This is essentially a rambly series of notes that might be used to make a more detailed essay for the future.
The best parts of the movie at those that are put into
motion by the characters motives. This is basic storytelling 101, that is: tie
the character to the plot, not vice versa. When the movie focuses on the “finding
Skywalker” main plot, it becomes an excellent film (a bit like how Episode II:
Attack of the Clones is a solid Obi-wan mystery plot juxtaposed with a
horrible Anakin romance/mass murder plot). The use of an A and B plot mangles
the third act, but we’ll get to that below.
Here’s what I thought was good:
Rey: I think Rey was the best thing about this movie.
Obviously, the actors have been freed up by a direct who like actors (and
usually strives for melodrama, but my dislike of Abrams aside, the actors are
working very hard in this movie). This character was handled with skill, her nature,
plot, and background were delivered smoothly in short bursts of sometimes
subtle, but present exposition and her movement through the film and her
development was compelling. Daisy Ridley was stellar, especially as she keeps
the plot moving in the most interesting directions and a lot rested on her
performance. (please don’t let her be a skywalker, please don’t let her be a skywalker).
Kylo Ren: I will immediately cop to thinking Ren was a
liability going into the theatre. Star Wars has a bad habit of raiding the same
trophes or narrative structures, and the “black armored Vader-worshipper” was making
me doubt the film. I was pleasantly won over. The character is three
dimensional, and while I admit the emo-Ren jokes are probably, I think it’s a
misread of the character. He’s not an adolescent moping, he’s a villain tempted
by the light. After years of “dark heroes” in comics and SF/Fantasy movies
(Aragorn has to be conflicted in Jackson’s films, Batman’s what Gotham deserves
in Nolan’s movies, etc) , this was a nice and complex twist. His lack of
control and his failures make him a villain like Richard the III or Macbeth,
that is a villain that you either sympathize with or want to succeed. Adam
Driver was very credible in every scene and I felt the combination of Ren and
Rey (please no siblings, please no siblings) could easily fill out two more
movies.
The Han/Leia relationship: If anyone needed reminding,
Harrison Ford is able to do more with a smirk than anyone other than Michael
Douglas. Ford’s charm aside, The Han/Leia relationship was mature, complex and
subtle. Much like the way Rey or the Force was handled, there wasn’t
heavy-handed exposition, just well-chosen words and well-acted scenes. One
bought the mature, no-longer together relationship, and it set the right tone
for the movie’s climax.
The Force: After the ridiculousness of midi-clorians and the
hyperactivity of Force usrs in the prequels, Clone Wars, and even Rebels, it
was nice to see the Force returned to a more limited and patient element of the
movies. The scenes are so nicely paced when Rey is learning from Ren, and so
well-done. I felt the Jedi mind-trick wasn’t fore-plotted well enough (Rey
should have either asked Solo about it or observed Ren using it), but the
interrogation and final battle sequence were willing to take their time and
develop the exchange instead of rushing for wish-fulfillment instant success. Likewise,
the use of Han Solo to confirm the Force was a good choice.
Character was the best thing about the movie. If the later
movies can focus on these new characters and let them drive the plot, it will
be a very strong trilogy.
What was Okay
Some the the characters failed to really engage the plot, or
the setting was present, but either running on routine or in need of new ideas.
Finn: Finn was compelling, but the plot arc was too heavy
handed at the start. I also felt that Finn was a little too quick-witted in his
jokes and irony for someone just “deprogrammed” from a violent training regime.
Still, John Boyega held his own against Ford, and the character added humor and
energy to the plot. I’m interested in seeing how he’ll develop in later films,
but right now he’s a bit distant from the main arc. The return to human/alien Stormtroopers,
and the brief lines between the General and Ren were great.
Maz: or, the new “Yoda.” I was interested in a more social, less
hermit “little wise alien” and I was sad to learn she’d been cut out of later
scenes. Still, I originally listed her as a “good” but in hindsight she became
an okay. As a character, there’s potential, but the film squanders her and
makes her a plot device instead of a character.
The First Order: I liked the way the story foregrounded that
the Imperials are space-Nazis. I hope everyone who dresses up like
Stormtroopers might start to think deeply about why they want to be space-Nazis
(I’m not being censorious or funny here: there is a serious discussion to be had about why the
Imperials are so compelling to fans of Star Wars and it’s one people keep
avoiding – the appeal of totalitarianism and Fascism might be purely aesthetic,
or it might be far more complex). Either way, I liked the fact that the
military leader assumed a more “Grand-Moff-Tarkin” like role in the movie, not
simply filling in as background. That particular element was well cribbed from
A New Hope.
Names: Generally speaking, the names were well chosen,
except for Finn and Poe. I kept waiting for an Ahab or Gatsby to wander in, or
a Captain Melville or Whitman to show up. Jedi Master Whitman the great Force
user, singing the Song of Myself or "I Hear Jakku Singing" as he lifts the Millennium Falcon out of a sandpit…"The
force is like the leaves of grass, my young apprentice, like leaves of grass."
Design: Generally speaking the film had strong design, but
that’s never been a problem for Star Wars. I felt the ships looked even more
dense or chunky, but that may work aesthetically with the prior six movies.
Dialog: “that’s one hell of a pilot” is the worst case of
having the “niave” character tell the audience how to react to a scene they’ve
just watched. Please, let’s have no more of that. The majority of the script
was good, if it did crib too much from the Joss Whedon “clever witty lines that
reverse the context” trick that he developed in Buffy and Firefly.
Climax: If the movie had remained focused on the “find-Skywalker”
plot, then the climax would have been gold. The space battle dragged it down
and didn’t add much to the narrative. I will avoid being too spoilerish, but
this was a brilliant scene between Ford and Driver (although why no hand-rails,
I mean who does health-and-safety on these places).
Dénouement: The final scene was nicely done, quiet and
unresolved. I though the circling shot was pulled us out of the characters too
much and so marred the moment. It was rushed into, but we’ll get that below.
Luke Runs-away: By now, there’s a repeated pattern: Jedi’s
are bad teachers and when they fail they run away. It felt tired. I liked the
idea of Luke retreating though…it makes a kind of Taoist find-the-hidden-master
plot that worked well. The idea that Ren and Rey would be racing to find him
was compelling. As an A-plot, it was new and interesting. The idea needed a
little more complexity…why couldn’t Ren fall after Luke had left? Then you’ve
got Luke’s regrets lived out in on-screen narrative time in the second movie,
and the scenes would write themselves…
Generally speaking, the use of minor characters was fine,
the monsters on the ship were okay, maybe too post-anime/manga, but let’s
forgive that for now. The design and the use of specific settings – Jakku, Maz’s
bar, etc was dealt with efficiently, with nice call outs to Miyazaki’s Nausicaa
of the Valley of the Wind in Rey’s introduction on Jakku.
What was Bad
The movie hits the ditch bad whenever the Resistance starts
to drive the plot.
World-building: Simply put, the world-building – Resistance,
First Order, New Republic—made no sense. Any time I attempt to but together
some kind of realistic framework for the polticis of this setting, it falls
apart. This is not the case for the first six movies – at every point, the political
frame of the setting’s background makes sense, even when it isn’t dealt with in
much detail (the briefing scene on the Death Star in A New Hope that mentions
the “senate” and the “emperor” was clear to a 7-year-old Canadian boy in
Edmonton, so I think it works). There is no sense of the setting beyond the
scene, and so the mass desctrution of billions of people on multiple planets is
utterly meaningless and approached bathos. The universe beyond Rey and Ren is
meaningless, and that’s not the way it should be.
Leader Giant-Hologram-Voldemort: This character was awful
and probably unnecessary. He was boring and the visual design distracting and,
oddly, poorly done. I thought he looked like an early Harry Potter version
(that bad CGI) of that Orc general Peter Jackson inserted into Return of the
King, toned down for kiddies and then plopped in. My wife’s immediate reaction
was “oh, it’s Voldemort” which is equally fair. No more evil emperors training
the dark-armor-villain guy please. Ren would be so much better with out him,
and the First Order way more evil if it was just a group of people being
monsters. We don’t need the deranged ugly hologram.
Starkiller: the weapon seemed dumb, and only seemed to exist
because of a perceived need to blow up a big weapon. It was a lazy crib from
the A New Hope, and never added to the plot. The Death Star is a real thing in
A New Hope – the destruction of Alderan is driven by the characters, the
characters then have to escape it, and then they blow it up. It created an
entirely unrelated B-plot that produced unnecessary drag on the A-plot.
Poe Dameron: He was compelling for the first ten minutes and
then was the figurehead of the B-plot dragging the plot into the ditch. I
thought he’d be there more, but he wasn’t, and as a result, he’s totally
disconnected from the other characters, no matter how many times he pats Finn
on the shoulder.
Actor service: The “minor” pilots and Resistance command
staff were dominated by familiar actors. It broke verisimilitude and generally
produced a sense of Hollywood-back-patting that didn’t help the already bad
B-plot.
R2-D2: This was the biggest gaff. The fact that R2-D2 was
going to wake up and have the missing piece of the map was completely obvious
and the heavy handed C-3PO lines were tiresome. When he just conveniently powered-up
and got things going so the plot could dénouement was lazy. If the latter half
of the film had been a race to R2-D2 (maybe Ren captured him with Rey and they
had to go back…), then the plot could have avoided the Starkiller and made the
R2 scene meaningful, but it felt like the writing was on auto-pilot. The fact that
J J Abrams has later tried to clarify this moment means it wasn’t handled well
in the film.
The Resistance: As I mentioned above, the Resistance makes
no sense politically as it is explained in the film. When the Resistance shows
up, we do get the great scenes with Han and Leia, but we also get the B-plot
and a lot of narrative drag.
Plot was a problem for the movie. The first half of the movie works on all engines, then it develops a conflcit between that it thinks the plot has to include and what the characters need to be doing to move the plot forward. This is largely the result of too much was cribbed from the first
movie. Some of it could be easily forgive (Maz’s bar, Jakku) because it was
similar, but different and it linked to the characters in clear, meaningful
ways (e.g. Jakku links to Ren, her scavenging, and her memories of being
abandoned). The B-plot can’t be considered a success because it isn’t developed
in tie with a character, not is it developed into a narrative need.
The movie was not as good as any of the classic trilogy
films, except perhaps for moment in Return or Lucas’s less confident direction
of actors in A New Hope. It is better than the prequel movies though and if the
writers can develop new ideas and focus on character, there’s a good chance for
stronger movies in the future. The move away from Abrams will likely be a good
thing (I don’t care much for him as a director or writer…I pitched an idea to
my wife tonight that he’s essentially a geek Michael Bay).
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