I'm a Star Wars fan and I hate this movie:
"Star Wars - The Last Jedi" by Rian Johnson.
What follows are the ramblings of a deranged
mind after having watched this…
My feelings before the movie:
Yeeeeeeeehhhhaaaaaaaa! Tickets booked!!!!
Groaners can groan, moaners can moan,
Carpers can carp, and stay bloody home!
Jeeves! To the pictures! And don't spare the
horses!!!
For some reason I continue to follow the
endless loops of this space opera, despite having to endure long passages of
painful boredom watching interminable fight sequences and passages of cheesy
dialogue and chases down spaceship corridors pursued by ineffectual stooge
soldiers wearing white plastic armour. People speak of episodes one to three as
a low point in the series, but in a curious way they are representative of the
many low points in much better received episodes. So why continue to watch it,
even to the point of paying 10 euros for an IMAX cinema seat? Perhaps because
it functions in its clumsy way as a ring cycle for our times, reverberating in
some strange way with the sinister zeitgeist of the period between the fall of
the Russian empire and the ascent of Trump. Or maybe it is because I like
science fiction, even when it seems determined to bore me to tears.
I liked Palpatine in the prequels. The whole
manipulating the entire galaxy into beating the shit out of itself was a good
concept...Unfortunately they let Lucas write dialogue so we got... complaints
about sand, and Ewan McGregor desperately trying to salvage something from
Hayden Christiansen (who I blame less and less as the years go on - he did okay
given the dialogue he had to work with). So yeah, what could've been an
excellent piece of villainy over 3 films, manufacturing a galactic civil war
whilst also successfully turning force-Jesus into force-Satan by playing off
the inherent flaws of an ancient religious order (which was unable to look
inward and understand why their centuries old dogma needed to change or they
would inevitably face destruction) against the expectations of a young lad
who's literally been told he was the chosen one by his mentor. A lot...So yeah,
I like Palpatine in the prequels. I also fix the prequels a lot in my head. Part
of the problem for me is that the villains since Darth Vader have not been
scary in the slightest. I mean Anakin Skywalker going over to the dark side
because he had nightmares or some such bollocks was really pretty unimaginative
and drab fare. When I have loads of money, I'm going to buy a really big
window, just so I can stare out of it and look all moody and vaguely sinister. Even the original one is pretty goofy (and Mark
Hamill is incredibly whiny). The series probably peaked with Empire Strikes
Back. So, while overhype is all-but-certain for this one, it looks pretty good
for Star Wars Move #8. You'll forget about global warming, North Korean nukes,
and Trump tweets for two hours. About all you should expect, really.
My main issue with it was the confusing sides.
Why are the good guys always referred to as the 'resistance' here when the
rebels won? Shouldn't they be like... the army? The naming conventions of the
sides in this conflict are not well set out, and “The Force Awakens” does an
absolutely terrible job of setting the broader political scene.
My understanding: the First Order is
effectively a splinter group that's risen up from surviving elements of the
Galactic Empire, hence the Stormtroopers, tie fighters, and I suppose, the
liking for ridiculous giant battle stations. The New Republic, which I assume
was established in the aftermath of the Empire's fall, for some reason, doesn't
seem to want to combat the First Order. Perhaps hoping to simply co-exist and
reduce their sphere of influence. The Resistance is then formed from parts of
the New Republic out of those who believe the First Order is a threat and
should thus be dealt with directly. I think there was some insinuation that
they were funded in parts by the New Republic but covertly to prevent 'outright
war' or whatnot. To be honest it makes no sense why the New
Republic wouldn't want to combat the First Order, but I imagine it was a decision
made to make the good guys appear to still be 'plucky underdogs'. Yeah, that
doesn't work for me. The "Rebels" won in Jedi, they are the
establishment now, yet they are skulking around like some sort of guerrilla
army. Surely they have access to the entire Empire's military power and
could/should be able to obliterate Kylo Ren's mob with ease. If they are so
incompetent in power that they couldn't prevent the rise of the First Order
then perhaps they have no business being in power.
That's one thing the Prequels have over the new
Sequels, is it at least they fleshed out the situation of the galaxy/universe
better. Given the Empire was an evolution of the Old Republic, most of it
should sort of fallen back into the New Republic after the Civil War, so how do
the First Order still have access to high volume ship fabrication and defense
manufactures, that the NR would now have oversight of. Too much overthinking
obviously. It doesn’t matter that the rebels ‘won’ in ROTJ. Why would that mean
that 30 years later everything is fine on the galaxy? Didn’t the Americans
‘win’ the Iraq war? Didn’t they overthrow Saddam Hussein? Did the Iraqis live
happily ever after? Or did a bunch of crazy Jihadists take over a large chunk
of the country and blow lots of things up? Surely the Americans could have
easily crushed them!! This is the equivalent of the French resistance being in
operation again with Hitler still enjoy a “creme brulee” for brunch with his
Nazi buddies. The problem with this theory is that the film implies that we're
supposed to side with the Rebels/Rebellion, that somehow they're going to make
the galaxy a better place. However, as we know, they defeated the Empire and
now they've either a) fucked it up and lost their power - in which case, why
should we want them to win again when they were not good enough to maintain
control the first time? - or b) they're still in power but facing a rebellion
from the shell of the Empire that they defeated - in which case, aren't the
First Order now the underdogs and the side we should empathise with? It's the
Socialists vs Social Democrats (two political forces in Portugal; in England it
be something like New Labour vs the Tories at the end of Blair's period in
office - there are no good guys left and nobody really wants either to win
given their track record).
One of the things I liked about Rogue One was
that it showed that the Rebels were not all good guys - shit had to get real in
order to progress their cause and innocents died in the process. With that in
mind, the Rebels of the original trilogy are no different to the First Order of
this trilogy. There is an actual Muppet in all of this. Star
Wars was good because Lucas cobbled it together from the Hidden Fortress and
Dambusters. Then the Muppet show. Then the one with the gold bikini, which was
half good (gold bikini) and half rubbish (Ewoks). Three prequels, with the
comedy gay Jamaican, Jewish slave trader and slitty eyed aliens threatening the
Burmese queen in Japanese accents. Then a film with the utter cheek to have yet
another death star and yet another unsuspecting teenager on another desert
planet... although the crashed star destroyer and At-At gave
it a nice sense of history at the start. Rogue One was pretty good because it
mostly avoided the mystical nonsense and did Vietnam in space.
I make that two and a half good films out of
eight so far. Yeah, as a franchise, it started eating itself almost
immediately. Star Wars is like a black hole: created by sucking so many other
things into itself, then sustaining itself that way across huge spans of
time/space. Still, even a black hole shrinks over time, eventually fizzling
out. In that extremely broad sense, sure, all pop culture is a long retread.
But most of that stuff is not expected to keep animating a movie franchise (not
sure I want one based on poetry), never mind keep animating it for ever and
ever. Do they still sell those felt pillows? That may be why. (Milton squeezed 10-12 (depending on which
version) 'episodes' (some better than others) out of “Paradise Lost”, then 4
more from “Paradise Regained”. And he had far less characters to play with than
Star Wars. As if “Paradise Lost” wasn't a slog enough...)
Having said this, I am in the camp that says
Star Wars ended with George Lucas leaving the series, so I see these new movies
as fan fiction, which it is. It can be entertaining but for me Star Wars was
Lucas' vision, and even if people didn't like the prequels, they were part of
his world, and the Disney movies are just a step backwards. The Force Awakens
reset the whole rebels Vs Empire thing, meaning the previous trilogy was
inconsequential. They brought back the same iconography (Stormtroopers,
Millennium Falcon, X-Wings, Death Star, a desert planet, the same freakin'
story) from the very first film. That was to keep the brand familiar to
audiences marketing purposes. They made Rogue One for the same reason, to evoke
feelings of classic Star Wars and even brought Peter “Gushing” back from the
dead for that purpose. I wish Disney had gone with the Lucas story treatments
because this time he wouldn't have written the scripts and his versions may
have been interesting, and would have aligned with what he started with the
other films. He did polarise the fans, but at least the films would have gone
in some weird direction.
Also, audiences are getting J. J. back for the
next film - that is good as confirming the next films will be crap. The
original Star Wars was wonderfully ingenuous, it had a great pace and an
optimism that was infectious. Empire strikes back was just a wonderful movie,
due mostly to Harrison ford. Return of the Jedi was the weakest of the 3; the
ewoks didn't work and they relegated Harrison ford to comic relief. The next 3 had great potential with Neeson and
McGregor, who were both really good. But the kid playing Annakin, the crappy
robots and daft comedy aliens badly compromised the movies. The last 2 have
been formulaic and with little depth - but they've been really successful (like
the makers have got a hold of the marvel universe playbook). I think we can
expect more of the same.
Coming back to the “Last Jedi”, I wouldn't have
thought any Star Wars fan would have been satisfied with plot. Every strand of
story was just a pointless diversion to create an action set piece. And most of
the characters were just there to pull a plot lever when required (Del Toro the
worst offender - and how did he even know the information he betrayed? Finn
& Rose didn't). Finn's storyline - pointless. Poe's story-line - pointless.
Disappointed as both a Star Wars fan and a human being with half a brain cell.
My feelings after the movie:
Next flick in December 2018, if it's not by the
Coen brothers (it won’t be; see above) I'm not going to bother. Mind you there's a great idea
for a pitch - Coen Brothers "The Hudsucker Force Empire Lebowski Awakens Fargo"
starring Clooney, Turturro, Hamill and Goodman as
Chewbacca. It's a musical space opera based on Homer’s Iliad, but based in
small town 1960's America and the hero is a lawyer specialising in divorce, who
has a string of mistresses, but is also married to Princess Leia, who happens
to be a serial killer.
I received the following leaflet as I was
leaving the theatre after having watched the movie:
"After the failure of Lucas' prequels, we
here at Disney Corp. decided to 'give back' to fans and provide them with
exactly what they wanted: old faces in new costumes, lightsabres, big-dogs
driving spaceships and all that Sci-Fi crap they love. After the roaring
financial success of “The Force Awakens”, we knew we were onto a winner by
following well-researched business models and marketing strategies, which would
tick all the boxes for Star Wars fans old and new. The fans ate it up, and
myself and all the other shareholders here at Disney Corp. had a wonderful
Christmas. The enormous financial rewards from ticket sales and merchandising
has allowed us to acquire more assets and rival studios, so as to reduce the competition
from other distributors and film-makers, which could in anyway harm our
product. In fact, our enormous power and wealth has allowed us to hire
maverick, independent, American film-makers, such as Rian Johnson, with the
lure of a vast salary and a side-order of blackmail, in order to make sure the
latest product (TLJ) is directed to specification of our glorious leader
Kathleen Kennedy. Fans will want to see this 10/10 masterpiece again and again,
so we here at Disney Corp. have made sure that cinema chains will pay a large
part of their revenue stream in order to screen The Last Jedi, so that other
films don't get in our (your) way. Merry Christmas and do make sure to visit
the gift shop after your fourth viewing!"
NB: I watched the movie in January.
