rey, losing the only father figure she's ever had; Chewy...uh. Although I'm all but sure that there were more than 4 cuts. It felt long.
And then the movie went on for another 10 minutes or so. We came close to the very end, when they put together the map, and I felt distinctly that I had no idea where they were going to end this film after all. It was much the same feeling with watching the Hobbit movies. The film just kept rolling, I felt rather increasingly discombobulated as they went through every green shot of Rey climbing and making her way through the island (and yes, I get it, she's on an island, like Ren had plumbed from her mind earlier in the film), until at last we came to Luke. And I get it, we hadn't seen Luke and now he's got a very Ewan McGregor sort of beard. He's 50 pounds lighter than we normally see Mark Hamill. We hadn't seen him all film. The last spoiler. So I get it; we get a long, loving look at Luke. And then back to Rey. And then back to Luke. And back to Rey. Then it finally cuts.
I get it. I mean. I give it more leeway because it's a franchise and it has history. But it ended on a sort of odd note for me. Definitely feeling like I was watching a moment that was far more important to others than to me. But I get it, and there isn't more than probably 30 seconds I would've ultimately shaved off the last 20 minutes, even then.
So. It was good. Pretty damn good. I'd be curious to know if I would feel the same impatience toward the end if I watched when I wasn't watching the clock so that I could get to work on time. But all in all, I'd still give it a good review. It did its job, which was make me interested in seeing episodes VIII and IV. And rewatch IV-VI, too. And maybe track down that Topher Grace cut of episodes I-III.
Ultimate rating: 5/7, har har. A much better idea to see this movie than snort baby powder.
Further reading
Anyhow, I considered dumping them onto tumblr, but god knows that place feels both very very small and very very large. And yeah, I'm straight up afraid of putting the wrong opinion into the wrong tag and winding up with internet-related PTSD. So here I am. A small corner of the internet, but one I have more control over. And I don't know if I will keep this up, but hey, I never do.
Anyway, enough bullshit. And as with everything longform I do, this one is of course, extremely overblown and overwritten and underedited. Whoops.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The short of it is that this was clearly an entertaining film, worth the time to go even for casually familiar folks, and a worthy post-Original Trilogy sequel. I say that as someone with a barely passable understanding of what happened in Episodes IV-VI, although I can at least name you the main cast's names, their familiar/romantic relationship with each other, and a couple of the planets. Where the SW universe generally loses me is all the politics.* The tax and tariff minutiae, the many many planets and political entities and structure. I believe most of this was what bogged down episodes I-III, and it makes my eyes positively glaze over.**
So it's good news that for casual watchers (I am not comfortable donning the cloak of fan in this context) that episode VII chucks all of that right out the door and settles on comedy, action, and archetype to deliver story. And JJ being JJ...yeah, he did pretty well. And I'm not surprised. It's JJ Abrams and he's been auditioning for this role for half his career. If this wasn't at least 90% of what he had always wanted to do with this, I'd be shocked.
*I'll confess that the SW universe has always lost me on one other thing, and that is its general aesthetic. It's highly...70s. The film grain, the hair, the dirty grunginess of...everything. Including the canonical tech. I can't explain why, but I've had a lifelong aversion to that entire decade and all things I associate with the 70s (even if they are from the 60s or 80s; this is all true, however dumb, and I'm just letting you know my biases). Maybe because I was born in the 80s and the previous decade seemed old-fashioned and Other to me as a child, but I've had a lifelong visceral distaste for it. Which makes going back and watching classic movies quite fun (I use the word sarcastically), because so many of them are from the 70s. Anyway. That's my hangup, one I need to actively repress on occasion, and you don't need to worry about it for the moment, because The Force Awakens manages to not press those buttons too hard for me. Thank god.
**Having said all that, and how the film seems to move at a good clip for most of it, how it remains engaging without making me impatient with lore and the most boring parts of worldbuilding, I'll say one more thing about my relationship with action/spectacle films. I think I'm starting to get to old for them. Or...maybe I'm not, but some movies make me feel like I am. Because I don't care that much about fight scenes if what comes between them is a bit shit. See: Avengers 2, the film that broke Joss Whedon. More about that another time.
Minor spoilers
So this is all to say that I appreciated the amount of characterization that got crammed in there. It wasn't perfect, but I liked Rey a great deal, and Finn too. (And Poe? I feel like I'm reading a hell of a lot more about him and his characterization on twitter than I did from the film, but hey, I like Oscar Isaac, and this was by far the lightest role I've ever seen him take on. I feel like I'm in a weird position to have seen him in stuff prior to and outside this franchise, which means I'm more familiar than some of his newfound fans. I feel very odd about that indeed.)
In particular, and this is one of my favorite parts about this film, period, I loved the total lack of romance in the film. I'm seeing a lot of Finn/Poe shipping (stormpilot, nice), but I didn't feel compelled by any means. Even despite Oscar Isaac apparently talking about playing his role as a romance. Which is a shame, because that was a brilliant bit of slashy PR.
I'm just so glad it didn't end with an unexpected passionate kiss. I'm glad that the feelings it attached to Rey were loneliness and stubborn independence and looking for a parental figure. And I can't imagine that the next two films aren't going to pick apart the mystery of her background and origin, but there's so much more there to delve into, and I'm glad. She's great. I'm glad for a whole generation of fans that she exists. I feel...a little pathetic for even saying that. But it's nonetheless true. This was a pretty good year for badass women in film. And she's an excellent addition to the pantheon.
Major spoilers
I wasn't spoiled for the film, but Han Solo's death didn't surprise me one bit. As soon as they came upon that bridge (which of course, none of these bridges ever pass OSHA regulation, intergalactic travel is nothing but handrails are impossible; who builds these facilities?), I was already seeing the scene in which Luke finds out about his father and loses his hand. Me, the not-fan. I was seeing a very classically SW moment play out, and it wasn't going to end well for Han. I think, in his way, Han knew it was coming too.
It would have surprised me more if Ren had come back with him, to be honest. But of course he didn't, couldn't really, narratively, and with that many people watching the bridge scene, it was like the whole symphony was playing at that point, and I was looking around as the note played out its crescendo.
I've read reviews praising the film for its pacing, but I felt that the film was getting more melodramatic than it strictly needed to, by then. I was running into the length of the film, I think, and maybe my not having eaten beforehand was starting to seem like a bad idea. I was acutely aware of its 2 hour+ runtime, and I was thinking about the back and forth shots as they were happening, that they were a tad overdone like dark brown toast. But then, I guess, the shots were important: Han, understanding Ren's choice and his own failure; Ren, trying to tell the Light Side in him to take a hike, desperately, if not resolutely; Rey, losing the only father figure she's ever had; Chewy...uh. Although I'm all but sure that there were more than 4 cuts. It felt long.
And then the movie went on for another 10 minutes or so. We came close to the very end, when they put together the map, and I felt distinctly that I had no idea where they were going to end this film after all. It was much the same feeling with watching the Hobbit movies. The film just kept rolling, I felt rather increasingly discombobulated as they went through every green shot of Rey climbing and making her way through the island (and yes, I get it, she's on an island, like Ren had plumbed from her mind earlier in the film), until at last we came to Luke. And I get it, we hadn't seen Luke and now he's got a very Ewan McGregor sort of beard. He's 50 pounds lighter than we normally see Mark Hamill. We hadn't seen him all film. The last spoiler. So I get it; we get a long, loving look at Luke. And then back to Rey. And then back to Luke. And back to Rey. Then it finally cuts.
I get it. I mean. I give it more leeway because it's a franchise and it has history. But it ended on a sort of odd note for me. Definitely feeling like I was watching a moment that was far more important to others than to me. But I get it, and there isn't more than probably 30 seconds I would've ultimately shaved off the last 20 minutes, even then.
So. It was good. Pretty damn good. I'd be curious to know if I would feel the same impatience toward the end if I watched when I wasn't watching the clock so that I could get to work on time. But all in all, I'd still give it a good review. It did its job, which was make me interested in seeing episodes VIII and IV. And rewatch IV-VI, too. And maybe track down that Topher Grace cut of episodes I-III.
Ultimate rating: 5/7, har har. A much better idea to see this movie than snort baby powder.
Further reading
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a movie we can't evaluate until we see Episode VIII [vox]
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens: let's try to solve the new trilogy’s biggest mystery [vox]
- What Star Wars: The Force Awakens learned from comic books [vox]
- A Closer Look at 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Character Mystery (Spoilers) [thr]
- 'Star Wars': Meet the Fan Who Watched 'Force Awakens' 9 Times in a Row [thr]
- 'Star Wars': What's the Point of the Republic After 'Force Awakens'? (Spoilers) [thr]
- 'Star Wars': Why the Climactic Moment of 'The Force Awakens' Works (Spoilers) [thr]
- Roger Ebert review [x]
- AV Club review [x]
- Which Star Wars Couples Are People Drooling Over? The Force Awakens Fan-Fiction Power Rankings [nymag]
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(no subject)
Date: 2015-12-23 01:51 pm (UTC)2. Long live the 80s.
3. I was actively restraining myself from going out there with food for you when you wrote that you were hungry going IN to that 2hr+ movie.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-12-23 10:23 pm (UTC)