We saw Star Wars:The Force Awakens and it was neither as bad nor as good

[drwex]

Which is to say it was neither as bad as I had feared, nor as good as it could have been. Mostly it seemed to be Kasdan and Abrams saying "Oh, there was this thing that people really loved in the original so we should totally re-create that." There is zero surprise in this film and you can feel free to nap at any point in its 2h15min duration without fear you'll miss something unique.

I'd call some of what follows spoilers except there's really nothing to spoil in this film.

Let's see - there's the plucky robot with the secret information; there's the desert planet with the young adult who doesn't know their secret power; there's the old wise advisor; there's the guy who ought to be a hero but decides to run away when danger closes in, only to come back and be a hero anyway; there's the giant mega-death destroyer whateverthefuck; there's the plucky rebel fighters with biker names; there's the trench run with stupid mechanical pivot turrets; there's the cantina (with a different name); there's the giant projected evil emperor... err, whatever he's calling himself now. Et cetera. I could go on and on, but I won't.

So then the question is - is it a good homage/pastiche? Yeah, it's not bad. Most of the good stuff is pretty faithfully re-created. It's nice having the universe mostly saved by a black guy and a woman this time, even if you have to accept a non-human female (muppet) as 'woman' in order to get the film to pass the Bechdel test. I do give them props for having her tell him (in very G-rated language) to fuck off every time he tries to "save" her. Self-rescuing princess test? Passed with flying colors. I did not appreciate the dearth of other colored faces - if Finn is supposed to be either a clone or a creche baby stolen from his actual parents where are the other dark-skinned people who got cloned/got their kids stolen? And did anyone think to check whether it was a good idea to play with slavery tropes by implying that white folk are still going around stealing black children and using those babies as slave labor? But I digress.

It's definitely bigger, boomier, flashier and all things Abrams. It's still complete nonsense from any kind of physics or science point of view but if you go to Star Wars for that kind of thing you're probably making a bigger error than anything in the film.

So, yeah, not a bad thing to spend a couple hours on but it's a measure of how awful Star Wars films have been that this is probably the third-best of all seven. Low bar to clear and all that.

Comments

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

Wex. Dude. Is there anyone on this planet who didn't read the non-human muppet Yoda as male? If so, introduce them to me, and I will hear them out as they reject Maz Kanata's apparent gender. It would shock me if you were that person.

You once tried to convince me that a Firefly episode passed the Bechdel test on the basis that Inara and Kaylee talked about how cute Simon was - but it was about their pleasure! I am not sure whether to be pleased that your standards have improved, or grouchy that you're being so unreasonable.

Finn's story echoes many distressing current events in Africa and parts of the Middle East. And that stolen to slavery narrative? Actually historically true for large numbers of people! We can't make peace with our past without encountering that. Slavery tropes are not incendiary propaganda.

[drwex]

All fair points you make. In order:

Yes, I accept Maz as clearly female. My complaint is the lack of other females in important roles as well as missing obvious opportunities such as using Leia for anything other than mothering at Han about their son.

Accept the power of "and" - I like to think my standards have improved and you're certainly within rights to grouch at me for being unreasonable.

Finally, I don't disagree with Fin's story and its relevance. My complaint is that the first time they introduce a main black character they engage with that. It's like giving the only gay character AIDS, or when I made lots of enemies in the Babylon 5 fandom by pointing out that JMS had made the (only) black lead character a drug addict. When your token character gets saddled with the canonical story of the group they are supposed to represent it feels like... well, tokenism. Or at a minimum insensitivity. I would rather have seen the character given a chance to develop his own story before (or instead of) being what felt like the sole symbol of our past.

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

COncerning Finn -

The Star Wars EU has been declared non-canon, but it is *rife* with stories of abduction and abuse. The Empire in media tie-in novels has been taking, indoctrinating, and training children for a variety of nefarious purposes for at least three decades. The animated tv series tie-in (sorry, I forget the title) gives time, care, and attention to the struggles of cloned storm troopers. So it makes an incredible amount of sense for the new movie to feature a storm trooper revealed as a human being with moral struggles. That storyline was very well-received in the animated series, when all the storm troopers were lily white Jango Fett clones.

Finn is an interesting character because of how hard he works to choose right actions, and the audience needs to understand that this is a struggle, and so the character has to have a history, and that history must consist of something. Finn is the anti-Han Solo. He has never been alone, and he's not sure how to be. He isn't marked out as especially capable or especially daring. He's a fuck-up stormtrooper - they made him a janitor. He chickened out the first time he was in the field. He has one thing that resembles a moral compass, and that's to ask himself what a stormtrooper would do and try to do something different. He's wrong sometimes, and he wants friends more than anything, and he's trying to build himself from scratch.

If I have a complaint about Finn, it's that the script devalues janitorial work. A sanitation tech should be the perfect guide to the weaknesses of the Starkiller base. (Unless you can find one of the HVAC crew. But the janitors should be able to point them out to you!)

I think it's reductive of you to see one story, or one set of stories, about the histories and lives of black people, and decide that it is *the* canonical story. And I don't understand why, then, whether or not it's the canonical story, it shouldn't be told. How many black characters should they introduce before they engage with history or reality or existing injustice?

[drwex]

I see you making a good point, which I read thus: there are at least two audiences for the film, one of which are (like Wex) film-goers and another of which are "Star Wars fans" who consume the various other forms of related media and incorporate it into their understanding and how they relate to this film. (Whether or not something is declared 'canon' is another kettle of interesting fish entirely.) From this I hear you saying "People who are in that second group will understand this character differently from people like you who are in this first group."

That is a true and fair point, and I agree with you. I can't help responding to the film from my own point of view but perhaps the filmmakers aren't per se addressing me in this case. Films have to satisfy many viewer groups.

I continue to think you're generally right, but let me respond to some things.

I don't buy the "he's a janitor" bit. I think that was thrown in without much thought - why are storm troopers janitors in the first place, and why send janitors into combat roles, even minor ones? Some services do have an "everybody fights" approach (e.g. US Marines) but that's a statement about who is capable of picking up a gun if the enemy comes to them. The Marines may expect their cooks to be able to shoot, but they don't send their cooks into combat unless the need is great.

I also don't think he "chickened out" so much as freaked out, and had a crisis of conscience. I think it's (supposed to be) significant that the only blood you see in the entire movie is the blood that gets smeared on his helmet - the helmet he is ordered to put back on. I think that's a fairly unsubtle statement by the filmmakers. I find it easier to read him as a "green recruit on his first assignment with no exposure to combat". We know that in real life some number of soldiers will react in this way at their first exposure to real combat, to the death of fellow soldiers, etc. I think that the film sets us up to see him as heroic from the get-go, with him taking the action (refusing to shoot civilians) that the audience will identify as right and heroic. (More on this in a second.)

As to whether he's the anti-Han... I am also somewhat dubious here. They're not identical, I give you that. But the arc of "fleeing when things look dire only to return and be heroic later" is exactly what Han did. I'd have to go back and re-check the first movie to be sure, but my recollection is that Han also tries to convince Luke to come along with him and flee rather than joining the Rebellion. Circling back now, I think that making Fin clearly take that right action at the very start is the filmmakers' attempt to avoid the ambiguity that arose around "Han shot first." If original Star Wars Han was ambiguously not heroic, this version is set up to be anti-Han by BEING heroic from the start.

Finally, I have to admit to being a fish out of water as a white guy in trying to understand and relate to the black American story. When I say it's "the" story I'm hugely influenced by what Ta-Nehesi Coates has written. The defining aspect of slavery and its history/consequences is his idea and I'm not good enough to recapitulate it. As to the question of whether/when to engage that's a broader one. I would say "after a non-minority character has done so" at a minimum. And maybe never. I think the question is, "When does a PoC actor stop being a stand-in for all persons of (that) color?" If that's the question I'm asking then my answer is, "After they've had enough space and screen time to establish themselves as full participants in the story and as characters with depth."

Which I acknowledge is a TOTAL hand-wave, but at a minimum it comes down to "not right out of the gate."

Thanks for engaging with me on this - I miss talking over stuff like this with you, even when you're telling me how wrong I am.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

the first time they introduce a main black character

Lando, for me, counts as a main character.

[drwex]

Hurm. Point well taken. I had been categorizing "main" in terms of "appearing in more than one story" but as I've been reminded there are lots of non-movie Star Wars stories and I'm sure Lando figures prominently there.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

He appears prominently in both Empire and Return of the Jedi.

I am starting to suspect your review is based on some very dusty memories of the original movies.

[drwex]

Quite likely. As I noted to ricevermicelli I'm not a Star Wars fan. Didn't really like Movie 3, disliked 4 and was sufficiently offended by 5 that I just didn't bother seeing 6. Like I said, low bar for this one to clear.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

...You're numbering them in release order, I gather?

[drwex]

Yes. I imagine there exist people who like the more recent trilogy and don't like the original trilogy but I have not met any such people.