Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Dec. 19th, 2015 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
major_clangerSaw this last night in one of the Gold Screens at the local Vue, i.e. the cinema-within-a-cinema with fewer but bigger and comfier seats, a bar, and no under-18s. Despite the corespondingly higher ticket costs, the 9.15pm showing on the second day after opening was three-quarters booked by the time I logged on to buy tickets back the day they became available in October. Last night's showing was the first time I've ever seen one of the Gold Screens at Vue Star City completely full.
Non-spoilery comments
This is better than any of the sequels, better than Return of the Jedi, and up there with A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back (the first of which had the extra benefit of novelty). It is generally well-written, with a strong plot, excellent characterisation and far, far better dialogue than any of the previous films. The return to practical effects gives a welcome physicality to the action scenes in contrast to the CGI puppetry and blatant acting-to-green-screens of the prequels.
Oh, and BB-8 was clearly designed to out-cute WALL-E. And does.
Unless you loathe everything Star Wars, go and see this. (And if you plan to, go and see it soon; there is a major plot development that any discussion of would be a massive spoiler, and it will quickly become common knowledge.)
Spoilery Discussion
The film left me wanting to know a lot more about the background. What is the First Order? The impression I got is that it's the distilled essence of Palpatine's Empire, driven back from much of the galaxy (I suspect Jakku is just one of many worlds littered with the wreckage of the Imperial Navy) and the uniforms of the non-stormtrooper personnel showed that, clearly paralleling the SS after the more Wehrmacht-like uniforms of the original films. The distinction between the 'New Republic', mentioned as having its own fleet, and the Rebel Alliance wasn't clear, and I wonder if there is some sort of cold war between the New Republic and the First Order, with the Rebel Alliance as some sort of paramilitary group the New Republic funds.
JJ Abrams really does have issues with scale, doesn't he? Just as in the Star Trek reboot anything happening to a planet in one star system is close enough to any other planet in the galaxy for people standing on it to see. And see in real time, despite the characters making several mentions of "light speed". Also, I was a bit disappointed that for the third time in seven films (the third in four if you go by internal chronology) the climax centres on the destruction by heroic fighter pilots of a planet-destroying super-weapon, to the point that the crew at the briefing hang a lampshade on it
I seem to recall a bit of dialogue after Finn's breakdown and mutiny where one First Order character is commenting about how this sort of thing wouldn't be happening if the stormtroopers were clones. Does this suggest that the First Order either the ability to make clones or was there a choice to switch to taking and indoctrinating children (as Finn says happened to him)? I'd guess this was a throwaway explanation of why Finn doesn't look like Temuera Morrison but it indicates other differences between the Empire (at least in its early days) and the First Order.
Even with the movie only having been out a couple of days there are already a host of fan theories developing. Here are my ratings of a few of them:
Rey is Luke Skywalker's Daughter. 8/10 - if she's not, there's a massive amount of misdirection. She clearly has some deep connection to him (her vision when she first touched his lightsaber) and from what we see she's one of the most powerful and natural Force-users ever. It would explain Kylo Ren's intense interest in her - she's his cousin!
Finn is Lando Calrissian's Son. 5/10 - We know he was stolen from his parents as a young child. On the one hand this would seem to be an improbable further coincidence, but I have the sinking feeling that even Disney might find it hard to shake off Lucas's fixation on family connections and secret parentage.
Supreme Leader Snoke is Darth Plagueis. 2/10. One of the better scenes in Revenge of the Sith was Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine recounting the story of Darth Plagueis, the Sith Lord whose mastery of the Force almost allowed him to conquer death. It was never explicitly confirmed, but it was heavily hinted that Palpatine had been his apprentice. Given that Snoke seems to have come out of nowhere and is apparently a powerful Dark Side user of the Force, some fans have apparently suggested he might be Darth Plagueis, not dead after all. I think this unlikely, because it would involve reliance on a short bit of dialogue that, in-story, took place fifty years earlier. Too obscure for the mass audience, I think.
Non-spoilery comments
This is better than any of the sequels, better than Return of the Jedi, and up there with A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back (the first of which had the extra benefit of novelty). It is generally well-written, with a strong plot, excellent characterisation and far, far better dialogue than any of the previous films. The return to practical effects gives a welcome physicality to the action scenes in contrast to the CGI puppetry and blatant acting-to-green-screens of the prequels.
Oh, and BB-8 was clearly designed to out-cute WALL-E. And does.
Unless you loathe everything Star Wars, go and see this. (And if you plan to, go and see it soon; there is a major plot development that any discussion of would be a massive spoiler, and it will quickly become common knowledge.)
Spoilery Discussion
The film left me wanting to know a lot more about the background. What is the First Order? The impression I got is that it's the distilled essence of Palpatine's Empire, driven back from much of the galaxy (I suspect Jakku is just one of many worlds littered with the wreckage of the Imperial Navy) and the uniforms of the non-stormtrooper personnel showed that, clearly paralleling the SS after the more Wehrmacht-like uniforms of the original films. The distinction between the 'New Republic', mentioned as having its own fleet, and the Rebel Alliance wasn't clear, and I wonder if there is some sort of cold war between the New Republic and the First Order, with the Rebel Alliance as some sort of paramilitary group the New Republic funds.
JJ Abrams really does have issues with scale, doesn't he? Just as in the Star Trek reboot anything happening to a planet in one star system is close enough to any other planet in the galaxy for people standing on it to see. And see in real time, despite the characters making several mentions of "light speed". Also, I was a bit disappointed that for the third time in seven films (the third in four if you go by internal chronology) the climax centres on the destruction by heroic fighter pilots of a planet-destroying super-weapon, to the point that the crew at the briefing hang a lampshade on it
I seem to recall a bit of dialogue after Finn's breakdown and mutiny where one First Order character is commenting about how this sort of thing wouldn't be happening if the stormtroopers were clones. Does this suggest that the First Order either the ability to make clones or was there a choice to switch to taking and indoctrinating children (as Finn says happened to him)? I'd guess this was a throwaway explanation of why Finn doesn't look like Temuera Morrison but it indicates other differences between the Empire (at least in its early days) and the First Order.
Even with the movie only having been out a couple of days there are already a host of fan theories developing. Here are my ratings of a few of them:
Rey is Luke Skywalker's Daughter. 8/10 - if she's not, there's a massive amount of misdirection. She clearly has some deep connection to him (her vision when she first touched his lightsaber) and from what we see she's one of the most powerful and natural Force-users ever. It would explain Kylo Ren's intense interest in her - she's his cousin!
Finn is Lando Calrissian's Son. 5/10 - We know he was stolen from his parents as a young child. On the one hand this would seem to be an improbable further coincidence, but I have the sinking feeling that even Disney might find it hard to shake off Lucas's fixation on family connections and secret parentage.
Supreme Leader Snoke is Darth Plagueis. 2/10. One of the better scenes in Revenge of the Sith was Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine recounting the story of Darth Plagueis, the Sith Lord whose mastery of the Force almost allowed him to conquer death. It was never explicitly confirmed, but it was heavily hinted that Palpatine had been his apprentice. Given that Snoke seems to have come out of nowhere and is apparently a powerful Dark Side user of the Force, some fans have apparently suggested he might be Darth Plagueis, not dead after all. I think this unlikely, because it would involve reliance on a short bit of dialogue that, in-story, took place fifty years earlier. Too obscure for the mass audience, I think.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-12-19 09:04 pm (UTC)Maybe it's the defining trope of this sub-genre?
Classic cyberpunk had a problem with a reoccurring necessity to concoct reasons why the climax of a story required a physical assault along with a cyberattack. It was the defining scene of Neuromancer, and other writers kept trying to recapture that moment.
Spoilery discussion
Date: 2015-12-21 11:40 pm (UTC)Also, a couple of things that I noticed - firstly, the entirety of the First Order (excepting Snoke who we only know as a hologram after all) are stupidly young. Even the general is just a kid. I think it's a Ken McLeod novel that characterises a group made up of the very old and the very young as the demographic of utter defeat. And the mighty rebel alliance/resistance seems to be reduced to a fighter squadron operating out of a shed. Clearly a generation of war has taken its toll.
Secondly, I really enjoyed the characterisation of Kylo Ren. After all, the Dark Side is powered by rage, and who is angrier than a stroppy teenager?
no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 06:35 pm (UTC)I don't recall the hanging a lampshade bit.
They could have simply had a First Order base rather than yet another Death Star, and a bigger one... by the third film of this trilogy it'll be a Death Hole...
Hang on, Death Star the size of a small moon, so Death Marble the size of a black hole.