Star Wars VII! And a little rambling.

[aggienaut]

   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:

   I 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?!

Comments

[adoptedwriter.livejournal.com]

We called him "Brat-Vader". LOL


AW

[belleweather.livejournal.com]

I LOVE that song... it was the best thing on the "Songs in the Key of X" not-soundtrack for the X-files. :)

[ryl.livejournal.com]

Much as I hate the prequels (specifically Phantom Menace, the movie that made me swear off Star Wars forever), they did do one good thing in this world. They inspired this song:

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Lol oh weird Al (:

I like that one about Yoda too.

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

I agree that the politics of the new galaxy seem strange...

[froganon.livejournal.com]

The glory days of the older Star Wars are gone and me, I am stuck in them. Good review though, and thanks for that!

[katinator44.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was my biggest complaint about the movie. I expected way more originality. But I guess it's a symptom of Hollywood these days. All they've really been doing is recycling the old and polishing it up to present it as something new. It's just sequel after remake after sequel. Nothing's original anymore. But I feel like in Star Wars it was just...blatant and lazy. They could have done so much, especially considering the story line they had. But they didn't...they literally just took the story line of the trilogy and added new characters with different relationships and put it into a single movie.

Garry was frustrated by the lack of keeping true to the actual story following the original trilogy. I guess Han and Lea were supposed to have 3 kids, none of them named Ben. Luke's son was named Ben...so I'm not sure why they decided to change it up? I told him they weren't going to keep to the story exactly because then people would know what's coming. But I still find it weird they decided to take Ben Skywalker and make him Ben Solo.

Also, they never said Rey was Luke's daughter...is that who you were referring to? Because I totally think she is Luke's daughter...or Hans and Lea's daughter somehow. All I could think about during the scene where Ben/Kylo Ren is trying to get the information from Rey was "she's totally your cousin or your sister or something dude". I'm curious to find out how she's related but I KNOW she's related somehow lol

Garry also brought up a good point...how did Rey even know how to use the force at all? Or Finn know how to use a lightsaber enough not to die immediately? These were apparently lost arts that NOBODY told them how to use. But they somehow just...did it? (I guess I can understand Finn a little...if someone handed you a weapon and you had to figure out how to use it or die, you'd figure it out pretty quick) Rey especially felt off...because she thought the force and jedi were legend. She was never taught how to use the force at all...but could use jedi mind tricks and beat Kylo Ren in a lightsaber battle? I don't get how that works. I think it's trying to show that she's super powerful but still...it wasn't terribly realistic. At least they sent Luke off to get SOME training before he could do those things.

I did like how they had a fucking amazing strong, intelligent, independent woman in the movie though! Everyone always said Lea was those things but I never really saw it...she always needed saving and was just there to be a pretty face and a love interest. Rey is amazing. She's super smart and can fly ships, she's a fighter and knows how to survive, she's sensitive and kind, she gets captured but doesn't need saving...she gets herself out of there, she never relies on anyone...she's a badass and I'm so happy she exists. <3

I also did really like the story line (aside from everything ripped off from the original trilogy). It was intriguing to see the messed up family dynamic the Skywalker name continues to experience lol that poor family, really. And it's all Anakin's fault :-P

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah I thought it was a bit odd too, that Luke needed I think years of training to do some of the stuff she does immediately. Like calling the lightsaber to her hand, Luke couldn't do that until I think he'd been training with Yoda for months and had been a jedi for years.

And yeah competing against mini-Vader with a light saber, well, YOU try to pick up a fencing sabre and have a go at someone with training, you won't last thirty seconds! I forget if Finn ever fights miniVader but he certainly seems to know what he's doing with the other people he's fighting .... though it's possible hand to hand combat with similarly used weapons had been part of his stormtrooper training I guess?

If the "true to the actual story" you're referring to is the "expanded universe" storyline of books and comics and things, as I said, I was rejoicing they scrapped that shit, because every single one of them pretty much was a little mini crisis with the same old jedi coming to save the day and everyone living happily every over and over again and I thought it was a bunch of trite wankery.

Yeah I was thinking that too about "hey these two are like cousins!" and I dunno maybe they'll shock us in the next installment and it won't be Luke's daughter but it seemed pretty overhwelmingly indicative of that in this one, I thought it was a relatively safe assumption.

Excited for the next installment though, as I said, they can't pull the same copying again and I'm really looking forward to them fleshing out these characters

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Also I just watched hte trailers/teasers for the first time and I'm glad I'd avoided them, they totally make it obvious that one of the main characters is a storm trooper, I'm glad I didn't know that so it was new to me when he defected (though frankly I think his acting was a bit bad during the battle, where he made it really painfully obvious he wasn't having it.

[anyonesghost.livejournal.com]

Sir, please notice I have my nerd-card brandished as I say: Luke called the light saber to his hand in the ice cave on Hoth, after he was hit by the Wampa. And Luke's training to that point had been, "Trust your feelings!" ...and "Run, Luke, Run!" I mean, Obi-Wan was so hands-off in his training that he might as well have just stayed on Tattooine.

Speaking as a former varsity fencer, Kylo Ren's fighting style was pretty crap. He was coasting on rage and fantastic conditioner. Rey had years of defending herself on Jakku. I'm surprised mini-Vader lasted as long as he did.

[anyonesghost.livejournal.com]

After a lot of contemplation, I think this was the smartest way they could have made Ep7. Star Wars is in the public consciousness, so having it deal with characters coping with the fall-out of the original trilogy made for sympathetic stand-ins. Doesn't mean it wasn't familiar -- some of the plot-points were so Ep4 I was having flashbacks. But the new stuff all really worked well for me, and I have a feeling they'll be shifting the balance to newer stuff for the next Episodes.

Of course, I'm a light-saber crossguard apologist, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. ;-) (Seriously, how many hands do we see chopped off in the other movies? How did it take a thousand years to put a cross-guard on a light saber? Man, Jedi are stupid. Or, more apropos: "Evil will always triumph because good is dumb.")

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah I guess I should specify that I think it LOOKS dumb -- but it really doesn't make sense NOT to have one I guess from a practical standpoint, it's natural for your "blades" to slide down to the hand, that's why they don't really make real swords with OUT crossguards. Still though it looked dumb gosh darn it!

What I want to see some time though is I realized the perfect lightsaber duel move would be to simply turn off your lightsaber for half a second as you make the attack, at the moment your opponent is going to block you. Skip past their blocking stroke, bam!

I felt like there really was too much of too-close parallels to the original trilogies, I mean, they really had to have it on a planet that looks JUST like tattoine? Of the countless different environments they COULD have set it in? And have some character who looks a lot like obi-wan giving the chip to the droid? Really now. I do think it was nice they had star destroyers and TIE fighters and storm troopers as a kind of "hey look, we're going to be much more like the originals than the prequels" reassurance to all of us, and maybe the whole "purpose" of this first of this new series was to be reassuringly like the original series. As I've said, I am very optimistic that they'll do good things with the next ones.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha. okay I have a fencer question for you. In these lightsaber battles you always see them doing sort of twirls where their back is to their enemy for half a second as they spin around. I know in formal fencing you're kind of on a linear line, possibly with a cable attached to your back I think to record hits or something, from what I've seen on TV, so it might not be practical, but if you _could_ would it really actually ever be the best move to spin around?? I feel like probably not. I mean maybe in some sort of highly rare circumstance but as something that happens frequently...

And oh Luke calling the light saber was before Dagobah?

[anyonesghost.livejournal.com]

Yep - he (Luke) had to get free of being frozen to the cave ceiling.

Yeah, the weapon is usually wired; a point is registered either when the tip of an epee hits anything, or when a foil or saber makes connection with a similarly wired jacket (completing an electrical current). So you tend not to see spinning around there. There's a move common mostly in foil called flèche where you charge past your opponent and try to hit them as you go by ... It leaves your back exposed, though.

In formal fencing, since it moves fast and there's usually right-of-way on touches, turning around isn't a good idea. Maybe for epee, since it's "first blood" so to speak, you could spin to bait someone into doing something stupid. But I think you'd get the same effect out of a feint / circle combination.

Then again, consider that fencing is the formalized sport version of when two people try to stab each other. In the sport, the referee yells at you if you bell-punch someone in the mask. (Whoops.). In life-and-death situations, all bets are off.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Lol. He really needed a haircut

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Haha what makes it a not-soundtrack?

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

True true, we still have them! ...though they keep fucking with them, I hope now that disney owns it all they'll undue some of George Lucas' dumb later edits.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

the referee yells at you if you bell-punch someone in the mask LOL!

[belleweather.livejournal.com]

None of the music was actually used or involved in the series, it was music by bands who were inspired by the vibe, dude.

In my humble opinion, that made it way better. :)

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Hey sorry I'm only now getting around to the calendar orders, where'd you send me your address?

[froganon.livejournal.com]

i just sent it in the live journal message in box thingy. :^D

[sistrmoon.livejournal.com]

Love that song! Thanks for sharing it.

Cute and likeable? Come on, she was BADASS! I appreciated a strong female character.