The Force Awakens
I'm rather ambivalent about the new film. I loved Rey and Finn a lot. I don't understand the online love for Poe, as, to me, he's barely in the film. He's there to be the offscreen hero Finn aspires to be. Also, it was so bizarre that he was alive at the end of the film I was absolutely convinced he was a clone (hey, we know there are clones in the universe--why wouldn't the Resistance's best fighter be one of a clone cohort?). Then I read interviews that J.J. Abrams decided to undead him mid-filming, and oh, that makes sense.
What didn't work for me was the continuation of the original cast. Carrie Fisher has had a successful career, but for the past decade or two, it's mostly been writing and performing about herself. When she appears in TV and movies, it's as herself or a parody of it. Harrison Ford seems pretty dedicated to not giving a shit about acting anymore. I can't say I've watched anything he's made in the last fifteen years where I enjoyed his performance. So it's not surprising to me that I found their acting awkward. The scene between the two of them was also badly written, with a lot of shoe-horned exposition. It did not work for me.
And Kylo Ren did not work for me at all. They seem to have taken the whiny child part of Anakin from the prequels and thought that was the way to go with their new Darth Vader. Without any of his backstory, I just don't have a reason to buy his actions (I mean, he starts the movie with a war crime), or his indecision about it. Also, when you remove someone's mask in a movie, I feel like that should be a revelation of some sort. And this time, it just made me go "who's that guy?" The fact that he takes the mask off sometimes but wears it around the ship just makes it a kind of pathetic affectation. It's clear from his interactions with others in the First Order that he's not in charge of anything. He's just sort of...around. He's not Darth Vader, in other orders, who, though subordinate to the Emperor, was in charge of his own Star Destroyer.
Him being Han and Leia's son, who was Luke's apprentice but turned and slaughtered the others...that's not something I can buy just in exposition. I don't see how the characters I know from the original trilogy could have lead to that outcome. Or rather, I think there is a way that could have happened, but you'd need to walk me through the specific circumstances to get me on board with it. Maybe Han was always afraid his son would turn out like Vader. I can totally see them having screaming arguments as Ben hit adolescence. Maybe the threat of the remnants of the Empire was so menacing that Ben couldn't understand why it would be bad to grab what power he could to fight them. But you can't just show him being emo about his grandfather and expect me to connect the dots.
This means that Han's death scene had no emotional impact for me. I mean, I was pretty sure going in he was going to die, even completely unspoiled, just because Harrison Ford has wanted to kill Han Solo for thirty years. That and his prominence in this film meant he had to die or he'd overshadow Rey and Finn. But the death scene itself is the very first scene between these two actors. We have no basis at all for a relationship between them. As one review I read pointed out, Han goes tactical and expository with his plea (he's using you) rather than reaching out as a father (I'm sorry, I love you, please come home), which further robs it of emotional weight. It ended up feeling like the necessary outcome of the plot as it was set up rather than any sort of pay off.
I also feel like this future for Han is depressing as fuck. Not just that he went back to being a smuggler, but he went back to being a bad smuggler. He lost the Falcon. He's in debt to literally everyone. In the first Star Wars film, we meet Han in debt to Jabba because he dumped his cargo. Now, almost forty-plus years later, he's still just as crap at this smuggling thing. This after we saw him evolve into a leader within the Rebellion. Couldn't he at least have been a Talon Karde type and have his own group of smugglers now? No. So dedicated is this film to duplicating A New Hope that we have to leave Han at a place where there has been zero character growth, and then kill him.
The way that this film duplicates A New Hope--eh. It doesn't bother me that much. It's not as heavy-handed about it as the prequels (where they quoted lines from the originals all the damn time). This one harkens back with plot, and with visuals. They duplicate the bluff shot of Mos Eisley, even the shot of a flight controller waving in a landing X-wing on Yavin. And of course they include the Wilhelm scream.
So yes, I love Rey and Finn a lot, but the movie was just a mess all around. Not a prequel level mess (if for no other reason than the acting is better), but still a mess.
When it comes down to it, though, its biggest sin is that I didn't grow up with it. I literally do not remember a time when I hadn't seen the original trilogy. Nothing is going to have that sort of resonance again. But I also find that this vision of the future compares unfavorably with the extended universe vision of the books. Books where one of Han and Leia's children does turn to the dark side, but after we'd known him for many, many novels, and saw what decisions led him there.
I think I'd've been all around happier if this had been a film in the Star Wars universe, telling what the future of it would look like, but without including the original characters at all (or feeling the need for all the new characters to be their children).
I will say, though, I am actually looking forward to Mark Hammill in the next film. He has been doing the most interesting acting in the intervening years, by far. And Luke was already becoming someone who stood apart by the end of RotJ, so I can buy his arc a lot more than anyone else's.
The Dreamwidth copy of this post has
comments. Comment there or here.
What didn't work for me was the continuation of the original cast. Carrie Fisher has had a successful career, but for the past decade or two, it's mostly been writing and performing about herself. When she appears in TV and movies, it's as herself or a parody of it. Harrison Ford seems pretty dedicated to not giving a shit about acting anymore. I can't say I've watched anything he's made in the last fifteen years where I enjoyed his performance. So it's not surprising to me that I found their acting awkward. The scene between the two of them was also badly written, with a lot of shoe-horned exposition. It did not work for me.
And Kylo Ren did not work for me at all. They seem to have taken the whiny child part of Anakin from the prequels and thought that was the way to go with their new Darth Vader. Without any of his backstory, I just don't have a reason to buy his actions (I mean, he starts the movie with a war crime), or his indecision about it. Also, when you remove someone's mask in a movie, I feel like that should be a revelation of some sort. And this time, it just made me go "who's that guy?" The fact that he takes the mask off sometimes but wears it around the ship just makes it a kind of pathetic affectation. It's clear from his interactions with others in the First Order that he's not in charge of anything. He's just sort of...around. He's not Darth Vader, in other orders, who, though subordinate to the Emperor, was in charge of his own Star Destroyer.
Him being Han and Leia's son, who was Luke's apprentice but turned and slaughtered the others...that's not something I can buy just in exposition. I don't see how the characters I know from the original trilogy could have lead to that outcome. Or rather, I think there is a way that could have happened, but you'd need to walk me through the specific circumstances to get me on board with it. Maybe Han was always afraid his son would turn out like Vader. I can totally see them having screaming arguments as Ben hit adolescence. Maybe the threat of the remnants of the Empire was so menacing that Ben couldn't understand why it would be bad to grab what power he could to fight them. But you can't just show him being emo about his grandfather and expect me to connect the dots.
This means that Han's death scene had no emotional impact for me. I mean, I was pretty sure going in he was going to die, even completely unspoiled, just because Harrison Ford has wanted to kill Han Solo for thirty years. That and his prominence in this film meant he had to die or he'd overshadow Rey and Finn. But the death scene itself is the very first scene between these two actors. We have no basis at all for a relationship between them. As one review I read pointed out, Han goes tactical and expository with his plea (he's using you) rather than reaching out as a father (I'm sorry, I love you, please come home), which further robs it of emotional weight. It ended up feeling like the necessary outcome of the plot as it was set up rather than any sort of pay off.
I also feel like this future for Han is depressing as fuck. Not just that he went back to being a smuggler, but he went back to being a bad smuggler. He lost the Falcon. He's in debt to literally everyone. In the first Star Wars film, we meet Han in debt to Jabba because he dumped his cargo. Now, almost forty-plus years later, he's still just as crap at this smuggling thing. This after we saw him evolve into a leader within the Rebellion. Couldn't he at least have been a Talon Karde type and have his own group of smugglers now? No. So dedicated is this film to duplicating A New Hope that we have to leave Han at a place where there has been zero character growth, and then kill him.
The way that this film duplicates A New Hope--eh. It doesn't bother me that much. It's not as heavy-handed about it as the prequels (where they quoted lines from the originals all the damn time). This one harkens back with plot, and with visuals. They duplicate the bluff shot of Mos Eisley, even the shot of a flight controller waving in a landing X-wing on Yavin. And of course they include the Wilhelm scream.
So yes, I love Rey and Finn a lot, but the movie was just a mess all around. Not a prequel level mess (if for no other reason than the acting is better), but still a mess.
When it comes down to it, though, its biggest sin is that I didn't grow up with it. I literally do not remember a time when I hadn't seen the original trilogy. Nothing is going to have that sort of resonance again. But I also find that this vision of the future compares unfavorably with the extended universe vision of the books. Books where one of Han and Leia's children does turn to the dark side, but after we'd known him for many, many novels, and saw what decisions led him there.
I think I'd've been all around happier if this had been a film in the Star Wars universe, telling what the future of it would look like, but without including the original characters at all (or feeling the need for all the new characters to be their children).
I will say, though, I am actually looking forward to Mark Hammill in the next film. He has been doing the most interesting acting in the intervening years, by far. And Luke was already becoming someone who stood apart by the end of RotJ, so I can buy his arc a lot more than anyone else's.
The Dreamwidth copy of this post has
comments. Comment there or here.