It's not a coincidence that I'm writing about the movie now, just before The Rise of Skywalker comes out. I mean I started writing it ages ago, but I realised that this was the ideal deadline to hit. It probably would've made more sense to write about The Last Jedi, seeing as it's the film that actually leads into the new movie, and to be honest I think it'd be more interesting to examine, but I figured I should start at the beginning of the trilogy. This way I get to talk about whether Rey is a Mary Sue or not, and I bet you're dying to read another opinion about that on the internet.
This will contain SPOILERS for the movie, but you know that as I've said it twice already. I say it on all my reviews in fact, even though there's a spoiler warning in the side panel over on the right. Maybe I could change the colour of the warning text next week, add a bit of variety.
Previously, in Star Wars: The Force Awakens:
Okay, the bad news is that Rey's been captured by Kylo Ren who wants to torture her for the location of Luke Skywalker, and also a bunch of New Republic worlds got blown up because the
But on the plus side, Finn, Han and Chewie have gotten BB-8 to the Leia and the Resistance, so they can finally find Luke Skywalker! Though I'd assume that's not their absolute top priority right now, because: space gun planet.
And now, the conclusion:
Finn's also reunited with his best friend Poe, who's pretty impressed that he finished his mission for him, and happy to help him out with his own mission. They go find General Leia, who manages to give Finn the impression that rescuing Rey is in any way a priority for them, and that he should tell them everything he knows about Starkiller Base so they can go do that. Leia knows what it's like to be held captive on a Death Star, being tortured for critical information, I'm sure she'd genuinely like to help Rey, but she also knows what it's like to have her planet blown up and is determined to put a stop to that happening again ASAP.
Leia also examines that map they got from BB-8, but C-3PO reveals that it doesn't match anything in their star charts. So that explains why they couldn't just fly straight to Luke with the piece of map they have: they need a landmark they recognise to start from.
Losing their son to the dark side of the Force was what drove Han back to smuggling and Leia back to leading a rebellion, but Leia hasn't given up hope that they can pull him back. If Luke could save Darth Vader, Han can save Kylo Ren. Hopefully without also killing him this time around.
Meanwhile, on Skywalker Base, the apparently redeemable Kylo Ren has Rey restrained in one of his many torture dungeons.
Ren tells Rey that they've recovered the other section of the map from the archives of the Empire, so now all they need is the map that's in her head and they can go get Luke. It's a bit weird that the Empire would have half a map to Luke in their archives, but it's really a map to the first Jedi temple so that does make more sense.
But hang on, the First Order have access to the Empire's archives? Do they have their shipyards too, is that where they got the new Star Destroyers from? Sorry, I'm still trying to figure out what the First Order actually is! I know A New Hope was similarly vague, but that wasn't a sequel.
Ren's getting very invasive with his mind reading now, spilling all her secrets, like how she sees Han Solo as the father she never had. But she puts up more resistance than Poe was able to when he tries digging in deep for the map. They she turns the tables on him, saying that he's afraid he'll never be as strong as Darth Vader!
See, this is why you need to be careful when you're showing off your Force abilities to another Force user: they may start to pick up on the trick themselves.
We also learn that they've tracked the Resistance ships back to their base so they can go blow them all up before they're able to find Luke. Funny enough it probably wasn't the Falcon they tracked, despite Han's concerns earlier in the movie. See, Han was just bullshitting because he didn't want to see Leia again, I knew it!
This is a bit of a weird scene though and not just because that's apparently an uncredited Daniel Craig in disguise as the Stormtrooper. I've got no problem believing that Rey could pick up the mind trick very quickly, but she's got no one to pick it up from. Ren didn't show it to her and I'm fairly sure she hasn't seen A New Hope, so where's this idea coming from?
Then again she knows about the Falcon's Kessel Run record, she's got a Rebel pilot doll, and she's aware of Luke Skywalker, so it's not a huge stretch to assume she's heard stories of what a Jedi can do. The movie could've done a better job of telling us that though.
Anyway, she makes a deliberate attempt here to convince her guard to let her out of her restraints, leave her the gun, and go away. He makes it clear he's got no intention of following orders from a prisoner, but she's got a lot more patience than Luke did (she knows all about waiting), so she just keeps trying it until it works.
Weirdly the scene's played for laughs, with a pair of Stormtroopers coming across his epic tantrum and making a quick 180 to retreat back down the corridor, but it works I reckon. The movie's been deliberately chipping away at Kylo Ren's projection of confidence instead of building him up, and we know by this point that he's no Vader.
Meanwhile Starkiller Base is in the process of killing a star to refuel. They do a really bad job of explaining how the thing works (in that they don't, at all), but it's apparently a mobile planet that flies off in hyperspace to drain another star before every shot. You'd think that they could just kill two birds with one sun by destroying their target's star, but that would end the movie too quickly so they're not doing that.
The Resistance somehow knows they have a time limit though, just like the Rebels did when the Death Star tracked the Falcon to their base. Only this time they don't have any secret plans revealing its weakness, all they have is Finn.
Ken Leung comes up with idea to destroy the thermal oscillator and Finn happens to know exactly where that is. A thermal oscillator is entirely different to a thermal exhaust port though, so they're going to need Han and Chewie to go in on foot and disable the shields first before the X-Wings fly in... just like in Return of the Jedi.
But to do that they need to steal a trick from Star Trek: Generations and get through their shields between cycles. They're also going to steal the trick of smashing their spaceship through a forest.
Things should've gone much worse really, considering that Han took them out of hyperspace a fraction of a millisecond before they hit the planet... and he did it manually. It's like leaping out of a plane and having to pull your parachute when you're exactly 0.05 millimetres above the ground. In fact it's just like in Star Trek Into Darkness, when the Enterprise... actually I've made enough movie comparisons already.
Unfortunately Ren senses Han's presence on the planet, just like Darth Vader sensing Luke in Return of the Jedi. Also Finn doesn't actually know how to get the shields down, he lied so he'd get a chance to rescue Rey. But that's fine, as they can just... use the Force! I love how Han's the one that's 100% committed to saving the galaxy here, and he's also the one who has to tell Finn that's not how the Force works.
And somehow they know exactly where to find Captain Phasma so they can get her to lower the shields, which means she finally gets another line in this movie! Man, you've got to have real confidence in your sets to give a character a helmet that reflective.
Rey's having an easy time sneaking around as well, though to be fair she's had a considerable amount of practice climbing around inside of Imperial installations and messing with their stuff. Sorry I mean First Order... no actually I do mean Imperial this time. Oh whatever, they're both the same bloody thing. Finn's had a lot of practice getting around First Order installations as well, as he used to work in sanitation here, and he utilises his experience to throw Phasma into the nearest trash compactor.
When the sun goes out Starkiller Base will be ready to fire on the Resistance hideout, but as long as there's light there's a chance. Well that's thematically on point.
I feel like I should point out that in all this time Rey has done absolutely nothing but kept out of sight. She hasn't learned any new Force powers like Ren was afraid of, she hasn't gunned down any Stormtroopers, she hasn't sabotaged the base, and she hasn't stolen a TIE Fighter and flown away. She didn't even swing across a chasm with a princess!
So that's objective B achieved, they've rescued Rey, but the X-Wings outside are still having trouble with objective A. C-3PO points out to Leia that it'll take a miracle to save them now, but they've got one better than that, they've got Han Solo!
He doesn't even need a call from Leia or Poe that explains the problem, he just rushes over to save the day so the X-Wings can do their job, just like he did back in A New Hope. They've only got a tiny bag of explosives but if they can get into the thermal oscillator and plant them on the other side of the armour they could do a sufficient amount of damage with them.
Man, hasn't he seen Empire Strikes Back? A walkway over a chasm is the exact wrong place for a father to ask his son to join him!
Han gets Ren to take off his mask, then brings him to tears by pointing out that Snoke's probably not got his best interests at heart and asking him to come home. It seems like Han's getting through at first, but he doesn't quite get what Ren's talking about when he asks to be free of the pain of being torn between the dark and the light. Han has inadvertently helped his son cope with the emotionally challenging task of murdering him, and he gets a lightsaber through the chest just as the sun outside finally goes dark.
But Han Solo really has become the latest character to be cut by a lightsaber and dropped down a chasm. More characters survive this than you'd expect, but I don't see him coming back from it. Neither does Leia, who feels his death from all the way back at the Resistance base.
Rey, Finn and Chewbacca are considerably closer to the action however, and it turns out you probably shouldn't piss off a Wookiee when he's got a massive bowcaster pointed at you. Chewie takes a shot and Ren doesn't block it! But he doesn't get blasted backwards by the force either, which is unusual. Guy's going to need to get a new kidney after this though.
I was getting worried for Chewbacca as well at this point, as the guy goes on a rampage and it looks like he's going to go down fighting. Plus he detonates the bombs when they're still inside, which is typically a sign that a character's not going to survive the movie.
Ren's wounded, but he punches the wound a few times to so that the pain will get him amped up (or to get his internal organs working again, it's not clear) and he definitely seems capable of finishing this before they can blink. Rey decides that shooting him again would be a good idea, but it works even worse than last time, as he just Force pushes her into a tree and knocks her out cold. To be fair to Rey, being a hero is tough and you shouldn't expect her to be instantly good at it with no practice.
Now it's just Finn and Ren... and Finn's got Luke's lightsaber! People say this movie's just a retread of the first film, but unlike A New Hope, this ends with the heroes actually confronting the villain and getting into a lightsaber fight!
There's a lot of things that stretch credibility in this movie, but the idea that Finn could survive even one minute of sword fighting against a trained Force user is utterly unbelievable, even if he is wounded. Fortunately the fight only lasts about 46 seconds, so it's fine. Less fine for Finn though, as he gets a nasty slash right down his back and it looks kind of fatal. It's a shame really, as he actually grew a spine and went against the First Order, even stood up to his boss, and now he's going to have to get another spine to replace it.
With that out of the way, Ren uses the Force to pull his grandfather's lightsaber to him, but it flies over into Rey's hand instead! This is his own fault for throwing her into a tree earlier really. Ren just hasn't learned yet that every time he uses an ability on Rey she's going to try to copy it, and now that she's acquired Force power #3 it's time for round 2.
When Poe gets to the hole he pulls a Star Fox, flying inside the oscillator to shoot weak points and then getting out before it explodes. The guy doesn't get a whole lot of screen time in this film, but whenever he does things explode good.
This is a bit awkward for Ren and Rey though, seeing as they're fighting on a planet that's tearing itself apart around them, while Rey's closest friend lies unconscious on the ground. Hang on, now Star Wars is copying a Star Trek movie!
Rey and Ren have been doing some clumsy angry fighting, wildly waving their swords around and doing more damage to the trees than each other, but Rey's been on the back foot the whole way and she's got nowhere left to go.
Ren tells her that he could teach her the ways of the Force, and that gives her an idea! She does the same thing she did back when she was trapped in that interrogation chair, calming herself down and focusing on achieving what she wants to achieve. Seems that she instinctively goes for the light side method of using meditation to tap into her abilities rather than the dark side technique of getting really mad, and it's been working out so far.
She turns the tables on Ren and goes on the offensive, inflicting a few superficial cuts before giving him a Final Fantasy 8 slice across the face. Though it didn’t look cool enough so he'll get the scar moved across a bit for the next movie. He's lucky she didn't take his whole head off really. He's also lucky that the ground splits apart between them she can finish him off. They're still both trapped on a crumbling planet though and Finn seems kind of dead.
By the way, the forest in these scenes was fake, as they pulled a Doctor Who and built it all inside a soundstage. Looks pretty convincing though I reckon.
Starkiller Base crumbles and explodes into a new star... and after watching that happen for 20 seconds we finally get to see that our heroes have made it and are flying off home victorious! Just like in A New Hope!
Man, I hope Dutch from Killjoys made it out.
Chewie's miserable as well, unsurprisingly. He and Han had been partners for over 40 years and the guy was one of the only people in the galaxy who could actually understand what he's saying. Plus he still didn't get his bloody medal!
To be fair no one's getting medals this time, as they're not really in the mood. Though R2-D2 has sensed that the movie's almost over and has powered back up again! And he's got the other part of the map! Which is good, because Rey didn't tell Han that the First Order had half of the map while they were still on Starkiller Base, so they didn't think to search the computer and download it.
This map shows how good the engines are on Star Wars ships, as getting across the galaxy is nothing to them. Assuming their galaxy is the same size as ours, the journey to Luke is almost equal in length to the USS Voyager's trip back home in Star Trek: Voyager, which was going to take the ship 75 years.
Finn is still unconscious but Rey's going to have to leave him here for a while. Not because she's going back to Jakku, but because she's the one who's going to take the mission to find Luke as the new pilot of the Millennium Falcon! I guess she owes the Resistance after they got her a second outfit to wear finally. Also they rescued her from Starkiller Base, which was nice too.
At first it seems like it's going to be an Empire Strikes Back ending, where the Falcon flies off at the end, but then the movie keeps on going!
And when she finally finds the protagonist of the first three movies, she holds out his old lightsaber and... keeps holding it out, because he doesn't move. For over 30 seconds they just stand there silently staring at each other as the camera spins around, and the film ends.
It'd take another two years before we found out if he took the damn thing, but that's fine. Rey's very good at waiting.
CONCLUSION
Man there's a lot going on in this movie. I thought Star Trek Into Darkness was exhausting to write about, but this is like a Star Wars' Greatest Hits compilation edited down to two hours.
It's obvious that director J.J. Abrams has more love for Star Wars than he does for Star Trek, as this is the second time he's made a remake! Though in the movie's defence, it doesn't deliberately draw attention to how it's echoing the earlier films. I thought Solo: A Star Wars Story was pretty obnoxious with all its endless callbacks, but The Force Awakens is happy just to be a remix. Not that the new crew haven't brought their own style and tone to it. Well, a little bit anyway. I did find it to be funnier than some of the older films, and not just because more of the jokes landed.
I suppose part of the problem with Star Wars is that it's typically about wars in the stars, so it's going to end up repeating itself. It's all kinds of genres blended together, with telekinetic laser samurais, cowboy pilots, robots and aliens fighting in Space World War II, but it seems like it's always going to focus on the plucky band of underdogs with the small spaceship fighting the assholes in the stylish uniforms with the big spaceships, forever. Though I expected the status quo to change at least a little bit after the end of Return of the Jedi, so that all the work the heroes did actually meant something.
The Expanded Universe gave us a different story of what happened after we left the classic characters celebrating on Endor all those years ago and for decades it was basically considered to be canon, in a way that Star Trek novels aren't. To be honest I've barely read any of the books (and I've heard a lot of them are terrible), but I played the games, I looked up what had been happening, and it seemed like things were moving on. Luke set up his academy and married Mara Jade, Leia and Han had a bunch of kids, Kyle Katarn grew a beard... they were doing alright! Now these new movies have come along and said that's not actually true, things actually went crap for everyone, and also the Empire's been replaced by its identical twin brother without any explanation so we're back to Rebels vs Imperials again! It kind of feels like they stole a happy ending from us.
On the plus side, the filmmakers' devotion to meticulously recreating classic Star Wars has made this feel a whole lot like classic Star Wars. The art direction, the music, the practical aliens... everything about this movie is exactly as it should be, as I want it to be. Updated when sensible, otherwise accurate to the source. Star Trek's been letting me down recently when it comes to continuity of design, but Star Wars always has my back. Plus they didn't pull anything too weird with the plot, like having the characters visit Earth or time travel back to the first movie or something. This could've gone very very wrong and it didn't. Though people do have their issues with the film...
Rey gets accused of being a Mary Sue and I think there has to be something to that, as it's clearly pulled a lot of fans out of the movie and they can't all be sexists. But I don't think it's that she's too damn competent and awesome, because she's actually kind of not. She has the baseline action hero skill set of being able to win fights and shoot straight, and she's good with spaceships, but her part of the plan is often to stay out of sight and pull fuses while everyone else runs around, and one time she messed that up so bad everyone almost died. She does develop a few Force powers quickly without any training, but not any better than Luke, who was able to block blaster bolts and telekinetically guide torpedoes down a tiny exhaust pipe after being instructed to 'reach out with your feelings' and 'use the Force' respectively. And I'm not surprised Rey won her lightsaber duel against a wounded Ren despite his years of training. The fact that Finn was able to survive more than 10 seconds against him shows that getting a bowcaster bolt to the side can really put you off your game.
Finn's very relatable for a Stormtrooper, as he's just a regular guy torn between his instinct to help people and his predisposition towards self-preservation. He thinks people are crazy to take a stand against evil because he's been to one of evil's massacres and he cleaned the floors in their unstoppable planet killer, but then he goes charging into the lion's den to save a friend he's known for just a couple of days. One thing I found interesting is that neither Finn or Rey really join up with the fight against the First Order by the end, not like Luke did in the first movie. Finn goes along with them to Starkiller Base to rescue Rey, and Rey presumably volunteers to find Luke because he knows where the instruction manual is for the Force, so they've still got a ways to go before they're selflessly working for the good of all the galaxy.
Ren's interesting too as he knows he's the Darth Vader of the movie, but he's also aware that he doesn't live up to it. Luke and Anakin were tempted by the Dark side, but he's tempted by the Light and it's a real struggle for him. He has his badass calm controlled persona, but he keeps throwing tantrums when things don't go his way. Plus Darth Vader was saved by Luke so there's a question mark over Ren about whether he can be turned around as well. The character works for me.
Here's something else I noticed about the characters: there's no romance. Sure there's Han and Leia, and I bet a lot of fans are seeing something develop between Poe and Finn, but the script doesn't force anyone to fall in love at first sight just because they're people in a movie, and that came as a bit of a relief for me. And not putting Rey in a overly sexy costume was probably a smart move too, as much as the world loves Slave Leia.
The characters came with plenty of mysteries though. Who are Rey's parents? What's Snoke's deal? Why did Luke run off to the first Jedi temple? Why was Maz holding on to Luke's lightsaber? What made Ren turn evil? Who's going to be the one using the blue lightsaber by the end of the movie? Where did the First Order come from anyway? To be honest I cared about maybe 40% of the mysteries, but it seems like other people got a lot more invested in them, judging by the reactions to the revelations in The Last Jedi (or lack of them). Hopefully Rise of Skywalker is going to give people let down by the last film the closure they've been craving, and bring both sides of the fanbase back together at last.
Where does the Force Awakens fit in my personal Star Wars rankings? Somewhere pretty high I think, definitely above those prequels and Solo. But then I like Star Trek 2009 as well so I'm clearly just a J.J. Abrams fan. It's not particularly original, but it's got the enthusiasm and charm of an old school Star Wars film, and it feels like it's part of a big important mythic saga. As much as I love the Trek films, they never feel like an event in the same way as a Star Wars episode.
COMING SOON
Alright, I'll shut up now and let you write your comment.
Yeah, I've never been clear on what the First Order is. I've seen it explained -- not in the films, because that would be too easy -- that it's sort of like the Star Wars equivalent of when top Nazis ran off to South America after WWII, but those Nazis didn't then go on to build an army that was bigger and more technologically impressive than what Germany had.
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting that you characterise Rey as "meeting up with the original characters and basically walking off with their story" because I sort of felt the opposite. I very much enjoyed the first part of the film, being introduced to Finn and Rey -- Ren not so much* -- and seeing what they were about, but then halfway though the film the original characters turn up and it becomes more about them and I wasn't as interested in that as I felt their story had already been told.
I suppose I want new stories set in the Star Wars universe, and it sort of looked like we were getting that, but it turned out to be the Skywalker Soap Opera again.
*(I like the idea of Ren. A Darth Vader fanboy who feels the pull of the Light side and hates it, that's interesting. I think it's the performance that kills the character for me.)
I think Disney has to be thinking about how the reactions to the last few movies compare to the reaction to the Mandalorian, which actually DOES tell its own story with its own characters, without endless bloody callbacks.
DeletePersonally I'm fine with the classic characters coming back, I wanted to see what they'd been up to. What bothers me is that every movie since, well Return of the Jedi, has either been a prequel or an echo of earlier events. Even when they tried to be clever about it to subvert expectations, the end result was basically a retread. I find it hard to take a story seriously when I'm struggling with deja-vu the whole time, and all I can see is what they did there.
Also you and Adam Driver are apparently the only two people who don't like Adam Driver's acting.
I think Star Wars ships will lose the speed advantage once Starfleet perfects that slipstream drive that showed up in Voyager a couple of times. That thing seems awfully similar to hyperdrive. It even looks the same.
ReplyDeleteI guess we'll find out if they ever manage that next year.
DeleteIt kind of feels like they stole a happy ending from us.
ReplyDeleteThis is an unfortunate side effect of unplanned sequels in general. Ghostbusters ends on a high note, then the sequel tell us the gang got mistreated and disbanded in disgrace. Star Trek: The Motion Picture ends with a newly invigorated Kirk, then the sequel shows us he's back behind a desk, depressed, and the shiny new Enterprise is demoted to a worn-out flight trainer.
The key point about happy endings is that they are endings. The laziest way to tell more story is to cancel the ending, which also cancels the happy, and it frustrates me.
Yeah definitely.
DeleteThough it's not so bad when the sequel gives the characters back their happy ending afterwards. Like how Star Trek 2... oh maybe that's a bad example. Though in Star Trek 3... okay, that's another bad example.
At least they didn't screw it up when they finally got the happy ending back in Star Trek 4 by later telling us everything immediately went to crap after the credits began rolling.
Delete"Sadly, George and Gracie proved to have no immunity to the pathogens of the 23rd century and within a week of arrival both died from whale flu."
DeleteYeah, Star Trek 5 was definitely 'show' rather than 'tell' when it comes to everything immediately going to crap.
Delete