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gffa · 5 years

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So... I've seen a /lot/ of your thoughts about the prequel-era of Star Wars, and the original trilogy of Star Wars is pretty much loved by everyone... but that latest meta got me thinking. What exactly are your thoughts about the new trilogy so far? What do you love about it, what do you hate about it, and where does it fall in the end?

My feelings are pretty boring, to be honest! I like the sequels’ characters pretty well, but I’m middle of the road on the plot and the worldbuilding. There are things I like about it very much, there are things I dislike about it, there are things I’ve dug out of the whole thing that I like, there are things I’m never really going to get over, and mostly it just doesn’t really sing to me like the prequels and originals do.Things I like about the sequels:- The characters are all pretty darling and I very much want to know more about them and their stories! Rey and Finn and Poe are precious, I really love Maz a lot, I’m interested in Ben Solo, I appreciate TLJ bringing us the Leia/Amilyn potential, I WILL FIGHT A MAN FOR ROSE TICO, etc.- TLJ actually made me really think about Luke Skywalker a lot, how I see him and how fallible he was in the originals, versus the Pure Cinnamon Roll that was all I saw for a long time. And it really, really helped me understand his character a lot better.- The supplementary material has been really good to me. Whether it’s the absolute batshit of Phasma (SHE MADE HER ARMOR OUT OF SHEEV’S YACHT, THAT IS THE SINGLE GREATEST THING HER CHARACTER COULD EVER DO, LOL) or the sheer adorable feelings that Cobalt Squadron gave me about Rose Tico or how Battlefront II’s storyline connected the dots between the OT and the ST really well for me, how much I legit enjoyed some of the lines from Jason Fry’s TLJ novelization, or the Poe Dameron comic being amazing, or a whole bunch of other things! The ST has given us the chance to have these things that I really love and I cannot (nor do I want to) full divorce those things from the movies in my mind, which means I have affection for the movies because I love the whole big picture that Star Wars is building with these characters and the galaxy!Things I don’t like about the sequels:- TLJ is something I don’t mind in and of itself at this point (mostly because I’m just so tired of the arguments) but it’s never going to be what my heart wanted, it’s never going to be satisfying for me in that sense. Yes, I get where they’re coming from, I think it’s a fascinating look at showing that yes the dark side/dark emotions is a LIFELONG STRUGGLE to overcome, that Luke fell back into them because it’s not a one-and-done thing, but that means that’s the ONLY story we got for Luke from the sequels, as played by Mark Hamill. If we’d had more stories of Luke with Mark, I think it would be easier to take, but this is the only thing we’ve gotten so far with Mark Hamill on the big screen, so it has all the weight of our expectations on it, and because it’s undoing so much of what ROTJ worked so hard for, it’s never going to be satisfying. I think it’s justified in what it did, but it’s never going to sing to me. (I would like to hope that TROS will stick the landing and make me change my mind, I’m absolutely willing to be won over, but I’m skeptical.)- Rey’s being wrapped up in the Skywalker themes, they’re going to have to step really carefully to stick that landing for me as well, and so far I haven’t been satisfied by the story. I don’t necessarily need her to be a bio-Skywalker (though, that would be my preference), but I need her connection to them to be thematically coherent, and so far it’s not enough for me. It’s not the worst ever, but so far it’s not singing to me, either.- The worldbuilding in the movies has been very lackluster. The planets all look like Earth locations for the most part, the aliens aren’t very creative, there’s a weird eschewing of established aliens, like they don’t actually want this to be Star Wars in setting, and there’s no sense of this being a bigger galaxy in the movies. The supplementary material does a lot of this lifting and I live in that space, so I’m not as cranky about it as I might have been (ie, god bless Battlefront for its gorgeous planets omg), but it’s pretty noticeable in TFA and TLJ.- The squandering of the OT cast. I’m actually okay with Han’s death in the movies, but I’m frustrated by totally taking out any impact it has on Luke and Leia, that they weren’t even there. Leia briefly feels Han’s loss and staggers over it, there’s mention of it in the TLJ novelization, but that’s about it. She feels Luke’s death, she gets a moment to talk with him in TLJ, but it’s so brief. Ben only briefly feels her and doesn’t pull the trigger on her, until one of his squadmates does. And, hey, I get it, this isn’t the OT’s movie, they had their movies, this is the ST’s movies. But I feel like there was a way to give them more meaning, to have their presences actually felt in the characters’ lives. TLJ at least started us on Luke and Ben’s relationship, but for all the weight it’s supposed to have, it’s barely a blip compared to how much time he and Rey spend together. There’s barely any interaction between Leia and Ben at all in the movies. Han and Ben get one scene. It’s harder for me to connect to Ben when he’s so disconnected from the people who he grew up with and so I’m told he’s part of this legacy, but I don’t feel it in the way I wish I did.Contrast this against the prequels, where Obi-Wan and Anakin’s dynamic is expanded on, that those interactions give such weight to their battle on the Death Star, to the way Vader won’t shut up about Obi-Wan, the way Palpatine’s influence on Anakin’s life has more weight now that we’ve seen what went down with them, and why it was such a huge thing for Anakin to break away from him, why seeing Obi-Wan and Anakin and Yoda standing together as spirits has so much more meaning, now that those connections were established. You can add in new characters (like Padme and Ahsoka) while still building up what was already there, but I feel like the ST really hasn’t connected the dots that well. There’s still this HUGE gap between ROTJ and TFA/TLJ and maybe one day I’ll come around on that, I certainly have enjoyed what we’ve been given so far, but there’s a disconnect between the ST and the OT/PT so far that’s hard for me to overcome.Where it all falls in the end:I’m hoping that I will come around and fall in love with the ST, but I’m skeptical because the ST is what brought me back to Star Wars, it’s where I started out after I watched TFA, that was where my investment was, until I started spreading my wings a bit, and the PT/OT really just bit into me hard in a way I never expected. I started out as largely a blank slate (I was a fan as a wee thing, but my feelings back then are pretty much the opposite of what they are now, other than that I Liked Obi-Wan Kenobi, apparently that’s my one true constant!) and one part sang to me and one part didn’t. I’m not sure TROS (especially not in the hands of JJ, who made Alias, which, look, I loved that show, but its ending was not strong, and don’t get me started on his Star Trek, SIGH) can change that for me. I hope to be proven wrong! There are a lot of things I will focus on and yell happily about–I love the characters, I actually genuinely enjoy looking at Luke’s character, I’m enjoying the worldbuilding of the books, comics, and games SO MUCH, but idk I just don’t have the same passion for the ST despite that I love the individual pieces a ton.(AS A NOTE: If someone really loves the ST and has fun with it, I would like to request that you continue to do so, because people loving things always wins me over, like, the most fun I have is when someone goes, “I love that thing! And I also love this thing!” and it makes me want to love that second thing, too! That kind of positivity always wins me over more than anything else.)

#meta #sequels discourse #stormmodblog

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jillmckenzie1 · 4 years

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Critic & Son – Star Wars Edition

You shouldn’t expect your kids to be into the same things you are. It certainly wasn’t the case with my father and me. Bill was a World War II veteran, a lover of big band music, and a guy with the kind of effortless charisma that made him likable to everyone he came across.* He was also a casual moviegoer. I remember him laughing himself into a mild asthma attack during The Naked Gun, and I remember us seeing both Goodfellas and The Silence of the Lambs theatrically.

However, I should emphasize he was a casual moviegoer. Did he care about the works of Altman and Kurosawa? Nope. Not even a little. Movies were strictly for entertainment, full stop. For some odd reason, I dove into movies far deeper than he ever did. Along with my desire to visit Loch Ness and my wish to make a pilgrimage to the grave of John Belushi, obsessive filmgoing was one more piece of evidence to my father that his son was defective, perhaps fatally so.

With my son, Liam, things are different. At twelve years old, he’s already developed strong opinions of his own regarding film. In between snickers, the mother of one of his friends told me about Liam critiquing their video library. He’s said, “I love Sonic the Hedgehog, but it’s not a good movie.” He’s a perceptive kid, and like just about everybody else in this time of plague, he’s bored to tears.

For the last couple of months, I’ve gotten numerous comments from Liam that were variations of, “Can I help write a review? Please? Please?” In the interests of familial harmony and for my own physical safety, we’re going to have a recurring feature around these parts On a semi-regular basis, Liam is going to join me in ranking the top five picks of franchises and genre flicks to you, our discerning readership.** We’ll begin with our Top Five picks for Star Wars Visual Media:

Liam’s #5 – The Last Jedi: My reasoning for placing this here is that The Last Jedi chose to experiment with the mythos of the Star Wars universe. It made bold moves, took characters in unexpected ways, and had the coolest space fight of all time, even if it came out of nowhere. There could’ve been more brand-safe plays, and a heck of a lot of people disliked this movie for said bold moves, but this is the movie from the sequel trilogy that I re-watch the most.

Tim’s #5 – The Mandalorian: Maybe all this time Star Wars is better suited for television? As the crown jewel (and virtually only series of note) on Disney+, The Mandalorian follows the adventures of a taciturn bounty hunter tasked to take care of an alien infant that’s both Force-sensitive and cute as the dickens. It’s essentially Lone Wolf and Cub with spaceships and blasters, along with some interesting ideas about parenting and nature vs. nurture.

Liam’s #4 – Rogue One: The best way to fill a plot hole is to make a feature-length movie about it! Rogue One is a smart, witty, and brutal Star Wars movie. It introduces a cast of fun and intriguing characters and then kills them off in a variety of ways. It features cameos from C3PO, The Ghost from Rebels, and the best scene of Darth Vader ever, which really makes his next duel look sad in comparison. A solid war film, and the best prequel movie from Star Wars.

Tim’s #4 – Rogue One: For a minute there, it looked like we’d get a series of self-contained Star Wars movies that had nothing to do with the Skywalker Saga. Then Solo killed that idea stone dead.*** Before that happened, we got Rogue One, an honest-to-Tarkin war movie about a suicide mission to swipe the Death Star plans. A game cast and director Gareth Edwards’ intense sense of scale took an idea that was unnecessary and transformed it into an engaging piece of entertainment.

Liam’s #3 – Revenge of the Sith: I know I called Rogue One the best prequel, but it isn’t my favorite. Revenge of the Sith is the movie that makes the prequels feel important. It shows us Palpatine annihilating four separate Jedi Masters, we finally see Anakin become Darth Vader, and we see the decimation of the Jedi through Order 66 in what is, in my opinion, the best half an hour of Star Wars.

Tim’s #3 – The Last Jedi: If I’m being honest with you, I have to admit that I kind of hate the sequel trilogy that kicked off with The Force Awakens. Both that film and The Rise of Skywalker look gorgeous, have fun action sequences, and rely almost entirely on nostalgia to push the narrative forward. The polarizing middle chapter The Last Jedi took big chances, including a grizzled Luke Skywalker who’s given up being a hero due to a moral failing. Writer/director Rian Johnson had very little interest in catering to fans. That’s a good thing, and I prefer having my expectations subverted.

Liam’s #2 – The Mandalorian: In easily the best piece of Star Wars television, The Mandalorian shows us what it is like to be a bounty hunter after the fall of the Empire. We see a cast of colorful characters interact with the bounty hunter, we get Taika Watiti as a murder droid and, most importantly, Baby Yoda. It is breathtakingly beautiful and has some of the best writing in Star Wars.

Tim’s #2 – The Clone Wars: Hey kids! Instead of swashbuckling adventure, how about we spend time focusing on trade disputes and political skullduggery? We all know that the Prequel Trilogy, by and large, sucks. But showrunner Dave Filoni saw through the layer of anti-entertainment. It took some time to get going. Over seven seasons, The Clone Wars managed to make the fall of Anakin Skywalker tragic, managed to turn faceless clone troopers into mostly sympathetic characters, and managed to introduce Ahsoka Tano. She’s Anakin’s apprentice and her journey from an annoying sidekick to a hero with the courage to walk away from the Jedi Order is genuinely mythic.

Liam’s #1 – The Empire Strikes Back: In one of the best sequels ever made, Empire blows the original Star Wars out of the water with how smart the writing is, one of the best lightsaber fights of the series, and causing the heroes to lose by the end of the film. It made Darth Vader into one of the best villains of all time and caused all other Star Wars projects to feel meek in comparison. It’s no wonder that this movie still is one of the most impactful movies even after 40 years since its release.

Tim’s #1 – The Empire Strikes Back: We can all agree that Star Wars is one of the most important movies ever made. Its sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, does what most sequels can only dream of doing. It takes everything that works about the first film and makes it better. The action scenes are more interesting, the dialogue isn’t as clunky, and the characters have arcs that are deeper and better defined. We have a hero who makes many, many stupid mistakes, making his eventual wisdom feel more hard-won. We have a plot twist that’s astounding. We have a Harrison Ford performance that’s charming and engaged. What’s not to love?

*The racist Border Patrol agent that he got fired? Probably not a big fan of my pops. Buy me a beer sometime and I’ll tell you the story.

**Huge credit goes to film writer Drew McWeeny, whose outstanding column Film Nerd 2.0 examined his introduction of classic movies to his boys. It’s excellent writing and I’ve wanted to try something similar myself. His work is well worth paying for and you can buy their introduction to the Star Wars movies here.

***There was talk about a riff on Seven Samurai, in which a squad of Jedi Knights had to defend a small settlement from hordes of Imperial troops. I would have loved to have seen that.

from Blog https://ondenver.com/critic-son-star-wars-edition/

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