And I will ruin it. Completely. This post is seriously full of spoilers.
Last chance to stop reading....
Dumbledore kills Picard!
Ok. Now that those of you who haven't seen it yet are gone, let me tell you why the new Star Wars movie is worse than what they did to us with the Phantom Menace.
Reason #1: Character believe-ability & plot continuity
This is the best place to start because it's the most overreaching portion of the film that is lacking. We meet several brand new, core characters in the first few minutes of the film- Ren, Po, BB8, and mysterious, seemingly important old man character who is immediately killed- to name a few. We meet these people in quick succession- with no idea of who is really who- or why they are important.
This is especially true for Po- it's clear he is a good starfighter on a mission with the rebellion/resistance (rebellion? wha- no. wait for that rant)... and that's about it. He is captured and force-mind raped for information, and that's all we know. Where's the backstory? Details? Anything?
We also meet Fin (though at the time he is just random wimpy stormtrooper #FNblahblahc6t766). This is where the disasters really begin. In his first scene- a fellow stormtrooper is shot by a blaster and dies in Fin's arms. There is some blood (I thought blasters immediately cauterized wounds?), and it gets on Fin's helmet, making him look cool. This apparently shakes Fin to his core, but we can't really tell why. Why is he such an emotional wreck? He's a stormtrooper after all- who we later find out was raised from birth to do battle. We're supposed to believe that killing innocents or having a fellow stormtrooper die in battle makes him crack and want to betray the only life he's ever known? When did he have the opportunity to learn to feel sorry for following orders? When and how did he get a moral center when he was raised and programmed to be brutal and merciless?
These problems continue, as Fin breaks Po out (right, I believe that there are no alarms for Kylo Ren's prisoners, and all stormtroopers in the First Order are given 100% access to all areas of the ship all the time). Not only does Po not seem very surprised, he goes along with the fact that a Stormtrooper is breaking him out- fleeing the only life he has ever known- for no other reason than Fin "needs a pilot." When they don't get blown up by a laser hit (what?), they crash instead. Then Po disappears and the TIE fighter they stole sinks ... into sand... (but neither Fin nor Po sink into the magic scary sand).
During this time we also meet Rey, who has a very strong sympathy streak for droids- despite being a scavenger and also slowly starving to death. We quickly learn that despite her poverty and life of ruin, she has managed to learn everything technical there is about spaceships of every kind, and how to fly them (despite not owning a spaceship and not having ever left Jakku since being a small child).
These kind of problems are plentiful in the beginning, and continue as the film progresses.
Reason #2: The big question that never gets answered- (many spoilers...)
What happened? Our favorite characters have all changed. A lot. Age, I can believe, it's been a long time. What I can't believe is the explanations for personality changes. Let's face it- Han Solo has become a blubbering, sad, old man. He apparently spends his elder years -after doing a large portion of the whole, defeating the Empire thing- hiding from his problems and his family on a junky, pirate space freighter. All because his son turned to the dark side? Under Luke's guidance? Instead of handling his problems he relies more and more on "simple tricks and nonsense," but lacks the gruff determination to succeed. He's not the kind of Han who would shoot first. He's a shell of his former self- almost comic relief. He dies a pointless, fruitless death at the hands of his son, while he begs for him to come home.
It's heartbreaking and maddening to watch. How did the great Han Solo get to a point where he begs anyone for anything? The wayward child of the Han I know would not get "asked" to come home. He would get knocked unconscious and dragged home- force or no force. His mother is also a blubbering wreck- rather than the strong, overcome-all-odds Leah that we know so well. She wouldn't have stood for it either. Ren would have never had the chance to become as evil as he is, because the first sign of misbehavior would be met with a rogue-ish wallop from dad and scathing lecture from mom. If nothing else, Luke has experience getting even the most hardened Sith Lords to turn back to the light- he should have been able to do something, right? More on Luke in a minute.
"Pew-pew-pew-pew"
-Han Solo, responding to the dark side by discharging his blaster in greeting to the last Sith he ever encountered (his soon-to-be father in law)
"Please, come home"
-Han Solo, apparently senile in his old age, tries to get his dark-side son back to the light by getting stabbed. At least Chewy still gets it. PEW-PEW!
All these character issues pale in comparison to what has happened to Luke. I'm supposed to believe that Luke, who took down the Emperor by turning his Sith Father back to the Light, is going to sit on an island somewhere in Scotland while his failed prodigy burns down the galaxy? While everything good he has worked for his entire life is destroyed? He- being the one person in the universe with the qualifications to stop the awful dark side mess? So rather than helping, he lets his family get ripped apart so he can brood somewhere on planet Loch-Ness. He lets the republic get destroyed, the First Order to rise to power and his best friend and brother in law Han to get killed.
"It's not that I love the Empire I hate it, but there's nothing I can do about it right now..."
- Luke, right before doing something about the Empire
"........................?"
- Luke, searching for Nessie while the galaxy burns
No. This is unforgivable. It ruins the original trilogy in the same way little prequel Anakin ruined the fear of Darth Vader. Han's coolness, Leah's resolve, Luke's courage- all now tainted. At least Darth Vader died doing something noble. Han died begging when he should have been punching- and now I want Luke to die for cowardice.
Reason #3: Things that just make no [insert swearing] sense:
- Luke's lightsaber? The blue one? The one that fell a billion feet in cloud city with his cut off arm?
- Speaking of the lightsaber- both Rey and Fin seem to have a pretty keen knowledge of how to use it despite having never seen or used one before. Either that or Ren really sucks at using his. But I guess Rey just knows everything, after all- she's an expert pilot/orphan/child laborer/scavenger/droid rights activist/Millennium Falcon mechanic.
- Speaking of The Millennium Falcon- it starts right up after being "junk" for 10 years?
- Speaking of the Falcon starting up, how come the hyperdrive works? It NEVER works.
- Speaking of hyperspace- why is Han so worried about not telling Leah about his plan to jump through the shield before cutting the hyperdrive? Wouldn't the "best pilot in the galaxy" Po, be able to complete a similar maneuver, taking the First order by surprise? It might be risky, but no more than say- attacking a weapon planet.
- Speaking of the First Order, how does no one seem to know about Starkiller Base until a lone stormtrooper suddenly has a crisis of conscience? Why did no one go- HEY THAT PLANET HAS A GUN ON IT AND IT'S EATING STARS! I don't buy the implied secrecy bit, especially since the First Order is not the controlling governing body in the Galaxy like the Emperor was with the Death Star.
- Speaking of controlling governing bodies- why is there a need for the rebellion/resistance still? The republic was re-formed, right? Why does the rebellion need to exist? Why is the republic not openly fighting the First Order?
- Speaking of fighting against the First Order- Captain Phasma. She makes no sense whatsoever. Sure, I'm the leader in this here order, and I know how to turn off the shields, but I'm not suppos- What's that- a blaster? In my face? I've never had to stare down one of those before! Scary! I'll just go ahead and commit high treason and be the downfall of everything I stand for. Then I will stop being in the movie. I guess the scene of her being actually put into the trash compacter was too hard to make, so JJ just had the actors talk about it instead.
- Speaking of trash compactors- since when do trained stormtroopers work in sanitation? Don't they have like, shooting practice? Maybe Fin learned his compassion on the back of a garbage truck while his stormtrooper buddies all went off to kill children.
- Speaking of killing children, this movie killed my childhood.
Since I now have to wait until 2017 to see the next installment of this "story," I'll be over here in the corner, quietly killing off my inner fanboy.
WHY IS C-3PO's ARM RED?
Let the angry comments begin!
Alright, Before I begin with how wrong all this is, there are a couple general ideas that we need to understand.
ReplyDelete1.At this time in the galaxy the force is heavily out of balance. We know of Kylo Ren, and Supreme leader Snoke (who is probably Darth Plagueis) who seduces and teaches Kylo Ren in the ways of the dark force. We also know that Kylo is part of the Knights of Ren, implying that there are many like him. All compared to one last Jedi in the Galaxy, Luke Skywalker. We know the force tends to balance itself from Episode 3, where we end with two Jedi and two Sith. This leaves us with a pretty big deficit when it comes to light side force users. So don’t be surprised to see a lot of good guy’s surface and able to perform “miracles”.
2.We also need to understand that the force is everywhere, in everyone, and has varying degrees of influence in people. At one end of the spectrum you have people with no influence, moving up to people who are Force sensitive, and ending with Force users. Obviously people can become more attuned with the force, but many people are force sensitive and do not move up. Some good examples are Leia, and Han. Both extremely skilled in fighting, leadership, as well as able to sense when important things happen, but don’t ever “use” the force.
Now let’s dig into the details. Unfortunately, because I know how Stubborn Christian is, this probably won’t mean much to you. But hopefully will help clear some things up for those who read your blog, and happen to take a gander at the comments.
New Characters
Let’s start with Poe. He’s not only a fantastic pilot, but he escapes from the first order, gets shot, crash lands, and still manages to survive. So you either chalk this up to bad writing, a farfetched character, or that he’s just that lucky/good. He’s also friends with the old guy, Lor San Tekka. We don’t get a ton of backstory from these guys, but don’t get too hung up on it as I’m sure we will get more info later. After all, we didn’t know anything about Vader until they made an entire trilogy about him.
Now, we have this rogue Stormtrooper with a conscience. You mentioned that this is pretty unbelievable as he was raised from very young to be a trooper. Don’t mistake them for being brainwashed, or programmed to follow orders. Those would be Clone Troopers, who were genetically altered to take orders. How else could they all have followed through on order 66 without question. We can also see that Finn is inherently good. When he sees his fellow trooper die, and is given the order to murder innocents, his only instinct is to get as far away from that as possible. In fact, Finn going rogue sparks a short debate between General Hux and another first order Officer on whether or not they should be using clone troopers instead of Stormtroopers. So obviously someone within the first order sees the possible weaknesses of using troopers. Finn also gets pretty lucky. He is quickly able to master shooting ships gun systems, as well as hold his own for a short time with a light saber. Man that sure is hard to believe, chalk that one up to luck.
Rey is the easiest one to figure out, mainly because we know the most about her. She could easily learn how ship’s systems work being a parts scavenger. How else would she know what has any worth, compared to what is junk? She not only mentions to Finn she is a pilot, but has an intimate knowledge to what changes were made on the Millennium Falcon, which means she’s probably worked on it before, possibly flown it. She does crash a whole bunch, so there was obviously a learning curve. Rey also has some connection to Luke. Otherwise she wouldn’t have had a flashback of Kylo Ren when she touches his lightsaber. My guess is she was a Jedi in training, and doesn’t quite remember when she was a child and Kylo Ren turned on everyone and killed all the other Jedi in training. Sounds pretty traumatic. But how else would she be able to use Jedi mind tricks, use a lightsaber, shoot blasters with accuracy, or maneuver ships like she does. Chalk all that up to luck I guess.
ReplyDeleteI kind of sound like a broken record, saying everyone is lucky, even when Obi Wan says, “In my experience, there’s no such thing as luck.” That’s right, because Poe and Finn are some degree of Force Sensitive, and Rey is a Force User. We know there’s a hefty unbalance of the force toward the dark side. So it isn’t too much to digest when all these good people perform miracles. Rey can all of the sudden maneuver the Falcon, or sense that she should save and shouldn’t sell BB-8. Finn feels he shouldn’t kill villagers, finds the one captive that can help him escape the first order, and they both narrowly escape dying the in the crash and the sinking sands (that we knew about as Rey had mentioned it to BB-8).
Now on to addressing reason #2 – the old characters.
We know who Luke, Leia, and Han were from episodes 4-6. We know they are all completely different now in episode 7. So let’s recap what happened in between 6 and 7. Han and Leia have a kid. Name him Ben. Han and Leia are both Force Sensitive, so it’s no wonder they have a kid who is also extremely gifted. Maybe they want him to become a Jedi, maybe they see some evil in him, and want Luke to help him. Either way they send him off to Luke to be trained as a Jedi. Ben later aspires to be as strong as his Grandfather Anakin and is seduced by Snoke. He is given the name of Kylo, and inducted into the Knights of Ren. He then goes and slaughters Luke’s upcoming generation of Jedi. This has got to be traumatic for Han and Leia, and I’m sure Luke feels somewhat responsible.
Leia continues as general in the resistance to the first order because a new tyrannical organization has developed. Han can’t handle what his son has done, returns to his less than honorable ways, and becomes less head-strong as he used to be. Han still has the hope that his son can change, and that he has the best chance of doing that, but not in a forcible way. Why would an old man with a blaster be capable of knocking out one of the deadliest assassin of the first order, take him back to the secret resistance base, and convince him of his wrongdoings? Not a likelihood. What he did, was the only thing he could have done. Luke, knowing that the First Order would like to bury all Jedi knowledge with him, goes into hiding. Leia mentions it’s an ancient temple. Maybe he feels he’s not strong enough to take down Kylo and Snoke and needs to meditate. Maybe he’s devastated that all his pupils were killed by someone he trained. We do know that where he went has meaning, and he is there for a VERY good reason.
All the other little things that I’m not going to go into, because now you are just trying to find issues.
I find it hard to believe that you treat all movies with this same amount of skepticism, maybe you just had high expectations.
Either way, it’s obvious that your opinions aren’t widely accepted as Rotten Tomatoes has rated SW:TFA at 95%, and an 8.8 from IMDB.
Yo Dawg, I heard you like blog posts, so I put a blog post on your blog post, so I could blog while you blog. :)
ReplyDeleteGlad you loved it Mark, really. I wish it lived up to my expectations/hopes/dreams.