Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015; dir. J.J. Abrams)

[coffeeandink]

Hey, so I finally saw that movie, and it was adorable. Then I finally saw Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith in hopes that they would explain some of the world-building that puzzled me. (Spoilers: They didn't.) I feel fully justified in my decision never to see them before, although Revenge of the Sith was less shockingly terrible than the first two. I can see why they're getting something of a critical reappraisal, because they are very ambitious and significantly more morally complicated than the original trilogy, but: they are still terrible.

Anyway, let's talk about the adorable!

• So that was hella fun, mostly because Rey and Finn are the adorablest and full of enthusiasm and delight. They are remixes in the very best ways: they are clearly inspired by the original characters, but they have their own distinct personalities and character arcs. (Poe was fine, but not nearly as central to the story as the other two, and also a little more rote hero.) The characters make everything, although they don't have to: the film is nicely paced and has lots of lovely visuals and action sequences that mostly did not bore me. I particularly appreciated the glimpse of Rey's ordinary scavenging life, and the gorgeous glorious shots of her against the desert. The intro of Finn was more directly plot relevant, but I also appreciated the brief time given to his reactions to the opening slaughter.
  
  
• I'd heard rumblings that Rey was a Mary Sue, and wow. Just in case I'd had any doubt that "Mary Sue" is a sexist dogwhistle. She has exactly the same plot that Luke has in A New Hope. I mean, you could have scientifically designed the two plots in a laboratory to test sexism in audience response.
  
  
• I love Rey's cool competence. I love Finn's enthusiasm. I love that they meet by her beating him in a fight. (Hi, Farscape!) I love that Rey rescues Finn a lot, and that when Finn runs off to rescue Rey, she's already rescued herself, but it's still important he came, because finally she has someone who comes back.
  
  
• [ETA 12/30 - Apparently Finn isn't a clone. Complaint retracted! The socialization thing also makes more sense; I was thinking of him as force-grown and literally two or three years old.] I don't understand how Finn is so well socialized, why he was raised by a family if he's a clone, and how he is both a sanitation worker and a soldier. I mean, for the last bit I can say that many clones were given various construction and maintenance tasks during the construction of the Death Star, and then reconditioned to be soldiers, but it would have been nice if the movie had bothered to say this.
  
  I also feel the movie missed some huge opportunities with the clone soldiers. If Finn is a clone, then many of the soldiers are Finn. Or at least they have Finn's face, which is an opportunity for angst, emotional depth, and moral complication. Especially since the clones seem to be speed-grown and conditioned specifically to be cannon fodder, which is to say: they're slaves. (I can't tell whether their use by the Jedi in Attack of the Clones is supposed to be another sign of the Jedi's moral degradation or not, because it is self-evidently horrible but no one ever comments on it, and these movies are not subtle.) [ETA 12/30 - Soldiers still not clones. I think there's a missed opportunity, though, based on the conscription, indoctrination, and "conditioning" the movie describes. The previous trilogies didn't do anything with the humanity of the stormtroopers, either, but they also didn't make their everyman character a stormtrooper.]
  
  
• Stuff I didn't realize when I was ten: THE DROIDS ARE ALSO SLAVES!!! WHY ARE THE DROIDS SLAVES?!? OUR HEROES ARE SLAVE OWNERS!!
  
  Can we have a droid revolution in the sequel?
  
  
• We will forever be cursed with the amateurishly laid-out "Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away" and that terrible horizontal font for the opening Star Wars crawls.
  
  
• The Death Star was not a remix in the best possible way.
  
  
• I'm not sure J.J. Abrams understands how big suns are. Like, how much bigger than planets they are. Like, people, they're really big. The sun is over 99% of the solar system! It's really hard for a planet to use up the energy of a sun is what I'm trying to get at here.
  
  
• Kylo Ren: Whatever, dude. Most of us manage to express our adolescent angst without running off to join the space Nazis.
  
  
• The twitter of Emo Kylo Ren is, however, a delight:
  
  ugh parsecs are units of distance DAD
  - Emo Kylo Ren (@KyloR3n) December 28, 2015
  
  
• I liked the use of Han, Leia, and Luke, though I hope to see more Leia in the sequels. (More Luke is a given, I should think.) Han's fate was a given once that catwalk was revealed, but it was nicely done anyway. I haven't seen the original trilogy in years, but it turns out seeing middle-aged female General Leia Organa was hugely important to me. It just made me feel really good.
  
  
• I wonder if what Leia felt was Han's death or Kylo Ren turning more fully to the Dark Side, or both. Although frankly I wouldn't class killing his dad as being more Dark Side than massacring civilians and whatever else he's been doing with the space Nazis. I mean, it would be nice if he repented and stopped murdering people, but the best he deserves is life imprisonment for war crimes, even if it's understandable his parents want him back.
  
  Also, this happened during the Captain America: Civil War trailer:
  
  STEVE ROGERS: Sorry, Tony. But he's my friend.
  TONY STARK: So was I.
  WOMAN IN THE AUDIENCE: Really?!
  
  Feel free to link me to any commentary you made or cool commentary you've seen; I assume I've missed a lot while avoiding spoilers.
  
  
  cups brewed at DW