I saw the Star War

[starlady]

I hated it less than I was expecting, partly because I had spoiled myself for enough going in that I had correctly calibrated my expectations. And given that the movie is basically a video game, it is actually more enjoyable scene to scene than I was expecting.

• Really kind of amazed how JJ Abrams snorted the old EU up both nostrils in this one. So many plot elements were straight out of Zahn and Anderson, but like…not even done as well as they were done in the books and comics. And in the NJO era, which I despised, the old EU had the courage of its plot points. JJ Abrams does not.
• Literally every character in this movie got done dirty except whoever Lin-Manuel Miranda was playing in his cameo at the end. He lived and Wedge lived, which is good. Every other character got undermined, killed, or neglected in a bad way.
• Very bitter about the bullshit with Poe's backstory, on that note! (Note: I'm not talking about the sad attempt to make him heterosexual, butI did like that Keri Russell is at least an age appropriate casting wrt Oscar Isaac.) And to say nothing of Kelly Marie Tran! I guess Dominic Monaghan wanted to be in a Star War? But Rose should have had all of his lines.
• The appearance of Pippin in the Resistance really highlighted in an unfortunate way just how much of this movie is cribbed from other, often better media. The desert chase scene is Mad Max: Fury Road. There' s an Indiana Jones moment on the desert world. The stuff with Hux (done SO DIRTY) is from Rebels. (A lot of stuff is from Rebels, actually, but whereas in TLJ the references worked to reinforce important points, here they were just incoherent.) And I felt the ghostly presence of the Lord of the Rings trilogy at points in some unfortunate ways.
• Unlike JJ Abrams, who is a hack, PJ once knew how to make audiences feel things. We should have felt things at the Dunkirk-style denouement. It starts by letting scenes breathe and not making a movie that is at heart a video game.
• Even Jedi: Fallen Order understands that the Force is in everyone. JJ Abrams, noted hack, does not. Except for how it's very clear that Finn is Force-sensitive! And that goes precisely nowhere! What the hell.
• The lack of the classic wipes really highlights how, as much as Abrams set out to remake Return of the Jedi, he is too much of a hack to pull it off properly.
• That said, the stuff with Kyle Ron and Rey being a dyad in the Force or whatever actually makes Obi-Wan and Anakin, and Revenge of the Sith, that much gayer! Their water fight is a very intentional (and actually mildly clever) callback to and twist on the duel on Mustafar (where Kyle Ron actually is in the opening scene of the movie), but this nonsense actually really makes it plausible that they were a dyad who couldn't make it work.
• I actually liked the lightning, and the weird object teleportation stuff. The Force is weird and I'm into it. And I liked Rey's new saber at the very end.
• The one moment I genuinely loved was when Wedge showed up. Then I remembered that they had just killed his stepson in the previous scene! Again, done dirty.
• The action scenes are…not great? Rey has developed a weird half-Ahsoka style and has a real aversion to putting both hands on the saber in this movie? Like, at least give me some good lightsaber fights for my time, JJ. But no! The fights were bad! The sole exception was when they were fighting separately at the end. That was good.
• I've seen speculation on Twitter that they went back to the mask because of reshoots. Seems plausible tbh, the physicality seemed off at points.
• I didn't hate the Reylo stuff, partly because I was spoiled for it. But the fact that the movie set up zero of the redemption arc is both so telling and makes me like the sequels less, honestly! Because in retrospect they are all about Ben Solo cosplaying as Darth Vader, and how two women have to convince him to stop for the good of the galaxy.
• I said going in that I expected it to be like Into Darkness, and I was actually right. So much of my problems with this movie are the same problems I had with Into Darkness.
• Speaking of the gays, there has been a lot of blowback online for the hyping of the Queer Kiss, but it was actually more prominent than I was expecting. Damning with faint praise here, but definitely doing much better than Endgame.
• On that note, despite everything and Oscar Isaac's entirely praiseworthy state of being over Disney's bullshit, Finn and Poe are not not married in this movie. The amount of interpretation you have to do to think that they're married is shockingly little. Just think how much better it could have been if these two excellent actors had been able to portray that relationship as more than friends.
• The music was good and I'm glad John Williams came back to do it; there are some great variations on the classic themes. But good god the sound mix was way too loud.
• I did really like the Jedi voices part (and I correctly identified all of them except Luminara, which made me happy). That said, I choose to believe that Ahsoka is just astrally projecting from wherever she is and not dead until and unless Dave Filoni tells me otherwise.
• Why did Rey bury the lightsabers? Doesn't she know how rare Kyber crystals are? Why did she go back to Tatooine, which Luke hated and Leia had no connection to? (I know why, because JJ Abrams was taking directions from Reddit. But still it makes no fucking sense.)
• The fact that the movie is too superficial to ever try to articulate the themes it makes random gestures towards is perhaps the biggest bummer, honestly. One of the things I genuinely liked about TFA, and which drew me back into the fandom after I saw it, was the setup about the rise of the First Order and the weakening of the New Republic; it was good and relevant and interesting, much as my old school fan heart would have loved to see the New Republic actually functioning. But the lack of follow-through on any of the points that TFA and TLJ made meant that all that interesting backstory was just pointless set dressing. And that really does make me sad.
• Speaking of Dave Filoni, I wish they'd let him come up with the story for this one, even if Abrams insisted on writing the script. Abrams is not bad at one liners, and even at scene dialogue--it is much more enjoyable on that level than some of the worst parts of the prequels. But lord, stitching those lines and scenes into a coherent whole that means something is apparently just beyond him.
• I love TLJ, and it wouldn't have taken that much work to make this movie, even with these general plot points (such as they are), so much less disrespectful to TLJ. Fuck you, JJ Abrams. And honestly, after this I'm definitely going to be rescinding many of my defenses of Kathleen Kennedy too. What is the point of the Story Group if it doesn't actually exert control over canon inconsistencies? And why oh why didn't they come up with a general trilogy outline in 2013?

Anyway, that happened.

Comments

[cofax7]

And why oh why didn't they come up with a general trilogy outline in 2013?

WORD. Tossing not just the directing but the actual story points and themes from one to another like a hot potato was the WORST IDEA EVER. And I'm sorry, Carrie Fisher's death doesn't mean that Rose Tico is no longer a valuable member of the team.

I didn't loathe it, because I went in with low expectations, but I'm so over Abrams and I want him to keep his hands off my fandoms. (Thank god nobody's trying to revive Farscape.) I'm in for Filoni, then, and hoping The Mandalorian will get me some of what I love in this crummy universe.

[starlady]

I actually think it could have worked out okay if Abrams had been forced not to undermine everything that Rian Johnson and he himself did in the first two movies. Lucas didn't build the OT with a three movie plan in mind and that worked out okay! But he wasn't undercutting himself out of pique, either. Abrams was given way too much creative control and his collaborator is a hack who should have been run out of town on a rail after Batman v. Superman.

[seekingferret]

I agree with basically everything here except for Hux. I was delighted by Hux's storyline, it was like getting to see Hans Landa's ending all over again.

The fact that the movie is too superficial to ever try to articulate the themes it makes random gestures towards is perhaps the biggest bummer, honestly.

Yes. That's why I haven't (really) posted about the movie yet. I had fun watching it, mostly, in that video game way, but I just don't have anything interesting to say.

[starlady]

I liked Hux's ending! But I thought it needed a few more scenes to breathe, like everything else in the movie--Hans Landa gets his comeuppance at the very end for a reason. As it was, he was done dirty like everyone else.

[skygiants]

You know, the thing is ... I mean ... the prequels were objectively worse movies, sure .... but the worldbuilding was more coherent ..........

I mean, maybe I'm just saying this because Clone Wars has retroactively made me think it makes sense, but on the other hand I find it really hard to envision pulling something as interesting as Clone Wars out of the setup of this film.

[lizbee]

I literally walked out thinking, "I bet Dave Filoni is RIGHT NOW coming up with ways to fix this." But he shouldn't have to!

[cofax7]

It would be nice if he did. The one thing I hope he would take from this film is the fabulous presence of women everywhere. It was lovely how many female characters there were.

[lizbee]

It's probably wrong to be so happy that the First Order includes female stormtroopers and people of colour in the ... space fascist uniforms. But yes, especially after the dude-heaviness of The Mandalorian, it was nice.

[starlady]

George Lucas gets a lot of well deserved flak but he knew the story he wanted to tell and he told it. The story is one of the few unimpeachable things about the prequels.

I'm particularly disappointed because I thought the setup in the sequels was one of the best things about them, and JJ Abrams just treated it all like so much window dressing. I finally realized why the Reylo stuff in this one didn't bother me emotionally as much as I would have thought: Abrams completely refuses to reckon with any of the things that Kylo Ren did, which makes it difficult to take any of it seriously from the audience, either.