I should probably talk about The Force Awakens a little bit.
I don't feel quite like I'm the right person to write a review about The Force Awakens, since I haven't seen any of the original trilogy in years, and haven't seen the prequel trilogy at all (although that was on purpose). But I know the story, and I know the tropes, and I grew up with the geek friends and the culture. So I'll talk about it.
First off, I'll mention that I have multiple friends who've seen this movie somewhere between two and four times. Like, every single friend I have who's seen it has seen it more than once. The friend I saw it with was seeing it for the second time; I have a college friend who saw it for the fourth time and nearly left to see it a second time the night after it premiered. "It calls for a second viewing," they say. (Or a third or a fourth, apparently.) Does it? I wouldn't go back. But it also wasn't my lifeblood growing up - I read the entire Harry Potter series ten times, and had periods where I could recite most of the films from memory. So I guess we all have our pop culture vices.
That said, it WAS a good movie. The Star Wars people had, like, four jobs - they had to make a movie that 1) had an original and engaging plotline, 2) was still very familiar to viewers, 3) didn't mess with or invalidate the earlier narrative too much (I have some thoughts about this, but I'll get into those later), 4) was accessible to new audiences who had very little experience with early Star Wars, and 5) made up for the prequel trilogy. Or at least The Phantom Menace. Or so I've heard.
So five jobs. Which they pulled off pretty well. New characters? Check. And a HUGE plus that one major protagonist is a woman and another is a person of color. Familiar plotline? A bit too familiar - a bigger Death Star feels less like a familiarity pitch and more like lazy writing - but maybe some people were happier for that, and the entrances of all of the original major characters were a very sweet, if predictable (but also necessary) touch. The movie didn't pull a Steven Moffat on us and invalidate an entire generation's canon, so props to the writers there. As someone with a pretty poor context regarding the original movies, I was still able to walk into the theatre, recognize a lot of the in-jokes, and also appreciate it regardless of the in-jokes I didn't pick up on. And finally - as far as I've been told - The Force Awakens did indeed make up for the atrocity that was the prequel trilogy. So, five jobs done well.
I was a little surprised at the ((((((*****SPOILERS!*****)))))) Han Solo death. I figured that they wouldn't kill off any of the major characters, since that DID feel a bit like it was canceling out the canon of the story, and I figured fans would be mad. But I guess I was wrong. If I had to guess - this is totally a personal hypothesis and not backed up by facts in any way - I would say that Harrison Ford didn't feel like signing on for more than one Star Wars film, and this was like the second, more final way of freezing Han in carbonite. But then again, it might have been an actual narrative choice on the part of the writers. I do not know.
I was also a little bit distracted by Adam Driver's presence as a dramatic character. I don't watch Girls, but I do know him from his work with Noah Baumbach (Frances Ha, While We're Young) and from the trailer for What If. The context made him feel out of place. It wasn't even that his performance was bad - it was more that I couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching Adam Driver, in a movie that was very much NOT an ironic, melancholic look at privileged millennials. I feel like I would have to rewatch the movie at least once more specifically to decide how I felt about his performance.
Finally finally, the ending felt a little bit hokey. Even though it also felt like it was that way for Very Important Dramatic Reasons. What was Luke Skywalker doing on top of that very windy hill? Did the Force tell him Rey was coming? So he just hung out there for a couple of hours so that it would look super dramatic when she finally found him? That is not practical. When I think back on it, I just keep imagining that scene at the end of The Holy Mountain where ((((((*****SPOILERS!*****)))))) the disciples are pulling off the hoods of all of the mannequins sitting around the table on the Holy Mountain and the last hooded person is actually just Alejandro Jodorowsky, chilling at the table and waiting for them to arrive. Luke Skywalker is like the Star Wars version of the Alchemist, only Holy Mountain has a strong absurdist comedy element to it. Not so here. Now I feel like I'm overanalyzing the final scene of the movie. Oh, well.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens was an enjoyable movie with strong performances, a nice sense for the nostalgic needs of its viewers, a good standalone narrative, and - props to John Williams - a killer score. If you have not yet seen it, it's probably because you don't care that much about Star Wars (nothing wrong with that), but if that's not the case and maybe you're just on the fence because you're afraid it's going to be boring or mediocre, do not worry, it is not these things, It's a good movie and probably worth your time if you like major pop culture phenomenons or sci-fi or sequels or J.J. Abrams. And that is all I have to say about that.
On not that related of a note, this is the very funny first part to a pretty good seven-part video essay on why The Phantom Menace is terrible. As long as you ignore the very very bad side plot where the narrator keeps people in his basement, and also the horrible slew of rape jokes he sticks in (seriously, I don't condone rape jokes ever, but the essay is strong enough in other ways that if you disregard them with the knowledge that rape jokes are terrible and normalize rape and perpetuate a rape culture and are never ever funny and you know all of this and are watching the video with the understanding that things can be very smart and very problematic at the same time and nothing is all good or all bad, it's a good essay), it's a good essay. And also ultimately the reason I never watched The Phantom Menace. Not that I probably ever would have, anyway.
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