Star Wars VII! And a little rambling.
So I've been anticipating this new Star Wars movie as much as anyone, I'm a classic example of one of those people who was a "star wars nerd" "before it was cool," (like 5th/6th grade) thought the three prequels were utter crap, all that. But to my horror I realized I was flying to Australia immediately prior to the movie release!!! OH NOES!!
So yesterday I saw the movie by myself, like a loser ): But it doubled as a good thing to do while on my own in Melbourne since it got me out of the cold (it was 105 the other day and I-wish-I-brought-my-jacket weather the next, they weren't kidding about "four seasons in a day in Melbourne!"), especially since I've been fighting a cold ):
Anyway before we get the the spoiler break I've just got to say I heard a song I really liked in the commercials that played preceding the movie:
Click to viewI really like both the sound of it and it's theme of a seemingly good person with that symbolic "red right hand." And this somewhat dark song was playing in the background of a tourism promotional thing for some region of Australia, showing people frolicking through hayfields! And I think I liked the way tehy synthesized it for that commercial even better, I wish I could find the commercial itself! lol.
Anyway, on to our feature presentation, ladies and gentlemen, the spoiler-curtain please
Star Wars Episode VII
Pros:
First and foremost I was absolutely overjoyed that it was NOTHING LIKE THE PREQUELS, and not only that, MAKES NO REFERENCE TO THEM WHATSOEVER! Cue the angels singing!! We can safely pretend they never happened!
And furthermore, this movie completely invalidates all the "Expanded Universe" crap that takes place after the movies, which, good riddance, because I found it all to be a bunch of wankery about how amazing the jedi are and how evil everyone in the Empire is yadda yadda.
Other than that, I really liked just the general look and feel of the movie, it felt darker, grittier, and more like the original series than the stupid prequels, which felt like they relied way too much on CGI. I feel like in the prequel series Lucas forgot who is fanbase was and tried to make lame kids movies where the bad guys are mostly cartoonish robots and well half the good guys are cartoonish bofoons themselves. I liked that there were still TIE fighters and imperial class star destroyers in use (see that's my inner nerd coming out, I have opinions about Star Destroyer classes), both with some improvements (aft-firing turret on the TIE, SD has some sort of rocket launcher we've never seen before and I couldn't tell but is the bridge broader?)
I also liked the wannabe-Darth-Vader guy. At first I thought he was a bit too much like Darth Vader but then when it became apparent that he was literally sort of a DV wannabe it all made sense. I liked the way he spoke though. Altogether a much better villian than that one dimensional Darth Maul
Cons:
I felt like it suffering from what I'm calling sequelism, where an original movie was so good they try to make a movie exactly like it, like Boondock Saints II. Let's see, we start with an orphan on a desert planet that looks an aweful lot like Tatooine (but isn't), and the Obi-Wan look-alike gives the all important data chip to the R2 look-alike droid whom the Empire-look-alikes are then looking all over for. Hmmm sounds awfully familiar. Then immediately after we meet Han bounter hunters looking to collect on him confront him and get killed (also sounds incredibly familiar) ... princess needs rescueing, innocent planet blown up by super weapon, team goes in to disable the shield generator to allow the superweapon to be destroyed ....
I did kind of like how they reversed the father-son relationship in Vader/Luke and Han/this-guy
But seriously, that was a LOT of plot analogues. There's making the occasional reference and hat tip, and then there's just plain recreating the whole thing slightly differently.
What was with that one storm trooper lady in chrome armor? She seemed to hold the rank of captain, which, given the size of the force tehre should have been numerous storm trooper captains but she was the only one in chrome. Part of the thing with the Empire was that everything was orderly, everyone in it was a cog in the machine. This adding randomly distinguishable different bad guys into the mix confuses and disappoints me, it's more like the kind of shit they do in super-hero movies, and I hate super-hero movies ;)
Also I was a little confused in general that these guys who seem to have inhereted all the Empire's military protocols is actually just some cultish... thing? I was going to say political party but I don't know if they have any civilian supporters. Just the private army of the new Sith Lord? Seems kind of weird the Republic would just ignore this weird highly armed group. And even the name, "First Order," doesn't make as much sense as I don't know "New Order," or even "The Order."
I do appreciate that we never see Coruscant and the Senate though, after the prequels I think we've all had more than enough of that.
Let's see also I thought wannabe Vader's sword with the glowing wrist-guard bars or whatever you want to call them was highly dumb.
Oh AND it suffered from making space feel like an awwwwfullly small place. Everyone is constantly bumping into eachother. Finn crashes on that planet (Jakku?) and out of anywhere on that whole planet happens to be walking distance from where everything ELSE on that planet happened!
But anyway, I did think it was a massssssive improvement over the prequels. I'm assuming they're setting it up for more sequels, that will actually involve Luke more. They can't pull the same "copying everything you liked from the original trilogy" trick AGAIN so hopefully Episodes VIII and IX are AWESOME.
Oh speaking of Luke, I thought his daughter was really cute and likeable and actually looked like him sometimes.
I think the director of this movie should just completely remake the three prequels, developing the themes this writer very astutely points out. How glorious would that be!
One last thought, speaking of the Red Right Hand song, WTF was the significance of C3PO's RED LEFT ARM?!