First things first: Ryan and/or Rory, if you’re
reading this, then this isn’t the ten-thousand-word post you’re looking
for. But it’s something for now -- with
a Star Wars reference to boot -- and
the real post will go up this coming
Thursday. Assuming that all goes well
and there’s no major catastrophe, but you get the idea.
Just as well, though. I’m sure that not everyone’s gotten a chance
to go out and see the movie for themselves (as of this post), so the smart thing
to do is to wait until a little time has passed. Not only that, but it’s a good idea to let
the movie sink in. I personally prefer
having time to digest a movie before talking about it in full, and in a lot of
ways that’s preferable to spewing a bunch of words before everything settles
in. With that said, I’ll make a slight
exception this time around. Because A) I
feel like I’ve done more than enough digesting at this point, and B) I might as
well take part in this cultural event and do what everyone else is probably
doing. Because relevance. Or peer pressure. Or self-righteous vindication. Take your pick.
So, this post is NOT a review. It will NOT have spoilers (i.e. anything
beyond what’s been in trailers and widely-released info online). Granted some stuff might allude to events
that happen, but I’ll try to keep things vague.
This post is more of a reaction, full of my opinions, thoughts, and
biases -- as is my standard. You know,
in case anyone out there ever thought they should take me seriously.
Ready? HERE WE GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
(Straight to the hoop. Yeah.)
All right, so the big question at hand is this: is Star
Wars: The Force Awakens a good movie?
It’s a legitimate question. It’s
been years since the last canonical movie -- a little over a decade since Revenge of the Sith -- and the prequel trilogy has long since taken
heat for being, you know, terrible. Conventional wisdom would suggest that
moviemakers leave well enough alone, for fear of sullying the brand name even
further. Then again, this is an era
where the running joke is that Hollywood (and indeed, plenty of other
entertainment industries) has run out of ideas, so they’re willing to mine the
past for those sweet, sweet nostalgia bucks.
The best jokes are the ones with a kernel of truth
to them.
Anyway, Star
Wars. This seventh episode can be
viewed in a very mercantilist sense -- it’s here for nostalgia-baiting, it got
made (and has already pretty much one) on the strength of its brand name
instead of its quality, it’s going to start a wave of merchandising that makes
the average tsunami look like ripples in a pond, et cetera, et cetera. There’s a lot to be wary about, and even
negative about. But if we set aside all
the baggage and all of the (justified) distrust, we have to do what’s
right. Simply put, we have to judge the
movie as it is: a piece of media, and art overall, that’s meant to be consumed
and judged. And with that in mind, how
does Star Wars: The Force Awakens fare?
It’s…okay. It’s the most okay movie I’ve seen in a while.
That’s not exactly a glowing recommendation, I
know. But hear me out on this: I went in
thinking that all
it had to do was not be Jurassic World. And yeah, it’s a better movie than Jurassic World. Finn, Rey, and Poe are pretty cool
characters, and are strong enough to carry this incoming new trilogy by
themselves; it’s helped by the fact that not only are they actually characters, but there’s some very good synergy between
them. A number of action scenes are
impressive, with some nice tricks here and there that provide both spectacle
and insight. There are ideas running
through that make for something a cut above the expected big-budget
blockbuster. Some of the jokes are good,
too -- not every joke, granted, but this is no dour melodrama or pretender
clawing at the “epic” tree.
One of the key villains in the movie is Kylo Ren,
AKA “the Darth Vader clone”. He’s got
more to him than that, though; I wouldn’t call him the movie’s best or most
interesting character by a long shot, but he’s definitely got a level of
intrigue to him. I can’t say much about
him now because that ventures into spoiler territory -- and I hate it when that
happens, believe you me -- but I’ll say this: there’s more to him than a black
costume and a fancy lightsaber. Still,
if lightsaber fights, dogfights, gunfights, and fight fights are what you’re
after, TFA will provide. Big-budget productions may have their stigma,
but there are moments in this movie where it’s obvious that the money went to a
good place.
Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut…
I saw it with my brother, and he had no problems
saying it was “an okay movie”, even though he expected it to suck. He gave it a 7/12, and that’s a fair
assessment…but personally, I’d skew a little lower than that; certainly no
higher than a 6. (This is where the
personal opinions start coming in, so keep your pitchforks and torches and
ICBMs at bay.)
I said that this movie is better than Jurassic World, and I stand by that; at
the very least, the good guys in TFA don’t
hamper their chances by breeding their own unstoppable killing machine. With that said, I’d still put TFA in the same tier as Jurassic World,
because it has some problems that are really hard to ignore. I’m wary of using this word to describe the
movie, but I can’t think of another way to put it: this movie reads and plays out like fanfiction.
There’s good fanfiction out there, for sure, but
with this movie -- this multi-million dollar movie of unrivaled cultural
significance -- the story is not nearly as tight as it should be. Worldbuilding elements are barely given the
time of day. The sheer number of
coincidences is astounding, to the point where things only happen because the needs of the plot outweigh the needs of
the logic. I know I said there are
no spoilers here, but the things that could be
spoiled are so inconsequential that you can practically guess them all
before going into the movie.
And that’s partly because of the movie’s fatal
flaw: the nostalgia-baiting.
Like I said, Finn, Rey, and Poe are all good
characters. Enjoyable characters, for
sure. The problem is that the new
characters and new plot elements and new ideas and new everything go underutilized.
In exchange? The stuff from the
old movies crowbars its way into the movie, and it has a devastating effect on
the story and pacing alike. I want to
see more of the new three characters, but I can’t get that because we have to
have Han Solo take center stage. Hell,
Rey’s the first new character to get named in the end credits -- and she only
gets fifth billing. I guess that’s to be
expected when you have the 73-year-old Harrison Ford playing the same roguish
gunslinger he did almost forty years ago.
Props are in order, if not required by law.
I couldn’t even make it through half of the movie
without getting frustrated. Like Jurassic World before it, there’s a
sheer onslaught of nostalgic references, allusions, and arguably
entire plot threads. Very rarely are
they woven naturally into the story; it’s like the moviemakers had a script
ready, then someone came in and jammed Character A or Iconic Item X into a
scene. It’s without hyperbole that I say
there’s literally a moment where a character appears out of nowhere and shoves
their face into the shot, even though the camera angles before the appearance
would at least allude to their presence.
And before you ask, no, this character does not have a perceptible
effect on the plot.
It wouldn’t be fair to call the movie a
shot-by-shot remake of A New Hope,
because there are new things in it. And
yeah, when the new stuff is the focus -- and the shakiness of the actual story
is minimized -- then it’s more than possible to enjoy the movie. Finn, Rey, Poe, Ren, and even
improbably-spherical ball droid BB-8 are all their own characters, each
offering appeal to audiences without trying to tickle nostalgia-bones. The problem is that TFA acts like it’s afraid to be new -- like it’s not confident in
its strongest tools, and instead banks on “the sure thing”. The sure thing, of course, is to rehash A New Hope (and to a lesser extent, Empire and Jedi). And even if you’re
not a Star Wars expert -- and I’m
most certainly not -- cultural osmosis has made those story beats lose their
impact.
I mean, in the old movies Obi-Wan says “I’ve got a
bad feeling about this”, and the movies that followed -- the prequels
especially, if CinemaSins is to be believed -- ran that line into the
ground. So what does TFA do?
Zoom in dramatically on a character’s face so we can watch them go “I’ve
got a bad feeling about this”…even though that was blatantly obvious from the
moments before it, and having it added in so awkwardly makes me realize how
dumb it sounds when put under the spotlight.
To borrow a quote from the Best Friends Zaibatsu, “I’D RATHER HAVE
NOTHING.”
I will be fair, though. The problems I have aren’t necessarily
problems that’ll hamper normal people with average-sized heads. It is possible to live with Han and the
countless references, because there’s a fair bit of charisma throughout --
between old characters, new ones, and beyond -- and all things considered, it’s
a breezy adventure across a smattering of planets. I don’t think anyone can accuse the people
behind this movie of being asleep at the wheel, because obviously some real
love and care went into making sure that this was the franchise’s return to
form -- even if there are some familiar elements, which in all fairness isn’t
a bad thing. Some things don’t work,
and some efforts were misguided, but overall?
It’s an okay movie.
But shouldn’t it be better than okay?
How much money went into the movie? I don’t know.
Plenty, probably. Plenty of
money, plenty of time, plenty of talent, plenty of technical wizardry, and so
on. For all of it to lead up to a final
product that, when gauging its net worth, simply makes it up to the level of “competent”
feels like something very close to an insult.
Not 100% an insult, mind, because there’s far worse out there than this.
But…this movie should be better than it is. The framework is there. The elements are there. The potential is there. Yet here I am, teetering on the thin line
between ambivalence and annoyance.
Like I said, this movie is in the same tier as Jurassic World. That movie’s more or less passable, as well
-- at least in the sense that the average Jill or Joe can watch it without
complaint. But the problem is that both JW and TFA, in my eyes, occupy an unfortunate space. Both of them should be better movies, without
a doubt. Both of them are passable…ish. But the big issue is that down the line,
being passable or just okay with such
notable flaws can actually have a negative effect. It’s not just in the binary “would you
recommend this, yes or no” sense, either.
The more I think about JW, the more I resent it. I
resent it for squandering its good ideas, screwing up at the very first turn,
banking HARD on nostalgia, and basically struggling to offer up any new content
of merit. I’m more inclined to remember
the bad stuff or things that annoyed me than the good stuff -- which means that
eventually, I’ll stop thinking of it as “passable” and outright say it’s
bad. That is, if I haven’t in an earlier
post. And now with TFA released in theaters, I’m worried it’s going to share the same
fate. The same negative space. The same sense of disappointment that turns
into disdain.
That’s not what I want to take away from this
movie. But it’s probably going to
happen. And I guess that’s…okay.
So that’s about all I’ve got for now. Sorry if I ruffled the tail feathers of any
superfans, but I have to be honest here.
And more importantly, I have to explain why I feel the way that I do --
with more concrete evidence. With that
in mind, I hope you’ll join me next week for a more in-depth post on TFA.
I won’t say that you SHOULDN’T see the movie if you haven’t, because you
need to form your own opinions -- just as I did. But be ready for anything -- for the good,
the bad, and everything across the scale.
There. Two
thousand words down, eight thousand to go.
…Well, more like seven thousand, eight hundred to
go. But who’s counting? Besides Microsoft Word?
No comments:
Post a Comment