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This has taken me a week to write: I went and saw it last Sunday and haven't been able to quite get this done amidst the madness of Yuletide and trying to harry along two secret santas.
tl;dr: I avoided all spoilers - trailers, articles, just about anything I could get away with in this time of casual spoilers. And I enjoyed the result.
It's not as good as the originals. It wasn't as compelling a story, and the movie had JJ's fingerprints all over it - not necessarily in the good way; but it's an acceptable copy for moving forward.
I am become cynical and very few things surprise me in an action movie anymore. Or, rather; I find it hard to disconnect my thinking brain and just get into the story.
Michael Stackpole (of Star Wars tie-in novels fame) once said of writing a book: writing a story is a game between you and the reader. If they guess the ending, you lose and they'll never buy another book; if you keep them guessing all the way through, then they'll buy your next book and the game starts again.
It's not strictly true - there are some things which are predictable, which need to be predictable so your audience comes back - but it's a good way of looking at the relationship between storyteller and audience - whether it's profic, fanfic, tv series, or books.
At any rate, the storytelling was good but not amazing. I could predict what was going to happen, and I'm more cynical about stories and the way they're framed and told than I was back in 2011 when I sat in the theatre with a couple of friends who didn't mind me commenting and predicted what was going to happen when in Captain America: The First Avenger.
There were the familiar beats: interruption one, interruption two, revelation one, revelation two. They might not have followed the beats of A New Hope so precisely but they were still very much present.
There were also the familiar locations: desert planet with life of drudgery, jungle planet with secret rebellion base, ice planet withThird Reich First Order, the Millenium Falcon as the bridging space, cantina/watering hole full of questionable characters, Yet Another Death Star...
So it was a "yay" but not a "whoa".
At least, not from the movie.
The characters were a vast improvement on the Prequels, although without the emotive punch of the Originals. I did like how they developed the dynamics in short space - Rey and BB8, Finn and Poe, Finn and Rey, Rey and Kylo.
At this point, my ins to the fandom will probably be Rey and Finn. I like Poe (mostly as an in to the New Rebellion) and I'm pretty meh on Kylo, although I imagine he and Poe will be very popular together.
I'm not sure I actually ship anyone at this point - I kind of like Rey & Finn and Finn & Poe, and the dynamic between Rey & Kylo is interesting but more as a contrast: force users, probably Skywalkers, the bright and the dark battling the other.
Or maybe I just want that "Luke turns to the dark side and Leia has to bring him back" story that I wanted when I was eight, and I can see the possibilities (albeit darkly) in Kylo and Rey. However, Finn would be Rey's emotional/psychological anchor through all that - he's worked for the First Order (they overdid the Nazi flashbacks), he knows what it can do, he'd fight back against it with Rey and for Rey.
But that's all speculation (and the way I'd like things to turn out; see MCU: Civil War).
I am probably one of the few people who liked the realism of Leia and Han splitting up after Ben 'died'. (One of the biggest marriage splitters: loss of a child.) Is it sad? Yes. Is it likely? Yes. Was it random and unexpected and unnecessary? Yes. But in a really brutal way, life is unnecessary to the planet continuing to move in its orbit, and yet I'm rather attached to mine. It seemed arrantly clear to me that it wasn't that they fell out of love with each other, just that they'd never been good at dealing with those feelings things and they broke on the rock of trying to work out themselves and their loss of Ben (and of Luke, who vanished) while still being who they were in the society they created.
There were no recriminations, either; two mature adults dealing with each other, with what was, and what had happened to them. Adulting: done with maturity.
I've mentioned the reiteration of themes, the new Death Star (honestly, the Dark Side needs to fire their Ideas Guys and get a new batch), and the Naziism turned up to 11. (Like, seriously, the Empire had the whole Nazi thing going for it already, JJ, you didn't need to amp the damn thing with the speechifying and the banners and the guy frothing at the mouth.)
I think that my problem with this watching was that it was the first time, and I was so busy following it all that I couldn't absorb it. People have said they got more from the second watching.
I'm going back to see it on Wednesday with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
acusa_dora and her family at the Sydney IMAX. Should be good now I don't have to be following what's happening and can just enjoy.
Overall? A good start. Not fantastic; I couldn't get caught up in the story, but enjoyable nevertheless, and people who are less critical than I will probably enjoy it more.
tl;dr: I avoided all spoilers - trailers, articles, just about anything I could get away with in this time of casual spoilers. And I enjoyed the result.
It's not as good as the originals. It wasn't as compelling a story, and the movie had JJ's fingerprints all over it - not necessarily in the good way; but it's an acceptable copy for moving forward.
I am become cynical and very few things surprise me in an action movie anymore. Or, rather; I find it hard to disconnect my thinking brain and just get into the story.
Michael Stackpole (of Star Wars tie-in novels fame) once said of writing a book: writing a story is a game between you and the reader. If they guess the ending, you lose and they'll never buy another book; if you keep them guessing all the way through, then they'll buy your next book and the game starts again.
It's not strictly true - there are some things which are predictable, which need to be predictable so your audience comes back - but it's a good way of looking at the relationship between storyteller and audience - whether it's profic, fanfic, tv series, or books.
At any rate, the storytelling was good but not amazing. I could predict what was going to happen, and I'm more cynical about stories and the way they're framed and told than I was back in 2011 when I sat in the theatre with a couple of friends who didn't mind me commenting and predicted what was going to happen when in Captain America: The First Avenger.
There were the familiar beats: interruption one, interruption two, revelation one, revelation two. They might not have followed the beats of A New Hope so precisely but they were still very much present.
There were also the familiar locations: desert planet with life of drudgery, jungle planet with secret rebellion base, ice planet with
So it was a "yay" but not a "whoa".
At least, not from the movie.
The characters were a vast improvement on the Prequels, although without the emotive punch of the Originals. I did like how they developed the dynamics in short space - Rey and BB8, Finn and Poe, Finn and Rey, Rey and Kylo.
At this point, my ins to the fandom will probably be Rey and Finn. I like Poe (mostly as an in to the New Rebellion) and I'm pretty meh on Kylo, although I imagine he and Poe will be very popular together.
I'm not sure I actually ship anyone at this point - I kind of like Rey & Finn and Finn & Poe, and the dynamic between Rey & Kylo is interesting but more as a contrast: force users, probably Skywalkers, the bright and the dark battling the other.
Or maybe I just want that "Luke turns to the dark side and Leia has to bring him back" story that I wanted when I was eight, and I can see the possibilities (albeit darkly) in Kylo and Rey. However, Finn would be Rey's emotional/psychological anchor through all that - he's worked for the First Order (they overdid the Nazi flashbacks), he knows what it can do, he'd fight back against it with Rey and for Rey.
But that's all speculation (and the way I'd like things to turn out; see MCU: Civil War).
I am probably one of the few people who liked the realism of Leia and Han splitting up after Ben 'died'. (One of the biggest marriage splitters: loss of a child.) Is it sad? Yes. Is it likely? Yes. Was it random and unexpected and unnecessary? Yes. But in a really brutal way, life is unnecessary to the planet continuing to move in its orbit, and yet I'm rather attached to mine. It seemed arrantly clear to me that it wasn't that they fell out of love with each other, just that they'd never been good at dealing with those feelings things and they broke on the rock of trying to work out themselves and their loss of Ben (and of Luke, who vanished) while still being who they were in the society they created.
There were no recriminations, either; two mature adults dealing with each other, with what was, and what had happened to them. Adulting: done with maturity.
I've mentioned the reiteration of themes, the new Death Star (honestly, the Dark Side needs to fire their Ideas Guys and get a new batch), and the Naziism turned up to 11. (Like, seriously, the Empire had the whole Nazi thing going for it already, JJ, you didn't need to amp the damn thing with the speechifying and the banners and the guy frothing at the mouth.)
I think that my problem with this watching was that it was the first time, and I was so busy following it all that I couldn't absorb it. People have said they got more from the second watching.
I'm going back to see it on Wednesday with
acusa_dora and her family at the Sydney IMAX. Should be good now I don't have to be following what's happening and can just enjoy.Overall? A good start. Not fantastic; I couldn't get caught up in the story, but enjoyable nevertheless, and people who are less critical than I will probably enjoy it more.