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Is The Phantom Menace Well Written? A Star Wars Essay

08 Friday May 2020

Posted by therealmcteag in Movie Reviews, Star Wars, The Phantom Menace, Uncategorized

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anakin skywalker, best sci fi podcasts, best scifi podcasts, darth sidious, disney, Disney Star Wars, EFAP, Ewan McGregor, George lucas, jj abrams, Liam Neeson, Mauler, Movie Review, obi wan kenobi, Palpatine, Qui-gon, Rags, star wars, The Fandom menace, The Force, The Jedi, The Last Jedi, The OT, The Phantom Menace, the Prequel Trilogy. The PT, The Revenge of the Sith, The Sequel Trilogy, The Sith, what is the Fandom Menace

Recent online and Youtube debates have sprung up during Quarantine regarding comparing the different Star Wars trilogies. The Prequel Trilogy was beat up by fans and critics when the films were released, but views seem to have softened.

The truth is now there really are three far worse Star Wars Chapter movies and one terrible origin movie out there. Only Rogue One has managed to work for Disney. Everything else we’ve gotten has been really bad.

While the Sequel Trilogy seems to draw universal condemnation; the Prequels are being reexamined.

Recently the EFAP youtube broadcast, (which I would call an amazing youtube follow) featured a sometimes heated debate about whether or not The Phantom Menace is well written.

To be fair, people are rightfully bored and we have time for it. I’m reacting to their specific question “Is the Phantom Menace Well Written?” I now feel like it’s a little harder to answer than you think.

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While a little acrimonious and no Rise of Skywalker Order 66 episode, it was still an amazing Star Wars discussion.

EFAP , Disney, The Real World and Me

The EFAP podcast on youtube is often brilliant. Listen to it. The Star Wars and film making discussions are probably PhD level. These guys know their stuff.

I buy in to much of what you hear on EFAP. Their views on how Disney has just botched all three of these movies they spent so much money on hold a lot of water.

I also agree with some of the political views the Star Wars people are broadcasting, but not so much when I’m in the theater! There’s a real world waiting outside with all sorts of real problems. I don’t need to be lectured or validated by a Star Wars movie! That’s a bridge too far, man.

Most likely I’m not on the same political page as the EFAP guys, I share their feelings on Star Wars and that’s as far as I’m willing to go. I don’t know what else they believe. It kind of doesn’t matter to me either. They aren’t monsters or jerks like Disney would have you believe though. They’re funny and they know this stuff better than JJ Abrams.

As far as Star Wars goes I’m about 80% in agreement with EFAP personalities Mauler, The Critical Drinker, Shad and Rags.

Do the EFAP guys go hard after Disney? You don’t pick up a label like ‘The Fandom Menace’ for being soft. But hey these Sequel movies have pushed hard to be talked about. It’s the one thing they did well. They uncorked four stinkers and this is what happens. Try making better movies, Disney!

Lastly,  on politics in Sci-Fi but this is huge; it’s emerging more and more that while geopolitical points or just the need to be on guard against oppression and protecting freedom work, anything more personal than that just doesn’t. Or at least has yet to be done well by anyone credible.

There; I’m done with the disabusing of my ignorance. I’m not planning to revisit it. Time to dissect Star Wars a bit.

 Rules of Assessment

EFAP has a great policy regarding how to assess the movies. The big rule here is that the novels, video games and comic books don’t count. The movie has to work “out of the box” so to speak. Also, writing the movie for the writers is unacceptable, they’re the artists we’re viewers. The answers need to be on the screen. This really does put the movie in perspective for me. I was tired of people using novels, comics and video games to excuse stuff anyway.  At some point it becomes expensive, un-fun Star Wars homework.

I willingly take on the mantle of Novice Objective Movie Critic. Thanks EFAP.

A Very Mixed Bag

Is this movie Well Written? It’s pretty Bi-Polar and seems to lack key information. Perhaps the opening crawl could have had more information? Or some throw away lines to illustrate the blockades origins and whatever sparked such a radical move?

At times the movies plain boring and depends on big budget CGI sets. For instance, a lot of the CGI has held up in the ho-hum senate sequences and helps getting through a Galactic Senate debate on Intergalactic Politics.

There’s so much to be said about whats bad about this movie. There’s a few really bad characters like Jar Jar Binks. Notable for being the first ever all CGI character and not much else, Jar Jar is the Rose Tico of the PT, fading into the background in subsequent films.

This movie Jar Jar’s front and center and he’s a mess. Some found him offensive he may have been meant for much younger kids. He seems real enough and present though, more real than Leia in Rise of Skywalker.

We have some really terrible dialogue pretty much all over the place. George Lucas is directing and he seemingly never gets your best performance. He doesn’t care, he’s going for your best Star Wars Performance. I’m thinking he doesn’t give you a lot of Direction.

The Galactic Republic political system is logical enough, it’s pretty effectively shown to be nearly completely broken and approaching uselessness.. And that’s advancing the story but it’s just not a lot of fun to watch.

If you wanted to see some exposition on the Republic’s size and unwieldy nature you do get that though. It’s pretty well told in words and images in the debut of the Senate Chamber. For the most part though, it’s C-Span in Space.

Still, Lucas has a complete vision and says everything he wants to say. The problem is that in accomplishing that he didn’t really entertain. A Pyrrhic Victory.

So its a Mixed Bag of mostly bad. Maybe the musical score is the best part. John Williams does well. Duel of the Fates is absolutely great. Starting to count positives with the musical score says a lot though. Not much else gets to be called Great. Costumes maybe?

The plot in and of itself, is actually NOT terrible. Its sort of good. Lucas had pondered the three movie arc a long time. A lot of stuff is also mandated and locked in by OT dialogue.

The fact its a bad movie yet still was somewhat well conceived complicates assessing it.

Then there’s some things that are just hard to justify.

Objective Problems, Lucas Style

Why is there a blockade?

It does seem nebulous but just requires closely watching a slow movie. It’s plainly said. It’s money.

In the senate chamber Senator Palpatine says the dispute started over the Taxation of Trade Routes. So that’s that. The disputes over money and trade. That’s all we get.  It’s easy to find. It’s just blurted right out, Amidala asks for a Vote of No Confidence right after at Palpatine’s suggestion. The “Badly Written Faction” was dead wrong on this.

How are they tracked?

One thing that was discussed on EFAP is “Just how does Darth Sidious trace the Queens transmission and find her and the Jedi on Tatooine?” Watching with subtitles actually answers this. It’s also pretty amazing to read the babble that Jar Jar actually says.

As far as how the Sith track them; its in the movie. In one brief exchange – They exposed themselves to being traced by even accepting the message. It’s not great but it’s said.

After Obi-wan tells them not to reply we get Sidious and Maul. They say theres a “contact trace.” I don’t think this new concept ever comes back again. It’s a contrivance to be sure, but I don’t find it that horrible. It’s done sort of bad but the answer is in there. This problem definitely took some to effort to even find. That to me makes it a bit more minor.

How Do They Get To Tatooine?

How do they get from Naboo to Tatooine if the Hyperdrive is leaking? This never really gets explained. This issue is legitimate as far as an objective flaw. How did EFAP miss it? The “Badly Written Faction” was right on this.

However the characters do not say the Hyperdrive doesn’t work at all. We don’t see them initiate hyperspace or drop out though. An Undocumented mini-jump seems to have been left out.

It’s probably a real mistake. This leaves merely the implication only that they can still move in an interstellar manner pretty quick without hyperspace because, hey- they get there. Not well done though. Sorry, George.

How they get to Tatooine is not spelled out. It is bad writing here.  This one also just slipped by even the objective obsessed EFAP guys.  It really was an objective problem.

The Separatist Blockade simply mentions to Sidious a Naboo cruiser ran the blockade and has passed out of their range. Nothing more. Nothing about having even a general idea where they went. It’s treated no different than if they did go to Hyperspace and couldn’t be tracked (ah, the good old days). That’s another reason that I think Lucas either forgot to write or cut a scene and just forgot to fix this error.

I guess it is sloppy. I can’t make it work either. Somehow its lost in other issues and doesn’t hurt the movie for me. Maybe Lucas is good at damage control and is better at everything at the end of the production then he was the beginning? Because its easy to miss and a little hard to find. Maybe he smoothed it out in editing. There’s no real way to know.

It’s cheaper and actually smarter to do what Watto says and buy a new ship.

They’re on what amounts to Air Force One and everyone is looking for it. The fact the ship itself is valuable is validated when Watto bets on it. I buy this as an objective problem. Lucas makes a mistake here too. Watto should never have said they would be better off buying another ship and created this issue. It’s a real mistake. The characters opt for the harder, dumber path.

Why are Republic Credits worthless and not exchangeable?

Republic Credits being worthless and not exchangeable anywhere on Tatooine was also a little weird and really doesn’t make sense. It’s a criminal planet, there’s no money launderer? Not movie killing, but a head-scratcher and just one more problem.

Why Leave Anakin’s Mother in Slavery?

That fact the Jedi leave Anakin’s mother in slavery when she’s spontaneously generating super powerful force users is a weird choice.  The characters fate could have still been the same in the end without leaving her to Watto. This one is the worst loose end of all. What was Mace Windu thinking on this one? I still can’t get past this.

Lucas is inspired to a point but he’s never really right on in this movie writing or directing. It’s just too ambitious in a lot of areas. Like it’s overuse of 20th Century CGI.

Questionable Choices and Affluenza 

Another issue is that a very key role is played by a child actor. This is compounded when the child actor is asked to act woodenly and Lucas-like. The first entrance of the future Vader is designed to be cute. It’s strange but not unintriguing.

Young Anakin also has to transition the fans from hating Vader to pulling for him. The movie does get there but its a tough slog. I got there after Qui-gon dies and we see Anakin as a padwan at the very end. And its just a visual. This is more a questionable choice than a mistake.

Maybe if Lucas had somehow made Anakin a padwan earlier it would have helped. Maybe he’d have been better with as a youngling apprentice doing things on purpose rather than sort of accidentally destroying a key enemy ship through a series of coincidences?

I think in the moment he writes TPM Lucas was simply too well insulated from any real feedback. There’s no real internet for him to get go and get beat up on yet, that comes in later. Does anyone think in 1996 when the wheels start really turning on this there was any person was able to say “hey George there’s some real problems here.” ? Or that they cared?

The studio knew demand was really strongly there. One example of how they knew- Bad movie Meet Joe Black was a hit that no one saw because all the people left after the Star Wars trailer and it played to empty houses. The trailer even made them money. They just let George do anything he wanted. The Studio was getting a Star Wars movie for the first time in a long, long time.  They didnt care what he made.

Script Problems

The Phantom Menace script needed doctoring it never got. It’s too bad he didnt run it by Spielberg or really good creative.  I don’t know if it could have been totally saved but this movies was worse than it had to be for sure.

The pacing of the movie is slow all the way through. There’s flashes of excitement, but usually these moments happen while another plot point is unfolding at the same time.

The great light saber duel, for instance, is about five minutes strung out over maybe 20. It might even be 3 minutes of 15, I’m unsure. The point is like all other action scenes we’ve got plots unfolding with other characters. This time it doesn’t work.

Some of this sequence is so bad it’s ‘un-Star Wars-like’ if you can say that about a Lucas movie. “Lets try spinning, that’s a good move!” is some really bad dialogue that takes you right out of the movie.

The execution and direction are bad. There’s also a few of worthy paths not taken.

The Acting

Most of the acting isn’t bad, but no one has a super great performance either.

Liam Neeson is okay but his greatest feat may be hiding how bummed out he is to be there. He mostly stays away from Star Wars after this. It probably complicates Attack of the Clones as I think he would have died in TPM anyway and been a Force Ghost in the next two movies. Seems he wanted none of it.

Ewan McGregor, on the other hand does a great Alec Guinness imitation. He owns the role from here on, but he doesn’t save the movie. He’s just not in it enough for one thing. The ensemble cast is all over the place to the point of some confusion.

Everyone else is just sort of okay. Natalie Portman is good enough in her really confusing role. She’s not to blame for any of the problems. Shes mostly just really beautiful wall paper in all three of these movies.

The use of CGI was cutting edge and not all of it holds up. Lucas is trying to do stuff, it’s just not working! He’s no Peter Jackson with the CGI at first. The Disney Plus version may be a little more enhanced than my DVD is.

Is It A Childrens Movie ?

Okay this time maybe the movie really was aimed at a slightly younger audience then the rest of the films. Is Lucas out of his element, aiming too low in age to hit the right beats? It would explain a lot. In fairness we never get a story this bad from George Lucas again.

Way back in 1997, when he was teasing the release, I remember George Lucas saying some elaborate stuff about how he viewed the Prequel Trilogy’s audience. It was fairly well thought out and all about building the fan base through appealing to six to ten year old’s instead of middle school kids with Episode 1.

He was pretty proud of this concept and later it becomes a shield against criticism with the whole “childrens movie about space wizards” defense apologists for JJ Abram’s make later.

The idea these movies are for children shows up around the release of this movie. Until then I just thought the Star Wars movies were for everyone, turns out I was wrong. So I guess I like children’s movies to a point. Perhaps we all do? The flaw in the excuse is that ‘these are some VIOLENT children’s movies.’ The adversaries had to mostly be robots or its an R for violence.

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Lucas 3 movie concept on the Prequels was daring, The movies were meant to be more mature as they went on, ageing up with the audience. Whatever the case, it gets said out loud that at least sometimes the movies were for 12 or even 8 year old’s.

It seems believable when you look at the three movies as one long story. Attack of the Clones has its plot unpacked better and is a departure from Phantom Menace. It’s not as simplistic and unpopular characters get semi-shelved. Then Revenge of the Sith has a dark, violent and somewhat mature tone. Episode III sort of justifies the journey, but that’s another blog post.

This one time the children’s movie excuse might be applicable. This one time the movie actually really seems to be aimed at younger children. Maybe that’s why it kind of sucks.

Is the Movie Just Bad?

Why lie? You could just say this and you’d be mostly right.

The Phantom Menace is definitely not a good movie. It’s fair to call it bad. I think it’s Lucas’ worst Star Wars movie. It was my worst in Theater Lucas movie experience! Especially the part where I saw it in theaters three more times thinking it must be me only walk out in the middle of the fourth viewing thinking about Stockholm Syndrome and

The complex plot is never fully unpacked. Its probably partly by design. It seems to have been Lucas’ thing. He was good at getting an audience to instantly invest in characters anyway. There’s minimal information about the nuts and bolts of the overall situation in this movie. It mostly holds up enough, it’s not good though. The conflict is pretty clearly over money.

We never find out why Naboo is such a priority. A line or two could have fixed this. It could have had some rare commodity the Trade Federation wanted or just been conveniently located on the hyperspace routes. We never get that. Its a fair point against the movie being Well Written too.

Lucas probably regrets he once boasted that the idea dawned on him one day and he wrote the script fairly quickly. It shows in The Phantom Menace. So while his concept was around a long time, he just fires off this script.

It was also the first time in a while. He’s a bit rusty and hard to advise. I doubt he redrafted it much. It seems like no one else was consulted.

In this movie Lucas is at his least successful in so many ways as a creator. The thing is he’s still better than most. His bad ideas are still overthought. He has a backstory and a reason for everything and he can spit out an answer on any aspect of his universe in most any interview. He’s wasn’t winging it, he just didn’t have the story refined enough.

Lucas is completely free to make any movie he wants and it will be funded. That cuts both ways in this movie and he owns the failure. It makes money and he doesn’t destroy his franchise, he just makes a bad Star Wars movie. The Studio didnt care, they just wanted their Star Wars movie after about 16 years of not having anything.

It was the franchises highest grossing movie. Lucas never rakes in more money but the criticisms are there. Having burnt off the Pent Up Demand the next movie had problems finding audiences by comnparison.

There’s real plot holes that got mentioned by EFAP and by people as far back as when the movie came out. The biggest issue is clearly “Why wouldn’t you break loose some cash and send a Jedi back to free Anakin’s mother from slavery?” That’s a problem that Lucas never addresses.

The journey through the center of Naboo was debated as unrealistic. On that point I just say “This is a Star Wars planet, its not even a Star Trek planet. You want to say the core is water? Okay.” That said, the sequence is a terrible mess. It’s not easy to tell who is doing what and why as we avoid a few too many monsters.

Lucas is not really mailing it in; but he has a bad day writing and directing. He gets the performances he wanted. They’re just not what everyone else wanted. The homage to serials was just too wooden in this movie. The expectations may have changed when it comes to acting styles from the release of the OT to the point this movie is made. The generation that grew up on serials was Lucas age. They weren’t running out to see it like they did in 1977. That generations grown kids were the target Lucas fails to appeal to. They were ready to follow him anywhere but this movie just kills Star Wars momentum for the entire prequel trilogy.

There’s a whole post to be made about how this movie is the moment so called “Head Canon” and Toxic Superfans start showing up. Who hasn’t had to sit through a lecture about how they need to throw 100 or so bucks into EU materials to walk into the theater? That’s just not a valid argument. The movie is supposed to simply make sense and entertain. I should be prepared enough when I fork over my twenty dollars.

One huge problem is Lucas has some dialogue and details from the Original Trilogy hemming him in a little. He tries to justify how a 10 year old can be a great pilot, but the solution is the Pod Race, which is only just so exciting and mostly played for laughs. It’s only kind of entertaining. Later when Lucas hits the ‘great pilot’ theme again during the fight on Naboo it doesn’t work either.

The final product has problems and is slow and boring. On the plus side- the damage is real but minimal to the franchise. It still feels like Star Wars, even with the warts. I could make a huge list of continuity and dialogue problems. I’ll mention just one – Theres some characters whose English accents just come and go. Notably Queen Amidala.

Lucas does sell his young Vader for the most part though. Its not a fun romp through the Galaxy Far Far Away, but its the Galaxy we liked for the most part.

The Force is explored to a point but the assumption is that you’ve seen the OT (and you have). There’s more powerful Force use on display, but just better, stronger versions of what we’ve seen for the most part. It’s logical enough a Jedi master would have more raw Force muscle than a glorified padwan like Luke is in Empire Strikes Back or a near complete Jedi Knight in Return of the Jedi.

TPM just sort of boring, though. So the limited exposition about the nature of the Force is an issue as much as the clunky dialogue. They are issues that count against the movie being well written. It’s not poorly conceived though, it just doesn’t work out.

The Midochlorian thing stays around and seems to relate to what’s called Garbage DNA in the real world. Its not in itself bad.

Viewed simply as the first of three prequels we can say we do get some more on the Force a little later. I myself also feel that some mystery surrounding the nature of the Force is good.

Directed with in a throwback fashion this only works just enough to be mostly coherent. Highlights are few and far between. A few more mistakes and it would have been awful.

You can’t say its Well Written but its not franchise-killing garbage. It’s a boring Star Wars movie and yes, overall its bad. Leave it to the Sequel Trilogy to make The Phantom Menace look like “the Good Old Days.”

Because the Prequels get better fast the movie has some fans. Its not Unwatchable.

My Verdict

It’s a Bad movie with a decent but poorly executed plot. Its only just so well written. Its an aberration among the six Lucas movies. I’m staking out a position in the middle. It’s the worst Lucas Star Wars movie. It’s only written just so well. On the other how smart was it holding off on this origin story now that we see it? Episode IV was a better starting point for sure! That doesn’t help TPM though.

The movie has an idea of where it wants to go but still meanders. It’s slow for a movie that has a lot of conflict. Its too long and its got bad dialogue. The plot was only okay. It’s only written okay. Its NOT written outright bad. The story is clear but can be hard to follow as things unfold so slowly.

The plots is pretty good but the movie is sub-par. If being immersed in Lucas’ Galaxy is your thing you’ll enjoy some of it. It wasn’t the best but is no longer the worst Star Wars movie. It’s a below average movie and a below average Star Wars movie and a fairly bad movie in general. Its about a Two Stars out of Five kind of movie.

I dont know if saying it sets up the next two movies well is redeeming to this movie in and of itself. Its still not good.

In a word “Underwhelming.” I guess “It never completely falls apart and just keeps plodding along” is my one sentence summation of positives.

If it got a grade its a C, maybe a C plus. One to ten as far as well written? It’s like a 6. I mean, there’s so many much worse movies for one thing.

It’s also a pretty bad movie, but there’s four that are much, much worse Star Wars movies out there now.

Perversely, its now mediocre among Star Wars movies. Thanks, Disney, you Force Healed The Phantom Menace to fourth fifth worst Star Wars movie!

Epilogue – The Internet Saves Star Wars

Around the time of the release of The Phantom Menace things like AOL get social media going and Lucas has anonymity again on the internet. This was the honest feedback Hollywood money men weren’t giving him and never would.

I’m convinced the internet revolution and it taking on its present form grounded a newly anonymous Lucas online, where people would just unload on the movie and say what they wanted.

My only real proof is that pretty much everything people hated was addressed in some form in the subsequent movies. There’s a darker story unfolding with things like more lightsaber duels, chases and space battles. Things sorely missing from TPM.

There’s a case to be made Attack of the Clones is a fairly good movie. It strongly departs from the stuff that killed TPM.

But the Internet hasn’t happened yet. The Phantom Menace was conceived and made before any real social media at all. The world was different. Cell phones could only make calls and send text messages when this movie comes out.

Here’s the EFAP Debate. This blog post is my theories, heres several others should you want to hear them.

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I’m Not Seeing The Rise of Skywalker and Neither Should You!

20 Friday Dec 2019

Posted by therealmcteag in Disney Star Wars, star wars,, The Rise of Skywalker, Uncategorized

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dont sdee rise of skywalker, dont see rise of skywalker, dont see star wars, emperor palpatine returns badly, force awakens, George lucas, harrison ford, jj abrams, JJ Abrams tropes, last jedi, last jedi awful, McTeag's Law of Star Wars Movies, Rise of skywalker awful, Rise of Skywalker Bad, rise of skywalker review, rise of skywalker toys and collectibles, rogue 1, rogue one, see star wars at home instead, solo movie, Star Trek, star wars, Star Wars Emperor, star wars novies getting worse, The Rise of Skywalker, why syo, why you shouldnt see Rise of Skywalker

Bad Trailers and Two Bad Sequel Prequels Point to Bad Movie

Sadly, we have been down the road of Bad Star Wars movies, especially since Disney took over, too many times. At every step of the way the sacred trust and love people have for the movies prevent you from getting any read on a movie you’ve seen 10 out of context minutes of in all sorts of commercials already. From candy to cars, Star Wars sells it all. 

Right now an early, spoiler-y but terrible review has emerged from GQ which kills the movie; starting with it’s really bad re-introduction of Palpatine. Here’s a quick quote that sums up what sounds awful – 

The “return” of Palpatine could easily turn out to be some clever scheme by some unknown villain, who hopes gain power by drafting on the reputation of the terrifying emperor.

 

And then, just a minute or two later, Kylo Ren comes face-to-face with Emperor Palpatine himself—very much alive, thank you—and Rise of Skywalker starts digging a hole it never finds a way to climb out from.

This damning piece of information, which shows nothing was learned from the (Horrible) Solo Movie Easter Egg as far as being unexplained and bad, seems pretty movie-killing just on its own. Its apparently right up front and there was worse in there. 

The Phantom Menace Paradox

My warning here probably won’t stop anyone either,  because Star Wars Stockholm Syndrome is REAL! People sympathize with anything slapped with the Star Wars logo.

How bad is it? Well, The Phantom Menace was the biggest grossing of the Lucas made movies. So, in a sense there’s no way to measure how good the movie is. That Phantom Menace defied the few realistic but much shared bad reviews and scathing word of mouth to be the most lucrative Star Wars Movie clouded peoples judgement. The malignant concept “now they’re Bomb Proof” was born. Fortunately the prequels got better fast, but the Box Office, while still great, was a bit down after Phantom Menace initially tarnishes the concept. even though it takes til home video for anger to really emerge. 

In contrast; near perfect movie Revenge of the Sith had a sort of disappointing box office. It wasn’t really about the movie, which, again, is really good. People were tired of Star Wars by this point.  Some people had hated both the previous movies. Also at that point, with all the video and re-releases, they had flooded the market. These things as well as being the only R rated Star Wars movie made it a cautionary box office tale compared to the inferior film, Phantom Menace. Another bad precedent was set. 

NOTE-Revenge of the Sith is slowly redeeming itself because there’s just a lot worse Star Wars movies out there. It had mixed reviews and was somewhat overlooked initially, but that’s another post.

But the idea a truly bad Star Wars movie was still going to do great financially was out there and it was just too intoxicating. Crank out the movies and merch and stay away from what made Return of the Sith great was sort of built into the game plan. 

Disney seems to have taken this as a license of sorts. They know the movies can’t truly fail (or so we still think), so what difference does it make if it could be better so long as it opens on time? Sort of like “Its crazy to own an Orange Grove and not plant oranges in orange season.” They paid out the nose for this and they built a theme park around it that costs a fortune to go to. 

No one believes they’re ever going to slow down the franchise until they can make, you know, decent movies. They just want their holiday Skywalker franchise and their summer Star Wars Stories  to open on time. After all, a lengthy delay didn’t help SOLO, which wasn’t even the best Sci-Fi movie with a Paul Bettany Death Scene in theaters that week (That would have been Avengers: Infinity Wars).

Critics have finally found some courage since the disaster that was The Last Jedi and the lackluster “Solo” movie that just felt like what many said it was- a wikipedia page on screen. So while Rogue One was an amazing view, the other three movies from the JJ Abrams crew up to now are bad or even awful.

The Curious Curse of Hiring JJ Abrams

While some people might be more forgiving, JJ Abrams will always be the guy who gave us the worst series ending of all time with LOST way back in the day. A seed was planted – JJ Abrams can only wrote beginnings. Nothing since then has disproved it.

Abrams romp through the Star Trek Universe left it so messed up things are still not really together a decade later! Chances Quentin Tarantino directs a Star Trek movie are far from high and seeming to drop weekly. The two TV shows, one bad, one yet to be seen, won’t be on regular TV but a streaming pay service from CBS. In the case of Discovery, season one wasn’t good enough for TV. The other show, Picard, appears to exist outside the so called “Kelvin Timeline” people so hate, so it may be good.

The truth is JJ Abrams is a Tropey, check off the boxes and terribly safe writer on the Star Wars movies. He’s mistake prone and creates boring enemy ships and aliens. The formula when Abrams is writing is schematic and transactional, never, ever missing a merchandising plug. Grasping at any plot device to advance from one “Star Wars Moment” to the next, we get from point A to point B in the most predictable way possible most every time.

For example- Is it really plausible Finn and Po are close friends because for 3 minutes they attempted to escape the First Order together? Consider for a moment how brief and frenetic their meeting actually is. No effort was made to really give them the kind of time together it takes to sell a buddy connection. It’s simply bad storytelling. It’s okay, you didn’t watch it wrong, it really is bad.

So the clunkiness and the impersonal nature of the heroes compounds to the point you’re just waiting for something to happen or the movie to end. JJ Abrams didn’t invest emotionally in these characters, why should we? Because he talked us out of about 18 bucks? Because getting conned sucks? I don’t know but people seem to never attack the movie without throwing some justification in there too. In this case it’s “worth it so see the end of the franchise no matter how good or bad.” It’s a cult in some ways.

Back to the new character.  The fact that BB-88 is one the most popular and relatable characters says something. Non verbal and usually pure slapstick. He’s a break from the lack of substance because a droid bouncing off the walls during a space dogfight was funny and didn’t go on too long. The other characters? Maybe the fact they ARE verbal hurts? Dialogue has never been great in Star Wars, but these Disney movies feature some of the blandest techno-babble ever.

McTeag’s Law of New Star Wars Movies

The Rule seems to be ‘The further they get from Lucas material the worse the movie.’

Selling Out to Sell Toys

Who among us will ever forget the Disney lowpoint with C-3PO pointlessly mentioning his red arm? Out of context and needless. It was just there to visually (and financially) differentiate the Toy income stream. It differentiates the C-3PO toys Disney and Abrams gets more of than the ones that are more like the Lucas version, which Lucas gets more of the money from. 

These movies have some of the worst toy connections ever, probably because the ships and creatures aren’t that good so they have to be pushed hard. And really, it’s only just so great compared to the Lucas conceived stuff.

At this point I have to note -JJ Abrams is also a bad toy developer, which in these movies, really hurts. The stuff he outright inherited from Lucas is amazing and we love stuff like Han’s blaster, Luke’s lightsaber and the sounds they made when primed, when fired and the level of damage they did to a target. In contrast Abram’s gave us things like Kylo Ren’s lightsaber, which angered and confused fans with its ‘self amputating’ looking crossguard. 

The elephant in the room is simply money and an intellectual property contract that showed Lucas is still an amazing businessman. Disney only “owns” it just so much and Lucas seems to have found a way to get paid again if too much of HIS vision is used. It turns out Lucas is also pretty successful in litigation when he sets his pack of lawyers on people, even Disney. I don’t think he went out of his way to make this clear and waited for them to make a mistake. Rogue One was almost pure Lucas and I think, with no proof, that he had his lawyers go down there to Rat HQ at Disney with a very serious letter about how much they needed to pay for exceeding the copyright. Good for Lucas, bad for fans as the run from Lucas properties becomes a priority and a plot driver for the Disney Movies.

This is why the killing off of his properties has been central to this new series. In The Last Jedi they kill off the ships from Lucas’ movies. Before that in so-so Force Awakens, Han Solo is just plain old killed in a typical ‘Abrams Parent Killing Scene’ we’re so used to its no longer emotional. For example, he kills 2 parents in half an hour in his first, deceptively good but “all beginning” Star Trek movie. It’s his last nominally good movie. Follow up Into Darkness was a complete mess and disaster that angered all Trek fans as he seemed to sabotage the franchise on the way out the door. One of the biggest insults- lying about what was in the movie to make it pop more. “It’s not Khan but a new villain named Harrison” was ridiculous and no one was surprised it was just bull when they saw the movie. 

Into Darkness was THE most apologized for moment in a Franchise that at different times has starred a bunch of geriatrics, was written by soap opera and western writers, was for a time abandoned by its creator and was led by William Shatner on a shoestring TV budget in the Politically Incorrect 1960s!!! Whats THAT say? 

Since it’s the same fans for the most part, no one was all that psyched to see him land at the helm of Star Wars, and Disney has turned out to be a bad fit. Talk about “Failing Your Way Up!”

In the Disney Star Wars Universe it’s this simple -the closer they get to Lucas’ Vision of The Galaxy Far, Far Away the more Lucas must be paid. But the closer to Lucas the better the movie. Disney just wants money.

George Lucas, The Real Emperor of the Galaxy Far, Far Away

Unlike Abrams,  Lucas’ genius as a filmmaker pales in comparison to his abilities as a highly profitable business man. Time and again he puts profits first and gets them. 

George Lucas generated a fortune for the studios and he managed to please the fans about four and half times out of 6 tries. The only things people truly hated was his slow pace of development between projects and retconning too much.

Hollywood loved that he put profits first too. In one case a better video transfer technique was right around the corner, but the deadline was more important and a pink shift/ purple shift affected the way the entire first trilogy looked. (Note- the version in Disney Plus right now is even a little more re-engineered, with the damage from other transfers somewhat addressed.) Now it looks like he understood the market and his abilities better than people ever gave him credit for. 

Theres Only One George Lucas

At the end of the day the fact is George Lucas was far and away a better creative than JJ Abrams and still made a lot of money. Mountains of it. This is because Lucas self corrected a couple of times. Abrams, contrastingly, has been making and remaking the same two plots for 15 years now.  And one plot is just ‘total pasted together fan-angering mess!’ and the other is “Bad Guys Have an ad hoc Death Star”  

Yes, Phantom Menace is terrible, but things improved fast despite the lack of goodwill for awhile towards the prequels. The bottom line – most of the things people hated in Phantom Menace are minimized or written away in Attack of the Clones, a movie that gets BETTER every 10 minutes even if its never really “great” it’s not terrible like its prequel and doesn’t make all the same mistakes that movie makes(only some of them, mostly upfront). 

You’ll Love it for 6 Bucks

That’s right, I said it, Rise of Skywalker will be a great view in a few months when you can watch it at home for 6 bucks. You’ll probably feel pretty good about punting on it. The theater is just a bad risk now. Some people I know have already seen it and one review was ‘preposterous’. So I don’t think I’m gonna end up being wrong on this. 

My Plea

Don’t bother going to the theater to enable a bad incarnation of a once great franchise. The movie looks derivative and bad. The lead up and trailers are bad. The promise to slow down making the movies if we just see this one is not encouraging at all and wont be kept.

So skip this movie, or, as a wise Sith once said to Luke Skywalker; “You will pay the price for your lack of vision!”

May the Force be with You as you watch the Mandalorian with a borrowed Disney code. That at least has mostly been really good.  Screenshot 2019-12-20 at 11.53.10 PM

Just Another Sci Fi Franchise

That’s right, you heard it here first. The bloom has been off the rose for awhile, but now the Star Wars movies are just plain old movies like any other franchise.  Worse yet, these newer movies have a higher chance of being bad than just any sci fi movie, and in fact Avengers has been better for a while.  While Rogue One delivered, really the next best movie they’ve given us is the shaky (and now undermined) The Force Awakens, which is not quite as good as Phantom Menace. 

And there’s no real need to go to crime ridden Orlando for the Theme Park til the price comes down either  but that’s another post. 

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How JJ Abrams Destroyed Star Trek AND Star Wars

10 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by therealmcteag in jj abrams, science fiction, Star Trek, Star Trek Discovery Fan Review, Star Trek Discovery Fan Revview, Star Trek Discovery Season 1, Star Trek Discovery Season 2, Star Trek the Original Series, Star trek TOS, Star Wars Episode 8, star wars,, The Single Biggest Flaw Killing Star Trek Discovery

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Well things hit a new low for Star Trek fans today as the last rotting vestiges of the Kelvin continuity took what appears to be a fatal hit shedding more creatives and cast members.Is it the end of the big screen part of the franchise? Future movies are very much in doubt at this moment and there’s nothing in production.

On the small screen we’re (sadly) diving into a second ‘for pay’ self-hating season of disappointing Star Trek Discovery. Adding insult to injury we’re going even deeper after the original show, with apparently, a new (as in NOT Zachary Quinto) Spock? Not very promising for a show already reeling from plagiarism charges that are very likely to stick.

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The New Spock….

For fans of Star Wars the news is pretty much the same – The movies are cancelled or on hold for being sub DC bad. Both franchises will now be reduced to mere pay service streaming video shows.

Bravo JJ Abrams, you’ve done what Roddenberry and Lucas couldn’t, made Star Wars and Star Trek unWatchable!

He’s a double murderer of Sci-Fi Franchises. Douglas Addams would likely describe Abrams’ takeover of any franchise as ‘the coming of the great white handkerchief‘

By the time he took over Star Wars he had practice destroying beloved Sci-Fi franchises and a history of shabby treatment of original characters.

JJ Abrams- A Sci Fi Force of Failure

JJ Abrams made one good Trek movie which he then destroyed with a special edition commentary that was too honest and came off fan hating and trope-obsessed. Then Into Darkness was just a bad movie. So bad it destroyed any lingering sentiment for the previous movie and beat us up with a recycled plot that is now the ONLY plot JJ Abrams uses in a movie – The Bad Guy has a Death Star.

Sure, maybe it was originally a Romulan Mining ship or is just a gigantic Federation Starship, but its basically a Death Star and the story was just the same. A glimpse of what we were missing in the Cold Open only made Into Darkness worse. It was the best part of the movie and the ensuing nosedive never ended.

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While Simon Pegg made a really watchable and in fact great Trek Movie in Star Trek Beyond it was too late, goodwill was gone. So little by little the remaining core of cast and creatives that had produced the most entertaining of the movies was allowed to erode.

How Did this Happen?

Ever since he shot Harrison Ford in the head to make predictable tear jerker “Regarding Henry” Abrams has depended on missing or dead parents to add some emotion to his loosely related series of vignettes.

Then we all got a huge dose of FAIL when he decided to simply cease LOST and create perhaps the worst final episode of any show ever. Some people praised him anyway and acted like LOST was Twin Peaks.

In the Star Trek movies he’s a one trick pony killing one each of Kirk and Spock’s parents On Screen in the first 40 minutes of his first Star Trek movie. 20 minutes into Into Darkness he kills Kirk’s surrogate father, Pike. So both characters are now partly motivated like Batman.

Remaking the Final Frontier into The Galaxy Far, Far Away

JJ Abrams only ever wanted to be the Star Wars guy and the stopover at Trek was complicated by his disdain for the franchise, fans and general all around desire to make Star Trek a Star Wars substitute. This extended to having tons of collectibles like never before. Abrams was aware that the merchandising had been the sweetest peach for Lucas and he was trying to do the same thing. Stories of petty obsessions with toy revenue and disputes with the original cast would also surface occasionally, only making Abrams look worse.

In the infamous Star Trek commentary to his first Trek movie Abrams gave away a little too much. Like when he tells us Captain Kirk is now based on Indiana Jones (and Batman), especially when he fights and only wins through luck.  The concept would have been better had he not boasted of it and dispelled the magic of the moment as he explained the point for point similarities to the fight where Kirk and Sulu fight some Romulan goons and the iconic ‘Spinning German Plane Fight’ from “Raiders of the Lost Ark”

Abrams mostly sounded like he had made the movie off a checklist and this was his “Indy fights the Plane Mechanic from Raiders of the Lost Ark Homage” box that he just needed to check off. He was drunk or high and telling too much of the truth that day but we’re lucky to have it on the record.

More importantly to the “Star Trekky-ness” of the new franchise, Abrams simply threw away the idea that we would just go to a planet and hang around observing and exploring.  It seemed to be a concept that was scrupulously avoided to say risk the ship, struggle with the Prime Directive and possibly encounter a race analogous to the current state of Humanity or any combination of those things.

He never did Star Trek at its best, where it shines a light into a flaw inherent in humanity and aspires towards a future where we’re simply more reasonable. No one expected that lofty theme all the time, but it never got any attention. Its probably the hardest thing to pull off, but episodes of the Next Generation did it all the time and the Original series of course pioneered this. Would it have been that bad to give it a try? Star Trek became mere action and adventure.

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JJ Abrams was largely successful in his endeavors to change and destroy Star Trek.  Then, in a shocking turn of events he got his dream job, to destroy Star Wars. Again he was largely successful.

Destroying Star Wars

The cash grab for toy money was so crass and obvious it forced some ‘Legally Necessary Dialogue’ into the Disney Star Wars movies. Who doesn’t love warm Disney Star Trek moments like when C-3PO pointlessly makes mention of his red arm? It stuck out as bad and it was just so obvious why the line was in the movie. It was unseemly.

In so many words; it was all so that JJ Abrams could get his own ‘red armed C-3PO toy’ out there and keep more toy money! There’s other examples you’ll easily find if you watch with the idea “Abrams is trying to secure a toy revenue stream” in mind. So the quality of the dialogue is secondary to selling stuff. So the movies are, in a sense, long commercials where we pay to be pitched things. Lucas was not the greatest with this either, but his movies and merchandise were just better and so was his ‘in movie product pitch’.

During his time at Star Trek toys were an issue and the toy money obsession lead Star Wars down many awful paths too. We’d seen this before in Star Wars, but Abrams take on weapons and droids just isn’t as cool as what Lucas created. Just think about all the anger over Kylo Ren’s ungainly lightsaber and then think about Darth Maul’s lightsaber. The Lucas created weapon is great. The Abrams weapon is just sort of okay on its best day. Lots of people hated it. Never heard that about any Lucas weapon. Lucas was just better at weapons (and ships, droids and stories).

The Abrams Trap–Good Beginnings that Go Nowhere 

Anyone saying JJ Abrams ‘only writes beginnings” is absolutely RIGHT ON! The last decent movie he made, his first Star Trek, was one long beginning. The next movie, Into Darkness, was a mere rehash.

In the case of both Trek and Star Wars he wrote himself and the franchise semi – excitingly into an ultimately boring corner that pre-compromised the next movie. The Force Awakens was okay until the sequel destroyed it as lots of false cannon and quickly abandoned ideas both good and bad. He’s also about the only writer to have less plot ideas as he goes forward.

On the bright side he got away with a few shortcuts. The launching of the First Order Assault ships was unnoticed by most as a re-hash of his original Star Trek movies credit sequence as shuttles escape the doomed USS Kelvin. I don’t know how he got away with this one, so similar. I think that’s when he really starts thinking everyone’s an idiot but him as the movies have more and more blatant tropes and more big budget moments shoe-horned in to inject some excitement into dull stories.

For Star Trek after he leaves things improve fast. We got a near Abrams free movie and Beyond was enjoyable, refreshing and very much a return to form. Fans were already pre-heated and angry though and the movie underperformed. Sadly this seems to have had a discrediting effect on more relatable plots and Discovery has been abysmal. The lessons of the Abrams era were lost and the mistakes are now being compounded in Star Trek Discovery,, a show that went to one planet for one episode and was mostly a plagiarized soap opera otherwise pilfered from a videogame….badly.

In Star Wars we get The Last Jedi, a movie where both plots start with bad jokes that fall flat.  The problem where Rian Johnson, the writer for the that movie, had just inherited nothing to work with was front and center through the whole awful sham. He also didn’t really distinguish himself with his self-important ‘trick’ ending that fails.

Who didn’t pity poor Mark Hamill, forced to play Skywalker as a guy who toys with murdering children? That trait was supposed to SKIP A GENERATION! The moment he holds his lightsaber on Kylo Ren’s bad for both characters. Luke looks horrible and the bad guy suddenly has real justifications that are badly related. Like Han Solo being a bad dad wasn’t enough?

Handcuffed by the need to have a Death Star but not have an actual Death Star, which has been the plot of five of this franchises movies, Johnson gives us  “Miniaturized Death Star Tech” in the Gun on the Salt Planet.  Then Luke dies but doesn’t die. Then dies, kind of.

As an aside- Why Laura Dern was even in this movie is a “wondering out loud’ blog-post of its own

Where We’re At

Perhaps this is the best way to sum up the “genius” of JJ Abrams- both Star Wars and Star Trek have ALL FUTURE MOVIES ON INDEFINITE HOLD AND ARE ONLY PRODUCING STREAMING PAY TV SHOWS.

Highly flawed Star Trek Discovery, mired in a plagiarism lawsuit that Star Trek writers should have been above, are now going to do what the Abrams dictate demands – Treat original characters with total contempt. A characters parent will die soon! Hell, we killed off a bunch of parents and doubles in the long boring trip through the new ‘improved’ mirror universe.

While Star Wars seems locked in to a terrible and unwanted Episode 9 that will likely be all house-keeping and a way to set up Non Skywalker future for the franchise, things are even worse for Star Trek.

Discovery is stuck in a badly plagiarized and predictably over the top world of super high stakes. The shows got a lot of flaws but the stakes being way too high is a constant. So’s the lack of humanity the characters show. Casualties among the crew don’t give the commanders pause.

The obvious ‘save’ for Discovery would be to have them always have been from a parallel universe to begin with and an honorable way out. It’s even a little interesting and freeing. It’s also pretty in keeping with the better Star Trek traditions and themes of over half a century. I hope they try it.

Disovery’s Loose End- The Spore Drive Fiasco

Their “Spore World” is just not going to be maintainable.  The fact is the lawsuit and outrage revolves around it. Unrelated to the lawsuit, there’s another group of people annoyed about a perceived thinly veiled rip off of Dune that also swirls around the pilfered Spore Drive idea.

Look for the Spore Drive to get little if any mention. They’re just going to have to find another reason to spin the saucer section on two axises at once. It’s kind of a stupid effect anyway. So much for your experimental Starship idea.

Star Trek has only one course – but it’s a chance for perhaps the greatest Trek movie of all.

Star Trek’s Only Hope

Give Quentin Tarantino complete control of one movie. Deal with the consequences, it’s only the Kelvin Universe. You could kill the whole crew in a stunning jump to the future and a meeting with a re-cast generation if you want. Bringing on Tarantino for as long as he wants seems a no-brainer. It’s hard to imagine Chris Pine and the other defectors wouldn’t return for something like this.

Let’s hope both franchises can recover.

 

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The Hate-Watcher’s Guide to Disney’s Star Wars Fails; Episode 1- Uncool Weapons

31 Thursday May 2018

Posted by therealmcteag in Han Solo Blaster, Star Wars Weapons, The Hate-Watcher's Guide to Disney's Star Wars Fails; Episode 1- Uncool Weapons, Uncategorized

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a new hope, attack of the clones, disney star wars fails, episode 1, Finn, George lucas, Han Solo, Han Solo Blaster, Hate Watchers Guide to Star Wars, Hate Watching star wars, kylo ren, landos blaster, light sabfer, lightsaber, LucasFilm, Luke Skywalker, princess leia, return of the jedi, revenge of the sith, Rey, rogue 1, rogue one, Ron howard, Solo a star wars story, star wars, star wars episode IV, star wars rogue one, Star Wars Weapons, Star Wars Weapons Guide, the empire strikes back, the force awakens, The Last Jedi, The Phantom Menace, the weapons of star wars, World War 2, World War II

Ever since Force Awakens hit theaters it’s slowly become obvious that the production values in The Galaxy Far, Far Away have fallen even as the budget has gone up. Sure, things usually look good in the center of the screen, but as anyone who’s racked up repeated views of Force Awakens, Last Jedi and SOLO will notice- Only the hero’s weapons are any good.

Part of it is technology may have simply enabled the developers to the point where they became the opposite of Creative, they are now “Risk Averse”. So while we got a decent effect for  Star Killer Base’s main weapon its sort of alone amidst dreadful new props and bad Foley Art (sound effects).

More Elegant Weapons from a More Civilized Time

Bigger, blander has been the trend and of course nothing is worse than Kylo Ren’s three bladed lightsaber. It’s at once stupid, poorly imagined, and thought provokingly impractical. The weapon was just a terrible vision of a lightsaber variant. It might have been forgivable alone, but it had plenty of (bad) company!

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This is all on Disney. It’s cheapness, laziness and a lot of re-use of things from the Avenger’s Universe. It’s not like they can’t get it right, when they shelled out for lots of Lucas property in Rogue 1 and embraced the feel of the original movies things worked out. Everyone had a pretty cool weapon right down to the US Omaha Beach gear some of the Rebels sport in the final assault. They took the time to really study the original gear and art from the first movie. They also correctly realized that George Lucas was homage-ing World War II movies and added some real WWII movie looking features to the whole production. It’s not rocket science!

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WW2 style Rebels in Rogue 1

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two awesome, real looking weapons in a cut scene from Rogue 1 Theatrical release

Even in the heavily criticized pre-quel series George Lucas designed better looking and sounding weapons than Disney has ever bothered with. For example, when Lucas decides to give the lightsaber an upgrade for Darth Maul it results in a cool, dangerous and logical looking weapon. Same thing for blaster pistols. Jango Fett has a great set of silver blasters that sound awesome when fired. It seems like the Solo movie’s Lando has one just like them judging from the look and sound of it.

Continuing on the topic of Blasters we have lots of stand out bad props. It seems perhaps no one wants to use their best ideas on a weapon that will end up being property of Disney anyway. A lot of highly boring weapons are showing up for whatever reason.

The Force Awakens shows us our lamest weapons to that point. Consider it a watershed moment where lack of creativity would always be accepted so long as a huge special effects scene was enabled. The Star Killer Base itself is just not that creative a weapon. It’s a mega Death Star. It’s acceptable but it also seems like the galaxy’s most expensive fire and forget weapon cause they suck that star dry! Some enabling dialogue could fixed that in a second, but the movies sloppy. “After we fire prepare to tow the base to the secondary star in the next system!” There- see how easy that was?

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Finn’s Blaster

The standard Stormtrooper weapon for the First Order is only okay. Its got white plastic on it probably incorporated for the sale of the toy (keeping it from looking too real). If we’re going to start designing movies around creating more effective Cosplay outfit we should just quit making Star Wars movies right now.

 

Rey’s blaster is a good example of a terrible weapon. It looks awful and lacks any menacing quality. It also sounds pretty crappy when she fires it. I won’t even waste a

paragraph on the LEGO style rifle Finn gets from Han Solo. I will indulge one more sentence and say its so bad it makes Rey’s modded vape rig of a pistol look a lot better.

In general they’ve given up on putting that worn, hard-used look into people’s personal weapons. In the past generally when Lucas was calling the shots the coolest weapons (and ships) had a convincing beat up look.  In the Disney Star Wars movies most of the gear looks new and fresh. It’s just not very Star Wars. Most Non Imperial Star Wars gear looks like it’s in serious need of maintenance.

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Rey’s blaster

Just among major characters in the Solo movie; Beckett’s personal weapon was a forgettable collection of tubes! Bad Guy Vision/ Dryden Vos terrorizes people with a pair of ginsu brass knuckle lightsabers that are a snooze! I wont insult you by posting a picture.

Conversely, very watchable Rogue 1 features mostly Lucas and Lucas-like ships, enemies and weapons and made for a Star Wars movie we could feel the ‘danger’ in.

There’s also a new level of Gun Awareness in our society that shouldn’t make it into the movies creative process (at least so far as marketability of toys). In most states relaistic looking reproductions of weapons are simply illegal.  The result is that ‘realistic’ (aka Menacing looking) weapons have to be orange when they’re made into toys/collectibles. Seems the art prop department played to that.

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Rey’s blaster prototype?

Think of it this way- when the original movie opens in 1977 every single weapon was awesome and had a great sound to it. Han’s blaster, storm trooper rifles, the Death Star’s main weapon. All wins. This starts to go away slowly in the prequels, but the guns still reflect the characters. Not so much anymore.

Han Solo’s weapon alone is a triumph of Hero Weaponry. Inspired by a real gun, heavy and dangerous looking, had a great sound for ‘cocking’ it as well as a super cool ‘report’ when it fired. It did damage that seemed appropriate. It’s a win. The storm trooper rifles are no less brilliant.

And George Lucas was a MASTER of Foley art who could always squeeze just a little more juice out of the right sounds and weapon combo. In return of the Jedi we finally hear a second type of weapon fired from the Falcon. You never get a great look but it seems that there’s forward firing cannons as well as the Quad laser Turrets. It has a unique bass-y sound.

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Han Solo’s Lucas Conceived weapon

 

Lucas vs Disney = No Contest

There’s a visible creative drop off between Lucas conceived and, for lack of a better term, Abrams conceived weapons, where Lucas wins hand over fist. It’s not even close.

Cube-ish, rectangular and uninteresting weapons that unimportant characters sport are a new and growing problem. The Creature/ Weapon asssembly line at Dinsey evokes under-thought 1970’s Marvel Star Wars comics weapons or even something like the mid 80’s GI Joe animated cartoon. Everything looks like it’s made of LEGOS. The Force Awakens was a call away from arms, for lack of a better term, as it signaled a huge slip concept designs. Except for Rogue 1 all the weapons we’ve seen from Disney are just awful.

Refocusing on the SOLO Movie; every weapon but the main characters, which were leftover from Lucas, is bland and boring. Only ships like the Falcon and TIE fighters are actually good or have decently menacing weapons. Even so, the Non Lucas guns on the Falcon, which we understand were before a lot of “special modification”, were still just lame. Its not like the visibly less cool gun couldnt have sounded a little less wimpy. The earlier tie fighters were ‘copyright payment reducing-ly different,’ with toned down weapons as well and are not quite as familiar or menacing . They seem like they will be easy to deal with and they are.

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Characters weapons were once much more important in The Galaxy Far, Far Away. The spoke to a character and added to it.

 

The desire to have the weapons reflect the character and also where they fit in to society was a meme in the original movie. For instance, well toCharacters weapons were once much more important in The Galaxy Far, Far Away. The spoke to a character and added to it.  do princess Leia has an appropriately elegant blaster, as does her mother Amidala in the prequels.

As for Leia’s weapon, it’s also well thought out and she stays with in later movies. It seems more precise and have a smaller impact mark on the stormtroopers she hits. Luke’s original musket was another example of the weapon fitting the character. It’s slim and elegant. It looks like a rich person would own it more than say what Han is running around with. It’s one of the character’s signature possessions.

When Luke gets his own pistol he ends up with what Han uses rather than the usual Rebel blaster, showing he was not your typical Rebel. It could be viewed as showing the characters self image, even if its just that he noticed it was pretty effective.

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Rogue 1- Always the Exception

On the opposite end of the scale, the fluke good movie, Rogue 1, features mostly Lucas conceived ships and weapons. Let’s face it, it helped. The reveal of Princess Leia at the end is a rare moment of respectful treatment of an original character, but thats a whole post of its own.

The Rogue 1 characters weapons and what original gear, weapons and ships they had were close to the weapons we see in the original series. Its clear that this production team looked at the same sources Lucas looked at- the weapons and equipment of World War II, for inspiration when designing anything new.

It’s got a far more authentic “Star Wars” feel. We don’t have the Falcon, but he have the basic Imperial Shuttle, which has always been cool ( but was re-interpreted somewhat poorly as the First Order shuttle). Also in Rogue 1 we have a big battle featuring almost purely Lucas conceived ships at the end of the movie. Plenty of X-Wings, TIE fighters and other familiar and signature vessel’s were part of the fight. It felt very ‘Star Wars’.

A bunch of Darth Vader scenes where he does everything we love climaxes with his vicious attack on a group of rebel soldiers. It’s one of everyone’s favorite scenes from the movie and has been cosplayed at subsequent Comic-Cons. All the weapons in this sequence are Lucas conceived and it’s the best part of the best Disney movie by Light Years.  Think about that.

Intellectual Property

This will be it’s own post soon. Just a thought for now-

Im thinking theres probably a connection to the language in the Disney – Lucas Intellectual Property Agreement that is part of pushing weapons and ships into a Non-Lucas area.

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more awesome weapons from Rogue 1

 

 

 

 

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Why Star Wars Movies Keep Getting Worse

26 Saturday May 2018

Posted by therealmcteag in Uncategorized, Why Star Wars Movies Keep Getting Worse

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George lucas, George Lucas fails, George Lucas Wins, Guillermo del toro, hellboy, hellboy 2 the golden army, how star wars keeps failing, jj abrams, Marvel Star Wars Crossover Movie, Pan's Labyrinth, solo movie, Solo Movie FAIL, Star Trek, Star wars fails, Star Wars Sucks, The Phantom Menac, What keeps going wrong with Star Wars Movies, why there will never be another good star wars movie, why you shouldnt see Solo Movie

Parallel Cosmologies

Well if you can mess up a Han Solo movie you can mess up anything. While Solo wasn’t a complete disaster it wasn’t as good as Rogue 1 or Revenge of the Sith. In general the movies are trending down. I have a few theories about exactly why this is happening.

Here’s my take on how these movies have gotten to the point making a good one is not likely at all-
The Wrong Movies Made MUCH More Money

Biggest Single Problem – The Phantom Menace is the highest grossing movie. That means every movie since has had elements of this huge fail thrown in. They think their giving the people what they want. It’s just because the price of movie tickets had hit an all time high (and has not gone up much since) around the time the movie came out AND the Star Wars Mandela Effect (more on that later)

Return of the Jedi is probably the highest grossing of the original trilogy in initial releases for all the obvious reasons. ROTJ is so flawed the Ret-Conning starts pretty quickly. Its probably the most re-made of the original movies too. This leads to a lot of problems. Lucas keeps helicoptering back to do a little more here and there.

One of the now recurring problems starting with ROTJ is “Unfrozen Han Solo” is a hit as a giddy comic relief type with no remaining darkness. It completes the characters journey from hard bitten cynic and works only in that sense. Sadly that version of Solo was the one we get in the Solo origin movie. It hamstrung the movie and the character.

Un-Failing Through Sheer Profitability has made the movies bomb proof and review-proof. How do you get a read on a franchise when your most flawed movie is highest grossing and you discount pent up demand?
Tech Crazy Money Hungry Mistakes and Purple Shift Compromise Originals

Along the way Lucas really fucks up and ‘Purple Shifts’ the prints of the original movies. In other words he was too quick to digitize the movies and they suffer from a then unnoticed flaw in technology. All colors pulled towards purple. Only a few people notice, until everyone does. Then you see it to the point its distracting. Its likely the original color scheme is gone forever.

Star Wars Stockholm Syndrome- Mandela Effect

People just seem to blame themselves when they see a multi-billion dollar grossing movie that they know sucks. Herd Mentality and groupthink kick in. You see the same thing with badly designed cell phones.

Apple especially has introduced flawed phones and blamed the user. One time they convinced everyone they just couldn’t take a picture right. Hey it worked, right? Forget that they hadn’t worked out a huge bug and just patched it. The story held up.

In the Galaxy Far, Far Away Stockholm Syndrome, where we sympathize with our captors meets the Mandela Effect; which is a phenomena whereby we create a false memory, meet. The bottom line is people convince themselves that the Star Wars writers can do no wrong and then recall their trip to the theater as better than it was.  It’s not crazy, its probably the only way to rationalize the cash massacre of a trip to the theater with a family. Youre out a hundred bucks! “It wasn’t that bad” is actually a very normal compensation.

Most people think they enjoyed the movies no matter what. It’s like a lot of people are inoculated ahead of time against believing the movie could be bad.

There’s a harsh group of fans who also just hate every movie and at one time they were cranks. No one wants these cynics to win. It’s self spite-ing denial that the doomsayers ended up being right. People HATE being wrong as much as they hate being conned. They will often Con themselves as a self defense mechanism.

This means no one’s Word of Mouth Testimonials about the movies can really be believed. They’re lying to themselves and will try to get you to validate it for them by telling you it was good or that it was worth seeing.

Toy Money

The toy money is just as green as the movie money. So if the movie is a little off the mark more toys can be released and people will buy them no matter what. So you can ‘save’ movies with toys

The cruel Paradox; Toys are for Children; doesnt happen exactly like you might think, but it affects the movies.

Everyone collects the toys, including me. The problem isnt that adults wont buy them, they do. It’s making a movie too dark and scary for children at all is now off the table.

As proof I offer this- the best movie outside the original series is still Revenge of the Sith, the only PG-13 Star Wars movie ever. It was not considered profitable and its the “Temple of Doom” of the franchise. Different and interesting but not as successful and much ignored.

So you don’t really learn anything from making a chance-y but good movie. Another way to fairly assess the movies also gets closed off.

No chances are taken with Star Wars movies at all. The spark is gone. The New York Times accused the Solo movie of being a movie about a Wikipedia page. Its not unfair at all. There were few surprises in Solo.
Feedback Loop of Yes-Men

The Phantom Menace was terrible because NO ONE could criticize George Lucas to his face. The Internet made him anonymous again. He has never spoken of it but he was definitely going online like everyone else and he saw some biting criticisms. To his credit he seems to have listened. Im sure the first few hours were horrible for him though.

You can see Lucas’ effort to literally Un-Fuck the problems of Episode 1 in Episode 2. By Episode 3 he had re-set the stage for a truly good movie in Return of the Sith. I think Lucas absolutely was letting the fans have their way and its probably out of shame when he himself realizes he screwed the pooch with Episode 1.

Once Lucas is gone this lesson leaves with him.
No Failure Analysis

The fans are not honest with themselves when the movie is bad. this stops anyone from killing things that don’t work because most people are followers.

Don’t be a Follower. Solo, for example, has so many problems that exist outside center screen that it’ll be analyzed to death. They’re real.
Pure CGI Infatuation

CGI has been a blessing and a curse for the movie industry. In one sense wow, we can have a city wiped out by a flood or a snowstorm. Its freeing but in Sci-Fi its cut both ways and led some aspects of movie making right off a cliff creatively.

Its a lot of power to be able to use a CGI spectacle to bail out a medicore movie. That means movies that once wouldnt get made at all get made anyway with big special effects budget. Overall the worst thing its done its made for a lot of lazy shortcuts in otherwise good movies.

Star Wars goes through the same temptations and issues. And In the Galaxy Far, Far Away the problems also existed because, after all, its in Hollywood.

While Lucas got KILLED for the problems of the character Jar Jar Binks, the critics deem him as an ‘acceptable” effect and it starts us down a path of Pure CGI creatures. Most of the time the Pure CGI creature is simply too easy to create and ends up being mediocre.

They just never reach the level of believeability that Peter Jackson consistently manages to achieve.
Lazy Alien, Ship and Weapon Creation & the Tragedy of the Golden Army

A few scars, a helmet and some breathing issues and you’ve got yourself a bad guy. There no more to it than that. Technology may have simply enabled the developers to the point where they became the opposite of Creative.

Should the Alien Invasion ever occur we will all be shocked and angry if the alien race isn’t essentially the aliens from Hellboy, Hellboy 2: the Golden Army. and Pan’s Labyrinth.  These aliens were simply Reused in the Avengers. They pull all aliens is a similar direction.

What we are now confronted with is the proto-type aliens we see a lot now were created by Guillermo Del Toro.  They are/were great, but this vision has now made the rounds Lets face it, refugees from Pans Labyrinth and deserters from the Golden Army show up all over the place. They’ve inspired a lot of “Boss” Aliens. The thing is both Hellboy movies and Pans Labyrinth are populated with things like actual, working gags. The Star Wars movies really can’t boast this of late. In fact Last Jedi misfired 2 jokes in a row (to start BOTH Storylines) in the most ramshackle movie yet.

The Golden Army has no apparent Veterans Administration or benefits. Seems they all became Intergalactic Blackwater guys when the Golden Army lets them go. I dont know but lets maybe get them their own movie again and move on in other franchises? This is a whole post of its own one day.

The laziness and enablement that gets us so many dull aliens spills over to affect all aspects of production. Starships and aliens also too often get short creative shrift.

It’s a real issue in Solo, outside the Heroes Weapons and Starships are Under-Developed. Again its due to the ease of which any vision can be created.

Think of it this  way – when the original movie opens in 1977 every single weapon was awesome and had a great sound to it. Han’s blaster, the storm trooper rifles, the Death Star’s main weapon. All wins. This starts to go away slowly in the prequels, but the guns still reflect the characters and the sounds of the weapons remains excellent. Not so much anymore.

In the SOLO Movie every weapon but the main characters, which were leftover from Lucas, was bland and boring. Only ships like the Falcon and TIE fighters are actually good. Most obviously- Beckett’s ship was just 3 rectangles!

Because they’ve developed so many aliens theres a point where Aliens are no longer Alien. We’re just too familiar with Galaxies Far, Far Away.
Many Successful Parodies

After Spaceballs the Star Wars Parodies kept coming. Most were good and that just makes it harder then ever to make a serious Star Wars movie. Basically the open of The Last Jedi is so awful it seems like a moment from Spaceballs because any attempt at humor will evoke the parodies.

A similar thing happens to a lesser degree when Star Trek was confronted with Galaxy Quest. For some reason the effects arent as bad. This might because Galaxy Quest was actually a pretty respectful parody.

Last- I have a prediction.
Marvel and Star Wars Look The Same and WILL Crossover

Yup. I said it. I do not think the people involved can ignore the fact that theres a crossover between these universes that will result in the Hugest Box Office take of All Time when “Star Wars Meets the Avengers”. It CAN NOT NOT HAPPEN. It WILL eventually be made. The SOLO movie made for 3 of the last 4 releases simply being bad. So the franchise is a tad desperate too. They may welcome Tony Stark or one of his buddies.

When the franchise is finally deemed to be Underperforming they will crossover the Universes. Don’t believe me” Marvel has had Star Wars rights since 1977. No one will be able to handle this fact. Consider Thor- Ragnorak a test balloon for the Marvel – Star Wars Crossover

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Why I Have a Good Feeling about the ‘Solo’ Movie (and you should too!)

25 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by therealmcteag in Star Wars Solo Movie Predictions, Uncategorized, Why I'm Seeing The Solo Movie and you should too

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Han-Solo-Movie-Trailer-College-Football-National-Championship.jpg

With under just days to go until I sit down in my local theater (with my cell phone turned OFF) I’m EXCITED for the Solo movie! While the current 70-ish% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes isn’t the greatest, its still the mark of a pretty decent movie.

I predict the Solo movie will be good, or at least better than some of the scathing haters are saying. It’s not really an Abrams production for one thing. So thankfully we don’t have to worry about his fixation on Tropes and the fact his movies are merely strong beginnings that disintegrate to self important nonsense. The Star Trek franchise turned in its most enjoyable movie by far (Star Trek:Beyond) the moment Abrams was out of the ‘creative’ loop.

And we wont have to worry about Abrams unbreakable pattern of treating original characters as mostly comic relief with zero respect towards the sentiment of the fans. It looks like the Han Solo in the movie is someone you’d have a beer (or Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster) with.

The success of Rogue 1 is big source of hope for SOLO.  Like Rogue 1 it wont have The First Order or Kylo Ren, so thats great right there. There could be a cameo from almost anyone, but maybe Obi-Wan makes the most sense as there’s probably some time spent on Tattooine in this movie.

The way it looks now the Solo Movie is worth risking the 15 bucks.

Every Trailer was good. So theres that. The director is Ron Howard, so we can take some confidence in that too. Donald Glover looks perfect as Lando and it seems we’ve got the good ol’ Millenium Falcon in the mix.

The Falcon looks a bit different in this movie. Here’s some conjecture –  the Falcon seems to feature a ‘connected’ leading edge thats no longer the same when we see the ship in Episode 4. Could it be some sort of ejectable cargo bay? This would explain why its not there when Jabba is routing Solo for dumping his cargo.  Or it could just be before “a lot of special modifications” Han mentions in “A New Hope” that he and Chewie added on themselves. In other words they re-built the thing before Episode 4.

{Is it worth mentioning the ship has the gap in the leading edge seen from in Episode 4 on in the cameo’s it has in the prequels, as far away and tiny as it is? Probably not but hey I have to get something out of listening to the director, writer and special effects peoples commentary for the prequels!}

the-brand-new-millennium-falcon-corellian-freighter-solo-a-star-wars-story-hi-res-model-1-768x432

the Solo Movie’s Falcon

The new Han Solo, Alden Ehrenreich, very much looks the part and seemed appropriately breezy and loose in the trailer. While he doesn’t quite have Harrison Ford’s voice it’s still acceptable.  He sounds enough like Harrison for it not to be jarring.

Woody Harrelson is of some concern, but after his recent Planet of the Apes Bad Guy turn he seems like a decent Sci-Fi actor. The Apes character wasn’t all that great and he still pulled it off, a good sign. If you want to throw in decent performances playing not so great characters you’ve got the Hunger Games movies too. So Woody shouldn’t be an issue as a Sci-Fi actor. We’ve got some evidence he can adjust his acting style out of the very serious roles we’re more accustomed to and deliver in Sci-Fi roles.

Wild prediction – A Kessel Run movie would be great and could leave us at the moment Solo enters A New Hope the Creature Cantina. While this would e great it would sort of rule out any more Solo movies so maybe they go further back. The trailer seems to indicate it revolves around meeting Lando and obtaining ownership of an apparently slightly different looking Falcon.

Last Point – As Han Solo makes a few statements about not believing in the Force in A New Hope this should be a relatively Force-free movie. I mean if Han sees someone levitate or shoot lightning out of their hands we’ve got continuity issues.

Here’s the latest Trailer I could find-

 

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The Force Awakens- Real McTeag Review

20 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by therealmcteag in jj abrams, star wars,, Star Wars: Episode 7, The Force Awakens Reviews and analysis, Uncategorized

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Ok, so reviewing a Star Wars movie is a No Win Scenario, something I truly love, so here goes.

Im trying to be spoiler free, or at least very low spoiler, knowing that read on

I enjoyed The Force Awakens in some ways, there definitely are moments of win,  but in many ways its a story of missed opportunities. I would say that its comparable to Jurassic World as far as entertainment value. Its pretty fun, but has scenes that make you laugh the wrong way. In the case of Jurassic World for instance, who among us didn’t spit out their soda whenever Bryce Dallas Howard used tech talk? “We have a Phase One Real World”. Not exactly “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid”, not that you have the right to expect it from a sci fi horror movie. The truth is both movies are Trope fests.

star-wars-jabba_

Perhaps the blandest First Order aligned creatures we see. A near copyright infringing Harley Quinn Type and  maybe a vet of the Golden Army?

My point in comparing them is for that for 20 bucks we still got enough high energy entertainment from a reliable franchise ( lets forget about the second one) in a slightly updated form. In this case though there’s nowhere near the nostalgia for the original series and the original characters are for the moment at least, somewhat fading from the story.

On to Episode 7. My first issue is huge, its about 25 minutes too long and a lot of suck is packed into that wasted time. If he had dedicated just 5 minutes of it to enabling dialogue JJ Abrams movie is markedly better. like half star better.

Lets for one moment consider Director and de facto new creative overlord of the Star Wars Franchise, Generalissimo JJ Abrams. He’s able and been great in his career to be sure. At the same time he made a fool of himself and enemies of the Trek fans with that trainwreck Into Darkness and a truly condescending directors commentary from his Trek movie 1. If you listen to it you can never unring that bell. He wanted Trek to be Star Wars so badly he made it look very similar every chance he got. A great example is how rei’s motorcycle is very much something that you’d see in his trek movies as is Han Solo’s new ship. A more endor type speeder bike approach would’ve been cooler and still made sense as she lives on a scrap yard desert planet.

Movies have changed and Star Wars has changed with them. Flawed Star Wars beats no Star Wars, but this one didn’t need to be so flawed.

The fact is that JJ has now made the same movie 3 times in a row. Star Trek, Into Darkness and Episode 7 have so many similarities its a blog post of its own. Briefly- Painful death of parent/ father figure, bad guys with death stars, Creature Cantinas of an Episode 4 sort of feel. Similar looking props, similar looking costumes, Snow combat, undermotivated villains and reliably poor treatment of beloved characters.His movies have become reliably sort of erratic.  Lately he’s been a combination of semi great and then suddenly he’s a trope addled lens flare addict.

Movies have changed and Star Wars has changed with them. Flawed Star Wars beats no Star Wars, but this one didn’t need to be so flawed.

Star Wars The Force Awakens is a hard movie to really nail down in the moving goal posts of Star Wars Fandom. The Phantom Menace was a movie people turned into the highest grossing film in the series by a comfy margin until Episode 7. It took till the video release until people sort of unified on the growing internet and started savaging it. We can’t assess this movie fully til we see if it sets up the next one well. Here’s how i see it as of now–

The Open- hey, you miss the 20th Century Fox Fanfare, what can you do?   The main theme is also perhaps a touch slower. The cinematics are great, but then a complete redux of the credit sequence from his first Star Trek movie ensues as the landing craft aka Federation Shuttles, depart the Non Imperial Cruiser. They look the same inside and out. OUCH! It’s absolutely the same.

Things sort of improve pretty quickly though, Max von Sydow was an excellent touch, if too briefly fearyred. BB8 manages not to offend too much as he is literally rolled out for the first time.

The First Order promptly show they have an inferiority complex but are willing to do on the job training to catch up to the old Empire by just massacring people (to make their troopers hard apparently). Kylo Ren makes a pretty creepy and violent first appearance. Make what you will of his costume. Neither helped not hindered the movie.

Of the new characters

Fin easily is the best. A solid performance and he has that Star Wars urgency that benefits the movie. No issues. You’re instantly on his side. He might even be the straw that stairs most of whats good in this movie.

Rei will hopefully improve and become less uninteresting. Her backstory is just right off the shelf. More annoyingly she apparently proves that the darkside is actually NOT  a faster easier path to power because on some sort of Jedi Instinct that’s believable til she keeps matching and sometimes besting Ren in melee despite his years of training and embracing of the Darkside. Abrams Overkill on that one

BB8- they pulled him off well and he has the least amount of what I call “The Abrams Overkill”. (JJ Abrams directs in superlatives. You have a moon sized death star? Fuck you, we have a planet sized Star Killer!). He manages not to offend and occasionally entertains. He also probably has the single funniest gag in the movie. Still, he’s more “not bad’ than good.

Kylo Ren- Ren is either mysterious or just confusing. I guess we’re supposed to believe he has too much of his dads crusading nature and moms morality in him? A very likely “Psycho Ranger” (tropes!) who could switch sides. The problem with that is after what he’s done no franchise fan will forgive him and he’s got “Season 1 Bad Guy” written all over him if you go by Tropes.

Why he keeps his helmet on what appears to be a bed of hot coals when not in use is another head scratching moment later. Killing his ass early in movie 2 might make everyone pretty happy.

Ginger Haired Tarkin Type- No real complaints except his huge nazi style speech sounds it was written by JJ Abrams lawyer. Whatever, he’s button pushing killer by remote control and shores up the Non Empires cold bad jerk image. In the Trope Guide he is known as “The Mad Scientist”. Well cast and played

The First Order- Well hey they couldn’t just call them the Sith or JJ gets less for the toys. The Non Rebel “Resistance” also play by the same rules. Whatever, we knew how Abrams works when it comes to protecting his merchandising rights from his Star Trek behavior.

star-wars-force-awakens-han-solo-chewbaccaHan Solo – In this movie all the original characters basically get treated like shit and Han Solo is maybe the worst of all.

Not too bad but Abrams went in a somewhat different direction than I expected or would’ve liked to have seen. After making Captain Kirk into Han Solo JJ Abrams finally gets the real Han Solo but mostly uses him as Older Indiana Jones, complete with an awesome weathered leather jacket and a pretty funny gun joke.

I would’ve expected he’d have shown the “Han Shot First” quality and  made him just a little more ruthless. He is supposedly ruminating over serious personal disappointments.

Maybe ABrams was really just trying to combine all the goodwill Harrison Ford has, its briefly off putting but not movie killing by itself. Another more charitable way of looking at it would be that he reverted to his post unfreezing comedy relief Solo from Return of the Jedi and its just the way he is now. He also seems like a sentimental old man who makes friends way too easy.

The Falcon- Some win, some suck. Way too crash-y. Hand solo would’ve woven through obstacles to a certain extent before just plowing through anything beyond the snowbanks they mogul over. The slightly different, lower profile sensor dish makes sense and looks great. For the most part the foley art (sound) of the falcon is consistent with how we’re used to the Falcon sounding.

General Leia- She still shines through. Somehow she just does, and shes pretty amazing in the sequences with Han. The Rebellion, now the New Republic, are aggressively exporting democracy these days. In other words, they’re more less the George W Bush administration waging a war of choice by proxy against the first order. This is fine as the Old Republic was also a war machine and a mess at the end when we really see it. It comports well though its occasionally awkward.

Po- Po has potential and is well played. Sadly its just a bunch of convenient plot devices to bring him back into the movie. When he reappears his face is pretty covered by the new bulky X Wing helmets and I was didnt recognize him while he’s doing some pretty cool dogfighting. Hey, its not like he has a distinctive voice.

Supreme Leader- UGH! on this character they screwed the pooch bad. No grease. Someone says it’s Andy Serkis, Im not even interested enough to check. Someone let me know in the comments. If true why they bought in an amazing physical actor to play a guy who sits in a chair is something maybe the next movie justifies. He lacks the awesome voice of Ian McDiarmid, the best bad actor this side of Shatner. He also looks like a Peter Jackson Monster mixed with Prometheus cast offs. Had he been named Corporate Commander it would’ve bee more appropriate and at least funny. He has a totally unimaginative name. Even King Something or other would’ve been better than Supreme Leader. The Star Wars cartoons are higher quality than this aspect as far as writing.

star-wars-crash_

Chewie- They got him pretty much right. No issues. He also gives Kylo Ren something to think about after he douches out and gets all Hamlet.

The New Republic- While they take a devastating hit from the First Order that’s sure to lead to all out war, from what we get they are aggressively backing insurgents into the First Order and seem to be the initiators of the conflict. Not exactly a Peace and Justice oriented government. Sounding much like a Reagan-esque or Bush 1 or Bush-Cheney America. Military adventuring would seem beneath the standards of the Old Republic, at least until it becomes seriously decayed and co-opted in Episode 2.

The final combat scene is as great as it is frustrating. While superior to the way the Obi-Wan/ Qui-Gon verse Darth Maul fight was cut, its infuriating as the plot holes sort of come at you- since they knew they would destroy the sun why does no one on the First Order side have an evac plan for a planet now presumably about to begin hurtling through space with no star to hold it in an orbit, presumably losing atmosphere?  Could we have been thrown a few lines of enabling dialogue to shore up why the bad guys decided to build a weapon that could seemingly be fired only six times? Mention the star is unique and regenerates would have done it and if I can think of it whats Abrams excuse? Also, just a funny aside, are they now as broke as the Soviet Union? How many of their kidnapped brainwashed army did they lose? Not bad for an attack that seems to feature roughly 16 X-wings.

The jedi combat is great, but undercuts the idea the Darkside is the quicker path to power. This can be fixed in the next movie, right now its an unscratchable itch that I worry will just be blown off. Like lets just find out they retarded Ren’s training on purpose and i’ll be happy. Anakin complained about it enough.

Finally in the most annoyingly convenient plot device in the history of movies with sound; the breaking up of the Genesis planet, umm i mean the Star Killer Base, simply puts the good guys on one side of the sudden opening in the earth and the bad guys on the other. At this point though the fact a decent jedi jump would vault the new chasm falls by the wayside, no one bothers and Kylo Ren shuffles off pounding his pancreas to stay angry (it took me a long time to realize this is why he did this).

John Williams- He’s written better soundtracks. There’s long pauses in the music, its sort of very unStar Wars. His music is a character of it’s own and often eased rough dialogue and enhanced the story telling. Maybe Abrams felt like i do when he heard it and just minimized it? By going with the non Empire “First Order” Abrams assures us we only hear a reprise of the Iconic and plot cementing Imperial March very briefly and mildly when we see the melted Vader mask.

Finally, there are notably, very few cinematic wipes, (i only counted one) a standby of all the other movies and a homage to early sci fi i always enjoyed. Too bad. I held  off this point for last for good reason, the film still works well enough without them. Other rabid fans of the other movies may take it a little harder. I’m not devastated but there’s no not mentioning it.

Overall- See it, its tied with a couple of the other movies at third best. Its not Phantom Menace, but don’t let anyone tell you its as good as Empire or A New Hope. Its just not

UPDATE- This not so great movie is actually a good deal better than The Force Awakens. All the same flaws taken even further if you ask me. The Treatment of original characters remains awful.

 

 

 

 

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