But I have noticed that, aside from the argument about whether CGI Ringwraith Tarkin was a good idea or not, reviews of Rogue One tend to want to compare it to The Force Awakens.
Ladies. Gentlemen. Little green frog creatures. The Force Awakens is awful.
A quick recap of that movie's plot is in order.
Luke Skywalker just happens to have left a map to his location, and that map just happens to be left with Max von Sydow on Jakku, and when the Imperial Remnant (calling itself the "First Order" so as to, what, not have to pay royalties to some book writer from the nineties? Original, guys) comes to claim it, they just happen to bring along a A Stormtrooper With A Heart, who just happens to have a crisis of faith in time to rescue This Generation's Wedge Antilles, who tries to escape with The Stormtrooper With A Heart, but they get shot down over Jakku, and The Stormtrooper With A Heart just happens to land within walking distance of This Generation's Luke Skywalker, who just happens to have discovered This Generation's R2-D2, who just happens to belong to This Generation's Wedge Antilles, and so The Stormtrooper With A Heart and This Generation's Luke Skywalker just happen to have enough time to run into each other before This Generation's Imperial Remnant comes calling again, and the ship the heroes want to take just happens to be blown up, so they have to take another ship, which just happens to be the Millennium Falcon, whose real owners just happen to be in the area and who just happen to be willing to give the heroes a lift to Plot Point Planet Number Two, which just happens to be within viewing distance of Several SuperDeathStar Fodder Planets, so our heroes can just happen to watch those SuperDeathStar Fodder Planets get vaporized, and then the bad guys show up and just happen to capture Rey and only Rey, and then when the other heroes go to rescue her it just happens that This Generation's Pathetic Excuse For Darth Vader is Han Solo's son, thus necessitating the murder of a childhood icon for "shock value," and then it just happens that this space nomad from the desert turns out to be the largest nexus of untapped Force potential since Anakin Skywalker, and then R2-D2 just happens to wake up, and he just happens to have the rest of the map to Luke Skywalker, and the movie ends.
Seriously, Jakku appears to have a surface area of about four square miles, and the movie's stupidity only grows from there.
In contrast, A New Hope relies on one and only one massive coincidence - that the first person R2 runs into just happens to be Luke Skywalker (and even then, R2 is looking for Ben Kenobi, who lives in that area). Everything else actually makes sense - Ben Kenobi is nearby because he is watching over Luke. Han Solo is at the cantina because he's Han Solo, Space Bum, not Han Solo, Legendary Character Who Must Be Shoehorned In. Vader and Kenobi have their limpsaber fight because they have a history and a Death Star-ful of unfinished business between them. (Okay, yes, Luke turns out to be a superduper pilot just in time for the shooty space ending, but he used to bullseye womp rats in his T-16 back home - that's not too outlandish considering some of the other nonsense.)
The one major coincidence in Empire - that Luke crashes in Yoda's swamp - is probably Yoda doing his Force stuff to make that happen. Notice how much smoother Luke's landing is in Jedi. (Han running out of gas in his shifty friend's backyard isn't much of a coincidence - I assume Han has shifty friends all over the galaxy. We just don't know about the rest of them because they never made it into Star Wars.)
The one major coincidence in Jedi - that Luke frenched his sister - was shoved in there because George Lucas had a breakdown making Empire and wanted this shit wrapped up as quickly as possible. (No, really, Luke's sister was originally going to be some other character we hadn't met yet.) The other big convenience - the Emperor is on Death Star II - isn't a coincidence, it's part of the Emperor's trap. Okay, the Ewoks are a bit of a coincidence. Good thing the Empire didn't build their murdersphere on Hoth or the rebels would be stuck enlisting wampas to fight for them.
Now I'm going to skip the just happens crap for Episode I, because we can all agree that Episode I is crap. Here are some coincidences I noticed in Episode II: the Jedi Council decides to have Anakin guard Padme even though he wants to get into her pants. Count Dooku uses the same assassin who was the template for their clone army to try to kill Padme, and that assassin happens to use an easily-traceable weapon. Um... That's about it, right? Everything else is either Romantic Filler Bullshit or Palpatine's Machinations. Compared to the amount of pure unadulterated stupidity that had to happen in TFA to bounce Rey from Point A to Point B to Point C... Episode II actually has halfway decent writing. (NOTE "WRITING" AND "DIALOGUE" ARE TWO SEPARATE THINGS)
Are there coincidences in Episode III? Doesn't "Palpatine's behind it all and everyone else is stoopid" cover just about everything? Chewbacca and the Death Star both show up for pointless fanservice. So does Tarkin for a dimly-lit three-second cameo. You wouldn't know it was him unless someone (hi) told you.
Now, I'm one of those weirdos who actually thinks Sith is a better film than Jedi. No, really, I do. Go back and watch the OT in one or two sittings and realize how many asspulls there are in that film. "The Empire's building another Death Star!" "Leia is Luke's sister!" "Luke's training is suddenly complete, even though Yoda told him not to go running off half-cocked last film to face Vader, and all Luke has to do now to be a Jedi is confront Vader, which he already did, and it went poorly for him." And my personal favorite: "What I told you was true, from a certain point of view."
Yeah, okay. Sure. In contrast, the clumsiest part of Sith is "Padme lost the will to live," which I assume happened because Lucas lost the will to show Anakin stabbing her in a fit of rage and then us getting some "Macduff was from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd" action. See, say what you will about the Star Wars prequels, and there is much to say, but at least Lucas was working with a defined end goal in mind: Anakin and the Republic both fall. Crummy as they are overall (mostly due to the atrocious first film and craptacular romance plot in the second), there actually is a cohesive story there, and they all feel like they were cut from the same marginal cloth. Jedi feels like something tacked on to IV and V because Lucas abandoned his original plan... which is because Jedi is tacked on because Lucas abandoned his original plan.
May I digress for a few minutes? As longtime readers know, my absolute favorite Bond Film is On Her Majesty's Secret Service for reasons I will not rehearse here. I love it for all the reasons I mentioned in those posts, and for one more: it's a fascinating look into an alternate universe where they didn't wait until 2006 to go down the Casino Royale route. (Granted, in this alternate universe, the franchise probably craters stone dead circa 1973 and then gets resurrected roundabout 2013 to be that studio's "cinematic universe" because f*ck originality amirite?) What I mean by that is this: Imagine a proper sequel to OHMSS. The behind-the-scenes crap plays out differently, and both Lazenby and Hunt stick around for James Bond Episode VII: You Only Live Twice, Again. Like, you can actually imagine it: it's a mashup of Licence to Kill, Quantum of Solace, and the novel version of You Only Live Twice. "Purists" who love ConneryMooreBrosnan would hate it. 17-year-old-me would hate it; 27-year-old-me would declare it The Best Bond Film Ever Made.
Okay, now imagine the alternate universe where Lucas doesn't have a psychotic break letting other people make the best Star Wars film for him. Episode VI is probably mostly Luke maturing, battling the darkness within him while he rescues Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt. Something happens to him along the way (he's captured by Vader?) that prompts the surviving heroes to seek out Yoda and learn who this mysterious "other" is, this sister who hasn't been introduced yet. Episode VII sees Luke slowly breaking under the Emperor's tutelage while his sister trains to defeat the Emperor, Vader, and, if necessary, her brother. Basically, Jedi is broken up into two films, each far darker than what we got.
I think that trajectory was set up by IV and V. But then the timeline skewed off on this tangent
 |
| "We're in an alternate 1985 where Nixon is on his fifth term and everyone's reading pirate comic books!" |
Regardless, Ian McDiarmid is the villain of both Jedi and Sith, and he's vastly preferable to Adam Driver and Domhnall Gleeson. As is Christopher Lee, as close a thing Clones has to a villain.
In conclusion, it's late, I'm tired, and The Force Awakens is no better than the second-worst Star Wars film of all time. G'night.
No comments:
Post a Comment