The Last Jedi: It Could Have Been Better

It was about 6 p.m. when Mark and I, very naively, went to buy tickets for a 7:15 showing of The Last Jedi. It was sold out. So were the next three showings. We deliberated and decided, what the heck, who needs sleep? and bought tickets for a 10:45 showing that night. Having got it in our heads that we were going to see the newest Star Wars movie that day, we weren't about to postpone the experience any more than necessary.

That was a week ago. It's taken me a while to be sure what I think.

So yep, I've seen it. It's hard to be at all concise about my thoughts and feelings and reactions, which were and still are multitudinous. There will be a few minor spoilers, but the big reveals aren't really what I'm here to talk about.

I'll start by saying that it's not a bad movie. It has its strengths and weaknesses. But I'm not sure if it's a great Star Wars movie. If The Force Awakens felt like Star Wars ripping off Star Wars, this felt . . . well, at times, nothing like Star Wars at all.

All the familiar elements are there: lightsabers, space battles, droids and the Force, and all the characters (who survived TFA, which is to say, all but one) are present. But The Last Jedi also contained a lot that is unfamiliar, and not always to its benefit.

The story is new and original, for which I'm grateful. Broad story arcs may have been inspired by The Empire Strikes Back, but there is no plot rehashing here. (I was also glad, though it's a trifling detail, to learn that Supreme Leader Snoke is a pretty normal-sized person; his previous enormous holographic projections had me worried.) I have no gripes with the plot, no disappointment about any reveals or lack thereof -- I came to the movie ready to entertain any new plot that emerged. For the most part the plot didn't disappoint me.

But execution is important, and it's what separates a good movie from a great one. And some of the execution of The Last Jedi wasn't great.

Most glaring of all in my mind, this movie has a sense of humor that doesn't feel authentic to the Star Wars universe. There have always been humorous quips and amusing banter in this galaxy, and even extended comical sequences (Yoda is hilarious and absurd when Luke first meets him on Dagobah, until he's ready to reveal his true identity), but there was a certain sophistication to the jokes because they relied on interpersonal dynamics and character quirks, not on contriving situations to get a laugh from the audience.

Rian Johnson fishes for laughs when Rey asks Kylo Ren to put a shirt on in a scene where she should have much bigger things on her mind; with a slapstick moment where the efforts of several very earnest (if ridiculous-looking) aliens are foiled (I just felt bad for them); and when BB-8 tells a very confused Poe that Finn is naked and leaking, prompting Poe to ask, basically, "are you drunk, bro?" The desired chuckles will be elicited, but these moments are tonally awkward in a movie that is willing, in some scenes, to commit to being dark and emotional. I like some light moments to even out the darkness, but this movie wants to go both very light and very dark (and while I wish I was talking about the Force, I'm not). The dry wit that has always been a Star Wars hallmark has been traded in for the broad comedy popularized by the Marvel movies. I am an ardent fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but I'm not excited to see its sense of humor sneaking into the galaxy far away.

Visually, The Last Jedi veers off in its own direction. The original trilogy was made in the seventies and early eighties, and is visually very much of that time. The prequel trilogy incorporated elements of that visual style while introducing more color and some of the aesthetics of its own time. Episode seven, which wore its love for the original trilogy on its sleeve, had a seventies throwback feel, and that more gritty look (made ever so slightly smoother by modern cinematography and special effects) was one of my favorite things about that movie. The story may not have been fresh, but the look didn't have to be, and it put me instantly back into the Star Wars universe.

The Last Jedi looks a lot slicker, a lot shinier. There are a lot of creatures and sequences that rely heavily on CGI. The color red is huge in this movie (to paraphrase Rey in TFA, I didn't know there was so much red in the whole Star Wars galaxy) except with one character who's more into purple -- as a hair color, that is -- and looks like she might have sneaked in from Guardians of the Galaxy or the capitol of The Hunger Games. And the camera loves to get close to the characters' faces. If those faces weren't the ones that populated the last movie, the two movies wouldn't look alike at all.

This movie doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's the eighth in a much-loved series, and its main problem is that it doesn't feel like it belongs in that series. The case could be made that this new trilogy should be judged apart from the other two and considered its own entity, and I'd be perfectly willing to accept that premise, but it doesn't make The Last Jedi seem any less of an anomaly. The Force Awakens was a love letter to the original trilogy, and this sequel looks, sounds and moves like an entirely different beast. 

So this is the other side of that coin, if not a different coin altogether. J. J. Abrams gave us something so much like A New Hope that it seemed all originality was lost. Rian Johnson has given us something so off the rails that it's hard to see the Star Wars under all the . . . well . . . whatever that was.

At first I came away from this movie feeling jaded; I'd found the straw that broke the camel's back. I would swear off new movies built on the backs of old favorites. And it truly may be time to recognize that sequels, prequels and reboots, while they feed our nostalgia and give us what we think we want (and can make metric crap tons of money, a large if lurking motivation), aren't truly the path to great cinema. But with some time to reflect, I have to admit that it's unfair to pin all of that on one Star Wars movie.

After buying our tickets to that late (but by no means the latest) showing, Mark and I went home to fill the intervening time by watching The Force Awakens again, for the first time since it was in theaters. If we hadn't literally finished the one and gone directly to the other, maybe I wouldn't have reacted so strongly. It is disappointing to come away feeling that The Last Jedi doesn't fit seamlessly into the puzzle, but I have lots of biases and emotion (and fifteen years of Star Wars fandom) coloring my view (red, in this case).

Ultimately, it's time that will tell how episode eight holds up. I'll have to see it again myself before I'm sure of anything.

Whose Is It Really? Some Star Wars Thoughts

I mentioned here that I'm collecting my thoughts on the world of Marvel movies -- and truly, I am. That post will come eventually. Marvel and I have been through a lot together, so I've got a lot to say.

But as you've possibly heard mentioned, The Last Jedi was officially released today. So I've got Star Wars on the brain.

What got me thinking in a different direction (something besides the powerful primitive wave of emotion that must necessarily accompany the arrival of a new Star Wars movie, that is) was this review of The Force Awakens. It's from two years ago, from when TFA was newly released, and reading it now, as opposed to in the exhilaration of that time, I'm able to evaluate its thesis with (somewhat) less emotion attached.

The question raised there is a fair one: has appealing to the fans become more important than creating something strong and original?

Make no mistake -- I am one of "the fans." If Marvel and I can be said to go way back, Star Wars and I go way way back. I began my relationship with that world something like fifteen years ago, as a kid watching the original trilogy in spellbound awe. The prequels were also fun to watch, although I haven't felt moved to return to them as I have (repeatedly) to the trilogy that started it all. They were flashy, but the magic wasn't there.

It's become popular to the point of cliche to revile George Lucas for "ruining" Star Wars with episodes 1-3, and I have at times been one of those people. It's strange: we who love the stories Lucas told have hated him for doing as he chose to do with something that we perceived as our own. It's a beautiful property of storytelling that the people who hear a story can claim a certain kind of ownership of it; I interact actively with stories that I find meaningful, instead of passively experiencing them and moving on with my life (as I do with stories that just don't excite me). But just because I find meaning in a story doesn't actually mean that I have the power to choose its path.

Or does it? Literary criticism (which, despite its official title, applies to far more than literature) has been moving toward reader-created meaning for a long time. That trend has its detractors (I know several personally who are vehement in their dislike) but the movement is strong. The idea is that when I experience a story, I create meaning within the framework the story presents to me. George Lucas may have intended Princess Leia to fulfill a certain function within the story (Macguffin, sex symbol, and who knows what else) but I can choose to see her in a different light -- and if you are on board with modern critical thinking, not only can I choose to do so, but I should.

I have some ambivalence on this point.

On the one hand, I have never admired Orson Scott Card more than when he wrote, in the introduction to Speaker for the Dead,

". . . in the pages of this book, you and I will meet one-on-one, my mind and yours, and you will enter a world of my making and dwell there, not as a character that I control, but as a person with a mind of your own. You will make of my story what you need it to be, if you can. I hope my tale is true enough and flexible enough that you can make it into a world worth living in."

Card gets it: his readers want what he can give them, but they also want to participate in the story, and that may involve going outside the bounds of what he imagined. We can't help doing this. Every individual is going to react and interpret a story differently. He's also explicitly giving me permission -- if I want to read something into the character of Ender Wiggin that Card did not foresee, I can do so with Card's blessing.

But I also frequently want to know what the writer meant, apart from what I might guess or want them to mean. This is why I love biographies of writers: I want to know what was going on in the lives and minds of my favorite storytellers, because I'm hoping I'll be clued in to meaning in their work. Stephen King is one of my favorite writers, and I've read only one of his gazillion novels. What I love is his nonfiction, his writing about writing; he is willing to give candid explanations of the thoughts or events or stories that inspire his own storytelling, and the insight is enthralling. With regards to King, what he means to communicate intrigues me even more than what he does communicate (so much so that I've hardly interacted with the actual books at all).

Star Wars fans who reject George Lucas' prequel trilogy are, whether or not they realize it, buying completely into the modern theory of criticism: that the reader is king. It's not what George Lucas intended, but what they want Star Wars to be, that takes precedence. So it is that J. J. Abrams, himself a rabid Star Wars fan (and, we can assume, a prequel-rejecter), was able to deliver to millions of diehard fans what they wanted where Lucas did not.

It's not a bad thing. I enjoyed The Force Awakens because I, too, love the original trilogy. The look is the same, the feeling is the same, and the story progresses through such similar beats that the first report I heard (from my mother, no less) was that episode seven was episode four all over again. Having now seen TFA a few times, and with the added perspective of a couple years, my opinion is that the story is not really the same, but there is certainly a lack of originality. The appeal is that of a familiar pair of jeans, not of a fancy new dress. Abrams didn't set out to blow our minds but to make us feel at home, and he succeeded abundantly.

Still, I wish there had been more. I would have liked to see someone give the fans that feeling of comfort as well as a sense of discovery. (When we saw TFA in the theater with family, my six-year-old niece said loudly at Harrison Ford's first appearance, "Wow, he got old!" That's not exactly the sort of discovery I was thinking of.) There could have been a movie that felt as warm and familiar that didn't also retread old story ground. It would have been a fine line to tread, but I think it was possible, and still is. Maybe that's what we'll get, belatedly, in episode eight (I've been zealously avoiding all details, so although I could probably know the entire plot already, I've remained blissfully, willfully ignorant thus far).

If you wanted to see something firmly, deeply rooted in the world of the original Star Wars movies that nevertheless told a new, completely original story, your best shot is Rogue One. That movie had its problem areas to be sure, but what is does offer is the nostalgic feel that fans (by and large) seem to crave, without retreading any old ground. The story, characters, and tone are completely new, but it doesn't betray its roots. It's still Star Wars (and importantly, with the OT flavor).

Maybe episodes eight and nine will give us more of that. Maybe they won't retread old ground anymore. I'm hoping that The Force Awakens was just a jumping-off point to bold new story frontiers.

I probably won't get to see The Last Jedi until next week, but when I do, you can bet I'll have things to say.

(In the meantime, I might just finish up that post about Marvel.)

Moving in the Right Direction: Justice League

I said my next post would be about Marvel, but I was wrong. Marvel can wait! Last night Mark and I finally saw the latest installment from that other world of superheroes: Justice League.

And yeah, I have a few thoughts. (And yes, there will be a few spoilers, so beware.)

First off, it was better than Batman v. Superman. This movie is actually fun -- real, honest-to-goodness entertainment. BvS . . . well, the best you can say for it is that it introduced us to Diana Prince.

Joss Whedon helped write the screenplay, and if you're familiar with his work his creative touch will be obvious throughout the movie. My biggest question is how he managed to get his finger in the DC pie after having been up to his elbows in Marvel's. It sounds like most of his work was done in post-production (it seems that at some point in the process the powers that be realized that they needed help) and at this point, Whedon has earned a reputation as script doctor extraordinaire (apparently he also did some directing of scenes shot late in the process).

And this is Whedon's specialty (see: Firefly) -- bringing together a diverse cast of characters and making them seem like they belong together.

In the case of the Justice Leaguers, it sorta works, kinda.

Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince are already friends when the movie starts, and they're realizing that something bad is coming, and that they may need help fighting it. They have a list of prospective team members, and they get busy trying to convince each of these guys that they should join up, starting with a guy named Arthur, better known as the Aquaman.

Aquaman is somehow incredibly cool in this incarnation, instead of being the team member with the lamest, most limiting powers. Apparently he's just as tough and fierce on land as underwater, and apparently a trident is actually a pretty effective weapon when wielded properly. Mark and I couldn't quite agree about Jason Momoa's acting; he thought it left something to be desired, and I found him perfectly adequate, with the exception of a few awkward moments (but these characters and this world lead inescapably to characters having to say some weird things). So Aquaman signs on eventually, after first rejecting Wayne's proposal.

Victor Stone (apparently his character is sometimes known as Cyborg, but that name is never spoken in the movie) is a quiet, tortured half-machine dude, and yet he still manages to be sympathetic. There isn't much time devoted to his backstory (nobody gets much) but the acting is strong enough to imply what the movie doesn't have much time to show: he's conflicted about his power and might be gradually losing his sense of self, but if his robotics can help save the world he's willing to contribute. Like Aqua-Arthur, he isn't initially sold on the idea, but he comes around.  

Barry Allen is a standout character. He's young and energetic, and this movie needed some young blood. He's super-fast (getting struck by lightning has its perks!) and super-awkward, and also super-ready to have friends (there is a slight implication that he may be on the autism spectrum; others have suspected as much). He is ready to sign up for superhero-ing before Wayne's finished his pitch, and he maintains that level of enthusiasm throughout. It's entertaining to watch him gawk at the unbelievable super-humanness of Superman. 

(Yes, Superman is alive. You couldn't have believed he'd stay dead.)

Superman returns! thanks to a life-restoring process that initially renders him a dark-sider destructo machine. Wayne brings in Lois Lane, the two spend some time at the old homestead, and Clark is back and ready to fight for truth and, of course, justice. I really want to believe that Henry Cavill's wooden acting was a calculated choice (otherwise you're slipping, Cavill), and that we'll later find this was a hint that all was not truly well, even after Lois calmed him down. What I'm hoping for is proof in later films that Superman was adversely affected (beyond the initial freak-out) by the resurrection process and really did leave some part of him behind -- and that he was merely hiding this from his teammates at the end of Justice League. Even with the scary evil-Superman moments (I LOVED hearing the Superman theme played briefly, recast with a dark edge), this guy recovered way too quickly. Bringing someone back should have much deeper consequences, and the DCEU could give us the depth this world needs by exploring those issues in the future.

It almost goes without saying that Gal Gadot is still fantastic as Diana, aka Wonder Woman. She is consistently sweet and feminine as well as powerful and badass, and she makes you believe that there is no dissonance in so being. The line that has her rolling her eyes at the childishness of her teammates is somewhat disappointing -- it relies so heavily on stereotypes of male/female relationships -- but it also serves as a reminder that compared to her, they are children -- everyone is. She's an ageless Amazonian, and the rest of the team will never be able to catch up to her years of experience. As Mark commented, she's definitely leveled up since we last saw her in her origin story, but it would be disappointing to find her otherwise.

And Batman -- well, he's there. He's still dressing like a bat and fighting crime, and he's the one who draws the team together and wields the power of the purse. He'll never be my favorite part of this world, but he works as well as he needs to.

However, even though each individual piece ranges from serviceable to memorably great, the movie as a whole isn't spectacular. That might be due to the one puzzle piece I haven't mentioned, the one thing every superhero movie absolutely needs: the villain.

This one is named Steppenwolf, and he's the CG-est baddie I've seen in a long time. (Supposedly he was created using motion capture, but he definitely feels entirely synthetic in every scene.) He's a very old-fashioned kind of villain, which in itself isn't a problem: he's unambiguously evil. His desires are at odds with those of anyone who's even remotely good, and there's no backstory given that makes us feel for him or that introduces any ambiguity about who's in the right. He wants bad things. The good guys can take him out without any haunting regrets.

And that could be okay . . . and yet. In a way he's Wonder Woman's villain -- her people have a history with him, so defeating him is (should be) a little more personal for her. Everyone else in the League cares because Steppenwolf wants to conquer the earth and, since he's a Bad Guy, that would Not Be Good. But even though he's allowed to be unambiguously evil, Steppenwolf should feel like a character to make this work, and he really doesn't. He's just a force of nature. We don't have a clear idea what motivates him or any proper explanation of who he is.

So the Justice League defeats him. And we're glad. But the fight is never about him -- it's about them coming together and learning to be a team. Despite the bumps along the way, group cohesion seems to be established with far too much ease. Too much time was spent on the bring-back-Superman plot thread, and having him save the day didn't feel like the triumph it should have (for me, at least, it was completely overshadowed by worries about what might be going on with him under the surface) and it distracted from the development of the new guys.

But Justice League was a step in the right direction. Maybe this will just be the necessary stepping-stone to the truly great stuff that is yet to come.

Getting to see the Amazons again on Themyscira was a highlight for me, even though the scenes there are largely ones of destruction and defeat. I still want to know more about that world. It's the first time I've seen a large gathering of women and really wanted to be one of them.

The use of CGI seemed gratuitous at times, but that's pretty par for the course these days. I don't like it, but I've come to accept that it's not going to change.

At one point in the film Diana had an excellent one-liner about technology and its dangers and merits. My memory isn't good enough to quote it here, but when I see the movie again at some point, I plan to write it down.

In the end, Justice League is quite watchable. It wasn't a waste of time. I had fun! This may not sound like high praise -- and may be slightly less than it deserves -- but it is leagues ahead of certain of its predecessors.

(Leagues ahead! Pun fully intended.)