![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I saw TFA yesterday. Mixed review. I was a teenage Star Wars fan, the same time I was falling in love with LotR. Loved the first movie, was mixed on the next 2--did not like the prequels--I think I saw the 2nd prequel but not the third. I just wasn't interested in the making of a psychokiller.
So, I liked much of TFA, but I didn't love it. I had problems with some of the story and depictions of violence.
The casting and all the diversity was fantastic and what it always should have been. There still could have been less white guys and more of everyone else, but they got much closer. It was good to see the old characters again. I like Rey and Finn and Poe. They were all very engaging. I especially like Rey's getting to make some mistakes in working with Hans. The chemistry between Hans, Rey, and Finn was great. And that Rey had her qualms about going on, as well as Finn was a good touch. Ren was annoying and the Great Oz a rote villain, but that's Ok for now. It was wonderful to see older women--Leia, and Maz was a cool mentor woman older than her voicer, and the doctor healing Chewey. The end between Rey and Luke was very moving and a wonderful leading close.
But the violence really bothered me and I don't think it's just that I'm different than I was in 1977.
I like that Finn is a turned stormtrooper, but once you make a stormtrooper a character we care about, then every stormtrooper shot could be another Finn. On top of that, there was a lot of focus showing the good guys shooting individual stormtroopers and showing stormtroopers wounded and killed. These had been Finn's colleagues and he's so into the hardware of getting a better gun and how well it kills and has no qualms about killing after his initial revelation--it didn't sit right and did the character a disservice. Yes, there is a difference between slaughtering civilians and fighting armed combatants, but the difference becomes murky once you have qualms about who you are killing. Making a stormtrooper a central hero changes EVERYTHING because the story tells us to care about storm troopers, and then doesn't follow through with the consequences of that, which is really lazy storytelling. Don't' bring it up if you're not going to follow through and deal with the consequences.
Accepting this kind of depiction is more desensitizing than shooting faceless enemies, unless you want to take seriously the cost of war, which this film isn't meant to do. This film goes for greater verisimilitude of killing without exploring the cost. It's not gore--it's just as sanitized as the old films--it's that there are more camera shots of the people the heroes shoot, so they are more humanized.
There was a focus on the heroes getting good guns and oh-yay-a-bag-of-bombs! and getting all hot about the gun hardware that wasn't in the originals where the focus was a romance with good fast ships and light sabers. The light sabers were the only really cool weapon to have and they aren't weapons of mass killing. Am I miss-remembering and it was all there in the originals? Yes, the light saber was still the defining weapon for determining Jedi's, but all the emotional emphasis on Hans giving Rey the gun and the romancing of what a good gun it was he gave her was like an NRA ad. Couldn't they have just bonded more over the Millennium Falcon?
It takes greater desensitization to not be bothered by the good guys killing vulnerably falling stormtroopers. So the fights felt yucky to me. And I couldn't fully immerse and it took the fun out of it for me. I wasn't particularly moved by Hans death because I was already shielding myself against the storm trooper casualties. Why should I care more about this family drama with Darth Emo when all these other people are dying?
Maybe I'm too old and shell shocked. There was more callousness in the younger me who better accepted orc and stormtrooper death as part of the adventure, but I feel this film asks us to accept and identify with more killing of a realer level of people than the old ones, and it alienates me and throws me out of the story. I'm not seeing the light side of the Force here.
I'd be interested if more otherwise lovers of sf/f adventure had the same problem with the handling of violence in this film, so let me know if you see more reviews or would like to share.
More minor quibbles compared to the above--the script was decent--some cute, but no really good lines--yeah I'm comparing to the first like an old foggy with this point, so I'll stop. And Finn having been in sanitation wasn't as funny as it could have been because--thank you, it's work black people get stuck in now. Oh, and I could have done without the giant testicle, as Carrie Fisher would put it, with the slave girl in Maze's bar, even if she is a spy and chose her own adventure--it's still a nasty echo of slave!Leia that I hated to see in the second film--couldn't we get through one film without a reminder of the commodification of female bodies? Yes, it affects Rey's journey even though she is wonderfully not treated this way.
Unless Leia knows who Rey is that hasn't been revealed to us (her niece or daughter or someone else), I don't quite understand Leia's emotionally deep hug of Rey who she is meeting for the first time. I guess Leia has been told Rey was there when Hans died, but I needed them to say something to each other first. I'm fine with not having who Rey is related to answered yet, but I need to know where that great hug was coming from. I hope Leia gets more to say and do in the next film and gets to be as central as Hans was in this one, but I may regret it. Is being a general a real upgrade from begin a princess? Will civic solutions play no part in the adventure?
I'm interested in seeing where this story goes, and who is related to who and how, unlike the prequels, so they got that right. Likeable characters help, and a central woman jedi and all the diversity of cast, but I'm really turned off by the handling of the war part of this star adventure and the sloppy line between cartoon violence and making it real in ways that don't make real world sense unless you see killing as a good thing. I may have done with the story after the next one, though, if they don't' fix some of the problems I'm having with it.
So how was it for you?
So, I liked much of TFA, but I didn't love it. I had problems with some of the story and depictions of violence.
The casting and all the diversity was fantastic and what it always should have been. There still could have been less white guys and more of everyone else, but they got much closer. It was good to see the old characters again. I like Rey and Finn and Poe. They were all very engaging. I especially like Rey's getting to make some mistakes in working with Hans. The chemistry between Hans, Rey, and Finn was great. And that Rey had her qualms about going on, as well as Finn was a good touch. Ren was annoying and the Great Oz a rote villain, but that's Ok for now. It was wonderful to see older women--Leia, and Maz was a cool mentor woman older than her voicer, and the doctor healing Chewey. The end between Rey and Luke was very moving and a wonderful leading close.
But the violence really bothered me and I don't think it's just that I'm different than I was in 1977.
I like that Finn is a turned stormtrooper, but once you make a stormtrooper a character we care about, then every stormtrooper shot could be another Finn. On top of that, there was a lot of focus showing the good guys shooting individual stormtroopers and showing stormtroopers wounded and killed. These had been Finn's colleagues and he's so into the hardware of getting a better gun and how well it kills and has no qualms about killing after his initial revelation--it didn't sit right and did the character a disservice. Yes, there is a difference between slaughtering civilians and fighting armed combatants, but the difference becomes murky once you have qualms about who you are killing. Making a stormtrooper a central hero changes EVERYTHING because the story tells us to care about storm troopers, and then doesn't follow through with the consequences of that, which is really lazy storytelling. Don't' bring it up if you're not going to follow through and deal with the consequences.
Accepting this kind of depiction is more desensitizing than shooting faceless enemies, unless you want to take seriously the cost of war, which this film isn't meant to do. This film goes for greater verisimilitude of killing without exploring the cost. It's not gore--it's just as sanitized as the old films--it's that there are more camera shots of the people the heroes shoot, so they are more humanized.
There was a focus on the heroes getting good guns and oh-yay-a-bag-of-bombs! and getting all hot about the gun hardware that wasn't in the originals where the focus was a romance with good fast ships and light sabers. The light sabers were the only really cool weapon to have and they aren't weapons of mass killing. Am I miss-remembering and it was all there in the originals? Yes, the light saber was still the defining weapon for determining Jedi's, but all the emotional emphasis on Hans giving Rey the gun and the romancing of what a good gun it was he gave her was like an NRA ad. Couldn't they have just bonded more over the Millennium Falcon?
It takes greater desensitization to not be bothered by the good guys killing vulnerably falling stormtroopers. So the fights felt yucky to me. And I couldn't fully immerse and it took the fun out of it for me. I wasn't particularly moved by Hans death because I was already shielding myself against the storm trooper casualties. Why should I care more about this family drama with Darth Emo when all these other people are dying?
Maybe I'm too old and shell shocked. There was more callousness in the younger me who better accepted orc and stormtrooper death as part of the adventure, but I feel this film asks us to accept and identify with more killing of a realer level of people than the old ones, and it alienates me and throws me out of the story. I'm not seeing the light side of the Force here.
I'd be interested if more otherwise lovers of sf/f adventure had the same problem with the handling of violence in this film, so let me know if you see more reviews or would like to share.
More minor quibbles compared to the above--the script was decent--some cute, but no really good lines--yeah I'm comparing to the first like an old foggy with this point, so I'll stop. And Finn having been in sanitation wasn't as funny as it could have been because--thank you, it's work black people get stuck in now. Oh, and I could have done without the giant testicle, as Carrie Fisher would put it, with the slave girl in Maze's bar, even if she is a spy and chose her own adventure--it's still a nasty echo of slave!Leia that I hated to see in the second film--couldn't we get through one film without a reminder of the commodification of female bodies? Yes, it affects Rey's journey even though she is wonderfully not treated this way.
Unless Leia knows who Rey is that hasn't been revealed to us (her niece or daughter or someone else), I don't quite understand Leia's emotionally deep hug of Rey who she is meeting for the first time. I guess Leia has been told Rey was there when Hans died, but I needed them to say something to each other first. I'm fine with not having who Rey is related to answered yet, but I need to know where that great hug was coming from. I hope Leia gets more to say and do in the next film and gets to be as central as Hans was in this one, but I may regret it. Is being a general a real upgrade from begin a princess? Will civic solutions play no part in the adventure?
I'm interested in seeing where this story goes, and who is related to who and how, unlike the prequels, so they got that right. Likeable characters help, and a central woman jedi and all the diversity of cast, but I'm really turned off by the handling of the war part of this star adventure and the sloppy line between cartoon violence and making it real in ways that don't make real world sense unless you see killing as a good thing. I may have done with the story after the next one, though, if they don't' fix some of the problems I'm having with it.
So how was it for you?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
my partner had an interesting take on the hug at the end. Finn was wounded and being carried off the ship and onto transport and everyone was making a big deal over him (everyone) and carrying him off. they left Rey standing on her own. admittedly maybe some of them didn't know that she had been involved in the fighting, or what her role was with Emo Darth? but my partner saw the hug as Feminist Leia sees Young Woman Fighter Get Ignored for Wounded Dude, and hugs her.
(although also maybe because she can sense the Force, she senses the Force in her, idk.)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Could be your partner's theory. In any event, I needed them to spell it out.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Or maybe I'm just old and jaded. Maybe it is me who cannot live in that universe any longer.
Nah.
The other day, on a local news broadcast, a commentator who is a huge SW fan said he *loved* the movie, was looking forward to his second and third viewings. (well, for one, I think that says it all: in the old days of LOTR, how many times would we already have seen the movie if it had been out for a couple of weeks? More than once, more than twice.....more than three times!!) He then followed his 'love' statement by saying that the movie was 'predictable'. Yep, I have to say that it was. Not entirely unenjoyable, but predictable in any case.
Well, I saw it and I won't ever have to go to that well again. They'll all just have to live in my memory now, untouched by the vagaries of time and misfortune.
P.S. In thinking on this more: maybe every generation has to have its own Star Wars. I'm sure there are kids seeing this one and adoring it. It will their Star Wars, the one they talk about to their own children. I remember this happening, in my home, with Romeo and Juliet. My mom loved the version with Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard. I personally think nothing can match Franco Zefferelli's version. My daughter adores Leo and Claire in the Luhrmann version. There you have it. To each their own.