Some movies
pull (the weight of) their lineage really well. Episode VII had not one or two
prequels to sit on but SIX and though some of them were awesome and others …
slightly less awesome, each of the previous Star Wars had tons of lore, tons of
subplot and a lot of classic moments, fan favorites… And when you’re making
Episode SEVEN, you either stand entirely on that foundation or you detach
yourself completely from the formula. It’s rare to see a movie with a perfect
combination of both.
I tried
reading as little as possible about it, watched no trailers or interviews
unless they were Force-fed to me (Force, get it?.... mnjah :D ), dived in no
forums discussing why Kylo Ren’s lightsabre is as it is … (Ye, I got it, he’s
conflicted) And I tried to really lower my expectation, because I ruined The
Martian with very high ones, hearing really good reviews. But still I loved it.
I really didn’t want it to end. I kept thinking – I know someone’s going to
die, I know it’s been two hours, but don’t end, don’t end, don’t end… Actually
counting the scenes from the only trailer I did see, thinking if we’ve gotten
to that part already or not? Because if there’s one thing that really fucks up
my whole day, is an excellent movie ending and I know it’s gonna be another fucking
year before the second instalment gets me another fix.
But enough
about me. It’s a great movie. If you have the imagination to comprehend it, it’s
amazing. Just the scope of it - all
those years past, all those big ships in the sand, the legends that make too
little difference… I have to see it at least three more times. Luckily, I have
nerdy friends. Let’s talk the retro good bits: you had to have X-wing fights
and you had to have lightsabre fights and Jedi Mind Trick whammy moments and Millennium
Falcon and a sinister puppet master (and he’s big! Well done! And hello again,
Andy Serkis) and a crazed Storm Trooper commander… Who plays that dick? Oh,
Domhnall Gleeson, right. Of course. And greedy smugglers and chatty droids and
Death Stars and unlikely friendships and glass submarine screens and bunkers
with Resistance in them and canteens and so on and so forth… Double check on
all of those. Down to the opening credits. Then there were some novelty good
bits: some people actually take off their masks. A lot of them go Full Dredd
and you still wonder who was it that played them so well (yes, I’m looking at
you, Gwendoline Christie, you’re a hot cookie), but the two that do get to go
full facial, are the lead protagonist, Finn and the lead antagonist, Ren. Finn
is the first Storm Trooper we meet as a person, otherwise they’re just numbers
in weird costume statement. But he’s cool. And I really like that they managed
to show love between two characters that isn’t the traditional, “let’s make
babies cause I like your boobies” kind of love. His relationship with the
heroine is believable and heart-warming. You can see they truly like one
another, but there really is no need for romance. Especially because you get to
see an old romance, an old flame, Han and Leia, and you get to learn how badly
that turned out, despite their great love for one another. Sometimes you mean
well, but you still spawn Hitler. With a hilarious temper control problem.
My favorite
scene in the movie is when Rey is being kept in the torture chair and she kind
of tries to get the courage to snarl back at her torturer by taunting him about
the mask and he just takes it off, no big deal. Her expression is the best one
in the film, I thought. It’s not a gruesome disfigured monster at all (yet), it’s
just a boy! That throws her a little. Gives her a bit of hope, but then
immediately makes her disgust even deeper, because she sees through the costume
– he’s just a sick brat. Talented, to be sure, and powerful, but just a messed
up little boy. I knew Adam Driver will be playing Ben/Ren, so I knew he was
going to be good looking, but I was surprised they made him so… puny? Layered,
yes, and torn, yup, but perhaps Darth Maul spoiled me. I know Darths are just
puppets, doing the Emperor’s dirty work. Still, he was awfully, willingly
played. Or maybe I’m just not used to the Sith being so many dimensional. I
also loved the scene in which he’s aloofly trying to seduce Rey to his
awesomeness and she kicks his ass. Weakly played, boy, really :D You may have a
fancy saber, but you’re a little bit on the Jon Snow variety when it comes to
the real world.
Another
really good character, one I couldn’t get enough of – Dameron, the pilot. Loved
him. I’d totally undress that one, especially with planets blowing up all over
the place and you can never tell who’s next.
I liked that they killed Solo the way they did... From the get-go. I thought if they're going to bring back an ancient character, having him fuel the emotional turmoil of the next generation would be the perfect way to see him off. You get to see how messed up his kid really is, or wants to be, burning bridges while standing on them, you get to see how adventurers die - for something they believe in - and you get to see that he had friends till the end - new friends who will seek to avenge him and set things right, things that he couldn't. I thought it was the least surprising outcome. Who else who connected the stories so well would die instead or how else would the new generation solve their own problems if he persisted?
Now for the
few bad things, things that bothered me. Or just the one thing. The acting is a
lot better here and so is camera work, and the dialogue also, to some extent,
but there is a lot of music-acting and I don’t like that. A lot of very long
moments where people are sort of just staring and shaking and the music is
translating what they’re supposed to be going through. Someone said Stephen
Spielberg owes half his Oscars to John Williams – I got that exact vibe here. Fine,
have the battles super noisy, but there really is no need for a screaming
booming orchestra when someone dies. We get it. It’s awful. We’ll miss him.
So now we’re
hooked … again … on a number of cool new people. From the watered down version
of Keira Knightley, who does her job perfectly and is always flawlessly groomed, shaved and all, to a very, very old Luke
Skywalker. And truthfully, nobody can remember any movie that Luke or Leia
respectively did between then and now. The time table IS a tad confusing,
because you have to bend your mind around the fact that THEIR mother was whom
we saw recently and they are the ones who fell in love when I was born in 1977,
and this is the continuance of THAT story … Bendy, yes. Not to mention I haven’t
watched any of the cartoons. I have no idea if some of the answers are there.
Lore galore, I said it. Am really curious on whose kid the girl is, though, Han
and Leia’s, an obvious choice, or is she really Luke’s? True, a Jedi shouldn’t
have kids, but I’m feeling they’re going to pair the big reveal of Episode V to
VIII by saying: Ren… she is your second cousin twice removed!... and abandoned, as all the kids seem to be in these parts … Am glad they didn’t
kill him off like they did Maul in the first round. I’ll enjoy watching them
meet again, and catch whatever the other one is containing, light and dark. No
shocks there. You could make those two more polar opposite if you made them in
mirror image and with crayons.
There wasn't much of a story yet, nothing pass the scroll intro - everyone is looking for Luke, the last Jedi, hoping that will somehow fix everything. Rinse and repeat cycle, really. New hope, new threat... Balance, unbalance, balance again. Fine by me.
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