The LiquidLegends Lounge - Page 1808

Overall, I believe that the movie was a 6/10. It had a lot of really interesting risks, and the first honest to god attempt to make a good movie in the franchise since Empire. It also had a lot of flaws inherent in a movie that actually attempts to be ambitious. I've written a ton on this, but I'll cliffnote it here for TL by just saying the three best and worst things of the movie:

Best parts:

1) Visually strong! It was a really interesting color palette, they actually attempted to compose things in interesting ways, and even used visual symbolism for more than referring to the original trilogy. Crazy.
2) An attempt to make a cohesive motif! Almost like a good movie would have! It wasn't executed well, but even the attempt to have themes in the movie, in this case failure and the need to move on, reflects well on where the franchise is headed in the future. They really tried with this one guys go team.
3) Fuck Star Wars. The movie had potential in the way they set themselves up to cast off tropes. The big evil cartoon villains, the unlikeable overly-altruistic Jedi, it was all being resolved. When they burned the tree down, I got really excited, because I thought it potentially signaled the end of the film's possessive attachment to its predecessors. Of course, it ended up meaningless, but I guess this is coming from the guy who wanted Episode 7 to start with all the old star wars characters blowing up and dying to demonstrate that the audience's expectations would not dictate the story the writers wanted to tell.

The BAAAAAAAADS
1) None of the main characters do anything. I mean this in two ways; first, none of the main characters outside of Kyle Ren impact the story. Their arcs all resolve with them learning from failure, which is nice from a thematic cohesion standpoint, but more or less wasted by the fact that none of their failures actually impacted much of anything. The second way is that none of the characters progressed the plot proactively. This is expressly bad writing, and I'll get to it after I address that first statement I made.

Finn and Rose: If they aren't in the movie, the outcome doesn't change aside from the codebreaker they brought on board. They also took up a significant amount of runtime from an already bloated movie. If their impact is so minimal, it maybe should have been scrapped. No, it absolutely should've been scrapped. Ugh.
Poe: Almost does something! And he's proactive about it! But in the end he accomplishes nothing and ultimately only learns to follow authority at the expense of everything. Where he not in the story, the ending remains exactly the same. It is possible to have failures for the character to learn from while still having that failure impact the end of a story! And yet, it almost never occurs here.
Rey: She finally makes it to Kylo Ren, and then immediately floats in mid-air while Kylo decides to move the plot. Her presence there is the only way she impacts the story, not anything she's actually done. I'm more forgiving for this character arc because at least she did have some impact on Luke's character arc, which does end up having something to do with an ending.

Essentially, all the main characters fail to impact the ending. I understand and admire trying to have them all fail, in an attempt to create a theme of learning from failure. However, it is possible to have characters fail and still have them impact the ending of the story. Watching this movie a second time, the weight of the runtime becomes increasingly burdensome. It's so bloated by stuff that will never resolve that the script turns into a mess.

On the second part of this issue, Finn and Rose are god-awful to watch in this movie. At least with the other characters, things occur due to the characters making and executing decisions, albeit ultimately meaninglessly. But in this arc, Finn and Rose land, exposit endlessly about Rose in an attempt to connect us to the character as fast as possible, and then get them arrested before they do anything. Then, someone else lets them free; they stand there while the codebreaker decides to move the plot. Then, some kids let them out on the animals. They're still just following giant plot arrows. They're basically the audience. They're rescued by the codebreaker again before they've even done anything but run out the gate that was opened for them. They fly into the big ship (hey, a proactive decision!) before immediately getting captured. Then they get freed AGAIN by external forces over which they have no control, in this case the destruction of the ship. They try to pretend like Phasma as foe makes any sense for Finn's character arc, but of course it's all meaningless because in the final fight, Finn, on the verge of FINALLY affecting the plot with his suicide into the Death Ram Thing, is tackled by Rose out of the line of Plot Fire. How fitting that, at the climax of the film, he is once again sidelined out of the movie by Rose. This whole arc needed to be scrapped. It's very bad.

2) Hey guys look it's flaw #2 we made it. This one is simple. They keep holding onto the last vestiges of Star Wars Bullshit. When I say SWB, I mean things that have absolutely no role in the movie except to remind you that it's a Star Wars movie. Nothing undermines an honest attempt to make a good movie with artistic value more than a frequent reminder that you're feeding the Capitalist Juggernaut that is Disney at the expense of artistic integrity and your own childhood. Unlike any other movies, except perhaps Marvel Movies to a lesser extent, Star Wars has a preconceived checklist of what needs to be in the movie. You gotta have fighters, the characters you know and love, lightsaber battles, etc etc. In reality, these checklists have nothing to do with the original films, but rather are a product of the prequels and their accompanying marketing blitzes. They're not, for the most part, what made people like the originals, and in fact most of the time they serve as examples of why most Star Wars movies are actually very bad. You know 'em, you love 'em, and that't the whole point, let's montage quickly through useless old Star Wars Bullshit

Yoda-Chewbacca-C:3P0-R2D2-ATAT Walkers-ATSTs-Those Weird Box Droids from the Death Star-Lifting Rocks-DarkSide Spirit Quest on a Lone Planet with an Unwilling Hermit Exile Teacher-Don't Tell Me the Odds-Two Suns-Sith Lord Forcing Young Hero to Watch Her Friend's Rebel Fleet Die Through a Conveniently Placed Window-Red Imperial Guard-Copy That, Gold Leader-And Many More! Thank god they didn't have a stupid, meaningessly flashy lightsaber fight somewhere though. At least they're getting better with this stuff.

3) Can't believe you read this far, but hey. Kylo Ren is SO DUMB as a character and I hate it. The movie sets up to be really interesting; Rey and Kylo's interactions, combined with a lot of things Luke and Snoke say, baited me into thinking the movie was finally ready for a more mature view of the force. One where "true good' and "true evil" couldn't really exist in a plot where the writing was taking itself fairly seriously. One where Kylo Ren might have interesting motivations outside of "power" to kill his parents, and one where Rey might seriously have to consider where her values are (because, as it is, she has no real values outside of being the Good Guy). They meet, Snoke dies, Luke has burned the remains of the Jedi Order, and it seems as though they could say fuck everything and be complex characters. This is a hope immediately dashed when Kylo Ren just decides all of his interesting character potential is stupid and says "hey join me and lets kill your friends." Then he immediately turns into the cackling malevolent villain I finally thought Star Wars had the balls to get rid of. It's really a shame.

All in all, I can respect the movie for being the first attempt at a real, competent film, which Star Wars hasn't had since Empire, but in the end it's too huge and ambitious, and ends bloated, messy, and self-fulfilling.

My main problem is that Star Wars, thanks to pop culture, turns into the poster boy for mediocrity for the sake of itself. I still firmly believe that mediocrity does not justify itself, and this film was the first honest attempt I've seen to exist in some capacity outside of the sphere of Star Wars mediocrity, and for that, I think it's the third best Star Wars film ever made. The best since Empire. And still not very good.

This was the tl;dr version guys I have a LOT more pages written down somewhere.

Oh and last thing, since apparently this is being discussed too now. Just because something is geared for children (WHICH THIS MOVIE IS NOT, THIS IS CLEARLY BEING MARKETED TO EVERYONE) does not justify stupidity and laziness in a movie for the sake of a child's understanding. Good writing can make something appear simple to understand, but still contain depth. Good writing for children does NOT include the characters voicing out their motivations and reminding you of stakes and plot points every five minutes, which is something really annoying that this movie did. Children's movies are not excuses for mediocrity! See the Lego movie for a great example of how to give depth to a simple concept, if you're so worried that children won't understand what's going on.