I would actually argue against RotJ being worse than TFA. Sure, it's silly. Strike that, it's downright stupid at times. And it reeks of "hey, we run out of ideas, let's make another blow-a-Death-Star SW movie". And George Lucas' "re-imagining" aka editing and adding unnecessary little stuff just because he can just made things even worse. But at least it tries to drive the story forward. It keeps the characters or upgrades them in a way. Ups the action in a way that wasn't seen in SW movies before. The conclusion, such as it is, is decent and all in all it's a
conclusion.
Now, TFA?
---
This guy is pretty close here. Yeah, in technical terms, TFA is pretty good. You have to give credit where credit is due. Ok camera, ok-ish chase/action scenes, technology porn.
But boy oh boy. It's beyond just "boring". TFA is downright "uninspired". Hollow. Worthless. But most of all, it feels like something nobody asked for. It feels fucking
forced.
The biggest sin TFA committed is trying to sell us something old as something new. Now, I'll be honest here. I'm not actually an expert on Star Wars Expanded Universe. I watched the movies, played a bit of SW: Jedi Outcast/Jedi Academy games and read quite a few articles on Wookipedia, but not the actual novels/books/comics what have you. I now some stuff, how the story is supposed to continue after the movies, but yeah, not an expert. So while it felt weird I wasn't supper upset when it was declared that stuff was declaredn and TFA is the official cannon. I mean, weird, yeah, you have all this bunch of lore and you are just ditching it. But whatever. From what I know, somewhere far far in the future SW galaxy also gets invaded by space fucking vikings so I'm actually glad that's not happening now.
But shit man, you take this lore, ditch it...
AND CREATE A FUCKING "A NEW HOPE: 2015 EDITION"
Because that's what a TFA is at it's core. It's a rehash of an 1977 movie. You have all this material you could work with, and you ditch it. You open all this possibilities after you ditch it, and you decide to instead go backwards. Oh, but they didn't stop there, oh no. They made rehash... BUT BIGGER! BETTER! STRONGER! EVILER! Armok almighty, I wish I was telling a lie. But nope. Take a look at that sorry excuse of a movie. Just take a look.
- Evil Empire? Check. Only this time they are even more badass, not overthrowing old republic, but instead building an army right under it's nose like they don't give a frack.
- Rebels? Check. But this time not as a rag-tag remnants of republic, nuuuh, they are organizing resistance when republic is still standing only it's inept to do squat. See, situation isn't the same, oh nooooo, it's more desperate because we have to make it desperate!
- the chosen one? On a desert planet? Get's message of great importance? Also suffers family-related misfortunes? Check, check, check, fucking check. Only this time the protagonist is a woman and we don't even have to wait for her family to be murdered, we are told from the start she's very very alone and sad. Grim! Oh, and no bling bot.
- Oh, and look, evil empire made a death star! Only it's even BIGGER and STRONGER than before so it totally isn't a Death Star!
- And and look look, they are again destroying planets with it only they don't even need to come close to the target, nuuuuuh, we are fucking more badass than that, shoot that fucker from half a way across the galaxy, yo!
- oh and speaking of that planet? Yeah, it's not some never-heard-of-it-before home planet of an important movie character, nah man, we are better than that, let's just destroy this fucker who's the capital of the republic and played in important piece in the older movies because fuck that man
-
And it get's even better. You know this movie is a best classic Greek tragicomedy we got in decades when even the characters in movie start to get this absurdist deja-vu. "but can't we destroy it?
We did it before, right?" ask the guy that had a total unneeded Jesus moments and we are supposed to feel
something for him even though before that he got just few unimportant moments. Nope, Jesus guy, you can't destroy it, we made this stuff harder! I mean, it's the same, you send your pilots, we send our team to sabotage stuff on the ground but trust me man, it's way different than before. Just trust me.
... And then there is The Bad Guy. Good grief. Listen, I don't hold anything against the actor. He was decent, given the role he got. But jumping Armok on a pogo stick eating a peantbutter sandwich his character was
bad. Really bad. People were turned off by Jedi-Anakin's angst in reboot movies but you could absolutely
cut yourself on this guy's
edge. What were they thinking? Oh, I get it, they were trying to portrait this troubled young prodigy, consumed by power he can't yet control and feeling torn by which side he must choose. I have a hard time thinking of a movie where a supposedly main antagonist feels so un-beliavable. So hard to take at face-value. So
forced. That one famous death he commits? I mean, what are we even supposed to feel there as viewers? Anger? Shock? Should we despise them for what he did, or pity his oh-so-troubled psyche that made him do it? Because fuck me if I did any of that. Fuck me if I didn't just sigh, maybe also facepalm because that whole scene was just so artificially upsetting. But this movie was a burlesque even before that, when for instance this young Darth Vader wannabe has his fits of rage and starts cutting shit up only for two definitely-not-happyface-stormtroopers come round the corner and back right away definitely makes it. It's fucking embarrassing watching this character do stuff so forcefully, like he just desperately wants to be what he's not yet he must prove otherwise because edge. Even the stormtroopers agree. And hilarity goes one final step further when we actually see this young goth have his confession in front of a fucking skull of his granddaddy. He WANTS to be like him. At that moment, the actor, the character and just whole fucking movie are as if they are trying to tell us - "Yes, we want to be something that we are not. We look into the past, we strive to bring the past back, we lack our imagination, we lack our very
soul and we need someone else, something else, something old and tried to fill this emptiness because fuck it if we know how to make a good movie without rehash but MORE+++."
I could go on about how old characters are brought back (also killed) in a completely stupid ways and just to appease/enrage fans, how new protagonist(s) suffer the same emptiness behind their tomboyish/bad-guy-turned-good-guy facade as the rest of the crew and how it subsequently spits in the bowl of "give women/people of color prominent roles" case they were trying to popularize, how main chars Force usage/development is more stupid than 3 Jar Jar Binks together... But if I do all that, I would eventually bump into that infamous "claymore" lightsaber. And the less is said about THAT the better.
Back when I saw Star Trek reboot, it left me thoroughly unimpressed, but not being a hardcore trekkie and seeing a lot of comments how that movie was supposed to be a "trekkie throwback", I thought maybe I just don't get it. There was some genuinely bad stuff going on with ST but I thought ok? Now, I'm convinced J.J. Abrams just cant' make a good movie. Or series. Everything he's involved with eventually turns to shit. One thing is paying a homage, another is stuffing the movie with all the references, familiarities and fan-service while giving zero actual, truly NEW content. And when you are unable to do this with a franchise that spawns 4 decades worth of material, maybe you should take a long, hard look at you "masterpiece" and ask yourself what are you doing with your life. Apart from sleeping on a pile of money surrounded by beautiful ladies.
Author
Topic: The Unpopular/Controversial Ideas Thread. (Read 81837 times)