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Star Wars: Last of the Jedi
Wouldn’t that have been a better title though? Not only would it have been a callback to Yoda’s line in RotJ (”When gone am I, the last of the Jedi will you be”) but it would have maintained the four-word second-act-of-the-trilogy title that tradition demands. A missed opportunity, that one.
Oh well. Let’s bitch about this movie, shall we?
Okay, let’s start with the obvious stuff. The biggest and most plot-central of which is the “chase them down” action that formed the bulk of the movie’s dramatic tension. The idea that turbolasers have a range of well under a hundred miles is a little silly when you consider orbital bombardment is a well-established tactic in the SW ‘verse, but I get what they were going for -- a naval chase where the heroes stay just out of range of the long nines. So, okay, whatever, I’ll give that a pass. And initially I was mad about the whole “come on, there’s no top speed in space to make one ship ‘faster’ than another” middle finger to Newtonian physics, but then I considered that the Rebel ships having a higher delta-V than the Imperial ships would accomplish roughly the same effect and would be visually identical at the ranges displayed in the film, so hey! Maybe they accidentally got that one right after all.
As for the rest? Yeah, the final battle on the salt planet was lifted almost frame-by-frame from Empire, but I don’t care -- the environment was different enough and visually striking enough to make it worthwhile. And sure, the opening of the film was another direct lift from Empire but this entire movie was about chases apparently so at least it set the theme.
Honestly I don’t know why so many people seemed to be so unhappy with this movie. All of my complaints are ... nitpicking, really. I wish they’d gone harder on the whole “grey Jedi” thing. I wish Luke hadn’t died from overextending himself (while I called his “heroic sacrifice” two years ago, I don’t think he actually intended to die here). I think Ren’s final heel turn was a little stretched, though his hatred of Luke is portrayed pretty well (and Luke’s crowning moment of awesome on the salt planet was a thing of beauty). Yoda was ... an interesting choice. I don’t object, I’m just not sure it was the direction I would have gone. And the hacker subplot? I see why it was necessary, fleshing out both Rose and Finn while establishing some important information about the galaxy, but all the same it wasn’t well-executed, and not having Lando be The Guy was a big missed opportunity.
I’m not sure I’m a fan of the rampant disregard for existing canon portrayed in this movie. Tracking ships through hyperspace? That’s a big game-changer. Force ghosts being able to affect the real world? Uhhh that makes a BIG ol’ mess of things, doesn’t it? We saw a lot of Force abilities on display in this movie that we’ve never seen before -- Force-sensitives levitating themselves, projecting semi-solid images across the Galaxy. Things which take a bit of a dump on all the previous movies simply because the mere existence of these powers retroactively creates so many potential plot holes.
And the other thing that bugged me a bit was the real world creeping into the movies. Yoda saying “page-turners” when books haven’t been a thing in the Star Wars ‘verse prior to this movie. A few of the other instances of people using modern American vernacular. “Godspeed?” What? Anyway.
I’m gratified that Reylo was shot right between the eyes. After the events of this film you just ... can’t plausibly sail that ship anymore. You can’t. I’m less happy that the writers seemed to veer so hard away from FinnPoe, though Rose’s crush on Finn is super cute, and FinnRey is ... in a weird place. Not much for the shippers in this film, for sure.
I really did want them to more deeply delve into the flaws in Jedi philosophy and more clearly establish why Luke felt the Jedi needed to end. He’s not wrong, of course, and his point that the Jedi having sole claim on use of the Force being vanity is spot on, but like. Decrying passivity, inaction, the denial of emotion, those are the flaws in Jedi philosophy and it would have been nice for more of that to be included in his diatribes. And while it was nice to see Yoda again, I feel like Luke didn’t really need, shouldn’t have really needed, the push.
(Artoo playing the Leia recording was a low fucking blow though. Beautiful. And I find it interesting that Rey stole the Jedi books and that Luke didn’t know she stole them.)
But on the whole I think this movie was actually better than TFA. And certainly twelve parsecs better than any of the prequels. I don’t get why Mark Hamill didn’t like what Johnson did with Luke, I thought that Luke’s character in this movie and his entire history were quite consistent with the character as established. The hacker subplot was the only one that felt extraneous; all the rest were plot-critical or they served to develop the characters. And there were just so many awesome moments. The aforementioned “Luke eats every blaster the First Order has and brushes it off” (even though it turned out to be a Force projection). Rey lifting all the rocks. Leia “noping” to dying in the vacuum of space. Rey and Ren fighting in Snoke’s chamber. A ramming maneuver at fucking lightspeed holy shit.
Bearing in mind that I’ve loved every Star Wars movie when it’s first come out, completely and unironically, even Phantom Menace, I have to say I found this movie satisfying. It was ... a lot of story for one movie, I think the changes to canon are risky from a story perspective, and I think offing Snoke was premature, but I was engaged, I was worked up, and at no point during the film did I find myself rolling my eyes at bad acting, shitty dialogue, or nonsensical plot.
I still fucking hate porgs, though.
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Thor: Ragnarok
Any of you reading this are probably not aware that I am a Heathen, Asatruar, an adherent of the old Norse religion. A religion which the Thor franchise has wholly appropriated, and not in a way I would call “respectful.” As such, I’m compelled to look at new installments of said franchise with the most oblique of side-eyes.
That being said, I loved the Hel out of this movie.
The “trivia” on IMDb invokes one of my very favorite movies, Big Trouble in Little China, as a strong influence on this movie. And while I don’t really see that, it hit me that this movie does strongly remind me of another movie from my childhood that I love, that being Flash Gordon. It’s 80s sci fi in all its gonzo glory and I loved every minute of it.
I don’t have much to add to what others have already said about this movie. It’s silly, it doesn’t take itself seriously, the sfx are top-notch as usual. It avoids Earth altogether, taking place entirely on Asgard, Sakaar, and (presumably) Muspelheim. All of the characters have satisfying arcs, the interactions between the characters are universally great, Thor is portrayed in a much more nuanced and rounded way than in his previous incarnations, and his buddy brawler, Banner/Hulk, gets a great moment of self-sacrifice and gets to beat down on Fenrir, the personification of destruction made manifest. It’s glorious.
I wish they’d given the Valkyrie a name. That’s the one thing I really wish was different. They made it clear that her name isn’t “Valkyrie” but they didn’t specify which valkyrie she was, and maybe that doesn’t matter, but it would still have been nice.
I don’t know. I loved this movie. I don’t have much more to say than that. Go see it, if you haven’t already.
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Captain America: Civil War
Reviewing a movie I've seen a bunch of times a year after it's come out. Why not?
You know, it's funny, but prior to seeing them I never thought I'd like the Captain America movies. I mean I guess to a point that's true of all the Avengers but Cap in particular -- even before I became a filthy commie I was never that patriotic, so a guy who dresses up in the American flag and throws a shield (of all things) at the bad guys seemed like an obvious miss for me. Of course, I was totally and completely wrong. The direction Marvel took with the character was pitch-perfect, and I defy anyone to play the role better than Chris Evans.
I wish I had the discipline to look like he does, yeesh.
Anyway.
I bring this up because, despite the fact that I love Captain America and the Avengers, I kinda didn't like this movie. I mean the acting is great, the direction seems solid, good production values (goes without saying). But ... the story just ... doesn't work.
First of all, there's the fact that this movie is both Captain America 3 and Iron Man 4. Not complaining, exactly, but it's worth noting that Tony gets almost as much screen time as Steve does. Moreover, Tony basically drives the plot -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing, since heroes are by definition reactionary, but it puts Tony in the role of villain, to a point, which is ... kinda weird?
Okay, let me get the big one out of the way first: this is Captain America's movie but he, himself, is ... not really the protagonist. Not really the hero.
Sigh. I'm having trouble articulating this.
The original "Civil War" arc was about the Mutant Registration Act -- American citizens being forced to register with the government if they had mutant powers. This is, for obvious reasons, a dreadful idea -- and parallels actual proposals coming out of our current President, like registering Muslims. It's very easy to see how problematic this is, and it's easy to see how a moral man like Steve Rogers would oppose such a measure.
Adapting it the way they did, though ... the Sokovia Accords are actually kind of hard to argue against, and it seems pretty out-of-character for Steve Rogers to be so strongly opposed. The Bucky arc, I have no problem with that at all, but ... Captain America, this Captain America, wouldn't object to the Sokovia Accords, and writing him that way is a little bit of character assassination. They needed him to be against them to set up the central conflict of the film, and so against them he is, even though it doesn't make sense for his character.
Steve is a former soldier who was ultimately betrayed by everyone he ever served. The US military didn't treat him super well and, well, SHIELD was HYDRA. He built his early career on disobedience, but was also fully prepared to face the consequences of his disobedience. I guess it seems like a bit of a stretch that he'd do a complete 180, to believing only in himself. Like, isn't it pretty arrogant to say that "only I can be trusted with my strength?" "Only I can be trusted to decide when it's time to get involved?" Gotta tell you, Steve, that's the kind of shit a bully says, and we know how you feel about bullies. Yes, people have agendas, and no, you're not as naive as you were when you stepped into Howard Stark's hottie machine, but to actively reject the idea of oversight for the Avengers is just ... arrogant. Grossly out of character.
And then, mid-film, it seems like he's actually willing to do it (for all the wrong reasons, but still). But then Tony says something and suddenly Steve is all opposed again, only now he's opposed specifically because Tony is for them. It gets very personal and that is definitely not Captain America.
So I guess that sums it up -- my main objection to the film is that it, a Captain America film, drops a big ol' deuce right on Captain America's shield. It doesn't make him the antagonist, exactly, but he also isn't in the right -- and it completely wastes the potential of the "plant yourself like a tree" soliloquy, which he doesn't even deliver.
Okay, and now for some lesser gripes.
The Spiderman scene is so offensively gratuitous. Jesus, Tony, the kid is sixteen fucking years old and you're taking him into battle against a super-soldier and a brainwashed assassin? Yeah, you didn't know about Wanda or Clint or Ant-man, but you goddamn well know the Winter Soldier is a terrifying badass. Bringing this kid into the fight should have landed Tony in jail, and all because Sony wanted to set up the second Spiderman reboot of the 21st Century.
And while we're on the subject of Tony, jfc. How many people died in the Hulkbuster fight? How many innocent people did the Avengers kill in New York? What was the collateral body count from Iron Mans 1 and 2? And suddenly it's Alfre Woodard's kid who tips him over the edge of accountability? Idk I guess it "works" but it's a little weird that he goes from zero to guilty in the course of a single conversation.
Which brings up another point -- it was Tony who was against oversight all along. He was the one who didn't want to join the Avengers. He was the one who didn't want to give up his suit to the government. It's so fucking weird to have Steve Rogers playing the part that Tony Stark should have played when for nine movies now it's been Tony Stark who's been pushing back against accountability. Yeah, it's nice that his man pain has shown him the light, but that should have just resolved any conflict he had with Steve. Steve should have been glad Tony was willing to grow up and sit at the big boys' table.
This isn't a complaint but Black Panther is so goddamn badass. Love that guy, can't wait to see his movie. (Though one does wonder when a prince has the time to achieve that level of fitness and puissance -- typically royalty have matters of state to attend to near-constantly. And I'll save my thoughts on the "Wakanda keeps their tech to themself" thing until the Black Panther movie comes out.)
Crippling Rhodey was kind of a bullshit move. Like, first of all, why couldn't Vision or Wanda catch him, second of all Iron Man can break the sound barrier at a whim, don't tell me he couldn't catch up to a human falling at terminal velocity, third of all ... why do it at all? It didn't serve to advance the plot and Steve couldn't have even known about it so there's no "look at the consequences of your actions" -- in particular because about this specific thing, Steve was in the right. Like. Was it meant to make Tony have second thoughts? Because that didn't come through in the writing, and also it isn't an Iron Man movie.
(Seriously, it's a Captain America movie, why is it Tony who gets the arc?)
The concept of the Raft is fucking stupid. And I'm positive the American Secretary of State has better things to do than hang out there.
You're going to tell me the Quinjet doesn't have tracking? My semi has a tracking chip in it, don't tell me they can't track the Quinjet. Plot hooooole. But a small one. And speaking of tracking -- Steve sends Tony a phone that he'll use to call Steve in Infinity War, but for that to work at all, Steve has to have a number that he can receive calls on -- which means he can be tracked.
Finally, Zemo's plot ... I mean I get what he's trying to do and that makes sense enough. I'm just not sure how the Winter Soldier plays into it. A debriefing, as far as I'm aware, includes the details of the mission's execution, which would include mission locations, targets, methods, outcomes, timeframes. It wouldn't include "where is your secret base." Yes, Bucky would have known where the secret base was but one would assume part of his programming would be to keep that secret at all costs, since, you know, anyone who had "triggered" him would presumably already know where that base was. There's no reason to assume the Winter Soldier would ever have been briefed on what it was he was retrieving or any of the details about the Russian super-soldier program. These are not "need to know" details and telling them to a field soldier who might well be captured by the enemy would be a tremendous security breach. Zemo already knew what happened in December 1991. Bucky should have had no new information to provide to him.
Anyway, sure, it's a fun movie. It's just "we needed to get from Age of Ultron to Infinity War and didn't know how, so we put together a list and wrote a script to check all the boxes with no thought to whether or not it made sense." I love Cap to pieces but this was definitely the weakest of his movies.
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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Finally got around to seeing this one. Three movies in a week? What's the world coming to?
I gotta say, the longer these movies go on, the further and further removed from reality they get. Yeah, granted, they're fantasy movies, but they still pretend to be taking place on Earth, right? Our Earth? Ish? I mean, the first three movies featured ships that were either real, actual tall ships, or CG ships that were at least plausible. The Queen Anne's Revenge in Stranger Ties departed from this, but this movie? Every ship a castle at sea, fanciful, grandiose, and profoundly impractical.
Ugh, I don't want to give the wrong impression here. I did kinda like this movie, it's one I would probably watch again (though I wouldn't pay ten bucks per ticket for the privilege), and it's at least better-written than the last one. However, it decidedly does not hold up to the original trilogy, so mostly I'm going to complain about that.
First? Nobody cares anymore about character integrity and it's obvious. Barbossa, Gibbs, and the undead villain du jour spend the movie competing to see who can eat the most scenery. There's no craft on display, everyone's just being as LARGE A HAM as possible. And Johnny Depp ... I don't know how you phone in a character like Jack Sparrow but somehow he managed it. As for the newcomers -- the no-names they got to play Third Turner and Hot "Scientist" did pretty good, but Tom Hardy was wasted in his role as Generic British Bad Guy #794.
It was nice to see Monty, Scrum, and Abbott and Costello again. I don't actually care about any of those characters but I like the callbacks. Pity Cotton's Parrot couldn't make it -- and where were Pintel and Ragetti?
Anyway, the point is, maybe it's the director's fault, but none of the people the audience is there to see were actually there.
So let's talk about plot, which revolves around the Trident of ... I don't remember if it was Poseidon or Neptune, so we'll call it the Trident of Nepseidon. Third Turner wants to find it to free Will from the Flying Dutchman. I have a problem with this but I'll get to that later. Hot Scientist wants to find it because "her father believed in her" or something. Daddy issues. Ok sure. Barbossa and Lieutenant Bad Guy both want to find it so they can "control the sea" or whatever -- though in Barbossa's case, he's doing just fine until undead villain du jour shows up, so I guess mostly he wants it to ... whatever. He's there because Geoffrey Rush needed a paycheck I guess.
The plot isn't stellar, is what I'm saying.
Another thing that annoys me is the movie's lack of respect for its own continuity. Okay. We find out that Jack Sparrow is called Jack Sparrow because he reminded undead villian du jour of a "bird" in the crow's nest, and so Jack took that as his name. How Jack learned about this when the villain and he never interacted is left unanswered. We see also that Jack gets the compass, his hat, his beads, his bandanna, and his other "effects" as "tribute" from his pirate crew. But wait! Didn't he get the compass from Tia Dalma? And all of this was when Jack became a pirate -- but At World's End establishes that Jack became a pirate when he refused a cargo of slaves (or something).
And how bout the Flying Dutchman? "The Dutchman must have a captain." The early movie shows Will Turner slowly becoming barnacle-encrusted -- but didn't that happen to Davy Jones because he "didn't do the job?" Why is Will "cursed," if he's been faithfully discharging the Dutchman's duty these past years?
(And what was up wit that necklace? Seems to have been invented for this movie so that Will would have something to give his kid. Couldn't give him the key? Or ... I dunno, maybe the dagger his father gave him?)
The "hang the witch" plot line involving Hot Scientist feels a bit stretched. Like, cliche Middle Ages nonsense. I mean. First of all, the accusations of "witchcraft" in Enlightenment-era England? Seems ... implausible, especially since there's another astronomer in town meaning people aren't going to be totally and completely ignorant of scholarly types who look at the stars. I don't know, I shouldn't speak too much about this because I don't know precisely how bad things were for women during that time period, but it felt like a bit much. Certainly the pirate crew, all of whom have sailed with not only women but an actual, literal witch before, shouldn't have been treating her the way they did.
In particular, the bit where she's teaching them about navigation. This isn't fucking sorcery to these guys -- yes, chronometers were new in the mid-18th century, but having seasoned sailors treating basic navigation like it's some kind of magic? Bullshit. Sailors have been reckoning by the stars for centuries. (Also? Marine chronometers in the 18th century were significantly larger than pocket watches.)
The entire "witch" arc was forced, is what I'm saying, and it wasn't even forced for a good reason! There was no payoff! She finds the island and all is forgotten!
Now let's talk about the segue in the middle of the movie, where Jack manages to make it to dry land and escape Salazar and his crew. This island features characters we've never met before, have never even heard of, forcing Jack to get married to a conventionally-unattractive and unhealthy woman for ... why, exactly? Because he owed the guy something? And then Barbossa shows up and saves them and releases the Black Pearl and they escape. Point. Less.
Oh, and the Black Pearl being the "fastest ship on the seas." Okay, sure -- except this enormous British man-o-war managed to catch up to her, and Salazar's ship managed to catch up to it, so now the Pearl is only the third-fastest ship apparently. (And if Barbossa had Blackbeard's sword the entire time, why did he never once use the rope trick to defend his ship or his men?)
How did Hot Scientist know that the "map" could only be read during a blood moon? Not really a plot hole, I guess, maybe it was in Galileo's book, or a deleted scene. Just an unanswered question. Sure is lucky that everything in the Caribbean is less than a day's sail from everything else, though.
Anyway. It was nice to see Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley again, even if it's a bit hard to match up the timeline correctly (again, this movie doesn't care even a bit about continuity). And yay, setting up Davy Jones to be the villain at some point in a future Pirates film, because God knows Johnny Depp doesn't care what's going on as long as he gets paid. Never mind that Davy Jones is fucking dead and his curse should have been broken as well ...
"Didn't we know someone named Smith?" Yes, you fucking sausage, you probably knew a million women named Smith, it's the most common surname in the fucking English language. And ... Barbossa has had a weird arc, from total and complete villain in the first film to slightly-more-palatable villain in the next ones to ineffectual-villain-turned-doting-father here? Storytelling, motherfucker, do you speak it?
I dunno. I guess we aren't supposed to think too hard about these popcorn thrillers. It's just frustrating how lazy and inconsistent they are. But they keep making money so what are you gonna do?
Maybe they'll spring for Gore Verbinski for the next one.
#pirates#pirates of the caribbean#dead men tell no tales#johnny depp#geoffrey rush#orlando bloom#keira knightley#critique#review
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47 Meters Down
I will be brief.
Don't see this movie.
Ok, so this movie is a Mandy Moore thriller vehicle. The plot is two women on vacation in Mexico get trapped in a shark cage on the ocean floor. Which, as a premise, is a bit thin, but could be engaging if done correctly. Unfortunately, this movie is a case study in how to use such a premise incorrectly.
I don't really have much to say, honestly. The writing wasn't just bad, it was insulting -- the final third of the movie is the portion wherein Mandy Moore has her arc, learns to be brave, overcomes adversity, saves her sister, and in the final two minutes we find out (spoiler) it was all a nitrogen narcosis-induced hallucination.
Fuck you, movie.
It's a shitty twist, to take what looks like a ham-and-cheesey ending and turn it into a "life sucks" fakeout. Like, narratively, the sister didn't deserve to die, and to shit on the main character's arc like that? Bullshit. Even worse, it was Gravity-style bullshit -- the movie fades to black the instant the tension is over. Here's the Coast Guard, you're saved, roll credits. Denouement? What's that?
Also, can we please move away from the "it's in Mexico so it's dangerous and unregulated" trope? I've been to a Mexican tourist trap and it was fine, the aquarium was clean and tidy, the staff were professional, there was nothing seedy or shady about the entire operation. I mean maybe that was because I booked the activity through the cruise company and the movie takes great pains to establish that this is not a service offered by the resort, but even so, it felt a little insulting.
And then there was the shark behavior. Cmon, guys, can't we get away from this "sharks are ravenous monsters who just want to eat nubile young women" nonsense? Like we need another film where sharks are these horror beasts made of teeth and hunger. Lazy lazy lazy. Plenty of other things to be scared of in the deep water.
Ultimately the movie didn't seem to know what it wanted to be -- a Jaws-style thriller? A 128 Hours-style tale of overcoming adversity in desperate circumstances? In the end it seemed to try to be both, but all it ended up saying is that you better not step outside your comfort zone, or you'll get stuck on the ocean floor and eaten by a shark.
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Wonder Woman
Ok, finally went and saw Wonder Woman.
sigh
Look, I know I’m gonna get crucified for this, but…
…I kinda didn’t like it. I really, really wanted to, but I kinda didn’t.
I mean I didn’t not like it, but there were problems. There were problems with this movie. The whole time I kinda felt like I was watching one of the Star Wars prequels. Bad pacing, bad direction, bad writing, subpar acting. It may have been the best DC movie to date but it isn’t remotely in the same league as the Marvel films. I didn’t hate it, I just … was disappointed.
Gal Gadot’s Diana is strong, self-assured, fearless, resolute, and principled. She is a well-realized character, for the most part, and is by far the best thing about this movie. My main criticism of the characterization is she has this constant “sexy pout” thing going on, which doesn’t seem to fit with the character (but may be Gal’s natural expression?), and there are places where her actions don’t seem to line up with her motivations.
But that latter bit is largely due to my primary criticism of the movie – that Diana, Wonder Woman, is not the prime mover. She triggers the action scenes, but the plot is largely carried by Chris Pine. The story is constantly placing her in situations where her agency is stifled, and other than her “hear me roar” moment in No Man’s Land, her choice to “do her own thing anyway” invariably complicates the situation rather than showing that she did the right thing (as is usually the case when the hero goes off-book). This is a very strange choice for a movie that is supposed to be about Wonder Woman – to show that the man is usually right.
Indeed, the only reason Diana succeeded at all was because of men. The only reason she even got to face Ares is because he decided to show up where she was and taunt her – sure, she beat him in the end, but she wouldn’t have had the chance to fight him at all if he hadn’t allowed it. It wasn’t her training, it wasn’t her strength, it wasn’t her smarts or even her divine nature that led her to Ares – it was Ares’ own ego. And she was ultimately only able to beat him because a man told her that he loved her.
Terrible writing.
And the love story, God. Anakin and Padme. Totally unnecessary, for one, and very poorly executed. Chris Pine spends most of the movie annoyed with her and trying to hold her back, keep her down, get her to “act like a woman” – you’d think she’d be more likely to break him in half than take him to bed. That she never expressed so much as annoyance with his constant manning is just unbelievable. And she spends the entire movie endangering him and his men with her actions, and suddenly he falls in love with her? Bullshit. The entire arc detracted from the overall story and reduced the message of the movie to “yeah, all men suck, but on the other hand, sex.”
The three sidekicks were totally superfluous. I don’t even know what they were doing in the movie. None of them actually accomplished anything – the sniper was completely useless, the Native American stereotype’s action was all off-screen, and … uh, what was Samir’s thing again? A con man? Super useful on a battlefield, that. Like, first of all, Chris Pine was supposed to be the party face. And once you’ve found the chemical weapons factory and talked your way in, maybe you want a demolitions guy, a heavy hitter of some kind, to help bring the place down?
“We have to get that Armistice signed.” “I want that treaty signed.” Again, I’m watching Phantom Menace over here. Ares’ motivation was unclear at best – he wants to restore the world to a pristine paradise garden by … giving mankind weapons of mass destruction? Hey, buddy, take a look at Syria if you want to see how well that’s gonna work out for you. The thing about “endless war” is it tends to make a mess. And if you’re so eager to get the Armistice signed, then … why forbid the heroes from going after the gas bombs? Why inspire the gas bombs in the first place? And for fuck’s sake, why blow your cover? You’d think a “God of War” would have some sense of tactics and strategy. You want Diana on your side? Give her twenty, thirty years of seeing the horrors men can come up with. Let the patriarchy wear her down, then make your pitch. Don’t unmask ten minutes after you learn she’s in play.
Ok, on to some technical nitpicks. The No-Man’s Land scene. Sure was useful there were only two machine gun nests that could be brought to bear on her, and that they didn’t shoot her in her unprotected legs. Lucky there weren’t any more nests to the left or right along that four-hundred-mile-long front. Shields are great but they don’t have 360 coverage.
There were no metal aircraft in WWI, and there were certainly no four-engine biplanes. WWI-era planes were wood and fabric because the engines had a poor power-to-weight ratio – airplanes didn’t become metal until industrial quantities of aluminium became available in the twenties. A four-engine, all-metal bomber with an internal bomb bay and enclosed crew compartment was fifteen years in the future. Also, biplanes didn’t have the range to reach London – London bombardment was achieved by zeppelins, which would have been way cooler anyway. Missed opportunity, movie.
“It has hydrogen, it’s flammable.” No. That isn’t how chemistry works. First of all, you don’t want chemical weapons to burn – makes it hard to make bombs out of them. Second of all, just because a compound contains hydrogen doesn’t make it explosive, which is a good thing, otherwise water would be a real problem for us.
And on the subject of gas, how is it that Diana is unaffected by it? How is it that the citizens of the town are just dead, and not all dissolved like the gas mask was? Chris Pine gets a little whiff of it and just coughs it off – which isn’t how real mustard gas works.
Diana’s invincibility is inconsistent throughout the film. She takes a bullet early on, grazes her shoulder, and she’s cut and bleeding. Sure, she heals fast, but there’s no indication that she is any “sturdier” than a mundane. Yet, later in the movie, she’s unfazed by a mortar shell bursting six feet away from her, the gas doesn’t bother her, and she eats a faceful of explosion with nothing more than a ringing in her ears.
I could say more but I’ll finish with this: I don’t see how this movie is somehow free of the “male gaze.” The Amazon’s boobtastic battle armor is profoundly impractical – no epaulets or greaves? No helmets? Just chest and shins, huh? Come on. It isn’t armorkini-level revealing but it isn’t far off. The Amazons are basically Hoplites, so kit them out accordingly – linen cuirass with shoulder pads, leather skirt, greaves, Corinthian helmet. That’s how you do armor. Armorkinis are male gaze.
A couple changes would have made the movie so much better – for example, setting it in World War II. Ares’ plot fits much better with the Manhattan Project – a real doomsday weapon that really does give humanity the ability to destroy itself, and the development of which really did lead to endless war. The novelty of setting the movie in WWI doesn’t really carry over when you fill your movie with anachronisms.
And if you can’t do that, then at least let Wonder Woman actually carry the movie. Show her physical prowess, sure, but also show her tactical mind. Show her strategy. Show her coming up with solutions that work better than what the guys come up with rather than making things worse for everyone. Let her lead, not just tag along. And put her in some better armor.
I dunno. I’m glad I guess that so many people found this movie empowering and kickass. For me, though? It was kind of a letdown.
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Star Wars: The Force Awakens
I have decided to review movies on those rare occasions when I see a new one. Don’t expect regular updates.
And now, the inaugural review...
The "Resistance" is looking for Luke. Luke tried to found a new Jedi order, it didn't work out because Kylo Ren (Ben Solo, spoiler alert) turned and killed the others. Luke went into exile because apparently that's what Jedi do when they fail.
Anyway.
One of the Stormtroopers has a crisis of conscience. Refuses to fire on the innocents. Meanwhile the pilot, Poe, is captured and brought back to the Star Destroyer so Ren can torture him into giving up the map to Luke.
BB-8 manages to get away and finds himself in the care of Rey. Who is Rey? Well, a Force-sensitive and super good with mechanics. Smells like Skywalker to me but that isn't made explicit. Anyway, she takes BB-8 in and agrees to, idk, get him to the Resistance or something.
Finn decides to take his opportunity to get away, and shanghais Poe. They manage to get a TIE fighter and crash-land on not-Tatooine. Poe appears to die in the crash; Finn ejects (?) and makes his way to the scavenger encampment where BB-8 and Rey just happen to be.
Finn convinces Rey (through lies) to ... something? Get him away from there. They hop into the Falcon and head into space. It is frankly a beautiful moment and probably the best homage to the first trilogy in the entire movie. And brother, are there a lot of them.
Who should show up but Han and Chewie, who have been searching for the Falcon since it was stolen from him by one of the asshole junk dealers on not-Tatooine. (Stealing an awful lot of story beats from Star Wars and the prequels, aren't we?) Han discovers the kids hiding, some goons from two different gangs show up, some crazy monsters get loose on Han's freighter, they hop aboard the Falcon and escape.
It is at this point that they head to a new world and find Edna Mode who runs a bar or something. Very like the cantina at Mos Eisley. She prods Han into helping, Finn chickens out to run to the Outer Rim, and Rey has an intimate moment with the Skywalker lightsaber. Clue number two. Come to think of it, does that map that they put together at the end of the movie cross Jakka?
Anyway. There are Empire and Rebels both in the cantina-castle-thing, they both call in the droid, the Empire shows up first and starts shoosting. Rey somehow ends up caught by Kylo Ren, who takes her to the Death Star planet at the behest of Emperor Gollum. Finn sees Rey get caught, locates his fucking testicles, and finds Han to go in pursuit. But then General Princess Leia and the Rebels show up. They scoop up everyone and go to the hidden Rebel base, which is located in a pretty system with a ringed Earthlike.
Somewhere in here Moff Tarkin's protege suggests taking out Coruscant with their new super space gun. Emperor Gollum says go for it so they do, and the chick from the Originals has her one-second cameo as a nameless, faceless victim. Seems really worth trading in your TV contract for, hmm?
So like. The Rebels are understandably freaked out by this. Mr ex-Stormtrooper gets debriefed in a room with all of the Rebel higher-ups, because the guy who has been literally conditioned from birth to be a nameless, faceless drone of the Empire can totally be trusted when he says he comes bearing gifts. No wonder you chucklefucks can't manage to take down an Empire without the help of a tribe of goddamn teddy bears.
Anyway, it turns out there's a hidden exhaust port or something, so the Rebel pilots volunteer to go on a trench run to take it out. Only there's a shield, so they have to send in a covert team to take the shield down. And who better to do that than the ex-Stormtrooper? Sure, we'll trust him to do the job. Even though he's already told you up-front that the only reason he's coming along is to save Rey. Maybe they're expecting some unexpected help from, what, a pile of kittens?
Rey, for her part, doesn't need saving. She picks up the Jedi Mind Trick like Paul Atreides, and literally talks her way out of her jail cell. It's ... pretty awesome, to be honest. Anyway, she bumps into the three stooges, but not before they kidnap Brienne of Tarth at gunpoint and made her deactivate the shield. Because it makes complete and total sense that the Stormtrooper commander would put her own life above those of the troops on the death planet, or the death planet itself.
Oh, and during this entire time, the super space gun is "charging." How does it do this? By draining the goddamn sun. I just. Who comes up with this shit? How does that even work? Suns don't grow back, JJ. Your planet-murdering superweapon has a five-billion-year refractory period.
So fine, whatever. Han and Chewie for some reason go off to plant charges around this base. I don't remember why they got separated from the kids. And that's bugging me. But long story short, Han finds himself facing off with his son while everyone else looks on. And in a truly poignant, if completely expected, moment, Harrison Ford ends his involvement with the Star Wars franchise in a way that is both satisfying and respectful to the character. Thanks, Harrison. Thanks for not fucking it up for everyone.
And then comes the climactic lightsaber duel. Finn takes a swing at Kylo Ren and doesn't suck, though he does get beat in the end. Although come to think of it, why does Kylo Ren suck so bad at lightsabering? This is a dude who used the Force to freeze a blaster bolt in midair (which was unbelievably hot), and he's being pressed by a fucking ex-Stormtrooper who has presumably not been trained in any of the seven lightsaber combat forms. But whatever, he wins, we see that those fucking crossguard things are actually functionally useful in combat, and then Rey has her Crowning Moment of Awesome when she wins a Force-grip contest with Ren over Luke's lightsaber. She then proceeds to thoroughly beat his ass and is all set to murder his face off when the fucking planet splits open and physically prevents her from doing so.
So the good guys triumph, the planet gun is destroyed, everyone gets away, except for Han who has fallen to his death. Even better, R2 wakes up from his coma just in the nick of time to put together the rest of the map to Luke Skywalker! Ren has a touching moment with Finn's comatose body, and then heads off with Chewie and Artoo to find Luke. And the movie ends with her proffering him his lightsaber on an island over the sea. Which is a place she's been dreaming about.
First off, let me say it is so good to be living in a world where Star Wars is good again. For all that this movie was sixty percent recycled content, JJ Abrams is a crackerjack action director, so the movie really did kick some ass. Harrison Ford's performance was frankly terrible, but it was good of him to show up so I'm going to give that a pass. The two new stars are great together. Kylo Ren is an interesting character -- he's notably conflicted about his decision to murder his former compatriots, he has serious anger management issues, and he has the Skywalker affinity for the Force. He's driven by a need to live up to his grandfather, and feels profound shame that he hasn't yet done so.
I'm going to call it right now that Ren is being set up for a face turn, probably prompted by his cousin, Rey. This is fine, really -- this is Star Wars, so we need to have our beloved bad guys be redeemed at the end. It seems the journey to get there will be worth watching. I'm not even overly vexed that the Skywalkers are still the only Force family in the entire universe. At this point it would be weird for them not to be.
The one thing JJ is really not very good at is plausible technobabble. And it pisses me off. It's one thing to not really grasp physics, but JJ movies have a habit of just giving physics the finger. It's a bit less noticeable in Star Wars, because Star Wars and physics have always kind of left the room when the other shows up, but it really did some damage to Star Trek. Here the main culprits are the stupid planet gun thing and the manner in which it is charged. Leaving aside the gravitational and hydrostatic pressure issues associated with drilling a thousand-mile-wide chasm to the core of your planet, it seems imprudent to expend so many resources on a weapon that can only really be fired once.
There's also the question of the practical need for such a weapon. I realize the Galaxy Gun and the Sun Crusher are both non-canon now, but you still have the Death Stars. You already have the ability to pop a planet like a water balloon -- why do you need to go bigger? I mean, I recognize the escalation principle that tends to inform action franchises, but this weapon is the kind of thing Mel Brooks would have put in Spaceballs II: The Search for More Money if JJ hadn't come up with it first.
There were a few choices I found plain baffling. The opening planet, for example. It's a desert planet. It's got almost no water. The people are living a hardscrabble, scavenging existence. Everyone's dressed in light-colored, draped clothing. Sketchy traders, lots of industrial equipment, and sand sand sand. So why the fuck was this planet named Jakka and not Tatooine? You have a perfectly good desert planet in a circumstance where making a callback to the original trilogy would actually make perfect sense, and instead you spike it. As if people aren't going to realize that "droid with hidden plans gets found by secret force-sensitive character who is living on a fucking backwater desert planet, said character decides to help the droid, bumps into Han Solo and makes her way to the Rebellion so they can stop the Empire's superweapon" plot is verbatim from Star Wars if you change the names of the planets. Christ.
(And why would you waste Max von Sydow on a two-minute cameo? Honestly.)
Another thing that doesn't make sense is just ... how is it that people forget about the magical space wizards so quickly? The Jedi were a galaxy-spanning order with the authority to steal children from their fucking homes, and then in the space of twenty years were so thoroughly forgotten that Obi-wan was totally comfortable hanging out in his Jedi uniform and flashing his lightsaber around. Well, it happened again -- Luke had time to create and then lose a new Jedi order, father at least one child probably, and then disappear so thoroughly that even his own sister doesn't know where he is, and once more the Jedi have been so thoroughly forgotten that the new fish wonder aloud if they're a myth. How long could it have been? Twenty, thirty years? There are still plenty of people alive who would remember the old Jedi Council, the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, let alone the fall of the Empire. We remember mystical orders of knights that were wiped out over a thousand years ago on Earth -- how are the Jedi, who are way, way cooler than the Knights Templar, so far out of sight and mind?
I guess what it all comes down to is that this movie is really a reboot disguised as a sequel. It introduces some new characters in order to set itself apart from what came before, but in every other way it's as "new" as Fifty Shades of Grey. The ham-fisted appropriation of the source material thankfully works pretty well for this franchise, probably because Star Wars has always been popcorn cinema, but given how many of the story beats overlap between the two movies it's hard to appreciate this movie on its own merits. We all knew JJ was the man for the job, and if you think about it like a pseudo-reboot, he actually knocked it out of the park.
Star Wars is a premise that only really contains one story, which is why they keep telling the same story over and over and over again. (And I don't want to hear about the Yuuzhan Vong, that was just stupid.) This movie is a worthy telling of that story, and I'm looking forward to seeing where the new franchise goes from here.
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