for me it’s right behind the original trilogy, which is a huge achievement considering where we were at after the prequels! JJ, thank you good sir - you got it back on track.
…maybe care less about Star Wars?
Look, outside of yourself, I’m one of the foremost spokesmen for TFA being a bad story in this thread, but all that stuff you listed has value. Kineticism. Visuals. A great cast. These are all great things to have in a movie. They lift a bad story to a thoroughly ok cinemagoing experience.
Yeah, looking at it compared to other resurrections of dormant franchises like Fury Road or Creed, it is pretty naff. But then put it against the likes Terminator: Genisys or Jurassic World, and you realize how much worse it could have been.
It’s an awkward let’s-remake-the-old-to-get-newcomers-onboard-and-placate-everyone-else-with-fanservice franchise lurch, but it doesn’t leave Star Wars fucked. A lot of the dumb shit is pretty easily ignorable, and it clears the table to take it new places.
(Then again, I just remembered Jurassic World’s Colin Trevorrow is making episode IX, so maybe the franchise is fucked after all.)
Trevorrow’s just directing. Rian Johnson is writing VIII and IX.
This kind of sums up my problem with a lot of online critics these days: There’s this disconnect between enjoying a movie and feeling like it is a “good movie” (for whatever definition you want to use there). I don’t know if people are trying to hedge their bets, or they feel like they have to hold to some higher artistic standard, or what it is. It seems odd to me.
A shitty director can still sink a good script - and man look at how much worse Jurassic World looks compared to Park twenty years of special effects later - but that is slightly reassuring.
You don’t think critics should hold movies to a higher artistic standard (mutatis mutandis for kiddie stuff or popcorn movies, of course)???
I can’t care less about Star Wars, I was an 18 year old in the cinema in 1977 when that 3 ft Star Destroyer first loomed endlessly over my head. It was a thing, a thing that had a bit of honour and cachet to it. Like many, I’m just a sad bunny that the prequels damaged the whole thing (though they have some aspects to like, and I like the continuation of that universe in the Clone Wars quite a bit). And now I’m even sadder that this movie … well I won’t bang on about it again :)
Look, outside of yourself, I’m one of the foremost spokesmen for TFA being a bad story in this thread, but all that stuff you listed has value. Kineticism. Visuals. A great cast. These are all great things to have in a movie. They lift a bad story to a thoroughly ok cinemagoing experience.
Yeah, looking at it compared to other resurrections of dormant franchises like Fury Road or Creed, it is pretty naff. But then put it against the likes Terminator: Genisys or Jurassic World, and you realize how much worse it could have been.
Sure, sure. In fact, basically the first half hour or so is pretty damn good in that sense, and there are loads of good moments here and there throughout. Especially the visual hyper-realism. As I said, apart from the BB8 moment, I was hooked just for that first half hour or so.
Btw, I found it quite funny and telling that the only character from the movie who seems to have captured people’s imaginations virally is a random stormtrooper (TR-8R as he’s called), who has some real swagger. Shouldn’t that have been, I dunno, Kylo or someone like that? :)
I’m saying that critics should hold all movies to the same standard, instead of feeling the need to label something as a “popcorn movie” because they’re afraid to admit that they enjoyed it (or conversely, giving something a better review because they perceive it as “art”, even if they didn’t enjoy it as much).
And yes, I was specifically referring to your comments that Force Awakens has “High degree of polish, extraordinary visual realism, kinetic excitement, yadda yadda. But we all know none of those things amount to a good movie.” Oh, but Poe hid a secret map in BB-8, so it must be a “polished turd.” You even admitted that you enjoyed it at first, before you nitpicked it to death and convinced yourself it’s horrible.
I find it funny and telling that you think that TR-8R is “the only character from the movie who seems to have captured people’s imaginations”, when people have been talking about Kylo Ren as a character for weeks and weeks (and yes, @EmoKyloRen has gone viral). Rey and Finn and Kylo Ren have captured people’s imaginations; TR-8R is a meme.
It’s possible to enjoy aspects of a thing while thinking it’s trash overall. Even at the worst popcorn level, an aficionado of visual fx can enjoy a good visual effect here or there. Someone who just loves s-f can tolerate an otherwise trashy movie just because it has spaceships and is intrinsically about the Great Beyond. Whether a movie feels like a waste of 2 hours or your life or a waste of money is down to a whole bunch of factors working together. I never said TFA was so shit that it felt like a waste of 2 hours or my life or a waste of money.
As anyone knows who’s looked into the making of movies, it’s such an incredibly hard job that when something comes out that hangs together enough not to feel like a waste of 2 hours, it’s almost a miracle. Loads of movies are made every year that really are a waste of 2 hours of your life to watch.
However, surely we take all that stuff as given? (IOW, we would all have been damn surprised if TFA had been as bad as the recent Fantastic Four movie.) As a musician, I don’t praise someone for good technique, good chops - that’s a given (unless there’s a super-spectacular passage). I praise them for the whole being more than the sum of its parts, for producing an aural “Magic Ear” effect (by analogy with those Magic Eye pictures) that produces sound that feels alive and elevates the spirit.
It’s the same with any artistic product. You don’t praise mere competence, competence that’s sufficient to not make you feel like you’ve wasted your time and money. You don’t praise things that are “entertaining enough”.
And if something has that “entertaining enough” level but doesn’t live up to the best of its lineal predecessors, and negates the spirit that fired up the whole thing in the first place, then that’s something to positively criticize.
Oh, but Poe hid a secret map in BB-8, so it must be a “polished turd.” You even admitted that you enjoyed it at first, before you nitpicked it to death and convinced yourself it’s horrible.
As I’ve pointed out, my first review shows I sort of enjoyed it, but was uncomfortable. My subsequent analyses have merely articulated the reasons for my discomfort. (Plus also, time and distance from the hype have gotten me over my cognitive dissonance in not quite wanting to admit it was shit at the time.)
I find it funny and telling that you think that TR-8R is “the only character from the movie who seems to have captured people’s imaginations”, when people have been talking about Kylo Ren as a character for weeks and weeks (and yes, @EmoKyloRen has gone viral). Rey and Finn and Kylo Ren have captured people’s imaginations; TR-8R is a meme.
No, TR-8R is cool, in a way that the mechanically-extruded rest of the movie isn’t. He has the feel of a moment of someone, somewhere’s genuine inspiration (even if it was just the stunt guy). That’s why he’s a meme.
Compare and contrast Darth Vader, who was the combined product of many people inspired by things like McQuarrie’s amazing art, Lucas’ own inspiration, etc. He was a meme in his day - something kids copied. HUGELY. As were lightsabers, Han, Chewie, space battles, pew-pew.
As I said, that’s what art is about - fire, enthusiasm, inspiration, the creation of something with its own organic integrity that wasn’t there before.
Competence is just the minimum requirement for that, polish a mere adjunct.
I wonder which is going to come first, Episode VIII or the end of Andy Bate’s and Gurugeorge’s “debate”?
Episode VIII is a year and a half away, so my money is on the debate. Decades after the trilogy is finished they will be whacking each other with canes in an old folks home, fighting over the return of Han Solo in episode IX.
I just knew Han Solo was Snoke! He clearly worked with his apprentice/son to fake his own death. If you look carefully, you can see the outline of a nice, cooshy ballpit at the bottom of the bridge scene where he falls to his “death”. He’ll have the last laugh when he comes back in IX.
Man most of what you listed isn’t even new. I actually thought the Storm Troopers in ANH had a fair bit of character when they are just chit chatting. And conflicted dark side apprentice is basically the end of ROTJ.
Interesting. Do you think this applies to games/books/music/etc? If not why not?
This idea of a “standard” that movies are held to seems pretty formulaic and limiting.
The best part is when Snoke/Han reaches out to Kylo Ren and says “Join me and together we shall rule the galaxy as Father and Son!” Ren says Yes and the trilogy ends happily tyrannically ever after!
What? Kylo’s conflict is far beyond the 3 seconds of indecision we see from Vader in Jedi. Luke saying “I feel the conflict within you” isn’t really giving us any sense of what it would mean to be conflicted, and Vader killing the Emperor to save his son isn’t exactly a shining example of the Light Side. Ren’s conflict is far more real and compelling once you realize that the “pull of the light” he’s talking about is the desire to not kill his own father.
As to stormtroopers - one line a piece is not character. In aggregate that may have given some flavor to who stormtroopers are, but we get 2 distinct personalities with a bit depth, plus TR-8Rs ballsy zeal in TFA.
So both those things are expansions of the universe, and the rest of the stuff is too. The only movie that obviously does more of that is ANH, which introduced everything (though ESB would also probably come out ahead, while Jedi has… Ewoks).
ROTFLMFAO, you wags :)
I think both Andy and I are the sort of people who are just constitutionally incapable of leaving something unresponded-to if we disagree with it.
Still, I hope our little wrestling match has been moderately entertaining for anyone who’s bothered tuning in :D
Truthfully, it’s the reason I finally tuned out.
No, I’m pretty much done. You’re bound and determined to nitpick the movie to death, and to ignore every moment of joy and inspiration so you can focus on seeing the movie as a symbol of soulless corporate greed, for whatever reason.
Yes, Star Wars is never going to be the original ’70s-era surprise that the first one was, because you can’t catch lightning in the same bottle twice. But the new Star Wars is full of inspiration and new direction and interesting characters, and I’m really excited about where the series will go from here.
But go ahead and keep complaining about how your heart “literally sank” when someone hid something in a droid, because obviously a repeated plot element is the sign of a bad sequel.
Well I found it amusing anyway. But then I’ve been accused of being a bit warped more than few times, for what its worth.