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lotesseI'm bummin about TFA.
okay so first: the replication of ANH, down to shot framing and editing, was way too on the nose. It made the film predictable, in a bad way. And it wasn't done quite as well, technically, I don't think - and that's never good, to so directly invite a comparison you can't win.
but mainly: this is the fucking EU all over again, I stg.
The astropolitics are a mess. All those Hitler-style massive armies, those take empires to feed and power. So what kind of planetary holdings does the First Order have? Is Leia simultaneously running a Republic and a Resistance? bcaus that dont mak no sens. What are they resisting, exactly?
The ethics are also a mess. Both the EU and the PT run on an idea of the Force that I fundamentally dislike: it's like the magic in Wheel of Time, that's fundamentally tainted by madness. Using the Force seems to automatically open you to the dark side. Why is Kylo Ren dark? becuz he is, can't you tell he's so goth (returning to this later).
Or it's like the One Ring.
But thing is, if it's the Ring the story has to be about its surrender and destruction. If being trained as a Jedi is likely to transform innocent children into murderers, even if it only happens to some of them - well, maybe y'all should stop doing that. This might be a reach, but it seems to me a uniquely late-capitalism conflict: this source of power is likely corrupting, but it gives us all these nice advantages, so we're going to keep using it and just angst about it sometimes. Nah, son.
Tthe story keeps being a goddamn merry-go-round of misery, and nobody ever learns shit. I'm back on the Kylo Ren bitching now. Why the fuck would Han and Leia's kid be such a fucking mess? They would be great parents! Luke would have trained him so carefully! Like Philip Hamilton, he would have grown alongside the fruits of his parents' revolution! So why is everything all crapsack.
These aren't the lives I want for Han, Luke, or Leia. I don't want the second half of L&L's lives to be as defined by darkside relatives as the first half was, I want them to gain some ground and start to build. It's Not Okay with me that this verse is letting Luke get away with hermitting off as much as it is. He's supposed to have better support systems than Obi-Wan.
(more than anything, TFA reminded me of the subgenre of classic Han/Luke novels where either Han or Luke, or both, take off from the rebellion after RotJ in a fit of angst, and the story is all about first tracking them down and then dealing with the issues, and also having sex; notable examples include works by Cara Loup and walkerminion, among others. but it didn't have the healing or the sex, just the angst and the 'local character/oc' stuff that's so subgenre-typical. Classic H/L also tends to do a lot with the lost lightsaber. Most of the moments in TFA that hit me were moments that seemed to dramatize this familiar plotline - the first time Rey mentions Luke to Han, Han talking about his epiphany that the Force is real, Han reacting to the lost saber. Because it's a subgenre that I love very very dearly - when it doesn't end with half my OTP dead, that is. When Mark finally turned up at the end, I was wailing over how they'd never meet again, how Han wouldn't be there to welcome him home. I assume he knew at the same time Leia did. FUck.)
(Luke's Hermit Island was very pretty, though, and reminded me a great deal of HTTYD's Berk).
Although the film does a good job flashing significant objects, it also fails to follow through on a number of key things. For instance - I noticed while watching that the twins' sibling relationship is never explicitly mentioned, and now I'm wondering if they've been open about their heritage. It's a question that gets a lot of traction in fic: are they going to admit that they're sibs, and are they going to acknowledge Vader. Remember, at the end of RotJ no one living knows about Vader, and only Han knows about the sibling thing - and of course he would keep that secret for them, if it was asked. But I don't know if TFA is doing something with this, or if it's just another gap, like Kylo Ren's motivation and the basic astropolitical situation.
Finally, but maybe most viscerally, I gotta complain about their treatment of Leia/Carrie Fisher. I fistpumped when the opening text crawl gave her name as "General Organa," no name-change - although then were they supposed to be divorced? I don't care, she gets to keep her name, that's good, that's important.
But imo they overprioritized keeping Carrie "pretty," and that badly shortchanged the character. I was horrified by how very frozen Carrie's face was; they made her lose weight again, and Botoxed the shit out of her face, and carefully lit her in dewy and glowing ways, so that she always looks a little like an angel. And she doesn't get to show any spirit or temper or commanding power what-s0-fucking-ever. In the opening scenes, when Poe and Ren were going at it, I was kind of getting off on the "Leia's sons fight for her honor" vibe; but we don't get her as a commander in this movie, nor as a politician, nor as a tactician, really, though she does look at pretty glowy displays that make her eyes look big and shiny. She's sad, or wry, and sometimes sort of hopeful? But she's not sarcastic or angry or fiery or passionate, she's not aflame with the work of her lifetime, we don't see her with her troops, or her staff, we don't see her as a venerated or commanding or even really an impressive figure. Instead, she's all goddamn winsome. It feels like a tremendous disrespect to both the character and Carrie herself; it felt like watching RotJ, where the more I like her the more I want to save her from these fucking movies
In fact, the number 1 place where TFA fails for me is that I can't really believe they'd let a darkside child of theirs loose on the galaxy like that; Leia alone would have pursued him to the ends of the earth, and tbh I can see Luke being determined to kill him hiself, out of that overdeveloped sense of obligation/responsibility he's got. Why are the OT characters so passive in their response to this shit with their kid??
The new characters were all cute, tho as I've seen noted elsewhere Finn is a problem, cuz if he can be so easily redeemed what about the other storm troopers the good guys slaughter all over the rest of the film? awkwrd. I liked Rey a lot, and obvs gravitated toward the most incesty ship available in the shape of Rey/Kylo Ren - but tbh I was never gonna be able to focus on them that well.
I would read significant quantities of an AU where Rey takes Han up on the copiloting offer and they do crime and/or retrieve Luke and kick his damaged emo ass until he understands about being on the receiving end of unconditional love.
okay so first: the replication of ANH, down to shot framing and editing, was way too on the nose. It made the film predictable, in a bad way. And it wasn't done quite as well, technically, I don't think - and that's never good, to so directly invite a comparison you can't win.
but mainly: this is the fucking EU all over again, I stg.
The astropolitics are a mess. All those Hitler-style massive armies, those take empires to feed and power. So what kind of planetary holdings does the First Order have? Is Leia simultaneously running a Republic and a Resistance? bcaus that dont mak no sens. What are they resisting, exactly?
The ethics are also a mess. Both the EU and the PT run on an idea of the Force that I fundamentally dislike: it's like the magic in Wheel of Time, that's fundamentally tainted by madness. Using the Force seems to automatically open you to the dark side. Why is Kylo Ren dark? becuz he is, can't you tell he's so goth (returning to this later).
Or it's like the One Ring.
But thing is, if it's the Ring the story has to be about its surrender and destruction. If being trained as a Jedi is likely to transform innocent children into murderers, even if it only happens to some of them - well, maybe y'all should stop doing that. This might be a reach, but it seems to me a uniquely late-capitalism conflict: this source of power is likely corrupting, but it gives us all these nice advantages, so we're going to keep using it and just angst about it sometimes. Nah, son.
Tthe story keeps being a goddamn merry-go-round of misery, and nobody ever learns shit. I'm back on the Kylo Ren bitching now. Why the fuck would Han and Leia's kid be such a fucking mess? They would be great parents! Luke would have trained him so carefully! Like Philip Hamilton, he would have grown alongside the fruits of his parents' revolution! So why is everything all crapsack.
These aren't the lives I want for Han, Luke, or Leia. I don't want the second half of L&L's lives to be as defined by darkside relatives as the first half was, I want them to gain some ground and start to build. It's Not Okay with me that this verse is letting Luke get away with hermitting off as much as it is. He's supposed to have better support systems than Obi-Wan.
(more than anything, TFA reminded me of the subgenre of classic Han/Luke novels where either Han or Luke, or both, take off from the rebellion after RotJ in a fit of angst, and the story is all about first tracking them down and then dealing with the issues, and also having sex; notable examples include works by Cara Loup and walkerminion, among others. but it didn't have the healing or the sex, just the angst and the 'local character/oc' stuff that's so subgenre-typical. Classic H/L also tends to do a lot with the lost lightsaber. Most of the moments in TFA that hit me were moments that seemed to dramatize this familiar plotline - the first time Rey mentions Luke to Han, Han talking about his epiphany that the Force is real, Han reacting to the lost saber. Because it's a subgenre that I love very very dearly - when it doesn't end with half my OTP dead, that is. When Mark finally turned up at the end, I was wailing over how they'd never meet again, how Han wouldn't be there to welcome him home. I assume he knew at the same time Leia did. FUck.)
(Luke's Hermit Island was very pretty, though, and reminded me a great deal of HTTYD's Berk).
Although the film does a good job flashing significant objects, it also fails to follow through on a number of key things. For instance - I noticed while watching that the twins' sibling relationship is never explicitly mentioned, and now I'm wondering if they've been open about their heritage. It's a question that gets a lot of traction in fic: are they going to admit that they're sibs, and are they going to acknowledge Vader. Remember, at the end of RotJ no one living knows about Vader, and only Han knows about the sibling thing - and of course he would keep that secret for them, if it was asked. But I don't know if TFA is doing something with this, or if it's just another gap, like Kylo Ren's motivation and the basic astropolitical situation.
Finally, but maybe most viscerally, I gotta complain about their treatment of Leia/Carrie Fisher. I fistpumped when the opening text crawl gave her name as "General Organa," no name-change - although then were they supposed to be divorced? I don't care, she gets to keep her name, that's good, that's important.
But imo they overprioritized keeping Carrie "pretty," and that badly shortchanged the character. I was horrified by how very frozen Carrie's face was; they made her lose weight again, and Botoxed the shit out of her face, and carefully lit her in dewy and glowing ways, so that she always looks a little like an angel. And she doesn't get to show any spirit or temper or commanding power what-s0-fucking-ever. In the opening scenes, when Poe and Ren were going at it, I was kind of getting off on the "Leia's sons fight for her honor" vibe; but we don't get her as a commander in this movie, nor as a politician, nor as a tactician, really, though she does look at pretty glowy displays that make her eyes look big and shiny. She's sad, or wry, and sometimes sort of hopeful? But she's not sarcastic or angry or fiery or passionate, she's not aflame with the work of her lifetime, we don't see her with her troops, or her staff, we don't see her as a venerated or commanding or even really an impressive figure. Instead, she's all goddamn winsome. It feels like a tremendous disrespect to both the character and Carrie herself; it felt like watching RotJ, where the more I like her the more I want to save her from these fucking movies
In fact, the number 1 place where TFA fails for me is that I can't really believe they'd let a darkside child of theirs loose on the galaxy like that; Leia alone would have pursued him to the ends of the earth, and tbh I can see Luke being determined to kill him hiself, out of that overdeveloped sense of obligation/responsibility he's got. Why are the OT characters so passive in their response to this shit with their kid??
The new characters were all cute, tho as I've seen noted elsewhere Finn is a problem, cuz if he can be so easily redeemed what about the other storm troopers the good guys slaughter all over the rest of the film? awkwrd. I liked Rey a lot, and obvs gravitated toward the most incesty ship available in the shape of Rey/Kylo Ren - but tbh I was never gonna be able to focus on them that well.
I would read significant quantities of an AU where Rey takes Han up on the copiloting offer and they do crime and/or retrieve Luke and kick his damaged emo ass until he understands about being on the receiving end of unconditional love.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 03:13 pm (UTC)I haven't followed the EU, but I agree on all your review, though I could see there being a republic, and a resistance going on in places that were still Empire held, but they don't try to explain that in the film like they should.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-12 11:09 pm (UTC)