"The Force Awakens" (with SPOILERS)

I saw ROS yesterday. It was good.
I think they went a little overboard on the appearances by about any character who has ever been in the series.
I'm also not big on having a dead person playing a living person and two living people playing guys who've died.

 

Saw it tonight and I can't disagree with any of this. Actually, the repeated plot lines opens my eyes to another sin I can retroactively place on the older movies too.

The Jedi protagonists in both the original series and the current one are trained to be the ultimate in discipline over emotion, to be able to control man, object, etc., to give themselves to the Force, and yet, they have zero discipline over their own hang-ups?

SPOILER

When it was revealed to Rey that she was the granddaughter of Palpatine, it was obviously a blow to her whole self-being and the meaning of her own life. But as I watched, I was like, "so what?" Why are the Jedi/Sith - and Luke and Vader and Anakin were all the same way - so tied up in their own feelings?

Why doesn't their Jedi training give them the discipline to say fuck it and chart their own path? Why is it fated that they have to follow the path of either the Jedi or the Dark Side. Why, in that moment, couldn't Rey just tell herself, "it sucks I am a Palpatine, but I will go my own way?"

SPOILER OVER (I think)

It's a big hole in the whole zeitgeist of Star Wars. And frankly, by repeating so many plot points from the originals in the recent films, it's actually made me be more questioning of the originals too.

Apart from that? The series has always been overt about sticking with friends and loyalty represents good over evil, and that's fine, but there were way too many pregame locker room speeches and rah-rah for my tastes. The football spiking that represented the last five minutes was silly. All the more so since I'm not invested in these characters remotely close to those in the original. I can reel off some of the most minor characters from the originals, but if I had a gun to my head? I'd get my brains blown out if I had to name more than five characters in this movie.

It was a decent two-hour diversion with the wife and kids, but forgettable, just like the Last Jedi was. Time for the curtain to close.

As it should be for so many of our childhood diversions. I have zero desire to see a Top Gun reboot and never had any desire to see Bad Boys in the first place. Nor the many others that have and will come out.

I am nostalgic for many things, but not at the expense of starving to death on a diet of nostalgia over a steady meal of something original.

 

That is where the original movies succeed, because Luke's internal conflict is very much about controlling his emotions and by doing so, taking control of his own destiny.

That is why the final battle with Vader is so compelling, because you had the external and internal conflicts going on at the same time. At one point, Vader managed to goad Luke into losing his temper, to putting aside the control that would keep him on the Light side and give into his rage. Luke won the physical fight when he sliced off Vader's hand, but briefly seemed to lose the conflict that matters, the contest for his own soul. Then he stopped,tossed away his lightsaber and declared himself a Jedi. He had to regain his emotional control and surrender the physical fight to finally truly become a Jedi.

On the one hand, I've always thought throwing away his lightsaber was stupid. It's not as if he didn't thought the Emperor was going to just let him go, so why give away his protection, but it does sort of make sense when you put it in the context of his internal conflict. Luke didn't save himself physically. Vader had to save him, and he suffered mortal wounds while doing it. That is the price Vader had to pay for redemption. In the moment in the movie, it doesn't even seem as if that battle meant much of anything to the final war. No matter who won that smaller conflict, the Death Star would have been blown up and the Emperor likely destroyed with it. But that's an entirely different discussion.

I'm not sure Rey's conflict works as well at the end of ROS. I really need to watch it again, but that won't be happening until it is on Disney+.

 

Except none of that matters now because the Emperor isn't really dead.

 

That doesn't change the quality of the original movies and it's also a load of crap. Luke still resolved his internal conflict in a positive manner. Vader still redeemed himself by saving his son. Your argument is almost as bad as people saying nothing matters because every body comes back from the dead. One character came back from the dead, two if you count Rey. That isn't everybody.

None of the crap they screwed up in the final trilogy changes the quality of the original movies.

 

Did they really screw things up in the third trilogy? Or do we just see them though vastly more mature lenses now? By the time the three prequels came out, we already were ruined for whatever was to come. Our expectations, for the most part, were based on 8-year-old eyes.

Last summer I took my 82-year-old Dad and my 5-year-old son to see a live performance of “The Empire Strikes Back” by the Cleveland Orchestra. The orchestra performed John Williams’ score while the movies were shown on giant screens. It was outstanding. My Dad, an orchestra lover who never saw any “Star Wars” movie, was blown away by the musicians’ performance, while I’m not sure my son even knew there was a 100-plus-piece orchestra in the building.

When it was over, my Dad commented on how awful the acting was in the movie, and he was right. The three originals, though, are held in high regard by fans. Why? Because nearly everyone saw them for the first time as kids. Which is who they were meant for. My son thinks all nine installments, plus “Rogue One” and “Solo,” are the best things that have ever happened.

I enjoyed the new trilogy because of – yes – the way the movies took me back, kind of like an olfactory memory, when one whiff will drop you in a ballpark you visited 40 years ago.

But our resident grumps have declared that some kind of unforgivable turpitude. The gall, after all, of valuing the nostalgia aspect, and being able to share a piece of your childhood with your own children, and getting to see what you looked like when watching those movies for the first time. all wide-eyed and agog. This from guys, by the way, who work in sports, where nostalgia is everywhere.

Bottom line, none of these movies is “The Shawshank Redemption” (which I will eventually watch for the 87th time – maybe I’m just being too nostalgic; I suppose we should toss out our old albums too, because we’ve already listened to them). “Star Wars” movies are fairy tales for an audience geared for fairy tales. Two generations later, maybe we’re not supposed to hold them in such high regard.

 

Like Bubbler, I, too, finally saw The Rise of Skywalker today, and, also like Bubbler, I can't really disagree with anything Double Down said.

I do think it was a bit harsh and even a little overwrought, though.

The best thing about this movie is that, more than any of the last three films, it just ...felt like a Star Wars movie, you could relate to it well on that level, and I liked it for that, quite a bit, actually. That said, I didn't like it as much as any the original trilogy, and I think my problem with it -- just as for many other people -- is simply that I've just never been as invested in the new characters of these most recent movies as I became with those in the original three.

That's about the size of it. I didn't ever have any expectations that these latest movies would be as good as the originals, and I certainly wasn't expecting any newfound movie classic, or some deep-thinking theatrical piece out of the finale. (In fact, to some extent, you had to suspend any real deep thinking and not "go there" with respect to some aspects of it).

But also, the originals were just that good, and that engaging, for me. I don't know if it was the actors involved, or the fact that we'd seen the "story" before, and the "echoes" just weren't as good, or what. The bottom line is that the best parts of the newer movies, almost always, involved the characters from the originals.

That was both the vehicle, and the problem, for the last three installments. And it's very telling.

That thought even extended to the credits, in my opinion. There is no way that Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley (who had the most compelling connection, relationally speaking, in the last three movies) should have not gotten star billing in the final credits of The Rise of Skywalker. Yet, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill -- the latter of whom made what amounts to barely more than a cameo appearance in it -- retained top billing.

I get that it was out of respect, and to pay homage, but it was also a reflection -- and one of the poor echoes -- of the movie itself.

 

Finally saw it.

If I ever set out to write a movie trilogy, someone remind me to set out in advance and figure out the story arc over the whole trilogy.

The old “figure it out as we go along, one movie at a time” sucks.

 

I think this was the main issue - they started The Force Awakens wanting to tell this story, try to figure out how to shoehorn Luke, Leia and Han into it, but also make the audience give a crap about the new characters.

The inconsistencies in not having a well-defined story arc planned from the beginning showed brightest in RoS. I saw it for the second time tonight (this time completely sober, the first time I was half in the bag and only remember certain things).

SPOILERS

Someone tell find me JJ Abrams so he can tell me how the f Palpatine survived being electrocuted, thrown down a shaft and blown up on the second Death Star?!

Also they had all of this build-up to a Rey-Finn relationship and that got zero resolution.

I did cry both times at Leia's death and Chewie's reaction. Please, just claw my entire heart out.

END SPOILERS

 

They coulda made Palp the big bad, and it woulda been fine ... you know ... if they had done one ounce of plot work in the previous two movies.

 

Rey, do not be afraid of who you are.
Emperor: You’re my granddaughter.
Old lady: a who the fuck are you?
Rey: I’m Rey Palp ..... ummmm, Skywalker.