wherein Liz finally gets around to seeing the new Star Wars

[edenfalling]

I went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens after work today.

That was a fun movie. That was proper Star Wars. :D

It was also a very silly movie in some places, and the dramatic tension (which was really good up through the first, oh, 1/2 to 2/3 of the movie) fell apart in really unnecessary ways toward the end. For example, getting the shields down around Starkiller Base should have been a lot harder instead of an utter anticlimax, and as I believe others have already noted, if you have two people swordfighting on a planet that's falling to pieces, you can and should do a lot more with environmental complications than just conveniently separate your protagonist and antagonist at the end. Let them each fall off a cliff at least once!

On the silly front, the script did dredge up a sliver of scientific handwaving and say that the superweapon Mcguffin was a hyperspace laser, which explains how it traveled so far so fast... but that renders the fact that Rey, Finn, et al could see it from Maz Kanata's establishment -- apparently traveling at normal lightspeed -- even more ridiculous. And the planets it hit were, um, rather oddly arranged, shall we say. I don't think JJ Abrams has a very good grasp of interstellar scale. His general failure to grasp that travel time is a thing also struck repeatedly, making interplanetary journeys seem like they take less time than, oh, driving from New Jersey to Ohio. Those two failings annoyed me a lot in his Star Trek movies, and while they annoy me a bit less here because Star Wars has always been upfront about being myth-in-space rather than anything even vaguely approximating hard sf, there is still a limit on the amount of disbelief I will suspend, dammit!

But those quibbles aside, I loved our heroes -- both new and old -- and am looking forward to Episode VIII in a couple years.

(I do not have high hopes that the next movie will deal with the social, political, and economic consequences that the destruction of six planets will have on the New Republic, nor provide much explanation of the relation of the Republic to the Resistance and why the fight against the First Order appears to be covert rather than overt, but hey, that's what fanfiction is for. Canon just needs to keep providing good characters, narrative tension, and dramatic fights, whether those are space battles or lightsaber duels. *grin*)

Comments

[branchandroot]

I so agree about Star Wars being so much more about the Shiny that it can get away with fudging all the details, while Trek was an Issue show from the start and kind of demands more attention to things like that. One goes to see them for different things.

[edenfalling]

The Shiny! Yes, that is a good way to put it. Star Wars is very shiny, and also sparkly. :D

This is not to say that I demand or expect strict scientific accuracy from Trek. The word 'technobabble' was coined for a reason, after all! But I do want Trek to be about ideas/ethics at least as much as about action. Admittedly, that's harder to do in two-hour movies than in a television series, but even allowing for differences in format, the reboot movies have gone too far over to the explosions and spectacle side of the scale for my taste. I like both franchises an awful lot, but I like them for different things and it's frustrating when one tries to become the other. :-/

[othercat]

Yes but how do you feel about jedistormpilot? (I really liked Finn. And Rey. And Poe.)

I am also amused that Kylo Ren was supposed to be the new super sexy antagonist. Um. No. That big call to the Light side is your grandpa headdesking forever in the Force dude.

[edenfalling]

I am very much in favor of Rey and Finn and Poe, both separately and in combination. :D

I think the film is aware that Kylo Ren is not a sexy/compelling villain, but more of a whiny self-centered wannabe who clearly slept through all his history lessons, made his own damn problems, and has forgotten the first rule of holes. The marketing department, on the other hand... *sigh*

(Anakin is totally headdesking in the Force, in between chewing his idiot grandson out and kicking things when Ben ignores him once again.)

[mme_hardy]

I consider him attractive trash in the way I do Eridan. SUCH a disaster, and so interesting to break.

[edenfalling]

You have put your finger exactly on why I find Kylo Ren only slightly more interesting than dirt: because he is like Eridan. That character archetype leaves me cold, unless there is some other trope attached to a person of that sort which I like so much that it overrides my initial disinterest.

This is in no way a moral judgment! I just find characters like that incredibly tedious, and insofar as they aren't tedious, they annoy me. So I follow the ancient fandom precepts of YKINMKATO and "don't like, don't read" and watch those corners of fandom with cheerful confusion. (If I want to break or redeem someone, there are always plenty of other choices. *wry*)

[mme_hardy]

I get you. I have a terrible, terrible weakness for *fictional* Byronic heroes, and regard them with a mixture of immense amusement and unf. But I certainly don't expect anybody else to, and in particular, I don't think they're the good guys. Eridan deserves everything that's coming to him and so will Kylo Ren.

But that swordfight with Rey? Unf again.

[edenfalling]

My villain-crushes tend to be on... well, basically Jadis the White Witch. Or the Condesce, to pick a more recent example. Arguably sociopathic women who unapologetically seek and wield power and don't give a damn what other people think about them. I'd run screaming from them in real life, but oh my god I love them in fiction, both to read and to write.

I am completely convinced this is C. S. Lewis's fault, and I would like to thank him for that. :D