The point being, I don't want to write that review, so there's going to be absolutely no squeamishness about spoilers. Want a spoiler-free review? Here's one I wrote two days after I saw the film:
"'The Star Wars Original Trilogy: The Greatest Hits' is, I think, to the film's benefit more often than not - J.J. Abrams's inability to have an original artistic thought makes for an awfully tasty plateful of comfort food - though the familiarity of the third-act conflict is some real bullshit any way you slice it. Equal to or better than Return of the Jedi, but I'll remind you that I don't value ROTJ anywhere remotely near the first two films. 7/10"
So that's that. Bail out of if you must.
Now, there are as many ways to properly open a review of The Force Awakens as you could possibly daydream, but I think the whole "carbon copy of the original Star Wars" is a fine one. For one thing, it's not true, both because it's crediting the film with too little originality and also with too much. By which I mean, this isn't repeating the beats of Star Wars, it's picking and choosing elements from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi also. The choice of single-biome planets this time around draws from all three of the original trilogy films, and the climax is a combination of both Star Wars and Jedi - an X-wing attack on a superweapon involving a trench dive and a highly specific weak point come from the 1977 film, but the fact that a team must penetrate a base on foot to shut down a shield generator, and the aerial assault is intercut with a sequence of a father and son having a fatal conflict over ethical behavior inside the base being attacked, all things snipped from the 1983 sequel. And this gives me hope - The Force Awakens is not just a remake of Star Wars, as the most cynical critics would have it, it's a remix of the whole trilogy, which hopefully means that the next film will be prepared to go into completely unfamiliar territory, now that this film has refurbished and refreshed our sense of how Star Wars movies work when they're focused on frothy space opera and not the minutiae of space politics. Though, at the risk of repeating myself, if Episode VIII isn't great - hell, if it's only exactly as good as The Force Awakens - this film is going to seem like a pretty huge missed opportunity.
But back to the remixing. On paper, it should be endlessly frustrating that all of the plot points are basically the same as in Star Wars, though in a slightly different order. It should, on paper, drive me to a homicidal rage that director/co-writer J.J. Abrams (Lawrence Kasdan returns to the series to co-write) would stage those basically the same points as virtual clones of moments from earlier in the series: the introduction to Maz Kanata's (Lupita Nyong'o voicing a CGI character) magical bar of colorful aliens is precisely what happens when you place the grotty set design from Jabba's palace into the exact editing pattern in the Mos Eisley cantina - I didn't have a stop watch, but the number and timing of the establishing shots felt identical. In practice, the exact replications are mixed up with conspicuous inversions, the most conspicuous being that Luke Skywalker is now a girl, Rey (Daisey Ridley) and C-3PO is now a black stormtrooper, Finn (John Boyega), and the result feels like both a myopic piece of Star Wars fan fiction and a savvy deconstruction of Star Wars' unfathomably over-familiar plot points at one and the same time. It's a neat trick, one that Abrams is better-suited to carrying off than any other director I can think of; his entire personality as a filmmaker is that he has no personality, but is an extremely gifted mimic of other people's aesthetics. Nobody could do a better job of making a copy of Star Wars that is also a feature-length commentary on Star Wars from a fan's perspective.
That being said, having another damn Death Star, or a SuperNuke KillPlanet, or whatever it's called, is criminally lazy; and introducing it with a comic beat in which the characters themselves note that it's hey! another Death Star, but bigger and deathier is the kind of "you can't accuse me of doing something wrong because I'm calling attention to the fact I'm doing it" postmodernism exactly, perfectly calculated to get the movie on my bad side.
Incidentally, there's another pretty overt lift from Star Wars history that I haven't seen another soul besides myself bring up, because the Consensus Narrative is that we do not talk about the prequels right now. But picture this: a character standing over a pit suddenly gets a look of shock and disappointment and pain in close-up. A cut to a position behind him reveals the reason why: a lightsaber has just been ignited right against his chest, and we now see it protruding out of the other side of his body. This scene ends with a dead body tumbling (in a rather unpersuasive visual effect, I might add) down an endless shaft of the sort that populate space fantasies. I have of course just described the death of Han Solo (Harrison Ford, better by miles than he ever has been in the role - possibly enthusiasm for finally being able to kill his hated character off). I have also described the death of Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, and now I get to feel like I've actually added something to the conversation, because it's just too damn specific in the blocking and editing for me to believe it's a coincidence.
The takeaway from all of this, anyway, is that the film is particularly anxious not to carve out a niche for itself: it's fan service on the grandest scale that it has ever been executed, aided considerably by the degree to which Star Wars fandom has entrenched itself as a basic prerequisite to engaging with popular cinema since some time in the 1990s (it does to remember that for a goodly number of years, the franchise had died back almost to Star Trek levels of "oh yeah, that nerd thing" invisibility). What is interesting about is the way that it employs that fan service at the level of subverting our expectations, but as a story it's never better than "Star Wars without the novelty", and it is very frequently not even that. It's naggingly obvious that our two new protagonists, Rey and Finn, are analogues to someone else's character arc - enormously enjoyable ones! Ridley's turn as Rey is a "star is born" moment straight out of old Hollywood, and her sly, playful way with the character's hyper-competence and curious dialogue is enormously fun and dangerously charismatic. But she's also good at pulling out threads of tragedy: the motivation of needing to be back on Jakku in case whoever might be looking for her actually exists is left woefully unexplored by the script, but Ridley weaves it into ever crevice of her performance.
Still, Rey's enormous likability as a protagonist is due much more to Ridley than to anything else: Abrams's addiction to setting up plots and then absolutely refusing to resolve them means that the character really doesn't do anything, and most of the things she achieves are defined primarily in terms of how she herself doesn't understand what the hell is going on. Finn, stuck in the role of the bumbling sidekick, fares even worse (and the script bizarrely insists on saddling him with anachronistically 2010s quips: it's even worse than the terrible dialogue in other Star Wars films, because it's not hilariously bad, just glaringly inappropriate), though at least we can positively identify the ways he's changed between the start and the end of the film. Both of them evoke rich characters without being rich characters. If there is an actual, layered character to be found anywhere, it's in the form of Adam Driver's Kylo Ren, a taciturn bad guy who is revealed as a desperate lost boy trying hard to form a personality for himself and idealising a way of life he's not good at replicating; but Star Wars isn't a franchise terribly well-built for antiheroes, is it? It is inherently Manichean. Nowhere is the fact that The Force Awakens is writing checks for other movies to cash more transparent than in his characterisation: if he turns into a fascinating, compelling figure, this will eventually seem like a gloriously launching point. If he stalls out, then this is just a pointless exercise in parodying Darth Vader as a sullen emo twentysomething.
The film is on steadier footing as a frothy space opera, at least, though it's hobbled by some impoverished world-building (it's a peculiarly unsatisfying and unclear continuation from Return of the Jedi: why are the Republic and Resistance two separate entities? Is it like the De Gaulle government and the French Resistance? Because it's hard to imagine how that operates in this context), and a generally erratic quality. There are great sequences in the film; for the first 30 minutes, in fact, there are only great sequences, as we're introduced to the new characters and new universe in bold, broad strokes, and get to enjoy the film's most excitingly hectic action sequence (the Millennium Falcon chase in the skies of Jakku), its most visually dramatic (the night raid on the desert community), and its best blend of comedy and action, before the jokiness starts to get a little overwhelming (although I concede that my three favorite single beats in the film are all gags: the stormtroopers spinning around during Kylo's tantrum, Chewbacca's sob story to the nurse, and BB-8's little lighter "thumbs-up". In fact, let's just go ahead and put it down so it's official: BB-8 is far and away the best thing in this movie, more crazily expressive than any movie robot I can name outside of WALL·E).
But there are also some very awful moments, like the thoroughly inexplicable chase with the tentacle-monsters, a visually cramped setpiece with ugly CGI. And there are moments that can't commit to being as good as they might, like the whole layover at Maz Kanata's: it's the only place in the movie that feels like it genuinely expands the size of the Star Wars universe, but it also has the definite tang of a "we needed to do this to get the plot momentum back on its feet" reboot, and despite Nyong'o's excellent vocal performance, Maz is a sort of terrible distraction, one of the few obvious CGI effects in a movie that mostly great job of mixing practical creatures and digitial spaceships. There are too many places where Abrams the director seems to fall down completely: I get that people life the Rey/Kylo lightsaber fight, but I am at a loss to explain why: the editing and flat camerawork make it, to me, the second-worst lightsaber fight in the franchise, behind only the absurdly dreadful duel in the opening act of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (but then, I don't know what to make of this recent madness that seems to have taken hold, that the climactic fight in The Phantom Menace is crappy because it's over-choreographed or narratively unnecessary, or whathaveyou. Boo hoo, it's still fucking cool). And the last shot is powerfully terrible, a messy spinning helicopter shot that looks gaudy as hell and feels all wrong for the traditional iris wipe to the end credits.
There are points at which the storytelling is just dumb: it's baffling why the fight between Finn and the random stormtrooper with the electromagnetic thingy couldn't have been between Finn and Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie), immediately giving it more intersonal heft, and also scrounging up at least one active, plot-moving thing for Phasma to actually do. On a similar "why would you not do the ludicrously obvious thing staring you in the face?" note, I am mystified why we got to see Kylo Ren's face before the showdown between him and his father - as no-brainers for intensifying the emotional stakes of a moment go, they really don't get much more brainless than that. And the film can't juggle all of its villains: General Hux (played by Domnhall Gleeson with lip-smacking hamminess) feels thoroughly vestigial, getting in the way of a potentially interesting tension between Kylo and the imposing hologram of neo-emperor Snoke (Andy Serkis, drenched in computer animation that is astonishingly shameful for a big-budget movie in 2015 - he looks like Voldemort in the earliest Harry Potter films, a series noted for the wobbliness of its effects work).
Despite all that, the film is slick and fun, and in Rey and BB-8, it has two instantly-classic additions to the Star Wars legendarium (I'm adopting a wait-and-see approach to Finn and Kylo; meanwhile, Oscar Isaac is phenomenal as Poe Dameron, and I look forward to seeing a movie where he has more than a glorified cameo). Ultimately, more parts of the film work than not - it doesn't set a single foot wrong till the arbitrary arrival of Han and Chewie, and there's never a protracted sequence of bad scenes that comes even remotely close to counterbalancing the momentum and energy and good spirits of its first act - and Abrams's copycat instincts result in a film with more than its share of splendid popcorn movie imagery. It's primarily interested in being agreeably trivial, and if it didn't have the words "Star Wars" in its title, I can't imagine having more than the fuzziest memories of it a year from now. But "agreeably trivial" is miles better than the three prequels could scrounge up between them (being neither agreeable nor trivial, weirdly enough), and its sins aren't really any worse than the worst of Return of the Jedi. What we've got here is a film that managed, on the first try, to turn the engine over in a car that has been collecting dust for 32 years. Now, they didn't drive it anywhere, so we can't tell if it was worth the effort. But the very worst you can say is that Rian Johnson & company have a firm foundation upon which to build something legitimately special next time around.
7/10
Reviews in this series
Star Wars (Lucas, 1977)
The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983)
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (Lucas, 1999)
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (Lucas, 2002)
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (Lucas, 2005)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015)
Hm. The Falcon on Jakku (and the ensuing attempt to remind us of the climactic Death Star II infiltration) was the part where the movie really ground down into "at best, this will be good" territory. Then again, I hated the CGI Falcon in general, and the way it was thrown into trees and rocks like it didn't matter.
ReplyDeleteAs for other complete opposite reactions: I kind of loved the final lightsaber fight as a piece of filmmaking (it's the only point in the whole movie where the Class of 2015 Blockbuster Cinematography worked for me), although it fails exceedingly badly as a piece of narrative.
And I really enjoyed Finn and John Boyega's combination of enthusiasm and reticence and (apparently?) horniness--I mean, Daisy Ridley does great with what she has, and I like Rey, but what she has in this film is so unacceptably incomplete, that it's not even a fair competition.
Finally, the idea that this thing is better than Jedi--and this is not just you, it's the whole Internet--is something I can't even understand. Even conceding for the sake of argument that Jedi has especially serious weaknesses in the first place, the lows of Jedi are not half as bad, and the highs are so much higher you can't even see them from here.
I actually had a very good time, and since what I wanted most was good production design and skilled performers playing simple but striking characters I was pretty satisfied.
ReplyDeleteBut while the first thirty or forty minutes are all around just fucking great, once Han arrives via Infinite Improbability Drive everything stops cohering and feeling like an organic development of anything.
And there are so many things where it's shocking that they didn't figure out a better way to structure it. Clearly the "twist" should have been revealed in that scene outside of Maz's, rather than just shat out offhand. Then you can couple that with the face reveal, while also keeping that nice scene with Ridley and an unmasked Driver.
Like, that feels so clearly the way one ought to go about it structurally, and it makes me wonder whether JJ Abrams is a storyteller at all so much as a traffic controller.
(I mean how is "When I woke up it was dark and you were gone" an acceptable explanation for that shockingly lazy way of writing Poe out of Act 2. )
Alright, let's talk.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed that The Force Awakens is exactly the movie I was expecting: right square in the middle of the series in terms of quality or novelty. As much as the prequels generate so much hate (and rightfully so), they still make an attempt to push the series into new territories, even if space politics is 100% not the thing people go to Star Wars for.
The first hour of this movie is great: opening up with its coolest shot (probably the second best 'reason' to see this in 3D, the best being the Star Destroyer RIGHT IN YO FACE shot that got laughs at my screening), followed by great moment after great moment. Our universe is back, with practical sets this time! Characters speaking lines that don't make me want to tear my ears off! That Millennium Falcon chase!
And while we're there, unfortunately, I'm going to be stricter on choosing movies to watch on IMAX from here on out . Once upon a time, it used to be "Does it have footage shot on IMAX film?" Now I'm going to add "Is the total number of minutes of footage shot on IMAX film actually in the double-digits?"
Then, like a light-switch, the pilfering from the Original Trilogy happens, and the pilfering does not quite grate me as much. If you're going to copy, you might as well copy from the best. But, when the pilfering gets in the way of the movie, it hurts so badly. I managed to call Han Solo's death half an hour before it actually happened, because I got the film's MO of being a remake of Star Wars, and Solo was very much the Obi-Wan of this remake. And that's fine. But, when it happened, the movie signals this moment as such a HUGE. FUCKING. DEAL (from the location of the death to the way it's edited to the way it builds and builds and builds to the stab), as though it's meant to be a devastating shock, instead of something that was telegraphed to happen. I was getting traumatic flashbacks to Star Trek Into Darkness at that point.
(It is terrifying really. If we're going to apply auteur theory to JJ Abrams, his signifying characteristic of his filmmaking personality is that he has none, and every time he tries to put a stamp on things, it's in the shape of a goddamn lens flare. Now, we don't even have the lens flares anymore. Maybe he can move on to Bond movies now.)
Also, let's talk John Williams. Glad to see someone actively trying to carve out a new identity for this instalment of the series. Sadly, the only thing I could hum going out of the theatre is Rey's Theme (which is wistful and tinkly in all the best ways.) The other two new themes I can detect (for the First Order and the Resistance) are nowhere near the level of The Imperial March. Still, good for him not to just coast on his previously established themes.
Which makes it all the more powerful when they do come around. The chills when the Force Theme finally makes its full orchestrated appearance in the final scene. Also, very much co-signing your thoughts on that scene. What should have been an extremely powerful moment, Rey finally coming face to face with her dad (yeah, I'm calling it now.), the music swelling and then the most frustrating last shot I have ever seen this year. CAN'T A SIMPLE WIDE SHOT SUFFICE?
I didn't like the pace of the thing, either. (and apparently, there is all kinds of footage on the cutting room floor, so much in fact, that it necessitated reshoots to fill in the gaps left by so much missing footage)
ReplyDeleteI really liked the montage when we first meet Rey, and the whole movie slows way down and says "let's just watch her for a while", and it's lovely, and so is she, and we just spend a bit of time discovering who she is by observing her. The movie is never that good after that. But I did like Adam Driver's Kylo Ren, who gets my vote as Second Best In Show. I can forgive unmasking him before his scene with Han, because he's giving a real performance under that mask, and it would have been a shame not to see it at all before the climax.
Poor Gwendoline Christie, though. She never got anything good to do, and didn't even get to take off her damn helmet.
Surprisingly for a Star Wars movie, I didn't particularly care for any of the design, which is usually a highlight, even in the prequels. But nothing seemed special here, just a lot of cut and paste looks from the earlier films. And don't even get me started on the galactic geography. Apparently, all of the worlds of the film are in sight of each other because.....reasons? I know scientific accuracy is not a hallmark of this series, but the amount of nonsense in this movie is distracting as hell.
The opening crawl is a disaster for failing to even sketch in the state of the Republic 30 years after Jedi. I had to go to the internet to get some details that by all rights should have been spelled out in the movie, and weren't.
The remnants of the Empire have coalesced into The First Order, and have amassed an amount of military power such that the New Republic is forced to officially recognize them, but rather than engage in open warfare with them, are covertly supporting the Resistance to work against them in secret. That's basically it. Why that couldn't be spelled out clearly and simply in the narrative is a mystery.
I agree with this review almost to the letter (though I liked Finn and Maz Kanata significantly more than you did), and as a result, I am ridiculously excited for Episode VIII.
ReplyDeleteI have to assume Disney hired J.J. Abrams with the express intention that he would create a play-it-safe fan-servicey palate cleanser with strong characters and no original ideas. The Force Awakens is not a GREAT movie, but it does set up a great foundation for Rian Johnson, who is a much stronger, more imaginative, and more ambitious filmmaker than Abrams ever was. It almost feels like an extended TV pilot in that regard.
Even if The Force Awakens is the least imaginative and ambitious Star Wars movie ever, it is easily the most competently made since Empire, which is nothing to sneeze at. After a trilogy of films that aim for "great" without even having the basic foundation of "good," I am happy with a movie that settles for "good." God willing, Rian Johnson can take these same pieces and combine both competency and ambition, and give us an Episode VIII that can stand alongside IV and V.
I don't think people are being fair with JJ Abrams. I mean, do you really want a completely distinct version of Star Wars? Wouldn't that completely change the tone of the whole franchise? What's next? Ditching John Williams' soundtrack because it's too familiar and imposing? I feel like this is the sort of easy criticism that happens just because it's JJ Abrams where in the previous movies this was completely a non-issue. When people that accused him of overusing lens-flares now complain that he's not an auteur because he didn't use them in this movie, you know they will never be satisfied with anything he does.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion Star Wars movies have always been for the most really poorly directed. The action, the acting and the pacing were always at least clumsy. The style too, it was either too stiff and boring or too childish and hectic. What JJ did was to show that it's possible to make a version of Star Wars that at least doesn't screw this up. What's more is that I actually think he does have a distinctive style. Think about the scene where Kylo Ren stops the blaster's energy ray in mid air, the interrogation scene where Kylo and Ren have a battle of wills using the force or when Rey grabs the lightsaber with the force and powers it for the first time, to name a few from the top of my mind. These are very stylish and intense scenes that I just don't see another filmmaker coming up with and directing as well as JJ did. If he doesn't have what you call a clear ever-present signature, he excels in delivering specific moments and that's also really important in a franchise that's bigger than it's director. The franchise needed a movie like this: Modern and sophisticated, at the same time nostalgic and respectful of the franchise's history.
JJ is to Star Wars like Martin Campbell is to James Bond. What happened when an auteur like Sam Mendes decided to tackle Bond? He made 2 good films but they're way too tonely distinct to feel like we're watching a Bond movie. We have to be constantly reminded by the visual motifs or by the music. Whereas in Campbell's films you never even think about direction because it's all organic and in service of the movie experience. I'm not making a case against auteurs taking on big franchises, it's just it's something that seldom works to its benefit.
As for the lightsaber battle, I'll have to completely disagree. This was the best, most intense lightsaber in all Star Wars. It finally looked like they were holding something dangerous and hard to maneuver. Plus, they were actually going for the opponent's body and not their lightsaber. I'm sorry Tim but to put this below the unbelievably terrible lightsaber fight between Darth Vader and Obi Wan back in Episode 4 can only be explained by your protectiveness of the original film. Gladly, I have no such attachments to the franchise and that's why I think I was able to enjoy Force Awakens to the fullest, even with all the flaws you listed in your review that I more or less agree with.
This is possibly suicidal, but the more I mull it over, the more I feel like it's personally true: I actually like this film less than The Phantom Menace. The crushing lows of that film are absent, but only in the process of sanding any real personality off of it entirely. Meanwhile, nothing about the film is ever going to be as indelible in my mind as the clear highlights of Episode I, which are quintessentially Star Wars-y setpieces that nonetheless feel entirely distinct from the movies that preceded them.
ReplyDeleteYour thoughts are close to something that occurred to me as well: this film's reputation has a lot riding on how Episodes VIII and IX turn out. I agree that the absolute worst-case scenario is if they end up being exactly the same as Episode VII, but if they manage to be better (and I can't imagine that they could be worse), the first question on my lips will be "why couldn't we do that the first time?" Any way you slice it, nothing about this film is going to stand the test of time.
I also agree that all of the best material is front-loaded. That camp raid is excellent, and the wordless introduction of Rey against the backdrop of that ruined Star Destroyer could not be more perfect. Where the film lost me (after already putting me on edge by more-or-less retconning the end of Episode VI) was the totally preposterous, unmotivated, shameless appearance of the Millennium Falcon, at which point I said "are you fucking kidding me?" out loud, and nothing in the film that follows that moment managed to talk me back from that point.
It doesn't help that it was followed by that abysmal freighter sequence. The clear lowlight of a film without a single decent action sequence to its name, conceptually dubious and choppy and unconvincing in its execution. When the stars of The Raid showed up in the credits with an "additional choreography" credit for that scene, I was just about ready to cry.
I'll admit that the main reason I like the lightsaber duel is because it finally felt like two people trying to actually kill each other, something that only really happens in Jedi, and even then only briefly.
ReplyDeleteAt the risk of turning the comments section into my own personal soapbox, here's part one of a probably needlessly aggressive criticism:
ReplyDeleteI saw this movie with a bunch of other Star Wars fans (and one Star Wars agnostic), and our views were that myself and another guy considered it soulless product, one of us hated it, and one of us liked it for reasons he had trouble defining beyond "it's fun if you turn your brain off" (the Star Wars agnostic was, well, agnostic). Having just seen it again last night with my brother (who gave a verdict of "a solid 5/10"), I think I'm reasonably well-equipped, in the Festivus spirit, to air some of my grievances.
-The world-building, as Tim mentioned, falls badly on its face here. I understand that Abrams and Co. were likely working from a position of "people hated the space politics in the prequels!" and decided to keep it to a minimum here. That's fine, leaving aside the fact that people probably hated the prequels' space politics in no small part because they were total nonsense. The problem is that the world of Episode VII is not conducive to the Episode IV style economy of worldbuilding. Episode IV had a simple, intuitive setup: the totalitarian, monolithic empire, which has enough resources to build a gigantic superweapon, is hunting the outgunned guerillas, who are fleeing from system to system. Not so simple in Episode VII. What is the First Order, exactly? What is its relationship to the Old Empire? To the Republic? Is it generally considered a threat? A nuisance? Just a human rights embarrassment? What is the First Order fighting to achieve? If the First Order is a genuine threat, why does the "Resistance" that the Republic is sponsoring seemingly consists of the same twelve X-Wings and one rebel base as the Rebels had in Episode IV? What is the "Hosnian system" that the movie make such a big deal out of destroying? If ...*sigh* "Starkiller Base" had destroyed Coruscuant (which, that's what everyone thought it was at first, right?), that would have at least had some significance within the wider Star Wars Universe. But since the prequels are toxic and the movie is desperate to assert its own identity in the most superficial way possible, "Hosnian" is, like all the other planets in this movie, something new, despite adding very little. You could argue that we knew only a bit more about Alderaan when it was destroyed in IV, but that worked on a different level because the destruction of Alderaan was a character moment: Tarkin was using the destruction of Leia's home planet as a way to torture her. Nobody here seems to care about Hosnian besides Domhall Gleason, whose Triumph of the Will speech here has made me stifle laughter both times I've seen it. I know that Episode VII was going for "character-story in a big universe" the way IV did, but by failing to properly establish the world and conflict in which our characters exist and participate, it makes their actions seem less interesting.
-The "Big Three" new characters were decently well-sketched by modern blockbuster standards, but that doesn't mean I didn't have some problems with them. I think my biggest problems were with Finn: for a man who was either kidnapped from his family at such a young age, or brainwashed so heavily, as to not remember or know his own name, Finn acts way too much like a normal person living in the 2010s, as Tim points out. Throughout the movie, Finn's character bounces between competence/bravery and incompetence/cowardice, and this character arc that looks more like a transverse wave would be less of a problem if the foundation of his character didn't strike me as being broken. This is a minor throwaway gag line, but it sort of exemplifies the questions I have about Finn: at one point on the Falcon, he asks Rey if she has a boyfriend. This line feels backwards to me. Surely the orphan from a backwater planet should be the one flirting with the exotic Resistance fighter, only for Finn, the janissary slave soldier, to react with confusion or hostility because he doesn't understand normal human emotions or social relationships. I dunno, I feel like that would have been more interesting than what we got. Maybe I'm wrong. As for Rey herself, her character of "bland hypercompetence" didn't really resonate with me. There's room for growth here, but it's heavily reliant on Episode VIII thinking outside the box. In any event, having her singing the Original Trilogy's greatest hits by the end of the movie in terms of force powers and lightsaber abilities was pretty irksome. Kylo struck me as the only character to mostly succeed in what the filmmakers were attempting to do with him. Like Rey, however, Kylo's development into a good character is heavily dependent on whether the sequels meaningfully develop his backstory. It's also reliant on his dark mentor, Snoke (Christ that name) being more compelling a villain than "Giant CGI Voldemort."
ReplyDelete-The old returning characters were alright. Harrison Ford gives some top-shelf effort, though the handful of dialogue scenes between him and Leia struck me as being just as bad as almost anything from the prequels. Leia got the short end of the stick especially; Carrie Fisher hasn't been in movies for a while, but even someone on their A-game would have had a hard time with some of the expository pablum she had to spout. Generally speaking, any character that has to use the name "Snoke" in a serious way suffers badly by doing so.
On a technical level, the movie is essentially flawless. The visual and sound design, the framing of the dogfights, all the "movie magic" sort of stuff works just fine. I just feel like it's missing a soul. This movie didn't make me feel anything most of the time, at least not anything good. I felt annoyed at it quite often, especially when it became obvious that "yep, they're actually doing another Death Star." An important thing to remember about Episode IV is that, while the stories of Episode V and VI build upon and in some ways improve that movie, Episode IV can still stand on its own as a functional piece of cinema. I do not feel that that is the case here. If Episode VIII were to never be completed, Episode VII would look mighty wobbly and undeveloped by comparison. I may be being uncharitable here, but it seems like the movie decided to plug gaping narrative holes with fanservice and nostalgia, hoping that it would paper over a lot of peoples' questions and concerns about the fact that this movie provides very little in the way of answers. Maybe Episode VIII will improve VII in retrospect, but for now, I'm left thinking of this movie as fundamentally lazy in terms of story, and for a movie that had essentially unlimited amounts of time and money for development, laziness feels like the most grievous sin of all.
You really think Harrison Ford was at his best as Han Solo here? Because it very much felt to me like he was just showing up to collect a paycheck.
ReplyDeleteAmong a lot of the points already brought up, what kept reoccurring to me was the same thing that kept reoccurring to me during the trailers: for being a filmmaker who's stock in trade is aping the look and feel of another IP, Abrams never seemed to try at making this look of a piece with the other movies in the series.
ReplyDeleteEach of the past six features had a certain stately nature about them in the way they're framed, lit, and blocked. I don't mean that as a criticism, even for the prequels. You can attribute this to the OT being part of the pre-digital era, to budgetary constrictions, to whatever you want; there's a visual trademark at work that sets the series apart. When this visual trademark is paired with really accomplished cinematic storytelling, like it was in Empire Strikes Back, you get compositional work that's truly startling, like Luke and Vader's lightsaber duel in the carbonite chamber.
With The Force Awakens, its like they started the pre-viz and storyboarding work with the pitch, "You know what'd be great? If we made Star Wars look like every other contemporary action movie. We'll just throw some handheld camerawork in there, and some fancy zooms in over here, and an elaborate CGI-stitched long take there. No strong visual unification or theme. Just fireworks. More fireworks." They even do that galling shot from the trailers where you start on a wide shot of the Falcon being chased into the wreck of the Destroyer, and the mostly-digital shot is artificially zoomed in and refocused to create that 'you are there' feeling that never actually did anything other than look rather gimmicky and coy. I'm not sure why that particular cinematic trick gets on my nerves more than anything else; using crash-zooms in general seems to be the mark of a desperate filmmaker trying to create mood where there is none, but it's much more irritating when the shot is mostly digital and you know that someone(s) labored for hours in front of a computer in order to make a shot look "raw" and "exciting".
There are moments early on, mostly on Jakku, where they seem to be going for the same poise in the imagery; although it's interesting that Jakku never seemed to have any time of day other than "magic hour", it still worked. And then there are isolated moments scattered here and there through the rest of the movie that have the same effect. But they're all pretty well shot to hell by the overwhelming feeling of anonymity and bland slickness in the rest of the production. Other than shot setups that are blatantly and/or intentionally lifted from the OT as nostalgia-bait (in addition to the cantina lift that Tim mentions, the introductory shots of Kylo Ren are, I believe, mirrored versions of the same setup used to introduce Vader in Episode IV), I'm having trouble thinking of any moment in the film that created any visual continuity with any of the past movies.
Just thought of one, and it's the only one I picked up on during the screening: the brief scenes with C3PO and R2-D2 at the rebel base seem to have that visual connective tissue.
Kylo Ren is what prequel!Anakin Skywalker would logically have turned into, not Vader. Do you think Abrams suspected this too?
ReplyDeleteObviously about 30 years have elapsed since ROTJ, but I was wondering how the remnants of the Empire got so strong to the point where it seems like the Resistance and possibly Republic are once again the underdogs. I suppose that question will be answered in the sequels, but it does seem convenient for setting up a retelling of the original trilogy.
One last nitpick; while it certainly made for an exciting battle stage, why did so many Star Destroyers crash on Dakku?
I loved it! It was fun, funny, there was good acting all over the place, cool new ideas, great practical effects work, an awesome villain and there is so much potential now!
ReplyDeleteI don't know how much of the trilogy is mapped out (does anyone know?), but I assume there is at least a rough draft of major trilogy plot points that the filmmakers are working toward. It's hard to say what decisions in 7 were made because of something that will happen in 8 or 9, but I think what this movie absolutely had to do is set up potential and it has done that amazingly well.
Here are some possible things to look forward to based on my minor disappointments from this film:
-Gwendoline Christy on a revenge quest against Finn
-A huge action sequence akin to The Raid
-Some kind of mind-blowing Snoke/Wizard of Oz reveal using the talents of the man who kicked so much ass as Gollum
-Much more Poe
-MUCH MUCH more Kylo Ren! (Thank goodness he didn't die at the end a-la Darth Maul)
Chris Stuckmann said it best in his spoiler review: we don't know the big picture with 7 the way we do with
4-6. I reserve final judgement for sometime around 2020 but for now I am wholly satisfied.
I would make the argument that the hallmark of JJ's filmmaking (and I would say his major strength) is in creating action sequences where the actual action is sorta peripheral to the scene but serves as a fast, fun, and intense backdrop to deliver character beats.
ReplyDeleteThe example that I'm thinking of here is when the Falcon is escaping from Han's freighter? thing and it cuts between Han quipping, Rey doing technical things, and Finn comedically patching up Chewie.
See also: the entire star trek reboot
I really, really could not abide Kylo Ren. I mean, “whiney emo kid” is what they were going for and it's what they got, but I don't understand why they were going for it in the first place. The character is totally ineffective as a villain, and given that his “evil” (even after his patricide) never feels like anything other than a juvenile rebellion against mom and dad, the Dark Side is powerfully devalued. If this is all it takes, half of us would be Dark-Sider-ers before we hit twenty. Also, I was kind of under the impression that the Force required, like, discipline? How the hell was this guy able to become even minimally competent at it? I will leave open the possibility that the sequels could make this character not suck, but they've got their work cut out for them.
ReplyDeleteBen above has made the point that I see so few people making. I feel like I am living in crazy-town because so few of my friends, even film school people, seem to comment on it.
ReplyDeleteThe OT and PT (mostly) felt like they were shot in a style that throws back to older movies. TFA looks like a movie shot in, well, the JJ Abrams style of the 2010s, and I do not like it.
The same goes for the dialogue. The humor wasn't bad, but it felt more like something out of Joss Whedon or a Netflix sitcom than the banter of the previous films.
Combine that with very few imaginative designs or glimpses at new things and the painfully pandering "OT's Greatest Hits" plotline and you have my least favorite of the seven. I love the prequels, despite their flaws. I enjoyed this movie on a fun-Hollywood-blockbuster level, but I did not love it.
I remember when Chewbacca turned up in ROTS and fanboys howled that Lucas was just throwing him in to pander to / take advantage of the audience's goodwill. I actually kind of agree. Well, this movie has about a hundred Chewbacca-in-ROTS moments.
— Adam
I had many of the same issues with the movie the rest of you had. The wholesale ripping off of the OT, the one too many plot conveniences, the missed opportunities. But, and it's a big BUT, I still loved it. It brought the magic of OT Star Wars back, and for that I'm forever grateful. Here are some of things I loved:
ReplyDelete- The whole night raid scene. Perfect introduction to the First Order and especially Kylo Ren. Also a great scene for Poe, who is the charming rogue every Star Wars movie needs.
- Rey on Jakku. Probably the best part of the movie. Starting off with callbacks to Nausicaa, we are introduced to Rey and her life with simple, but evocative, strokes. For me, this bests even ANH's introduction of Luke to the audience.
- BB-8. The lighter thumbs-up was the crowd favorite. My SO absolutely loved the little droid.
- Finn. Going back to the night raid, Finn's defection was set up very well, as well as his escape from the Stardestroyer with Poe. Great chemistry with Rey and Poe. Maybe even better with Poe. His character was more interesting at the start of the movie than later on, however.
- Kylo Ren. I was truly impressed with Adam Driver and the amount of depth he brought to this character, who easily could have been a Vader wannabe and nothing more.
- All the scenes with Rey and Kylo Ren were electric.
- The lightsaber battle at the end. Have to disagree with Tim here, but this lightsaber battle was incredible. For once, lightsabers actually seemed like the dangerous and difficult to wield weapons they're supposed to be. There were many great moments to savor, but the scenes when the lightsaber flies in Rey's hand, and when Rey "lets in" the Force, were especially great.
A few scattered thoughts:
ReplyDelete-I liked Finn a lot more than you did. Boyega did a fine job of playing a character who was bullshitting his way through things way out of his depth, even when he got bolder and tried to take charge. That especially made his use of the lightsaber interesting and fun. Agreed on pretty much all the other characters, though, and I'm especially anxious to see more of Poe and Hux.
-On the subject of lightsaber fights, yes the one in The Phantom Menace has neat choreography and production design, but it still leaves me bored out of my skull because the characters and story don't mean anything to me. We've seen Darth Maul for, what, all of five minutes before the fight? Meanwhile Qui-Gon has been totally lifeless and making stupid decisions while Obi-Wan waits on the spaceship and complains. The lightsaber fight is replacing the character development rather than developing from it.
-Blatant fan service is nothing new to the series, but it was so much worse in the prequels.
-Once again, actively important canon material has been left in other sources - the battle of Jakku (the source of all the crashed Star Destroyers) and the rise of the First Order have been left to books and the new Battlefront game. This pisses me off more than it should because the world-building in this film needed a lot more meat.
-Overall, I quite enjoyed the film while it was happening, but I've since cooled off toward it. I'd say it's a little worse than RotJ.
I will say my one real problem is that Star Killer base didn't need to shoot anything. All it needed to do was kill their star and the planets would die an icy death.
ReplyDeleteThere is one good thing about it, though: the way it slowly sucks away the light and allows the 3rd act to start during the day, hit twilight with the death of Han, and give us a night-time-snow-forest battle, is pretty fucking cool.
It would be a lot easier to focus on how cool that is if the damn thing didn't shoot, but stored up the energy of the dead sun to propel itself to it's next victim. Oh well.
I will say that this film had to do no more to make me love it than to restore the mysticism of the Force. In the OT, the Force was more akin to the magic in The Lord of the Rings, tangible enough to be observed, but defined with enough vagary to seem mysterious. In the PT, it was just some superpower/videogame bullshit. TFA is closer to the former than the latter.
ReplyDeleteEveryone here seems to have some criticism in the form of "I can't believe so many people like this part of the film which is clearly terrible," and it's rather fascinating the variety of things in this hodgepodge that work exceedingly well for some and not at all for others. It really speaks to the inherent messiness of the final product.
ReplyDeleteFor me it was Kylo Ren, who I'm with Regular GeoX in completely loathing. Why oh why did they have to go with the whiney bitch emo boy archetype again? Surely Adam Driver pulls it off better than Hayden Christensen did, but all he succeeds at is being more convincingly irritating, and moreover it makes no sense that he would have the rank and force skill the movie wants us to accept. I think the film would have been improved immeasurably if it featured at least one truly menacing villain, but Kylo Ren, Phasma, Snoke, and Hux are all entirely ineffective in that regard. Though I did prefer the climactic lightsaber battle in this as unremarkable as it was compared to the technically accomplished, conspicuously choreographed ballets of the prequels because it actually felt like a real fight and lightsabers look cool against the snow.
Harrison Ford was terrific (though I'd argue his best Han performance comes in Empire if only for "I know"), but his telegraphed death had less emotional impact than when he was frozen in carbonite.
When John Boyega said "Droid Please," with an entirely unsuitable Ebonic parlance, I wanted to hurt someone. I did like him in general though. But Daisy Ridley is far and away the best thing in the film and I'd be lying if I didn't say I was damn excited to follow her adventures with an ObiWanesque Luke in the next film, though all the stuff about her family origins has me somewhat worried that they will take the obvious route.
I wish R2 and C3PO were not in this film.
Still I did truly love the theater experiences I had watching this twice on opening weekend because the enthusiasm was so infectious and it's rare to sit through a film in which the audience cheers consistently throughout. I had the sort of crowd that went crazy when Admiral Ackbar of all characters appeared on the screen. It definitely colored my experience to the point where I feel such good will towards a film I find extremely flawed.
@Andrew Johnson - Now you've got me wondering if we're going to get a character who will walk the arc that would have seen us go from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader.
ReplyDeleteI think my own great love for this series has always been the amazing background world-building details, especially the ships and the droids. With the exception (and what a great exception) of BB-8, there's really nothing new there. No new ships, no new droids given space as anything but blink and you'll miss it background details. Instead, all the ships are just updates of a smaller pool of the same ships we saw in the original trilogy.
I'll limit myself to observing what I haven't seen said yet. Force Awakens is in danger of being to the new trilogy what Phantom Menace was to the prequels: a pointless setup. Rey and Luke meeting should have be mid way through the film, or the conclusion of the first act. Apparently that was the original plan too. Most of its run time the film is just treading water to give the appearance of a working story.
ReplyDeleteWow, so many comments here... not sure if there's any point in me chiming in at this point - but I can't resist.
ReplyDeleteTo me, the best parts of Tim's review were the engine analogy at the end (which was precisely right) and that he emphasized that the ultimate worth of this film will depend on it's sequel.
The three points where I would disagree with him would be:
a) the light-saber battle. I agree with others here that it was amazing. The reasons are two - the awesome and atmospheric Killbillesque snow and the fact that it occurs shortly after Han's death. I saw the film on opening night and hadn't read any of the reviews - yes, Han's death was something that the film logically was moving towards but it's not something that you could believe could happen (it's Han Solo!). So, to me, that's when the film really got my attention and a little something in my head clicked from silly to awesome. This gave a lot of heft to that battle.
b) I also disagree that the film's first half is better. I felt like they failed that whole storm-trooper turned hero bit - it was done in such a plastic, inorganic, you're-watching-a-movie sort of way that it set a lousy context for the whole first half (much as Han's death set a strong context for the end). It drew me out of the action. I couldn't reconcile this funny black kid with the stereotypical pathetic storm-troopers that surrounded him. More world-building was necessary for it to work.
c) I loved the final scene. First, because they finally gave us a genuinely new set-piece (I love islands and pilgrimages). I also loved how broken Luke looked. And, to me, the epic-ness that the helicopter shot gave that moment was exactly right.
I do hope that the next film is able to give us a genuinely frightening antagonist, though. As is, Kylo is not only a whiny kid but an unimpressive warrior. Ideally, the whole space-monster scene should have been cut in favour of an actual meaningful struggle with an awe-inspiring bad-guy. In this film, they were lucky to have Han's death to up the stakes, to make us feel like shit was real. How will they accomplish this next time if Kylo is the villain?
...incidentally, I recently watched the Legend of Korra animated show - which is a fantastic example of how to do antagony well and one from which Star Wars could learn from (especially so because the show that Korra is a runoff from, Avatar, had a very very Kylo-esque villain and the producers noted the weakness of that and upped the game considerably with Korra, particularly in seasons 1 and 3).
@Fedor: Na, Zuko's arc was one of the strongest parts of Avatar. They just recognized that in a fantasy adventure you'll need strong villains other than the conflicted anti-villain - but TFA doesn't have any of those and so far Snoke is a major disappointment.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to Kylo's first unmasking scene, I was initially surprised/disappointed that they didn't save that for when Han yells "BEN" at the end. I too felt that would have been a no-brainer decision.
ReplyDeleteBut the more I thought about, the more I liked it-- it gave us the first real opportunity to see under the tough-guy exterior of Kylo Ren, and Driver's face as Rey resists his mind-reading was just so delicious. There's a dozen emotions that flash across his face in those moments, and I liked that we start to see the chinks in the guys armor; I think it really helped set up his rivalry with Rey through the rest of the film (and presumably the trilogy).
I haven't read over the comments, but I have to say I agree with a good 90% of this review. I liked Finn better than Tim, I thought the final lightsaber fight was at least cool for being in the snow at night, and I think Return of the Jedi is a lot better than this movie was. (I also find Revenge of the Sith to have much higher highs than TFA, though of course it has much lower lows as well.) Otherwise, spot on.
ReplyDeleteBasically, I found it a little weird and disappointing that a Star Wars movie didn't expand the universe at all, but instead made the galaxy feel smaller, more insular, and more unimportant. The prequels always made the galaxy seem bigger, every single time.
I have very few complaints about this movie, and for me they are very nitpicky. It has plot inconsistencies (especially Rey's sudden mastery of the Force)and it copies A New Hope far too much. But I honestly think that these are far too insignificant to actually make the film bad. I do think it is better than RotJ since it does away with dumb elements like the Ewoks and the cartoony slapstick humor that you see in the first third when they go to rescue Han from Jabba the Hut.
ReplyDeleteAnd come on, the new characters' likeability is so high it makes up for a lot of the film's flaws. Also, the cinematography is just gorgeous. It has some of the best shots I've seen in movies this year, particularly that last part in the Skellig Michael, which rivals the last scene in A New Hope that was shot in Tikal.
Even the CGI backgrounds are beautiful, especially the last scene where the Starkiller is destroyed and a small star is left behind as the X-Wings and the Millennium Falcon escape, all to John Williams' iconic music. It may be an almost carbon copy of the ending of the original Star Wars, but damn is it eye candy.
Just wanted to chime in with support for Kylo Ren. Recent Star Wars villains have set the bar undeniably low, but Kylo turned out far more interesting than he needed to be, and I think he is one of The Force Awakens' most powerful inversions of the original trilogy.
ReplyDeleteHere we have a Sith Lord suffering a crisis of faith -- temptation by the Light Side. He and Prequel Anakin are the only two Sith who, I think, lend any support to the Dark Side = Anger & Hate dogma that every Jedi has been spouting since time immemorial (Vader and Palpatine are I feel some of the least angry characters in all seven movies, I mean, geez). Kylo's unpredictability and insecurity are part of what make him so threatening.
For a split second I truly did believe he was going to give up his lightsaber on that bridge. The conflict in that scene was real, and for me, one of the emotional high points of the entire series.
As others have pointed out, though, the believably of his character arc will depend a lot on learning what actually transpired between him and Luke, as well as him and Snoke. Which is all to say, I too am curious to see where VIII goes from here.
I'm on the fence about the new villains; Kylo Ren could be interesting depending on where they go with his arc, but Snoke and Hux were....eeeh. I do think Captain Phasma has potential, the film just didn't really give her the material to be properly intimidating.
ReplyDelete