Satsu, BRIAN BLESSED, MIGHTY AND WISE Junpei Iori: Ace Detective, Maccaffrickstonson von Lichtenstafford Frabenschnaben, Polite Krogan, Robert Baratheon
I think claiming TFA to be a "complete rip-off" is absurd and too reductionist for meaningful debate, but I think it was playing it very safe to the point where we had setting elements that feel rather static for a thirty year timeskip, and the film was making plot concessions in order to fit in homages like trench runs and superweapons.
There's fun to be had and I don't necessarily see an issue with Abrams revisiting the same structure and storytelling of the old films, but honestly, I found the new things that were added (like characters and character interactions) a lot more interesting on the whole compared to the old things revisited. Lucas' prequel trilogy, for all the faults it had, saw no need to cash in on nostalgia even after years of nothing and fully-realised a fundamentally different era of the galaxy, whereas the most egregious part of the sequel setting (the "Resistance" and "The First Order") makes this era a little too similar for my taste.
My personal opinion is that the unwillingness to be a little more self-referencing is part of the prequel trilogy's failure to live up to the original in the hearts and minds of fans.
You can't go back to such a beloved franchise and act like you're paving this ground for the first time. You just can't. There's a balance to be struck, certainly, and some homages cross that line to the point of being such a retread as to devour suspension of disbelief (FFIV: The After Years, I'm looking at you), but I genuinely believe you've got to wink at the audience some to do this sort of thing well.
There's going to be expectations after so many years. Look at FF: The Spirits Within. Good movie. No winking. Absolute failure with fans.
Yeah, the best fan-fiction/derivative work is filled with references to the source material. In order to get the audience to trust that the author knows what they're doing when they do deviate a lot from established canon, they have to start out firmly grounded in the original canon and show that they know where they're coming from and that they respect the source material. If they start doing different stuff without respecting canon, then they should be doing an original story set in an original universe.
Which TFA does beautifully. The audience now knows that the dev team behind the new trilogy isn't just taking the Star Wars story where they want to take it. Instead they're paying attention to the setting and where the story in the original trilogy would be logically heading. And they're also in-tune with the fans of Star Wars enough to know what type of things people want to see.
I think that perhaps a larger part of the prequel trilogy's failures with the fan base were the films' tonal differences. There was less swashbuckling. They had more in common with Shakespeare's historical epics than with Flash Gordon or even Indiana Jones, and unfortunately the inept characterwork made George Lucas' expanded vision for Star Wars very difficult to want to be a part of. Where George failed in the prequels, TFA achieves greatly. TFA is an adventure movie similar in tone to the original films with really, really memorable characters. I loved everyone in this movie. JJ went on record to say that this was his greatest ambition in making TFA and he succeeded with flying colors. Some of the callbacks are a little lame, but some of them aren't.
Imo the first act of Force Awakens is incredible. It's primo Star Wars. I don't mind the inclusion of previous Star Wars tropes like
the desert planet visuals, the droid data MacGuffin, the opening raid sequence, or the very obvious parallels between Rey and Luke, or even the very convenient discovery of the Millenium Falcon
. The reliance on these tropes is done tastefully and there's a very real sense of urgency to everything that's going on. The story continues to unfold and continues to surprise at break-neck pace from one big scene to the next, all the while in service of the story and characters. To quote Larry Kasdan: "It moves like a son-of-a-bitch." My problems with the Force Awakens really start popping up towards the second act of the movie, where everything seems to slow down. Imo that adventurous pace, that feeling of the movie continuing to unfold stops. I start to feel like the movie stops inventing and starts paying its dues:
the death star is in there so we can have Han break in and Poe can have a trenchrun to blow it up, Rey can perform a jedi mind trick because it's a cute callback, not because it makes sense, Leia and Rey are supposed to have a meaningful relationship even though they share little-to-no words because they are the female leads of the movie
. I'm not saying I dislike TFA, not by a longshot, but I do think that its reliance on the previous films is definitely problematic. I think even Sith did a better job of striking a balance between embracing the previous films and adding onto the mythology in a meaningful way. (I'm sure that's gonna rub some people wrong ). That being said, I am mega-mega excited for the next movie, and I feel like there are so many opportunities to do something new and exciting with Star Wars. Rian Johnson is a super cool writer/director, I can't think of anyone's Star Wars movie I'd more like to see than his.
I mean, if you want to look at the general format, Return of the Jedi follows the same basic beats that A New Hope does as much as The Force Awakens does:
Episode IV to IV
• Starts with lone person stuck on Desert planet who eventually learns that they have an affinity with the Force, who joins the little group of military Rebels, and flies through a trench to blow up a superweapon.
• Starts with a kidnapped person being rescued by someone from within their organization, eventually leaving said desert planet, to then go see an old Force user, and then eventually blow up a bigger badder Death Star by flying into its superstructure to shoot down its weak point.
ZOMZ, DEYRE DA SAEM!!!11 CALL THE STAR WARZ POLIES!!
It's obviously because if you're starting ALL OF STAR WARS back up, your first piece is going to be 100% dripping with Star Wars everything, and then once you've got that premise of familiarity, you can build out from it brilliantly.
Most of the prequels issues is that they tried to build INTO it, but it felt incredibly disparate from the get go, which is why it's only the best parts of it that actually feel like proper "Star Wars" to the fans.
I mean, if you want to look at the general format, Return of the Jedi follows the same basic beats that A New Hope does as much as The Force Awakens.
It's obviously because if you're starting ALL OF STAR WARS back up, your first piece is going to be 100% dripping with Star Wars everything, and then once you've got that premise of familiarity, you can build out from it brilliantly.
That definitely seems to be the filmmakers' opinion. I agree that it worked, TFA is cool. And your New Hope/Jedi/Force Awakens parallels are noted (even Phantom Menace tries to adhere to that format in a roundabout way). But in my subjective movie-going experience, I think that as the movie progresses it become more and more referential and it definitely detracts from my experience with the movie. Like I said, I'm very excited for Episode VIII and IX, I agree that TFA has set a great starting point for the rest of the trilogy. It is an excellent foundation to build off of, and it's fun and feels like Star Wars.
Satsu, BRIAN BLESSED, MIGHTY AND WISE Junpei Iori: Ace Detective, Maccaffrickstonson von Lichtenstafford Frabenschnaben, Polite Krogan, Robert Baratheon
My personal opinion is that the unwillingness to be a little more self-referencing is part of the prequel trilogy's failure to live up to the original in the hearts and minds of fans.
You can't go back to such a beloved franchise and act like you're paving this ground for the first time. You just can't. There's a balance to be struck, certainly, and some homages cross that line to the point of being such a retread as to devour suspension of disbelief (FFIV: The After Years, I'm looking at you), but I genuinely believe you've got to wink at the audience some to do this sort of thing well.
There's going to be expectations after so many years. Look at FF: The Spirits Within. Good movie. No winking. Absolute failure with fans.
I'm not going to hold that link up as gospel (because some of the arguments in that essay are a bit of a reach), but my point is that references don't have to come at the expense of a new direction in the story. The titular awakening of The Force is a really cool part of TFA's story, everything else surrounding those sequences (the things that people just "want" to see) don't quite hold up to the new things for me. That said, I agree with wayfarer in that I think the first half is incredible since it doesn't seriously involve The Resistance to a huge degree and mostly involves a bunch of intriguing characters fumbling around in the story which builds up to the greater scale. It makes blatant references to ANH's story and sequence structure, but at the same time I think it makes a much better balance between the new and the familiar.
TFA gripes aside, I hear the next films will basically use the first one as a launching base to go off into wholly new directions? So I'm excited for Star Wars nonetheless
My personal opinion is that the unwillingness to be a little more self-referencing is part of the prequel trilogy's failure to live up to the original in the hearts and minds of fans.
You can't go back to such a beloved franchise and act like you're paving this ground for the first time. You just can't. There's a balance to be struck, certainly, and some homages cross that line to the point of being such a retread as to devour suspension of disbelief (FFIV: The After Years, I'm looking at you), but I genuinely believe you've got to wink at the audience some to do this sort of thing well.
There's going to be expectations after so many years. Look at FF: The Spirits Within. Good movie. No winking. Absolute failure with fans.
Additionally the Prequel Trilogy is an extremely lazy hack job and disjointed mess in terms of editing. Most people probably didn't pick up on it consciously and just defaulted to calling it bad acting , despite pretty much everyone (even hayden) being excellent actors. So what happened?
I'd embed the clip but idk how to embed timestamped clips lol. Just look at the frustration in Ben's face in the editing bay lol.
Look at Anakins hair and portion of his face when they go for close ups.
Anyway the entire prequel trilogy is riddled with scenes like this that added with George purposefully forcing out the most wooden acting really adds to just how off the entire thing felt.
I think over all the worst offender when it comes to the Prequel Trilogy is that it actually could have been amazing. Here's an excellent 3 part series that details what the PT could have been and its amaaaazing.
His idea for episode 1 is a little weak, but episode 2 and 3 are really excellent ideas.
It's using a combination of Luke & Rey's theme in the end. There's even more to the way that John Williams has been seeding little musical cues into the themes that you can see in this video that I dug out from the comments on that one.
Also from the comments there, I found this little beauty:
I love the musical combinations of the different character themes, but until the next movie comes out proving me wrong, I'm still not buying into the theory that
Rey and Luke are related. I don't get why a new, original character has to be Luke's or Han's daughter, or Obi-Wan's granddaughter... Why can't she just be a kid that's strong with the force? I know the Skywalker family has had a big influence on the story line and the galaxy so far, but I feel as if that be would taking too much away from a good character to make her related to someone we already know. I want someone totally new.
If Rey's theme is similar to Luke's theme, I just chalk it up to the nature of their characters being similar. Not that they're related.
Sorry, for the tangent, I'm just getting sick of this theory. That, and the whole 'Snoke is Darth Vader' bullshit. Don't even get me started with that.
I love the musical combinations of the different character themes, but until the next movie comes out proving me wrong, I'm still not buying into the theory that
Rey and Luke are related. I don't get why a new, original character has to be Luke's or Han's daughter, or Obi-Wan's granddaughter... Why can't she just be a kid that's strong with the force? I know the Skywalker family has had a big influence on the story line and the galaxy so far, but I feel as if that be would taking too much away from a good character to make her related to someone we already know. I want someone totally new.
If Rey's theme is similar to Luke's theme, I just chalk it up to the nature of their characters being similar. Not that they're related.
Sorry, for the tangent, I'm just getting sick of this theory. That, and the whole 'Snoke is Darth Vader' bullshit. Don't even get me started with that.
I don't see how being related to the previous main characters takes away from the new main in a story that is a generational saga.
I'd be disappointed if all the hints were just red herrings and it ended up being a Spaceballs-esque "I'm your father's roommate's daughter's niece!" "What does that make us?" "nothing".
And no, just Kylo Ren isn't enough, we need a Skywalker protagonist as well.
It doesn't make the Empire look smaller. It's just that the children of Space Jesus have really big roles to play, no matter how humble their desert carpenter beginnings.
Really though, Anakin >> Luke being the last Jedi sets for their family of already exceptional Force Users to stand head and shoulders above the rest.
• Hints like that make for good storytelling, and just using them only as misdirection for hardcore fans is weak, and I doubt John Williams would go for that. The Internet is an infinite render machine, so it doesn't matter who puts some of the pieces together for things like that, so long as they work for the story that's being told with them.
• Holding off on her parentage until we get a full chunk of time to delve into that complex relationship with Luke makes sense — and it lets Ben's parentage reveal be contained in its own film.
• That's the only good reason not to give her a last name in the film is to make it a hint that her parentage has significance. The only other characters with no last name is Finn — who literally didn't have ANY name.
• The Skywalker's legacy has really been a boys club for the entirety of the Star Wars canon. You can say as much as you like about Leia also being a Skywalker Force User, but the reality is that we'll never get to see her the same way we've seen Luke or Anakin — even if we DO get to eventually see her use some of her Force powers in the later films.
• We'd get to have a positive parent-child relationship in Star Wars on screen for the first time in basically ever that wasn't a deathbed confession, or a decent parent being left in slavery, not to mention seeing a Skywalker mentor another Skywalker.
• The Anakin/Vader dynamic between Rey and Kylo Ren that I'm extra hyped on being a part of the Skywalker legacy.
• It takes the Mary-Sue argument and firmly puts it in its place of she's the grandfather of Space Jesus, and gets trained by Space Jesus' son, rather than random homeless girl that the Cosmic Force powered up.
• 0% possibility of the Luke X Rey = even more powerful Force User question ever being considered.
TFA didn't really make it seem like the universe was that big though; the prequels did a much better job at those (Coruscant and co). TFA has a desert planet, a bar in a ruin / ye olde temple, a couple hundred Stormtroopers, a few dozen rebels, half a dozen x-wings, a dozen tie-fighters, oh and a rather large gun that takes out half a dozen planets in one go (which seems to be the actual population center(s) based on the few scenes from there).
It just makes the movie feel a bit low-budget, nawsayn? Especially compared to the prequels, which had city-planets, arenas, large events (pod races, jedi gladiators), large battles involving armies of robots, fish-men and clones, etc.
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Off course, I can imagine the population kinda thinned out after the Clone Wars, empire/rebel wars and first order vs the universe.
Mind you, I only know star wars from the movies, . Here's to hoping large fleet battles in the next movies. Although OTOH I'm pretty sure they'll want to keep the same feel to the movies, even if they could double the budget and still break records.
Satsu, BRIAN BLESSED, MIGHTY AND WISE Junpei Iori: Ace Detective, Maccaffrickstonson von Lichtenstafford Frabenschnaben, Polite Krogan, Robert Baratheon
So as a little experiment I bought one of my dearest ladyfriends to watch VII with me yesterday. I really wanted to watch it a second time to wrap my head around it as well, because I wanted to see how it felt with some distance from the first viewing.
Plus, I could get the opinion of someone who's kind-of into movies but hasn't actually gotten into Star Wars yet - that movie-going audience that Disney is so eager to hunt for, including children (of which the two of us are! ). She turned up to my Star Wars marathon but only went through IV and the beginning of V before some other friends decided to cut and run.
What I was surprised by (and in hindsight, shouldn't have been) was how much she actually enjoyed it, even without most of the previous films under the belt. It's a damn good movie, to be sure, and it's positioned perfectly at the start to attract a new audience, and even those who aren't huge fans of Star Wars. At the very least, post-discussion she was much more interested in revisiting the originals and prequels. She mainly loved the characters (except for Kylo Ren, because the casting itself completely bugged her), fixated onto the merchandising bait that BB-8 was, got lost in some of the action, and laughed the loudest at the jokes.
She was completely bummed by Han's death scene (and not in the good way) and saw it coming the moment Kylo Ren walked in on that particular scene somehow. Without the extreme emotional attachment to the characters (though she got super excited every time Han and Leia showed up, so idk ), there wasn't much caring involved in that sequence, and thought it felt weak since it was already the second time that Kylo Ren removed his helmet.
She yelled "SEQUEL BAIT" at the screen when the credits popped, which I got a sensible chuckle out of.
Some of my own thoughts on second viewing:
I never quite liked the new blaster sound effects, but the new lightsaber ones I like a lot. Every time the good ol' blue one switches on it feels like a thunderclap goes off in the theater and I love it so much. Every time it happens is a moment.
On my first viewing I was actually very disappointed in the final sequence between
Rey climbing up the steps of Skellig Michael Achch-To? and meeting Luke.
I wasn't incredibly impressed by the visual scenery of the locale itself (even though the history and context behind the location itself felt nicely on-point). It felt less like a mystical hideaway on a remote planet and more like a scene shot on an aesthetically pleasing World Heritage Site from Ireland.
I'm not saying the sea should have been green or the sky should have been purple, but the seeming lack of set dressing (post-production or otherwise) to me makes it feel excessively ordinary. Tatooine was Tunisia and moon of Endor was Redwood National & State Parks, but they were dressed appropriately to the point where it felt fantastical.
It colored my impression of
Mark Hamill's acting, with what little time they gave him.
Unfortunately it took me out of the moment and all I could think was how his facial expression looked like someone who realised that the curry they ate half an hour ago was not going to agree with their gastrointestinal tract. It bugs me because conceptually it's a powerful, emotional moment driven purely by the characters uniting together with no lines of dialogue needed, but the external elements in it take me out of it.
On my second viewing I warmed up a bit to the acting in that sequence, but I can't shake that "THIS SCENE WAS SHOT ON A REAL-LIFE LOCATION ON EARTH" feeling that J.J. Abrams tried to follow so religiously in earnest.
I'm hearing Rey's Theme and Kylo Ren's more clearly now (and out of all of the new themes Rey's one is sticking in my mind the best), but no real action moments stand out to me yet with the same memorable cues like the OT did (besides that one Resistance theme). I think "John Williams going through the motions" would be too harsh, but I'm sad that I can't find it in me to be wowed with this score like I was with all six previous films.
I still laughed at General Hux's scene. Fuck that guy. The way the character turned out was nearly a complete waste of screen space. Star Wars has almost never been subtle, but some of the imagery in the film just seems like the lowest hanging fruit by today's standards. Ragging on this aspect is a bit shitty, but HEY.
Did you know that the FIERY, IMPASSABLE CREVASSE that separates the HERO and the ANTAGONIST exactly at their feet towards the end signifies the IMMEASURABLE, IRRECONCILABLE POLAR DIFFERENCES they have between each other?
Ragging on this aspect is a bit shitty, but HEY. Did you know that the FIERY, IMPASSABLE CREVASSE that separates the HERO and the ANTAGONIST exactly at their feet towards the end signifies the IMMEASURABLE, IRRECONCILABLE POLAR DIFFERENCES they have between each other?
I 100% disagree with the fact that it at all signifies, "immeasurable, irreconcilable polar differences" between Kylo Ren & Rey.
All of the elements around Starkiller base focused on the two of them are all Force based. The sun overhead slowly bleeding away ties in with Kylo Ren's moment of honest introspection with Han Solo, slowly leading to him embracing the choice to kill his father as the light is completely consumed.
Similarly, there's a lot of that same planetary-level storytelling happening from that point on. After Han's death is when the Resistance starts really attempting to kit the oscillator, and the turbulence goes along with both Kylo Ren's physical injury from Chewbacca's Bowcaster, as well as the emotional issues he's still grappling with.
While things are a little rocky, nothing REALLY happens when he goes after Finn. He's hit, but he's still very much holding together despite the situation. It's only when he goes up against Rey that coincides with the Resistance really starting to hit home, and Poe eventually landing the hit that makes all the difference.
When the two of them go up against each other, you're looking at the Dark Side vs. the Unknown. He pushes her literally until she has no other recourse and she's backed up against a cliff's edge before she embraces the Force. It's when Rey makes that turn that the planetary turbulence takes a step up, especially as she finally bests him.
After she takes him down, there is a moment where she could EASILY have killed him. The novelization even has a stronger version of this with the thought to kill him coming into her mind and her rejecting it. As we've seen in every Star Wars film ever, that moment of striking down a defeated Dark Side user encapsulates a turn to the Dark Side (Obi-Wan's killing Maul and Grievous in Combat is the clear exception, since neither of them are ever in a "defenseless" position when he kills them).
It's at that moment, that his attempts to have her learn about the Force with him, and the potential for her to be pulled down the Dark Side at that moment is cut off. The rift there is as much representative of the finality of Kylo Ren's failure to take her to the Dark Side in that moment, as much as it is them becoming rival forces of the Light and Dark Sides of the Force.
I'll take strong, obvious, visual storytelling like that any day over the sort of clunky dialogue that the Prequels suffered from in so many of what should have been their pivotal moments.
Satsu, BRIAN BLESSED, MIGHTY AND WISE Junpei Iori: Ace Detective, Maccaffrickstonson von Lichtenstafford Frabenschnaben, Polite Krogan, Robert Baratheon
Ragging on this aspect is a bit shitty, but HEY. Did you know that the FIERY, IMPASSABLE CREVASSE that separates the HERO and the ANTAGONIST exactly at their feet towards the end signifies the IMMEASURABLE, IRRECONCILABLE POLAR DIFFERENCES they have between each other?
I 100% disagree with the fact that it at all signifies, "immeasurable, irreconcilable polar differences" between Kylo Ren & Rey.
All of the elements around Starkiller base focused on the two of them are all Force based. The sun overhead slowly bleeding away ties in with Kylo Ren's moment of honest introspection with Han Solo, slowly leading to him embracing the choice to kill his father as the light is completely consumed.
Similarly, there's a lot of that same planetary-level storytelling happening from that point on. After Han's death is when the Resistance starts really attempting to kit the oscillator, and the turbulence goes along with both Kylo Ren's physical injury from Chewbacca's Bowcaster, as well as the emotional issues he's still grappling with.
While things are a little rocky, nothing REALLY happens when he goes after Finn. He's hit, but he's still very much holding together despite the situation. It's only when he goes up against Rey that coincides with the Resistance really starting to hit home, and Poe eventually landing the hit that makes all the difference.
When the two of them go up against each other, you're looking at the Dark Side vs. the Unknown. He pushes her literally until she has no other recourse and she's backed up against a cliff's edge before she embraces the Force. It's when Rey makes that turn that the planetary turbulence takes a step up, especially as she finally bests him.
After she takes him down, there is a moment where she could EASILY have killed him. The novelization even has a stronger version of this with the thought to kill him coming into her mind and her rejecting it. As we've seen in every Star Wars film ever, that moment of striking down a defeated Dark Side user encapsulates a turn to the Dark Side (Obi-Wan's killing Maul and Grievous in Combat is the clear exception, since neither of them are ever in a "defenseless" position when he kills them).
It's at that moment, that his attempts to have her learn about the Force with him, and the potential for her to be pulled down the Dark Side at that moment is cut off. The rift there is as much representative of the finality of Kylo Ren's failure to take her to the Dark Side in that moment, as much as it is them becoming rival forces of the Light and Dark Sides of the Force.
I'll take strong, obvious, visual storytelling like that any day over the sort of clunky dialogue that the Prequels suffered from in so many of what should have been their pivotal moments.
I'm not sure what's there to be called out on. The majority of your analyses on the visual theming may well be spot-on, but the majority of it was not referring to the example I used .
I, too, prefer well-handled visual storytelling over clunky dialogue (though I think the prequels do have some great visual moments told through scale and positioning), but my main beef is with contrivances and conveniences used that break my personal suspension of disbelief, or feel overtly heavy-handed in contrast with the rest of the film.
Like I said, Star Wars has never often been subtle, but I think the specific examples I cited cross that line of strong visual storytelling and becomes imagery prioritized over the scene itself. In contrast, I have no problems with other seemingly obvious visual cues in Star Wars, like the clashing struggle of red and blue lightsabers locked together,
the draining of the sun to reflect both the macro struggle ("while there's light, there's still hope!") and the personal character decisions made,
, the camera lingering over Vader's amputated hand as Luke clenches his, or the green and red coloring between X-Wing and TIE fighter lasers.
I certainly don't think the original trilogy really needed close-ups of bad guys spitting at the screen like Adolf Hitler to convey the religious fervour of the Space Nazis
). That being said, I am mega-mega excited for the next movie, and I feel like there are so many opportunities to do something new and exciting with Star Wars. Rian Johnson is a super cool writer/director, I can't think of anyone's Star Wars movie I'd more like to see than his.
). She turned up to my Star Wars marathon but only went through IV and the beginning of V before some other friends decided to cut and run.