Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

I wrote this review in Jan-Feb 2020, and it is intended as part of a book on the mythology of the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy. As such, there are references to different chapters. To dispell confusion, you’ll have to wait until I publish that book soon to read the other chapters.

Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker

Score: B-/C+

My thoughts on The Rise of Skywalker are many but here’s the gist: I enjoyed it, but I found it to be very unoriginal. All the choices made in terms of story were safe ones, like they were checking boxes of things that would appease the most fans. It was formulaic. But maybe that’s just a JJ film, because The Force Awakens was like that, too. The Last Jedi was not like that at all, which may be why some “fans” hated it. But I loved The Last Jedi for the fact that it was daring and challenging and genuinely surprising. No more sober, complex Star Wars like in The Last Jedi. For better or worse, we’re now back to the bright, flashy shininess of The Force Awakens because J.J. Abrams is back to write/direct.

Having explained in my The Force Awakens review why I’m ok with reading spoilers before the film comes out, I should mention that no matter what I spoilers I read for The Last Jedi, almost nothing was spoiled for me. I did not know that Luke and Snoke would die. I did not know about the Force projection ability. None of it. However, I unfortunately knew what was going to happen in The Rise of Skywalker because of internet leaks by someone called JediPaxis (“The basic plot of Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker assembled from my sources”). However, there were things that I hadn’t heard from the leaks: Kylo and Leia would vanish upon death, that Leia’s body would wait for Ben to die before vanishing, as if mother and son were connected even in death (my wife pointed that out to me). I’ve seen this explained like this: When Leia “offers her own life to save Ben Solo, her body does not leave as her journey is not complete,” having seen in a vision that her path would lead to the death of her son (Sheraz Farooqi, “Star Wars: Why Leia Only Disappeared After Kylo Ren’s Death”). She “does not completely pass into the netherworld of the Force until she can guide Ben Solo to come with her” (Farooqi). Farooqi observes that Leia’s ultimate purpose on The Rise of Skywalker “was to save and redeem her son, and in turn, redeem the Skywalker family” (Farooqi).

            My opinions often align with film critics. I’m always interested when they don’t. Am I missing something, or are they? And they almost align with The Rise of Skywalker. As of January 2020, The Rise of Skywalker is now the worst rated Star Wars film, even lower than The Phantom Menace (Tassi, “‘Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker’ Is Now The Worst-Reviewed ‘Star Wars’ Movie Ever”). It is more than 12% below Attack of the Clones. This makes no sense to me because Attack of the Clones is by far the worst Star Wars film ever made. I love Obi-wan sleuthing around the galaxy and the end battle scene, but everything about the Anakin and Padme scenes is too terrible to bear. So my opinions don’t always align with film critics. I happen to like The Godfather better than The Godfather Part II, which goes against popular opinion. Go figure. Some film critics have called The Rise of Skywalker a failure. I think that’s wrong. Was it a formulaic retread? Sure. But it wasn’t a failure. However, I think that it was easily the weakest of the Sequel Trilogy. For me, The Last Jedi was easily the best of the Sequel Trilogy.

It is interesting now to re-watch The Force Awakens knowing what where the story goes in The Rise of Skywalker. The granddaughter of the Emperor and a stormtrooper defector take on the remnants of the Empire, led by Leia’s son/Luke’s nephew. They are interesting reversals, like those that Lucas did in the Prequel Trilogy, where the stormtroopers are the army of the good guys (the Republic) and the rebels (the Separatists) are the bad guys. It also reminds me of the generational reversals in the Dune series of novels.

In a perfect world we got the Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly’s Episode IX film, in which Rey Solana accepted both the light and dark sides of the Force to finally balance it—she would not deny her anger nor reject her love—and defeated a (mostly) unrepentant, evil Kylo. It made much more sense as the culminating arc of not just the Sequel Trilogy but solved the desire for balancing of the Force in the Prequels. Instead we got The Rise of Skywalker, which feels like the ending chapter to some other trilogy of films. (More on Trevorrow and Connolly’s Episode IX at the end of this review.)

The good.

I preferred Rey being related to no one famous. She doesn’t need to have a famous lineage to be an interesting and engaging character. While I would have preferred that, I am ok with Rey being a Palpatine in that it’s a lineage and a past that she has to overcome. If she’d been a Skywalker by blood, it would have been too easy. “Oh, well, she’s another hero in a line of heroes” (except for Anakin, obviously). This goes back to the whole “democratization of the Force” that Rian Johnson supposedly did in The Last Jedi. As I said in the last section on that film, it was George Lucas who democratized the Force in the Prequel Trilogy when he made the Jedi celibate monks. No Jedi ever had a famous lineage before the Skywalker family, and now the Palpatine family, of course.

Some people who love The Last Jedi complain that The Rise of Skywalker retcons some elements. I agree with this. Some of the things that happen in the film directly refute The Last Jedi. However, in everything I’ve seen about J.J. Abrams, he seems to have nothing but good things to say about Rian Johnson and The Last Jedi. Why did Abrams and co-writer Chris Terrio make Rey descended from Palpatine? It apparently wasn’t meant as a dig against The Last Jedi. Abrams says of the decision,

One of the themes of [The Last Jedi] is that anyone can be anything regardless of where you’re from . . . Though I completely understand ‘you’re nobody’ is a devastating thing, to me the more painful, the more shocking thing was ‘you’re from the worst possible place.’ And is your destiny, is that thing that you feel, that you know is part of you, somehow, that you’re haunted by, is that your destiny? The idea that choices -- there are things more powerful than blood, as Luke says. That feeling was an important thing to convey for us. (Abrams qtd. in Gina Carbone, “Rey’s Parents Revealed? J.J. Abrams Explains Lineage Choice In Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker”).

It was interesting to note that Kylo and Rey’s relationship in the Sequel Trilogy is the inverse of Luke and Leia’s in the Original Trilogy. Writing for Salon, Matthew Rozsa states,

With Luke and Leia, we started out thinking they might become love interests before learning that they are in fact siblings. With Kylo Ren and Rey, audiences speculated that they would wind up being related to each other before learning in the end that, nope, their connection was actually supposed to be romantic. (Rozsa, “The Force dyad, critiqued and explained in ‘Rise of Skywalker’”)

Something interesting to note is that in The Rise of Skywalker we finally see a Force power—the ability to save others from death—that Anakin Skywalker sought after in 2005’s Revenge of the Sith. It was revealed to be what drove Anakin to the dark side in the Prequel Trilogy; his fear that he would lose his beloved as he had lost his mother in Attack of the Clones. Anakin wanted this power for selfish reasons. He wanted to save his wife Padme from death in childbirth so that he could continue to be with her. It’s love, but it’s a selfish sort of love. When Ben Solo resurrected Rey, he sacrificed his own life doing it. It’s the one redemptive act he performs to undo some of the death and damage he caused as Kylo Ren. In opposition to Anakin’s selfish love, Ben’s is a selfless love. At the end of the film, when Rey adopts the surname Skywalker. What is incredibly interesting about that is that Rey actually is pretty much the carrier of that bloodline now, since Ben (the last of the Skywalker line) transferred his life force to resurrect her.

I liked in the film that Hux didn’t turn on the First Order out of altruism. , but for the contemptible reason of simply wanting to see Kylo fail. I think it’s still in line with his character.

I liked that for the Luke and Leia flashback, they used cut scenes from the Original Trilogy, probably Return of the Jedi. Visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett explains that, “We scoured outtakes from the original movies, and we took some pieces and then had to try and figure out the technical aspect of putting that shot together” (qtd. in Hoai-Tran Bui, “Billie Lourd Played Leia in ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ Flashback Scene”). Note that it was actress Carrie Fisher’s own daughter, Billie Lourd, who played Leia’s body double in that scene (Bui, “Billie Lourd Played Leia”).

I liked the stadium of people at the end, watching the Sith ritual between Rey and Palpatine. But who in the world are they? According the Visual Dictionary, they are the Sith Eternal, (Pablo Hidalgo, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker The Visual Dictionary 178). Since those Sith Eternal hissed out words very similar to the “Duel of the Fates” song from The Phantom Menace, I wonder if it is the Sith Eternal on that track. Is that a retcon?

I liked how the door on the Death Star opens for Rey in a similar way to the door in the bowels of Maz’s castle in The Force Awakens that leads her to Luke’s lightsaber. In The Rise of Skywalker she is searching for the Wayfinder, probably the worst, most on-the-nose name of anything in a film in history, except for the equally ridiculous name of “Unobtainium” used in Avatar (2009).

Some people question why Rey didn’t disappear after she destroyed Palpatine. The answer is: For the same reason that no Jedi before Obi-wan disappeared when they died. No Jedi disappears in the Prequel Trilogy, which of course surprised all the audience members at the time. And it has still never been sufficiently explained by Lucas or anyone at Lucasfilm.

No matter what the story issues anyone has with any of the Sequel Trilogy (myself included), at the very least they were well acted, directed, and written; unlike Lucas’ Prequel Trilogy. There was no Jar Jar Binks stepping in poop and getting farted on by a long-legged tapir (in The Phantom Menace). The dialogue was good throughout, unlike the dreadful dialogue in—especially—the love scenes of Attack of the Clones. Every word Anakin or Padme says is just so bad, so ill-conceived, and their acting is so wooden and stilted, that it just snaps you out of the fantasy of it all. Thank the Maker the Sequel Trilogy isn’t like that!

            And yet, if they hadn’t planned on the Emperor returning—Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly’s original script confirms that—and if they weren’t going to release the Emperor’s communication at either the end of The Last Jedi or the beginning of The Rise of Skywalker itself, then they should have at least made it as the opening paragraph of the crawl, instead of releasing it on Fortnite.

Some critics I read thought that having a bunch of Snoke clones in tanks was “laughable” (Kyle Larson, “Spoiler Review – Hopelessness Versus Hope in The Rise of Skywalker”). I disagree. I thought it was very economical storytelling. In screenwriting, one is supposed to show, not tell. And I thought that was done well.

            I also didn’t think that the ending where Kylo/Ben dies in Rey’s arms was “cynical, shallow, and cruel” (Larson). I saw it as fitting and in keeping with Romeo and Juliet. And the Force heal is not an “inexplicable Force-ability dropped in the idle of the story” (Larson). It is shown earlier in Rey healing the snake creature. It was shown days before The Rise of Skywalker’s premier in the Disney+ series The Mandalorian. I know that this is not an in-film display of it, but I do think it’s worth noting.

I like that the Flash Fights turned out to not be in the film. According to early spoilers, while Kylo and Rey were fighting in the film, they were supposed to be able to physically jump from planet-to-planet, hoping around the galaxy to well-known Star Wars planets. Jumping from planet-to-planet while fighting, even if they’re connected via the Force, always sounded like such a terrible idea to me. I’m glad that whatever they do it’s in semi-close proximity, and they both don’t physically go to different planets. They can pass objects to each other via their Force connection? Ok. That’s at least in line with The Last Jedi where Kylo has sea spray/rain from Ahch-To on his face after one of their conversations. For me, The Last Jedi is by far the best, most challenging film of the Sequel Trilogy.

I liked that Poe and Zurii did not end up together, even after their shared history… or really because of it. Their relationship, too, was formulaic, but in a good Casablanca kind of way.

I really liked the little droid mechanic Babu Frik. He was a classic Star Wars character, cute and a little goofy. Some may say that this trend started with the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi, but I say that it really started with Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back and probably with R2-D2 in A New Hope.

            Finn ends up with no one, romantically-speaking. His affections seem all over the place in The Rise of Skywalker. He likes Rey (as shown in The Force Awakens). He likes Rose (as shown in The Last Jedi). Now in The Rise of Skywalker, he likes Jannah. He can’t pick. And of course, he seems to have some chemistry with Poe, but it’s just a “bromance.” Most people felt a heaping helping of (mostly unhealthy) Kylo/Rey romance, myself included. Sure, they’re star-struck lovers, à la Romeo and Juliet, but who can’t help pulling for them anyway? “Maybe they’ll make it one day… oh… one of them died. Whelp… who didn’t see that coming? Am I right?” “I will kiss thy lips. Haply some poison yet doth hang on them” and the like. Reylo have so much sexual tension you could cut it with a lightsaber. That’s right. I said it.

With Rey being a Palpatine, I’m more glad that Dooku/Tyranus and Snoke were shown using Force lightning, otherwise ignorant fans might claim that only Palpatines could create Force lightning, when George Lucas has said that Anakin/Vader should have been able to do it, too, but he couldn’t because he had cybernetic arms. Lucas has said only Sith could do it. Any Sith. Yoda could absorb lightning straight into his hands, just as Palpatine could create it. I always assumed it was to show how powerful in the Force they both were. If Yoda could do it, then by rights any Jedi should be able to… if they’re strong enough in the Force.

When Rey and Kylo are fighting on the Death Star and she backflips over the wave and lands, I kept thinking about Deadpool’s comment on superhero landings. I wanted Kylo to walk through the wave and say, “Maximum effort.”

The bad.

In the film, it is revealed that Rey is Emperor Palpatine’s granddaughter. This notion gave people anxiety realizing that Palpatine had sex at one point, however it should be noted that Palpatine did have a son in the Expanded Universe named… Triclops (Bill Slavicseck, A Guide to the Star Wars Universe 450-451). Triclops was a mutant with a third eye in the back of his head, and he was kept hidden away in an Imperial insane asylum (450-451). Whatever I or anyone else thinks negatively about The Rise of Skywalker, let’s all be thankful that Triclops did not show up in the Sequel Trilogy. Also, Triclops had a son named Ken, who was a Jedi Prince, so Rey does sort of fit that vague outline of Palpatine’s grandchild (451).

It is revealed that Luke and Leia knew about Rey’s parentage the whole time, during the events of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Withholding Rey’s parentage from her seems like a particularly audacious thing for Luke to do, since his own parentage was withheld from him until the worst possible moment in The Empire Strikes Back. (The answer to this, of course, is that Rey was not originally supposed to be descended from Emperor Palpatine in The Last Jedi or Episode IX, at one time called Duel of the Fates. For more information on the unused Duel of the Fates script, turn to Chapter 9.)

I think at this point, I should note that it makes very little sense for Rey to take the surname Skywalker in The Rise of Skywalker. She knew Luke Skywalker for about as long as Luke knew Yoda: a few days to maybe as long as one week. The entirety of Rey’s training by Luke takes place during the time that the Resistance is being chased by the First Order in The Last Jedi. Likewise, Luke’s whole training by Yoda takes place during the time that the Millennium Falcon is being chased by the Imperials in The Empire Strikes Back. Maybe differing time on different planets—because of gravity—has something to do with either training taking longer? But we can only guess at that. The point I am making is that Rey knew Luke for a short period of time. She was trained by Leia for at least a year, as it was explained that The Rise of Skywalker takes place at least a year after The Last Jedi (Chris Agar, “Star War 9 Takes Place One Year After Last Jedi”). While Leia is a Skywalker, she uses her adoptive surname of Organa throughout the Original Trilogy and Sequel Trilogy, where Organa is stated in all three films’ opening crawls (Wookieepedia, “Opening Crawl”). Wouldn’t it make more sense for Rey to take on the surname Organa? For the character, yes, it would, because Rey knew Leia Organa for far longer than she ever knew Luke Skywalker. By the way, I got this notion from YouTuber Just Write’s video “The Rise of Skywalker Is The Most Frustrating JJ Abrams Film.”

I did not notice any new musical themes from John Williams. There are a heaping ton of callbacks to previous motifs and themes, but no new ones I could hear after three theater viewings.

I wanted the filmmakers to do away with Jedi and Sith altogether and have people who walk the line between light and dark sides of the Force use Luke’s last name as a title. I like “Skywalker” as a title much better than “Gray Jedi,” which was used in the Expanded Universe, now Star Wars “Legends.” This notion was more prominent in Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly’s Duel of the Fates, which I will get to in Chapter 9.)

There are too many fake-out deaths in The Rise of Skywalker: Chewbacca, C-3PO’s memory wipe, even Kylo has two fake-out deaths (stabbed by Rey, and thrown off a cliff by Palpatine). Also, Palpatine’s return is a fake-out death from ROTJ (although he does state early in the film that he has died before). Rey, too, dies after defeating Palpatine, until Kylo resurrects her.

Another thing that was bad about the film: The final film of the “Skywalker Saga”—as Disney has labeled it—ends with two Palpatines fighting to the death? That’s an odd choice, to say the least.

In The Rise of Skywalker, they say that the “Holdo Maneuver” was a one-in-a-million chance of working. It didn’t. You just need a big ship and a suicidal pilot. Also, isn’t the star destroyer that is destroyed above Endor being taken down by using the Holdo Maneuver? It sure looks like it. Craig Elvy at ScreenRant noticed the same thing, stating that The Rise of Skywalker “complicates matters further when it shows what appears to be a second Holdo Maneuver being executed on a Star Destroyer above Endor during the film’s final moments” (Elvy, “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Confirms Why Holdo Maneuver Only Happened Once”).

One thing that I don’t like in any of the Star Wars films is what happens when lightsabers meet Force lightning. Sometimes lightsabers absorb the lightning (Rey in The Rise of Skywalker or Obi-Wan in Attack of the Clones). Sometimes they deflect the lightning (Rey in The Rise of Skywalker and Mace in Revenge of the Sith). Sometimes the lightning morphs Palpatine’s face once its deflected back on him, sometimes it makes him explode (it also seemed to have had this effect on Vader in Return of the Jedi). Either way, it never occurs to Palpatine to simply stop shooting his lightning. Maybe it’s difficult to stop using it once you start? What are the rules behind this? There probably are none.

Having Ewoks, and Wickett explicitly, in an overt Return of the Jedi remake is ridiculous. I cannot believe that anyone truly liked that.

When people saw The Rise of Skywalker, I heard a lot of chatter, with people saying things like, “The Emperor’s back? This ruins Return of the Jedi’s ending! Anakin now didn’t bring balance to the Force and died for nothing!” Writing for Forbes, Dani Di Placido states that the film, “desperately attempts to distance itself from The Last Jedi, and completely nullifies Anakin Skywalker’s sacrifice, invalidating the plot of six films, just so it can resurrect a fan favourite villain” (Placido. “‘The Rise Of Skywalker’ Is Now The Worst Reviewed ‘Star Wars’ Movie, But Does It Deserve The Hate?”).

Others wondered how the Emperor survived being thrown down a hole and blown up. I don’t think either are correct. While it is never explicitly stated in the film, I’m convinced that Palpatine died in Return of the Jedi, but was brought back via cloning and transfer of his spirit, à la the Dark Empire comic series from the 1990’s, which I’ve always loved. Three pieces of evidence: 1) Yes, everyone points to the line that’s originally from Revenge of the Sith about how the dark side is a pathway to unnatural abilities. But right before that Palpatine tells Kylo explicitly that he has died before. 2) Dominic Monaghan’s character says that Palpatine could have returned through science and cloning. There it is right there. 3) Co-writer Chris Terrio states that, “The entity known as Palpatine in this version – his body died in Return of the Jedi – is patient and has been waiting” (qtd. in John Hoey, “Snoke’s Death Forced Abrams’ Hand For Palpatine’s Return In The Rise Of Skywalker).

            In the end, it was terrible screenwriting to leave out how the Emperor returned. Apparently, The Rise of Skywalker team didn't want to “clutter the film up with things you didn't need to know" and editor Maryann Brandon said that there originally was more information in the film about what was keeping the Emperor alive but it was cut because “it seemed to go off topic” (qtd. in Carbone, “Really? Rise of Skywalker Team Figured ‘You Didn’t Need to Know’ How Palpatine Returned”). I cannot think of anyone who would agree with those statements. Most saw the omission as a big, gapping plot hole in the film.

Redemption.

I thoroughly disliked that Kylo Ren was redeemed in this film. Call me crazy, but I don’t think that murderous, fascist scumbags should get to be redeemed. Redemption is thought by some to be a major theme of the Star Wars films, and the “Skywalker Saga” in particular. However, I say that redemption was only a theme in Return of the Jedi, not the series as a whole. Although more people will disagree with me now that redemption is a theme in The Rise of Skywalker, too. Still, that’s only two out of nine core films, and twelve films total if one counts Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Solo: A Star Wars Story and 2008’s animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Redemption in two out of twelve films is hardly a major theme. In the Prequel Trilogy, the Jedi wanted the Chosen One to destroy the Sith, not to redeem them. And in the Original Trilogy, Obi-wan and Yoda both wanted Luke to kill Darth Vader, not redeem him. Redemption was Luke’s idea, independent of the previous galactic happenings.

Redemption of the villain, who is also from this one specific family in a whole galaxy of beings, is not even a theme. It’s a trope, which I see as having a negative connotation. Tropes are limiting. You have to make everything fit in with that one trope. It’s why Kylo’s redemption in The Rise of Skywalker was so rushed. It had to be shoe-horned into the script. Themes, on the other hand, are expansive. It’s like myth (expansive) versus dogma (limiting). Tropes are repetitive, as is The Rise of Skywalker’s use of redemption of the villain. I’m ok with it. I just don’t like it much. It’s too easy, both for the filmmakers to use and for the audience to accept. It’s banal, boring. The Last Jedi was not boring. The audience was on the edge of their seats. “Who’s going to turn, Rey or Kylo? Oh, I thought it would be that, but now it’s this other thing? Great!” With The Rise of Skywalker I just sat there thinking, “Well, I guess Kylo’s going to turn now because that seems to be what other fans are expecting. Oh, he did turn back to the light? Oh. That’s fine, I guess.”

The redemption of the villain worked in Return of the Jedi because the audience wasn’t expecting it to happen.

It doesn’t work in The Rise of Skywalker because the audience was expecting it to happen.

But most Westerners love a good redemption tale because we all have a redeemer complex. (Refer back to Chapter 5.) I also don’t like that Vader was redeemed in Return of the Jedi, because I don’t think he deserved to be. I’ve thought that since way before we saw Anakin/Vader murder a roomful of Jedi children in Revenge of the Sith. I think that the strength/power of Vader turning towards the light is not, “He became good again? Good for him!” That’s not the point. The strength/power of that happening is that it shows the strength/power of Luke, as well as the light side of the Force. Compassion is the real power, not domination. That’s what the Sith do.

Rey wanted to redeem Kylo in The Last Jedi only so that the redemption trope could be subverted. And it was a brilliant scene! Unfortunately, Abrams went back to redemption as a theme, probably out of feeling like he had to; for fan service. And it is fan service because that is what many of the fans expected because of Return of the Jedi. However, it’s boring. Instead of something interesting, it was a recycled story arc.

The interesting thing is that Kylo disappeared once he died. I’ve seen people interpret that as Leia having helped Kylo/Ben to disappear. Speaking of Leia, what happened with her when she called out to Kylo and then died? I’ve seen people interpret it in these ways: Leia used all her energy to reach Kylo across the galaxy. That effort killed her in the same way that Luke Force projecting across the galaxy killed him in The Last Jedi. I like that interpretation.

Here are some others: Some people think that Leia used the Force to forcibly push all of the dark side out of Kylo, and the effort of doing that is what killed her. That left only the light side in him and allowed him to return to being Ben Solo. I don’t like this interpretation at all, mostly because it takes autonomy away from Kylo. Sheraz Farooqi writes that since Leia had visions of her son eventually dying—which is why she gave up her Jedi training post-Return of the Jedi—Leia did not disappear into the Force until she could guide Kylo/Ben into doing it, too (Farooqi, “Why Leia Only Disappeared After Kylo Ren’s Death”). Lastly, my wife, Kinnereth, personally loved that Leia didn’t disappear until her son did because it shows the deep connection that mothers have with their children.

But Force ghost or no, no actual redemptive work was done by either Kylo or Vader. All Vader did was kill the guy who was slightly worse than him. But he didn’t pay for all the death and destruction and oppression done by him for decades. How would one even begin to do that? Kylo at least resurrected Rey. Sacrificing himself is much better than what Vader did, so in that respect I like The Rise of Skywalker more than Return of the Jedi.

Conclusion.

I think it is complete nonsense for people to complain that the Sequel Trilogy was not all planned out beforehand. This is because the hallowed Original Trilogy was not planned out either. When Lucas wrote Star Wars, that was it. (It wasn’t even titled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope yet.) When Obi-Wan tells Luke that a man named Darth Vader killed his father, that was the truth at the time it was written and filmed. How do we know this?

First off, let’s look at Alan Dean Foster’s book Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, originally published in 1978. Splinter was written as the sequel to A New Hope, and it is nothing like The Empire Strikes Back. Splinter was written in such a way that if A New Hope tanked at the box office, Lucas had a story for a sequel that he could film on a low budget. Foster states in an interview,

“The only restriction placed on me was that the follow-up novel had to be filmable on a low budget. That’s why I set it on a fog-shrouded planet. A lot of the action takes place in the fog or underground, which facilitates shooting with cheap backgrounds.” (qtd. in Brian Cronin, “Movie Legends Revealed: Was ‘Splinter of the Mind’s Eye’ Nearly a ‘Star Wars’ Movie Sequel?”)

Cronin notes that Splinter of the Mind’s Eye is “pretty explicit” in its portrayal of Luke and Leia being romantically interested in each other (Cronin, “Movie Legends Revealed”). This is because they were not yet brother and sister in the story.

Lucas originally had different plans for Darth Vader, too. Originally, Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker were two different characters. Luke was even trained by Anakin’s Force ghost while on the “Bog World” in The Empire Strikes Back while Darth Vader was running around elsewhere in the galaxy (Thomas Bacon, “Darth Vader’s Original Backstory (Before He Was Retconned To Be Luke’s Father)”). Furthermore, Bacon notes that,

This is confirmed by Leigh Brackett’s first draft of the script for The Empire Strikes Back, which was drawn up from Lucas' copious notes and doesn't contain any hint of the famous "I am your father" reveal. There are a number of key differences between this draft and the final theatrical cut, suggesting Lucas hadn't cemented his plans as much as he likes to claim. Han isn't captured, Luke doesn't lose a hand, Luke does have a twin sister (but it might not be Leia), and Luke actually gets to meet his father. On Dagobah - which Brackett referred to as Bog World - Luke is mentored by both the spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Force-Ghost of his father. (Thomas Bacon, “Darth Vader’s Original Backstory (Before He Was Retconned To Be Luke’s Father)”)

After Brackett passed away, Lucas wrote a second draft for The Empire Strikes Back, which is where Vader being Luke’s father first appeared, “according to the annotated screenplay” (Bacon, “Darth Vader’s Original Backstory”). So no one has any right to complain about a sensed hodgepodge story writing of the Sequel Trilogy because the Original Trilogy was written on the fly, too, by the same writer: Lucas.

            That being said, I think it is highly doubtful that Palpatine was supposed to return originally. I think that they did it because Rian Johnson killed off Snoke in The Last Jedi and Abrams thought that he still needed a “big bad” in the film. But why not simply use Kylo as the big bad? He was already the main villain in The Force Awakens, Abrams own film. And he turned out to be the main villain in The Last Jedi, too. Not only in terms of screen time, but by the fact that he killed Snoke. Johnosn did that so that Kylo would now be the main villain. He explains this in the The Last Jedi DVD audio commentary (01:56:00 – 01:56:17). And I think it is a fine idea. I mean, why not simply have Kylo as the main villain? I suppose some portion of the fandom didn’t think that Kylo was a legitimate villain. In the The Force Awakens Behind the Scenes documentary, Abrams himself states that the title of the film not only meant the awakening of the light side of the Force in Rey, but also the awakening of the dark side in Kylo (Secrets of The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey 01:02:30-01:02:40). But then Abrams does a weak 180-degree turn in The Rise of Skywalker and has Kylo give up all that he has done and worked towards in the span of about a two-minute scene with the memory of Han Solo (who forgives his son for patricide?)? Why did Abrams do that?

WORKS CITED

Abrams, J.J., director. Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. Lucasfilm Ltd.,

2015.

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi

I wrote this review in Jan-Feb 2020, and it is intended as part of a book on the mythology of the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy. As such, there are references to different chapters. To dispell confusion, you’ll have to wait until I publish that book soon to read the other chapters.

Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi

Score: A+

The following review for The Last Jedi was originally written as a series of texts conversations between me and a few friends from December 2019 to January 2020. Thus, I had lived with The Last Jedi for a few years. I loved it initially and after thinking about it for a few years I really became able to explain why. Also, this review was written after I had seen The Rise of Skywalker.

I was very impressed with The Last Jedi. I consider it to be second only the Original Trilogy’s The Empire Strikes Back. I think that The Last Jedi was very bold, creative, and original. It was more dark and somber than The Force Awakens was, as it should be, being the second act in the trilogy. It’s only fitting because The Empire Strikes Back is a more somber film than A New Hope. (Attack of the Clones is also a more somber film than The Phantom Menace, but then the third act of the Prequel Trilogy gets even more dark and somber.)

I appreciated how Luke in The Last Jedi continued to follow the Return phase of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, as I explained in Chapter 3.

A lot has been written already about The Last Jedi’s self-conscious myth-making, especially the myth-making that Luke himself performs in the story. Recall from Chapter 1 that the word “myth” comes from the Greek mythos, which is “a recurrent narrative theme or plot point” (Oxford English Dictionary). Myths are the stories that we tell ourselves, be it a personal narrative of our own lives or the narrative of our culture; “narrative patterns that give significance to our existence” (May, The Cry for Myth 15). At the beginning of The Last Jedi, Luke pokes and prods at the fact that he has become a legend to the galaxy. Yet no one knows of his failure involving Ben Solo and his Jedi temple years before the Sequel Trilogy begins. And yet, Luke plays into his own legend/myth by taking on the First Order alone on the planet Crait. No one knew that he was a Force projection from across the galaxy. After this action and Luke’s death, we are shown a group of children reenacting the scene with handmade toys. This inspires a young boy—deemed “Broom Boy” because he picks up a broom using the Force—to gaze up at the stars and dream big dreams. It’s a wonderful, self-referential scene that ends the film.

I liked all of the references and allusions to film history in The Last Jedi. I appreciated the multiple versions/memories of Luke attacking Kylo. It was an obvious homage to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950). It is fun to note that Rashomon is a Jidai Geki film (“period dramas”), where the term “Jedi” comes from (IMDB, “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope Trivia.”). Director Rian Johnson explicitly states that Rashomon was the inspiration for these scenes in The Last Jedi audio commentary (Johnson, The Last Jedi DVD audio commentary 01:01:53-01:02:06). Johnson states that the opening space battle was inspired by the 1949 film Twelve O’Clock High (Johnson, 00:08:48-00:09:00). There is also a tracking shot in the Canto Bight casino scene. Johnson states that this was taken from the 1927 film Wings (Johnson, 00:54:44 -00:56:00). And when Finn rises up on a gantry to hit Captain Phasma in the head, Johnson states that was inspired by the 1989 film Back to the Future Part II (Johnson, 01:54:00-01:54:16). Writing for Slate, Sam Adams and Forrest Wickman also go over some other film references, from Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, Kurosawa’s Kagemusha and Ran, Hardware Wars, The Young Ones, and to many motifs employed by legendary director Steven Spielberg (Adams and Wickman, “A Guide to The Last Jedi’s References to Other (Non-Star Wars) Movies”). Even Rose’s Resistance insignia ring—which has the Original Trilogy-era Rebel insignia—is a reference to Casablanca         (Adams and Wickman).

The design of The Last Jedi is really amazing. The end battle on the planet Crait, with the white salt flats “cut” into by the Resistance speeders is one of the best visuals in film that I have ever seen. It was great to think about the planet Crait as being cut or marred by the battle of the measly humans. It makes me think of how we constantly destroy our own planet with war. This was apparently inspired by Kurosawa’s Ran, “where color-coded armies slam into each other like rivers of paint” (Adams and Wickman).

I really liked the inclusion of Rey and Kylo’s Force connection. In the The Last Jedi DVD audio commentary, Johnson talks about simply using the grammar of film—Rey looks to the left of the screen, Kylo looks to screen right—to cut back-and-forth between the two (Johnson, The Last Jedi 00:45:51-00:46:00). And even though they are a galaxy apart, it reads like they are speaking to one another in the same room. Great stuff.

The Last Jedi is also very well-written. And I’m not just talking about the dialogue, which I think is good, too. The Last Jedi has great writing in terms of its plot and the characters’ conflicts and change, as laid out by YouTuber Just Write (real name Sage Hyden) in his video “The Last Jedi and the 7 Basic Questions of Narrative Drama.” The seven questions come from the Birth.Movies.Death. author Film Crit Hulk in a post titled “Smash: The Importance Of Dramatizing Character.” The seven questions are 1) What does this character want? 2) What does this character need? 3) How do those wants and needs conflict with each other within the character? 4) How do they conflict with the outside world? 5) How do they conflict with other characters? 6) How does the character change thought those conflicts and how does the resolution affect them? 7) What impact does that change have on everyone else? (Film Crit Hulk, “Smash: The Importance Of Dramatizing Character”).

Just Write goes over how these narrative questions affect The Last Jedi’s three main characters Rey, Finn, and Poe. As one example, Just Write explains: Rey wants external validation, but what she needs is emotional independence. Her internal conflict is “Who to join?” and the conflict with the world is with the First Order. The conflict with other characters is between Luke and Kylo. The change is that Rey becomes a Jedi. The impact is that she saves the Resistance (“The Last Jedi and the 7 Basic Questions of Narrative Drama”).

In another video, titled “Why We Can’t Agree About The Last Jedi (Or Art In General),” Just Write explains the cinematic language that makes Luke’s death scene in The Last Jedi so poetic. In terms of the camera shots, director Johnson deliberately plays off of and reverses Luke’s introduction in A New Hope with his death in The Last Jedi. Luke looks from left-to-right at a sunset in A New Hope. This looking from left-to-right in cinematic language evokes looking into the future. In The Last Jedi, Luke looks from right-to-left at a sunrise as he dies, almost as if he is looking back at the past, back at himself in A New Hope (“Why We Can’t Agree About The Last Jedi (Or Art In General)”).

Rey’s parentage, or lack thereof.

I loved, loved, loved that Rey was not descended from a famous lineage. In my The Force Awakens review above you can see that I hoped that the story went this way. I loved Rey not having a famous lineage because it is what I would have done had I been the scriptwriter. I loved it because Rey does not have to be related to anyone famous to be an engaging character who has strength all her own. She didn’t have to be related to anyone famous to stand up and be a hero. (Of course, Rey’s parentage/lineage was later unfortunately and haphazardly retconned by The Rise of Skywalker.)

A certain subset of fandom wanted a famous lineage for Rey and were angry that The Last Jedi didn’t give her one. But to be angry about this completely disregards what creator George Lucas set up in the Prequel Trilogy: that no Jedi had a famous lineage, nor a lineage at all. The Jedi in the Prequel Trilogy were supposed to be celibate. How then could any of them have a lineage? Every Jedi in the Prequel Trilogy, even Yoda, were the Broom Boy from The Last Jedi. Jedi lineages began with the Skywalkers. I have a sneaking suspicion that the celibacy rule of the Prequel Trilogy Jedi was in effect because the Jedi feared super-powerful Jedi lineages. How could super-powerful Jedi be controlled by the Council? They probably couldn’t be.

Some fans complain about Rian Johnson’s “democratizing of the Force.” I don’t like this because the term itself is a misnomer. Johnson did not invent it. George Lucas did in the Prequel Trilogy. Johnson didn’t change any notion of the Force to where suddenly anyone in the galaxy—I’m looking at you, Broom Boy—can use the Force after hearing the story of Luke’s bravery against the First Order. Anyone anywhere could already use the Force… if they were “Force sensitive” enough, or had enough midi-chlorians in their blood, as the Prequel Trilogy unnecessarily explained. The Broom Boy was simply Force sensitive. In the Original Trilogy, the Force was strong with the Skywalker family. Yes. But in the Prequel Trilogy, Lucas made the Jedi all celibate monks (which of course makes perfect sense to avoid attachments because the Jedi are all Buddhist monks.) So until the Skywalker family, there were no Jedi lineages. Every single one of the (supposed) 10,000 Jedi in the Prequel Trilogy were Force sensitive people born to parents who were not Force sensitive. And they did not pass on their Force abilities genetically because, again, they were supposed to be celibate. Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi simply reiterated what Lucas had set up in the Prequel Trilogy.

Some may feel that what Johnson did in The Last Jedi doesn’t fit with the so-called “Skywalker Saga.” They might say that having a whole saga about one family and then tacking on an unrelated protagonist in the third trilogy would be disjointed. (And yet, that’s what was going to happen in Colin Trevorrow’s Episode IX script. More on that in my The Rise of Skywalker review below.) However, I say that the Sequel Trilogy already had someone in it from the Skywalker family: Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. (Has anyone ever noticed how the names Kylo Ren and Ben Solo are almost an inversion of each other?) Rey could have, and should have, remained “no one” and simply been the new hero who either brought the villainous Skywalker (Kylo) to redemption or brought him down permanently. Rey could have then still chosen the surname Skywalker and had her own Jedi lineage. I think that could have been interesting. Rey did not have to be related to anyone famous to be an engaging character. Luke Skywalker was “no one” until the final moments of The Empire Strikes Back, almost two whole films into the Original Trilogy.

Force projecting.

I loved the force projection in The Last Jedi because it was an unexpected ability. Really, that’s the reason that I love The Last Jedi so much, because of all the unexpected choices that were made.

Interestingly, Johnson describes how he decided on using this Force ability and it seems to be what Jung described as synchronicity. Synchronicity is “the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear to have a meaningful connection when there is no explicable causal relationship between these events” (APA Dictionary of Psychology 1059). Johnson describes it this way:

I was in the middle of trying to crack this whole thing with Luke and the ending. I hadn’t quite got it yet, but I had this notion of what ended up being the projection thing that he does . . . I was sitting in the lobby at Lucasfilm . . . That book was sitting on the coffee table there in the lobby . . . I turned to it, and it described exactly what you saw. I landed on that and it was like a God ray came down or something. (qtd. in Cinemablend, “The Moment Rian Johnson Decided To Actually Use Force Projection”).

The Last Jedi detractors.

It’s unfortunate that I even feel the need to address those who did not appreciate The Last Jedi. Most critics praised the film highly. Rotten Tomatoes has an average score of 91% (Paul Tassi, “‘Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker’ Is Now The Worst-Reviewed ‘Star Wars’ Movie Ever”), but there was enough of an outcry from a small, but very vocal group of Star Wars “fans” that I will should address the complaints.

I’m still shocked that anyone disliked The Last Jedi. Film critics are very invested in films. They see them all the time. They know when they see something fresh and interesting. And film critics almost unanimously rate The Last Jedi as the second best of the Sequel Trilogy; 91% to The Force Awakens’ 93% (Paul Tassi, “‘Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker’ Is Now The Worst-Reviewed ‘Star Wars’ Movie Ever”), although I personally rate The Last Jedi higher than The Force Awakens. To me, The Last Jedi is so obviously not only the best of the Sequel Trilogy, but the best SW film since The Empire Strikes Back. Great writing (with interesting bold choices that subvert SW tropes, making it interesting, not boring/predictable like The Rise of Skywalker), good acting, incredible art design (the end battle of Crait is amazing), lots of references to films from film history (from Rashomon to Wings).

Some fans didn’t like that Luke refused to ride to the galaxy’s rescue. This plays into America’s myth of the loan cowboy, which comes from the Western myth of the redeemer, as explained in Chapter 5. To me, just because The Last Jedi does not follow this American myth does not mean that it is bad. I see it as refreshing in this aspect. Kofi Outlaw notes that, “Luke simply playing out the Yoda-esque role of the Sequel Trilogy is a weird thing to get upset about - let alone crucify Rian Johnson for” (“How The Rise of Skywalker Validates Luke’s Story in The Last Jedi”).

Some fans complained that new Force abilities were shown in The Last Jedi. For the life of me, I cannot understand why this would be a problem. New Force abilities are shown in almost every new Star Wars film that is released. In 2019, no less than four new Force abilities were displayed in The Rise of Skywalker—Force healing, Force draining, Force teleporting, and essence transfer is alluded to—yet fewer people took issue with those new powers than Luke’s Force projection in The Last Jedi. On January 19, 2018, director Rian Johnson responded to The Last Jedi detractors in a series of tweets in which he showed where he got this idea (Amino, “Rian Johnson Tweets His Source For Force Projection”). In the series of tweets—now deleted by the time I write this in January 2020—Johnson shows his bookshelf with a book from 2010 called The Jedi Path. He turns the pages to the “Advanced Force Techniques” section and comes to the entry titled “Doppelganger,” which states,

Doppelganger, or Similfuturus, permits a Jedi to create a short-lived duplicate of himself or herself or an external object that is visually indistinguishable from the real item. Those who have perfected this ability can create phantoms of any person of their choosing or trick and enemy into seeing more objects, such as droids, than are actually present. (Delia Greve, The Jedi Path 132)

This ability of Luke’s also displayed even earlier in the Dark Empire comic series from the early 1990’s. See Chapter 9 for more on this.

Some fans hated the Rose Tico character and the actress Kelly Marie Tran was harassed on social media to the point where she deleted her accounts (Tom Philip, “Kelly Marie Tran Deleted Her Social Media After Being Harassed by Star Wars Fans”). I will never understand the racist and sexist “fan” backlash against the Rose. Kelly Marie Tran is a perfectly good actress and Rose is a funny and knowledgeable character. A worthy addition to the cast. She’s like the Lando of the Sequel Trilogy. Also, aren’t nerdy white men stereotyped as being attracted to Asian women? I’ve always thought that was the case. Then why the backlash over Rose from that subset of fandom? I will never understand it.

Some complain about the “car chase in space.” They either don’t like the tracking through hyperspace or they complain about the use of “space fuel.” Tracking a ship through hyperspace as new technology is a perfectly fine choice. Needing enough fuel to outrun an opponent in space (which has no friction, so once you get going you continue at that speed forever)? Yes, that was an odd plot choice by Johnson. But odd does not equal bad. (Having Luke and Leia revealed to be twin siblings in Return of the Jedi after they had kissed twice in the previous film is also an odd choice. Not a bad one, just really odd.) As for space fuel: it is not talked about in the Original Trilogy, but the X- and Y-wings are refueled before the end battle on A New Hope, as they are in Rogue One (2016). Getting space fuel for the Rebellion is also a plot in a few episodes of the Star Wars: Rebels TV series. Lastly, obtaining a hyperspace fuel called coaxium was a major plot element of Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018). So The Last Jedi didn’t make it up at all.

Some like The Last Jedi, but still point out the Canto Bight sequence as pointless. All right. But I would ask those fans if the Bespin plotline in The Empire Strikes Back is pointless. Of course it is not. Yet all of the characters fail in the Bespin plotline, too, just as they do in the Canto Bight sequence. The Empire Strikes Back and The Last Jedi are all about failure as a linchpin for growth. Yoda explicitly states it in The Last Jedi. How can people love The Empire Strikes Back for it, but hate The Last Jedi for the same thing?

Subverting expectations and tropes.

Some may say that they don’t like The Last Jedi because Johnson subverted Star Wars tropes just for the sake of subverting them. But that wasn’t what Johnson was doing. The purpose of The Last Jedi’s subversion of tropes was so that new Star Wars stories could (finally) be told.

I’m surprised that many “fans” cannot see the subversion of Star Wars tropes that Johnson did as a good thing. Star Wars needed a bit of shaking up of expectations. (This was later proven true in 2019 when The Rise of Skywalker came out to low critical ratings.) I think that people who dislike The Last Jedi must just want the same story regurgitated back to them over-and-over again. And yet they are probably the very same people who complained that The Force Awakens was too similar to A New Hope. Just like the people who complained that Prometheus was too dissimilar to an Alien film, yet complained that Alien: Covenant was too much of a retread. When did surprises in storytelling and subverting expectations become a bad thing? Star Wars fans are too mired in hero-worship. That’s their complex. And the only way to healthily deal with a complex is to confront it.

Filmmaker and YouTuber Robert Meyer Burnett explained foreshadowing versus telegraphing in film. He says that, “The best storytelling is all about foreshadowing and not telegraphing, because if you’re telegraphing then the audience is ahead of you” (Burnett, “PT. 1: A Look At The Star Wars Episode IX: Duel Of The Fates Screenplay – Robservations S2 #317”). Furthermore, he states that storytellers/screenwriters should want the audience to be with them, not ahead of them. This is because a “deft storyteller” will “zig” when the audience will have expected them to “zag,” “And then they’re caught off guard and that surprises them. And it’s those moments that make stories great” (Burnett, “PT. 1: A Look At The Star Wars Episode IX” 39:43-40:26).

Zigging when the audience expected the story to zag is why The Last Jedi will always be the best of the Sequel Trilogy of films. Johnson played on expectations and subverted them. And while I like the two J.J. Abrams films, he telegraphed the story way too much. Just look at Han Solo’s death scene in The Force Awakens. The audience knew what was going to happen for a long time before it happened; the lead-up to Kylo stabbing Han was almost five minutes long (J.J. Abrams, The Force Awakens 01:45:00-01:49:10). Maybe some audience members didn’t want Han to be killed, but most knew that is was going to happen. And so it did. There was no surprise there. Abrams played into audience expectation, which is another reason The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker feel like in-your-face fan service. Johnson played on and against the expectations of the audience, which is why The Last Jedi feels fresh, creative, and bold. In contrast, The Rise of Skywalker was completely unsurprising. It was as if storytelling boxes were being checked all the way through. It was boring. I liked The Rise of Skywalker more on subsequent viewings—because then I was watching it in the way I watch the Original Trilogy films, already knowing the outcomes—but on the first viewing I was almost bored.

As an example of bad subversion of expectations, one of my friends wondered how I would feel if Palpatine had won the day in The Rise of Skywalker. Once he said that, I thought that would have been a good idea. Evil won once, in the Prequel Trilogy, and it can win again. And that might have been more original because you were expecting Rey and Kylo to defeat the Emperor. However, it would have also been unacceptable to our American sensibilities. European films can get away with dour or sad endings. Not so in American cinema. American audiences demand happy endings. That’s why I think most people don’t like The Godfather Part III. It’s a bleak ending. The godfather dies. Bleak yes, but also natural.

Ex Machina vs. CHAPPiE

Aug 8, 2015

Ex Machina vs. CHAPPiE
Since I recently watched both films and they both deal with Artificial Intelligence, I thought it would be fun to do a this-versus-that movie review! Here we go:
SCORE: A+ vs. B
Ex Machina is about a “female” android. CHAPPiE is about a “male” android.
Ex Machina is a character-driven thriller. It’s thought-provoking, hard sci-fi on the level with ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. CHAPPiE is a straight action flick.
Ex Machina is beautiful, classical music. CHAPPiE is rock-and-roll.
Ex Machina is still shots and ultra-slow zooms down hallways. CHAPPiE is quick pans and shaky-cams and faux-news reels/interviews.
Ex Machina is about a developed AI. Does it love? Does it have real consciousness? Can it lie? Does it want to be free? CHAPPiE is about once an AI first becomes self-aware. How does it learn? Does it have a mother and father figure? How does it feel about its maker? Does it have morals?
Ex Machina is about an android contained by a multi-billionaire entrepreneur. CHAPPiE is about an android living with gangsters in a defunct factory.
Ex Machina reminded me of watching Data from ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’. CHAPPiE reminded me of the ‘Short Circuit’ films, but with a lot of F-bombs and guns.
Observation: In CHAPPiE, the robots as a police force echoes ‘Robocop’ in a way. And the Moose robot (Prototype 475A) is of the same ilk as ED-209 from ‘Robocop’.
SPOILERS:
In Ex Machina, the android becomes more human (in appearance). In CHAPPiE, a human becomes an android (by having his consciousness transferred into an android body).
Interestingly, at the end, Ava in Ex Machina has to put on skin to be naked. Then she dons clothes and escapes.
At the end, CHAPPiE has more empathy and emotions than the humans around him who are trying to destroy him. He ends up saving his maker (Dev Patel’s character) by transferring his consciousness into an android body.

Annihilation

Sep 28, 2019

Ooooh! Annihilation is fucking weird and I totally recommend it!

Hellboy (2019)

Sep 28, 2019

I bought/watched the most recent Hellboy movie. While most have panned it, i liked it. It follows one of my fav Hellboy stories, and incorporates some other disparate good ones. It’s flaws are that it’s gratuitously gory. And they say fuck like it’s a comma. It’s unnecessary but I still think it’s fine overall. Don’t get me wrong, tho, the newest Hellboy movie is nowhere near as good as the two del Torro flicks. It’s just not as bad as many have said.
Budget-wise it looks fine. Maybe some of the CGI is poorer, but that could be because they used a different company to do it.
They wanted to push a hard R-rating for some reason, which I’m fine with, but they just say fuck all the time. It just sounds dumb/lowbrow, not cool and edgy, as the filmmakers might have thought.
Also, they do some strange gore for no real reason either. Case in point: only a holy man can say the words to open a certain box. When the priest refuses, the monster rips the whole bottom of his face off, eats it, and then speaks in the priest’s voice. Um... ok. Weird.
Personally, I think that the worst offense is having rock music drive the fight scenes. I just completely hate that. I’m a traditionalist in terms of movie scores. I don’t like rock music in movies, like in 300 or whatever. It just seems out of place or like the creators are trying too hard to make it “cool”. They could have had singers over the fight scenes, like in LOTR when they have an all-male choir sing chants during the Bridge of Kazed-Dum scene (where Gandalf dies). It’s badass. Or also when the Ringwraiths attack Bree at night.

A Hologram for the King

Aug 26, 2017

My wife and I watched a lovely little movie tonight that I had never heard of: 'A Hologram for the King. we really enjoyed it. Score: A-

Deadpool

June 25, 2016

SCORE: A
This review is very late and will not be as long as it should be, seeing as I've been a fan of the Deadpool character since about 1990, when he showed up in X-Force #2 (yes, his first appearance was in New Mutants. Thanks. But I first saw him in X-Force back when it was good).
I saw this film back in March.
It is a wonderfully dark comedy, much as the Deadpool comics became while they were written by Joe Kelly back in the early 2000s. I thought that everything about it was done well... except for the pathos of Wade Wilson himself and his girlfriend Vanessa.
With all the humor made in this film about death and destruction (and films like this, such as Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill), it's hard to feel much pathos for Wade when he gets cancer and things start falling apart for him.

TMNT: Out of the Shadows

June 25, 2016

SCORE: B-
This 6th TMNT film (or 7th if you count the made-for-TV movie "Turtles Forever", which I do) is doing better with critics than the 2014 flick. However, I felt while watching it that the 2014 film was better. Sure, the 2014 film had a few bits of dialogue that made me cringe ("Well drain every ounce of his blood, even if it kills him!"), but I thought that the story was better and more poingnant than this sequel. The 2014 film was all about family. This one was about stopping an alien invasion. Both are cool, but one is more serious. Although I find that most people don't like a serious TMNT film. And whereas the 1990 and 2014 films were based more on the 1984 comic series (read: more serious), this 2016 sequel is based exclusively on the 1987 cartoon series, with all its zany characters and plot that doesn't make too much sense. I guess it seemed like the story was too big for it's britches, as they say.
Yes, they FINALLY brought Bebop and Rocksteady to the big screen. And they were done very well, I thought. I especially liked Bepob's portrayal. Rocksteady had a brogue accent when he's human (they say Finnish in the film?), but not when he is mutated, for some strange reason.
I LOVED what they did with the Technodrome! What a great set piece, seeing cubic bits of it fly into place as the Turtles fought Krang. And yet Krang's voice sounded so stupid, like the pufferfish character in Finding Nemo.
Stephen Amell did a good job as Casey Jones. My favorite Casey is still Elias Koteas, though. I liked seeing Casey as an NYPD cop.
Having Tyler Perry as Dr. Stockman? Meh. His inclusion wasn't great, akin to Woopie Goldberg showing up in the 2014 film. Whatever.

Finding Dory

June 25, 2016

SCORE: A+
Another Pixar winner. Some people say it's better than the original Finding Nemo. I'd say that it's just as good. They're both great.
SPOILERS:
I thought it was really great that by the end of the film, Dory learns that "family" entails more than just her mother and father. "Family" also includes her friends, like Marlin and Nemo, as well as many of her friends from the Marine Life Institute.
On the downside: I didn't really hear any identifiable theme song of the film. I'm sure that there must have been one, but it didn't stand out at all to me like the themes from Finding Nemo did.

Cinderella

July 7, 2015

Cinderella
SCORE: C+/B-.
A decent adaptation albeit wholly unnecessary for Disney because their 1950s feature is much much better.
Helena Bonham Carter is horrible as the Fairy godmother. She is one of those actors who only ever plays themselves (like Jack Nicholson and David Schwimmer). She completely takes you out of the movie. Terrible choice by the filmmakers.
It was interesting to see the prince's castle as a 17th chateau (I assumed that they would have filmed Cinderella's Castle at Disney World).
btw, I was surprised to see so many Game of Thrones actors in this movie.

Tomorrowland

July 7, 2015

Tomorrowland
SCORE: B-
This is a pretty good film. I liked George Clooney and Britt Robertson. Raffey Cassidy as Athena was an amazingly great child actor. On the other hand, Thomas Robinson as a young George Clooney did about as good a job as Jake Lloyd in SW:TPM.
The set up in the movie takes FOREVER, about an hour (and the opening bickering between Clooney and Cassidy is very annoying) and the climax/resolution is not that fantastic a payoff for all that we had to sit through to get there.
NOTES
-It's weird to see a movie about
Tomorrowland (which at Disneyland was all about a utopian future) and then see it portrayed on film as a dystopia. What gives?
-The final shot of the movie is beautiful, but makes you feel like there's a whole other movie that the filmmakers are not allowing you to see.

American Sniper

July 7, 2015

American sniper
SCORE: A+
I thought this movie would be all jingoistic/rah-rah/go America/war is awesome! (I mean, so many pro-military people liked it.)
But it's not.
Instead of glorifying the military and war and death it shows the ramifications of all of these and they're very negative.
The acting is great all around. I didn't even recognize Sienna Miller.
The movie ends a little too abruptly for my taste but that's life (the ending really happened as abruptly).

Terminator: Genisys

July 7, 2015

Terminator Genisys
SCORE: B+
I really liked this movie (having had no interest at all in seeing it while I heard it was in production).
I think they did a really good job of furthering the series and getting away from the trope of "we have to save Sarah/John Connor!"
Some people have said the actor who plays Kyle Reese does not act well but I disagree. I think he acted fine. And his relationship with Emelia Clarke/Sarah Connor was fine as well. Arnold was funny without being too corny. I personally liked him best in T3.
It's interesting to watch the Terminator series as technology progresses. In Terminator and T2, Skynet was a machine intelligence that took over the world. In T3 and TSalvation, it's the internet/military industrial complex at NORAD. In TGenisys, Skynet is like an app in iCloud (called Genisys) that connects everyone's devices/lives under one umbrella.
I think what was done with John Connor was VERY interesting (sort of echoing what happened to a character in TS) but it'll probably rub a lot of people the wrong way.

Jurassic World

July 7, 2015

Jurassic World
SCORE: B+/A-
Definitely the best Jurassic Park sequel. Some people complain about product placement but that is the whole point. This is a meta-movie. It is all about current consumerism.

The Hobbit 3

Dec 19, 2014

SCORE: A-
I think ol’ PJ finally hit the ground running in this final Hobbit film (kind of like how Lucas FINALLY made a decent Star Wars film again with ROTS).
The acting is great, as always. As is the writing, directing, yada yada yada.
But this time around, the events don’t seem as forced (at least to me).
Basically, the ENTIRE film is one big war (but the title does suggest this). However, PJ did a good job editing the film because you don’t really ever get war-weary (or at least I didn’t).
While I’m on the topic of the title, the film should have been titled more simply, like “The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies”. Instead, they throw in two unnecessary thes to make it “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”, which doesn’t roll off the tongue in the slightest. Whatever.
PRO:
I liked seeing Angmar. It’s too bad that they cannot reference the queen of the vampire bats, Thuringwethil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuringwethil) in these films, because she’s mentioned in “The Silmarillion”, which MGM/Warner Bros. do not own the rights to.
Speaking of which, they also never mention in the film that the Arkenstone is more-than-likely a piece of one of the three Silmarils for the same rights issues. Lame.
This is neither Pro nor Con: All of the kings in this film are total a-holes. Thorin is greedy and turns on his friends. Thranduil is just an asshole to everyone: his son, the chick his son likes, Gandalf, everyone.
I liked seeing Thorin speaking Smaug’s words when he turns super-greedy.
Alfrid (the Lake Town guy in black) continued to be funny in this film. He was probably even funnier than in Hobbit 2.
There are two very good acting scenes: one between Thorin and Bilbo, the other between Thorin and Dwalin.
The White Council vs. the Nazgul was a pretty good sequence. They went with showing the Nasgul as they really looked, but flickering in-and-out of reality. Cool, but an odd choice.
Having Billy Connelly as King Dain riding in on a huge hog was pretty neat (although he looked too CG-ish).
The big goats that Thorin and company ride are really cool. I wish they were in it more.
It’s good to see Galadriel using her powers.
The whole Kili/Tauriel thing seems way less forced this time around and actually ends well (dramatically speaking, not for the characters themselves).
I appreciate when I can see the director having fun, as when a huge Troll is killed and falls back onto a whole troop of Orcs, killing them, too.
I’m glad PJ didn’t inject one last cameo of Gollum into the film.
CON:
Thorin’s fight with Azog was drawn out to almost comical proportions, but was still interesting to watch.
I kept waiting and waiting for Beorn to show up and rip all the Orcs new assholes. And he does make an appearance and it is a cool appearance at that... but he’s not in the film for more than about 30 seconds. What a missed opportunity. For all the beefing up of the Hobbit book that PJ did, he left Beorn out of the major battle? Blarg.
Shai-Hulud (the worms from DUNE) make an appearance for some strange reason. I later read that they are supposedly “were-worms” that are referenced in passing in “The Hobbit” novel. But according to Tolkien Gateway (http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Were-worms), Tolkien meant worm in the Old English sense; wyrm meaning dragon. So a were-worm is supposed to be a human that can turn into a DRAGON. I don’t understand why they went with the current meaning of worm, and not what Tolkien intended. But then again, Smaug is supposed to be the last dragon alive, so it wouldn’t really make sense to have some were-dragons running around. But the original reference to were-worms were an allusion to a creature that was mythical in Middle-Earth. Are you confused yet?
There’s a bit too many mutilated Orcs for my taste. In LOTR the Orcs were scary-looking and sometimes deformed (the Orc leader in ROTK), but in the Hobbit films the majority of the Orcs are mutilated, which is not scary, it’s just gross. The one that was over the top for me was a Troll that Legolas rides briefly. The Troll has had its feet cut off and replaced with stilts, its hand cut off and replaced with wrecking balls, and strangest of all it has no eyes, but chains that hook into its eye sockets. Huh? It reminds me too much of “300”.

Interstellar

Nov 8, 2014

SCORE: A
Pretty interesting film. The kind that when leave the theater you see the world a little differently.
A complete review to come...

Big Hero 6

Nov 8, 2014

SCORE: A

Really fun movie!
I'll write a full review one of these days...

Guardians of the Galaxy

SCORE: A

A sci-fi film with sarcastic humor that I liked? Weird.

Mr. Peabody & Sherman

SCORE: C-

I can't believe this was directed by Rob Minkoff, one of the directors of 'The Lion King' (one of the all-time best animated films based on most ratings and box office).
I did like some of the dialogue, like when Sherman says, "I love you, Mr. Peabody!" to which he replies, "I have a warm regard for you as well, Sherman."
But most of the film is pretty low-level writing. They hit all the high points you'd expect in a time-travel movie: ancient Egypt, the Renaissance, Troy, etc.
And one of the main characters, Penny, is a horrible little girl who bullies Sherman... and within minutes the story has Mr. Peabody and Sherman zipping through time trying to save her.
But she's an awful character! As an audience member, I hated her. Who cares if she's stuck in time? Not the audience.
There's actually a lot of women bullying men in this film, which is pretty strange. Penny bullies Sherman, and the Child Protective Services woman bullies the male principal. Weird.

300: Rise of an Empire

SCORE: B

I think this film is actually much better than it's predecessor. Sure the original 300 film was new and cool, but that's all it was. This film has better acting and a better story.
When the first film came out all the History Channel shows said things like, "While the film focuses on the small battle led by Leonidas, the REAL battle happened at sea, with Themistocles leading the Greek navy." This film is all about that. It rises above being simply cool and is actually good.
There's a line that I couldn't stand, though. Near the beginning, Themistocles is speechifying to his troops to pump them up for the battle. One of his lines is, "Fear is freedom!" to which all the jocks shout "Yeah!" But I think this is a terrible message to be sending out, namely because certain political parties in this country operate under such ideas.