Dec 21 2015

Thoughts on The Force Awakens

First things first: here there be spoilers.

With that out of the way, and having seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens twice now, here’s a rundown of what I thought about the movie (short version: I liked it, but wasn’t blown away, there’s some problems that needed to be addressed).

THE GOOD

1. It’s entertaining.

Seems like an obvious thing to expect from a Star Wars movie, but it’s not. Not after all the prequels, especially Attack of the Clones. You actually have fun in the movie for a good portion of it.

2. The first act.

I would say the first act of the movie, which comprises the introduction of our main characters in and around Jakku, it’s pretty much perfect. Up until the moment Rey and Finn escape in the Millenium Falcon, I was impressed. There’s nothing in this first act that I would change, except perhaps the stupid opening crawl, which sounded too childish and simplistic to me and bothered me right away (yes, I know it was done in the style of every Star Wars movie, but… more on that later).

3. The escape from Jakku.

Speaking of the escape in the Millenium Falcon, I have to say this is one of the best sequences in any Star Wars movie, and certainly my favorite from The Force Awakens. Right from the start, when Rey initially dismisses the (yet to be revealed) Falcon for being “garbage” (cue OT reference), only to be forced into using it after her chosen ship was destroyed, to Rey and Finn’s celebration after finally escaping, it was a beautiful thing to behold.

4. Rey.

Daisy Ridley was perfection as Rey, on par with Carrie Fisher’s OT Leia. In the prequels we had potential with Ewan McGregor as Obi Wan, but the scripts never allowed him to fully realise that potential. Rey soars high in this movie, and I would venture to say she had a better start than Luke Skywalker’s in A New Hope.

5. Finn.

John Boyega as Finn wasn’t quite on par with Ridley, but he was pretty damn good himself. First time I watched the movie I thought he was a tad too comical at times (even Han Solo asks him to turn it down a notch at one point), but on second viewing I’m fine with it. He is comic relief, but without sacrificing good characterisation or his own dignity. I do wonder what his role will be in the next two movies, though, as he seemed to be more of a plot device than an integral part of the trilogy’s overarching story.

6. Poe Dameron.

Probably the coolest, most likeable character in the movie. I’ll reserve the negatives for the next section.

7. John Williams’ score.

I placed it here because there won’t be a neutral section to this review, and this score wasn’t bad. It wasn’t memorable, however; the only new theme that stayed with me was Rey’s, and even that one wasn’t all that great. In A New Hope we had Luke’s theme, in Empire Strikes Back we had the Imperial March and Yoda’s theme, in Return of the Jedi we had Luke & Leia’s theme, in The Phantom Menace we had Duel of the Fates, in Attack of the Clones we had Across the Stars, and in Revenge of the Sith we had Battle of the Heroes. All of these themes were memorable. Rey’s was good, but on par with these? I don’t think so, but only time will tell. Besides that, the score itself didn’t have the operatic quality of the original trilogy. I think we will never get that back, Williams is too old at this point (83, the man is a machine!). The prequels also suffered from a less operatic, more standard set of scores.

8. Stormtroopers.

It was about time that stormtroopers stopped being the butt of most Star Wars jokes and finally got some badassery bestowed upon them. Not only did we have Finn deserting their ranks (so an ex stormtrooper was one of our main characters), but overall they were more intimidating, what with flame throwing that village, slaughtering the people in it, Daniel Craig’s stormtrooper resisting Rey at first, that other stormtrooper who seemed to have a history with Finn and challenged him to a sword fight… I won’t speak of Captain Phasma because she doesn’t belong in this section. The rest of them, though, got thumbs up.

9. Kylo Ren.

He wasn’t on the level of Darth Vader, but really nobody is. Heck, Rey told him point blank that his greatest fear was never reaching Vader’s level. Ren was, however, what Darth Maul should have been in the prequels, had Lucas given him a little bit more love. He was also interesting in how he wasn’t all badass like the other villains, but was still learning the ropes and we are just witnessing some of his potential. That he had an issue with falling to the light side was a very interesting twist, and like Luke before him his greatest test was facing his own father and killing him. By no means a perfect character, but I’m onboard with him.

10. BB8.

Perfection. BB8 was to R2D2 what Rey was to Leia.

THE BAD

1. A New Hope Reloaded.

Yeah, I get that these movies “rhyme” and are “poetry”, but I call bullshit on that. They don’t need to. The movie was as close as you can get to a remake of A New Hope without actually making it a straight up remake. It wasn’t just some stuff like Starkiller base being Death Star 3.0, Rey being Luke 2.0, etc., but a bunch of scenes and sequences like Maz Kanada’s place for Mos Eisley cantina, the escape from Jakku that included stormtroopers asking around for a droid, said droid containing important information to save the galaxy, Han being killed by Kylo as Kenobi was killed by Vader (after being the young one’s mentor), and even Rey hanging from a wall in Starkiller base like Obi Wan was when avoiding stormtroopers in the Death Star. There were many other callbacks, and it got to be too much. I would say that JJ Abrams was just playing it safe, if he hadn’t done the exact same thing with his two Star Trek movies. Since he was a Star Wars fan, I was banking on that to get something more original.

Nope.

2. Starkiller base.

I mentioned it already, but it bears mentioning again because of how stupid it was. So all that Star Wars can manage is to have a big, bad base as the destination for our heroes last desperate attack before facing destruction? And how did the First Order finance it? The Empire controlled the galaxy, so they could afford it, but the First Order is the remnant of the Empire, and Starkiller was far greater than the Death Star. And on a related note, how did people in the Hosnian (?) System able to witness the destruction of the Republic’s bases, as if they were planets in the same system? Should we expect a second Starkiller in Episode IX?

3. The First Order.

Not that the First Order per se was a bad thing, far from it, but to expand on my comment about Starkiller base, how did they finance it when they are supposed to be what’s left of the Empire? Shouldn’t they be in the position the Rebel Alliance was in in the OT, and the Republic hunting them down? It seemed, at best, an even match, except that the Republic fleet was mostly concentrated on one system, a la Pearl Harbor, which means they aren’t as spread out throughout the galaxy as one would think after overthrowing the Emperor and taking over a fractured Empire. That attack on Starkiller was so dismal they could only muster a few X Wings, when even in the first Star Wars the fleet that flew to the defense of the Yavin 4 base was composed of at least two different classes of fighters (Y Wings, I believe, being the other). The Republic can’t afford a Death Star, and I’m sure they would build something similar if they could, so how can the First Order do it?

4. Captain Phasma.

Such a great buildup for nothing. Phasma was barely in the movie, but what’s worse is how her biggest participation was getting captured by Finn and company, and then complying with their demands. I was expecting her (since they didn’t know how to deactive the shields) to use some sort of computer trickery to get the guards on them, but no…

5. Opening crawl.

“Luke Skywalker has vanished! Blah blah blah!” Ok, so? I get that he was an important part of the Alliance, but to rest on Luke’s shoulders the fate of the galaxy, to assume that if he’s gone the First Order will simply take over again, is ridiculous. The plot for this movie was too simple and stupid; in A New Hope R2’s plans were crucial because the Death Star was such a terrible weapon, but here what’s so important in possession of BB8 is an incomplete map to the whereabouts of Luke. Who made that map? Was it Max Von Sydow’s character, who lasted all of five minutes in the movie? If it was him, why not simply tell Poe Dameron? How did he, or whomever made the map, find out where Luke was? If the rumor was that Luke was trying to find the first Jedi Temple, why not raid the old Empire archives for its location, something that Kylo Ren mentions is under First Order control? Wouldn’t that make for a better quest? Let’s infiltrate the archives, which are in so and so planet (Coruscant? Moved elsewhere?), and that’s the final mission, but the horror! the First Order has also uncovered the location of the Resistance’s secret base, and are moving an all out assault that will result in a big space fight, yadda yadda yadda. This way we get rid of the stupid Starkiller McGuffin base as well.

6. The final battle.

My complaint with it is that it didn’t feel epic. The final battles of both Episodes IV and VI were grand in scale, and you felt there was a lot at stake. Not so here, even though the Resistance was at risk. It felt more like the meaningless battle at the end of The Phantom Menace.

7. The epilogue.

It just felt rushed. Like, yay we destroyed the third Death Star, but *sad face* Han is dead… but whatever, and oh R2 woke up from his coma just in time, like this was some sort of Carmen San Diego game where beating the final boss unlocks the map to find her, so let’s get this completely new girl Rey to join Chewie in searching for Luke like Chewie and Lando did for Han at the end of Empire Strikes Back, except that they actually find Luke in this movie, and very quickly, and then Rey climbs the mountain and finds Luke peeing or maybe just meditating, and offers him his old lightsaber but he’s like “nah, I’m not doing that anymore” and leaves her there awkwardly hanging with her hand extended, roll credits.

It didn’t have the force (no pun intended) of the endings of…well, any of the previous Star Wars movies. Except Episode III, that ending was rushed as hell too.

8. Not enough character development.

There was very little more that I knew about our new main characters at the end than at the beginning. I know Finn was raised to be a stormtrooper, but why did he have an attack of conscience if he was raised that way? And this was his first offense (the desertion), so during all that time he didn’t show any signs of not going along with the program. With Rey we got like five more questions for every answer about her character. With Poe Dameron we don’t know anything about him beyond being the best pilot in perhaps the galaxy, and a very likeable guy. He was the most underutilised of the three, by far. The only character that we truly understand much better at the end is Kylo Ren.

THE UGLY

Image courtesy of some spoiler loving asshole.

There’s only one ugly thing, and it’s Han Solo’s death.

Not that his death was wrong. No, I’m fine with him dying, and I was actually expecting it to happen even before all those damn spoilers in the first few days of the movie’s release. My problem was with how he was treated like some disposable character, to be killed and tossed away, mourned a little, and then move on.

This is Han freaking Solo. He is the Batman of the Star Wars Trinity (Luke being Superman and Leia being Wonder Woman). He is a legend both in our real world and in the Star Wars universe. He deserved to be retrieved by Chewie (no fall into the pit), and given a proper funeral. I wanted to see Chewie go completely berserk and attack Kylo Ren in such a way that he had to retreat; Chewie could have had his own great moment right there. I wanted Leia to mourn her love at the funeral, say some powerful eulogy, and shed some silent tears for him while doing so. No complete emotional breakdown, of course, but something that went beyond a sad face. He deserved a death like Spock’s, not like Kirk’s. It would have been the antithesis of the Throne Room finale from A New Hope.

The way in which he died was a bit clumsy too. Han is a smuggler, and has been for many decades. This guy is a master of escaping ambushes, of smelling the bullshit from far away and taking the necessary measures. You could also tell, by the look on his face when Leia asks him to bring their son back, that he doesn’t believe it’s possible. He knows that Ben Solo is gone, that Kylo Ren is too powerful a presence now, and he only goes through with it because of Leia. So walking so carelessly towards Kylo Ren, without at least a hint of distrust (a distrust that Kylo Ren would have sensed, sending him to the brink of the darkside, away from the lightside forever) was just plain dumb.

Dying was fine. How he died, and the aftermath, was nothing short of insulting. I think that’s the worse important character death I have ever seen, especially in what was otherwise a very enjoyable movie (despite what this long rant appears to say).

An that’s it. Those are my thoughts on The Force Awakens. You are free to leave your own comments on the movie below, whether you agree or disagree with me and what your own thoughts are. Now let’s cross our fingers for Episode VIII: The First Order Strikes Back.

Aug 25 2014

TV Show Review: “Attack on Titan” Season 1

That day humanity remembered the terror of being ruled by them. The humiliation of being kept in a cage.

So begins the first episode of the anime series Attack on Titan, as the Colossal Titan rises above Wall María to the horror of the city’s inhabitants. The wall’s breached, and a hundred years of peace are over forever.

Here are some words I can use to describe this anime’s first season:

Wow.

Spectacular.

Gory.

INTENSE.

“Intense” is by far the best description I can give it. In fact, it is such a perfect description that from now on I will use an intensity scale based on this when describing other works (and there will be some future reviews with “intense” as the best description as well). This anime is a Titan 10. 10 is not necessarily the highest level of intensity, but for the purposes of scale calibration I will use it as the point of absolute awesomeness intensity. (Of course, levels of intensity vary according to every person’s stomach).

But before going into detail about what makes Attack on Titan intense, let’s touch upon what it is about:

So we are on a world. I guess it’s supposed to be Earth, perhaps the Earth of an alternate reality, perhaps another planet, sort of how Middle Earth, or Earthsea, or any other totally fantastic world might be another planet on another universe. They don’t delve into that much detail, but they don’t have to. All you need to know is that this is a quasi-medieval world mixed with some steampunk technology, and that one hundred years before the start of our story, giants popped into existence and wiped out most of humanity. Those that survived built a huge walled city that has two more concentric walls within protecting other… cities, I suppose. The outermost wall, named Wall María, protects the part of the city/country where our hero, Eren Jaeger, lives with his family and adopted sister Mikasa. The walls are too high for the giants – the titans – to climb and invade the city, until one day a titan of colossal proportions appears out of nowhere and destroys part of the wall, creating a breach through which the lesser titans can get in.

At this point I should mention that the lesser titans reason for existence seems to be devouring humans.

So the first wall’s breached, chaos ensues, Eren and Mikasa barely escape, and while Eren’s father was away on an errand his mother dies a horrible death which Eren is witness to. This death was the introduction to the series’ gore and… well, the intensity I have been talking about. Attack on Titan isn’t pulling punches when characters die; it shows you their deaths in a way that you suffer their loss almost as much as the characters in the story do. It makes you look. And considering how the mindless titans’ way of dealing with people is by eating them alive, it’s pretty frightening to look at.

So of course this is the catalyst our hero needed to finally go over the edge and train to kill titans. Actually, he already wanted to train and join the corps that kills titans before all of this happens, but now this wish becomes an obsession. So he, Mikasa and their best friend Armin join the military, eventually working their way into the Survey Corps – the ones that leave the “safety” of the walls to venture into the open and scout (and kill) titans. There are plenty other mysteries that pop up little by little as the series progress, but I won’t spoil that much to you.

At its core, it’s not a great story. Nothing really special about it, just humans trying to survive the horror that besieges them. And that’s fine. What actually makes Attack on Titan so special are the technical aspects. For one thing, the cinematography is beautiful. Just look at those screenshots I have been posting and tell me you aren’t impressed not only with the look of it but with the sense of scale. The editing and direction are spot on, with the action sequences deserving special recognition; the steampunk tech that I alluded to earlier helps the soldiers move faster by using a device employing grappling hooks and steam propulsion to navigate a la Spiderman among buildings or forests. This adds much dynamism to the action, and the combination of all these elements makes for a complete cinematic experience. Add to that the gore and the realisation that no character is safe (think Game of Thrones here), and every time you see a titan and an action sequence you will catch yourself gripping your seat tightly while thinking “fuck, fuck, fuck, who will they get this time?!?”. Fear is an essential part of the series. There’s no chivalric heroism to speak of here; everybody’s scared shitless of the titans, and with good reason. Sure, there are the typical badass characters from every anime that appear to be fearless, but they are no heroes. They know what’s at stake, and they know their limits. For most characters, though, the very human emotion of fear grips them whenever a titan is nearby, and that’s contagious. The world seems to be clouded with despair, and so rising above this reality and doing your job – however dangerous and/or suicidal it might be – is the true heroism in Attack on Titan.

The story’s plot twists are good enough to keep your attention beyond these technical aspects I mention, of course, and there’s always a cliffhanger leaving you craving for more. Attack on Titan isn’t so much a masterpiece of literature as it is a roller-coaster ride with great animation storytelling. A definite must-see.

Sep 8 2013

Goodreads Review: Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

Gone With The Wind 75th Anniversary Edition by Margaret Mitchell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Literary speaking, this book is as well written as any I have read. Amazing, well developed characters; perfect story pacing and dialogue; a narrative style that keeps your interest throughout the 1000+ pages of novel; enough historical detail to give it authenticity without becoming a scholarly drag; an epic storyline set against one of the most pivotal moments in U.S. history… there are no faults that I can find from a writing perspective. The only fault, one which I’m sure must have been addressed countless times already, is the blatant racism Mitchell displays at several points in the novel. More on that later.

As I went through the novel I kept going back to the movie sequences of what I was reading about. I have to say, for such a long book the movie adaptation was incredibly faithful, and while a lot of people will point out that the movie is about four hours long, the truth is that what was contained in this novel could have easily taken fifteen to twenty hours of screen time. That David O. Selznick and company managed to “trim it down” to four hours and still appease the public with what would become a classic among classics is nothing sort of spectacular. Remember, this book was the greatest bestseller of its time, and the frenzy it created could perhaps be compared in modern times to Harry Potter (different audience, obviously), and so would the demand for as faithful an adaptation as possible. The casting was spot on, and that, too, made it into my imagination as I read. Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O’ Hara got to be some of the best cast roles of all time. They were legendary in the movie, and they were legendary in the novel.

Scarlett O’Hara

The story centers mostly around Scarlett and her growth from a fifteen year old spoiled girl to a twenty eight year old woman. By the end of the story she is by no means a “finished product”; there is still plenty of room for further growth in her character, but she has gone through a lot and she is very different from how she began. The point was never to make her a heroine (if anything, she is sort of an anti-heroine), but to show her relentlessness against all odds, and how that drive will not only allow her to survive the devastating effects of the Civil War, but to prosper – first from the state of economical poverty she was thrown in by the war, and later from the moral poverty she suffered of from the get go. The rest of the cast in the story is there to chip away and mold the character that is Scarlett O’Hara into what she “finally” becomes. They are as much tools in her development as the sequence of events that are set into motion.

Rhett Butler and Melanie Wilkes

Two characters in particular, beside Scarlett, held my sympathy and attention: Rhett Butler and Melanie Wilkes. Rhett is the quintessential dashing rogue, the rebel that will play his own game and get ahead of the rest of his society, a society which adheres to antiquated rules and is eventually forced to change in order to survive. Because of this, Rhett is despised and/or envied by most, except for Melanie Wilkes, whose saintlike (or perhaps, naive) personality only allows her to see the good in people. In the wrong hands this character would have been trite, uninteresting and unrealistic; but Mitchell knew what she was doing, and as with the rest of her cast she built a solid foundation from which Melanie emerged as one of the most sympathetic characters I have ever read. Her last scene – the result of which I knew already from the movie – still managed to move me, and even had me wondering as of what she really knew of the relationship between Scarlett and her husband Ashley Wilkes. Both Rhett and Melanie were perfect complements to Scarlett: Rhett’s personality allowed him to see Scarlett for what she really was and still – and thus, purely – love her just the same, while Melanie’s blinded her to Scarlett’s many faults, allowing her to become the fiercely loyal friend Scarlett needed to endure many of her calamities.

As for the racism, it didn’t bother me for the most part. I simply took it as a Southern story told by a Southerner, to which feeling superior to blacks was as normal as breathing. It gave the story an added authenticity that would be lost nowadays in the politically correct climate we live in. The problem is that at some points Mitchell went on a rampage, blaming the “inferior” blacks as much as the Yankee Republicans (who were the true villains of the story) for all the sufferings of the poor, defeated state of Georgia. While the racism was left to the background as an afterthought it was easy to handle, but when Mitchell pushed it to the forefront for no other reason than to denigrate blacks it became an infuriating experience. Mark Twain was just as authentic with his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn without being offensive; Margaret Mitchell’s true colors shone here, and that was the one thing were the movie can claim to be superior to the novel, since David O. Selznick made a point to cut the offensive parts from his adaptation.

All in all, however, Gone with the Wind is one of the greatest novels I have ever read, and a superior product to its classic adaptation. Then again, this shouldn’t come as a surprise; books usually are superior to their movies.

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Sep 6 2012

Goodreads Review: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ll be honest: I was surprised by how much I liked this book. Not that it’s a masterpiece or anything remotely close to that, but it’s really entertaining (except for the first few chapters, which are a bit of a drag). Once it gets going, it does get going, and this is all thanks to Collins’ excellent narrative. It just FLOWS smoothly.

What puzzles me is how closely the movie (which I saw before reading this) resembled the book, and yet it completely lacked that sense of entertainment. I guess since the subject matter is a bit crude for a Young Adult audience – you know, the whole children killing children thing – they went with a very somber mood, effectively killing whatever sense of entertainment you might get out of this. The truth is, it reads very PG-13, and not the R you would think a story like this would be; Katniss, the heroine, never once succumbs to the depravity of the killing, and neither does Peeta, so despite the carnage you never feel any sort of morbidity. If anything, you probably feel the same kind of detached excitement over the whole thing that the people from The Capitol feel, which is a curious thing, considering how it’s Katniss who’s telling the story, Katniss who is the complete moral opposite of the citizens of The Capitol.

The romantic triangle, while forced, actually fits and adds to the tragedy. I have no problem with this, but with how it eventually became the center of attention. I guess that comes with the YA territory, and would have been worked differently had the story been aimed at a more adult audience.

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Talking about entertainment… my way.

Tag Archives: entertainment

Thoughts on The Force Awakens

TV Show Review: “Attack on Titan” Season 1

Goodreads Review: Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

Goodreads Review: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins