The Blog Awakens

(Warning: There Be Spoilers Ahead. And Possibly Ravenous Piranhas.)

It’s been a year or three since anyone updated this blog, but the re-release of Star Wars: A New Hope in theaters seems like as good a time as any to get back in the game. They even brushed A New Hope up a bit with a new name and new actors, and I daresay the TIE-Fighters look slightly different. (Okay, cheap joke, but what can I say? Left Thumb is off doing Important Medical Things, and he’s the one who brings the funny to this blog. Except the jokes about closed captioning. Those are all mine, baby.)

My style is more “amateur theological sanctimony applied to pop culture,” but I won’t bother you with any of that nonsense here. For one thing, given how late I am getting around to writing anything down, others have already written interesting things about how Kylo Ren is a (distressing) villain for the modern era, how The Force Awakens is a sign of the decline of civilization, etc. For another, The Force Awakens is more of a beginning than a full story, and it is hard to draw too many moral narratives out of it. (Similarly, twas not A New Hope but The Empire Strikes Back that provided the artistic and moral center of the Original Trilogy.)

All that is left, then, are my thoughts on the movie. Normally I wouldn’t assume those were worth writing about, but so many people have asked me, it is easier to write them down once and link people here.

As a subjective matter, my movie-going experience was incredible. When I sat down in the theater, I could not stop smiling. The possibilities were endless. Even though I fully expected the movie to disappoint me, it hadn’t yet, and it was the first truly new Star Wars movie in my lifetime. The prequels were exciting, but they were a story that we (more or less) already knew. Moreover, I knew I would never have this feeling again: the first truly new Star Wars movie I will ever see. Even if Rian Johnson makes Episode VIII into a masterpiece worthy of a Klingon Opera, it will still not be the first. I'll never again have the feeling of watching those beautiful trailers with X-Wings and TIE-Fighters for the first time. So, disappointment or not, the trailers and opening scrawl made everything worth it entirely on their own.

And then something weird happened. The movie was not disappointing me. The opening scrawl was perfect. “Luke Skywalker has vanished.” Bang. The early scenes focused on what Star Wars has always been about: backwoods, middle-of-nowhere, almost forgotten areas of the galaxy. Star Wars isn’t about sprawling metropolises, even though we know that the galaxy has those. It’s a story about heroes from unlikely beginnings and unlikely places, where the rich and powerful never bothered to look.

Tatooine—err, I mean, Jakku—was a perfect nod back to the original movies. Bombed out Star Destroyer hulks and AT-AT carcasses, without explanation or context, gave a sense of the transformation of the original stories into myths for a new generation. Rey’s daily routine grounded us in the notion that her life was real and probably tedious and not conjured up out of thin air to provide the basis for a cool story. Though there were lots of characters to (re)-introduce, each one was given attention and detail, so the passage of time had actual weight to it. Against all odds, J.J. Abrams—he of the endless smash cuts, frenetic pacing, lens flares, and heavy-handed effects—actually had the feel of Star Wars down.

About halfway through the movie, everything was rolling. The old characters’ place in the universe made sense, and Han Solo’s wisecracks never go out of style. It wasn't quite clear where the story was headed, but that was a good thing. Abrams had said something about how he wanted to return the movies to emotional stories about characters, instead of intellectual explanations of massive social forces, like what (mostly) happened in the prequels. He was succeeding. Halfway through, I was starting to believe that I would exit the theater with all my dreams having come true. (And yes, Star Wars is way, way too important to me.)

Then the First Order blew up the “Republic” with a “Starkiller” and the movie was no longer perfect. Abrams’ inability to tell a story with a sense of time crept back in, as a million things happened at once, in numerous different star systems. Plus, the story stopped making any sense: why is there a Republic and a Resistance? Wait, is the Republic gone now? How do you blow up a Republic that stretches across the entire galaxy…? How did the First Order build an entire solar system-destroying weapon without anyone, umm, noticing? And how come the “Resistance” only started thinking about destroying this weapon now? Mightn’t they have tried a few days earlier and stopped the massacre of all those people on all those planets that were apparently important somehow though it is not clear how? Why does the entire military force opposed to the First Order apparently consist of ten X-Wings?

 

One of the great things about the Original Trilogy is that it left a lot of things unexplained, which gave a sense of breadth and depth to the universe. But there is a huge difference between declining to explain certain details and telling a story that is simply nonsensical. In its first half, The Force Awakens did the former, and it was awesome; in the second half, The Force Awakens dove toward the latter, and it was not awesome.  

Abrams’ need to rush everything particularly weakened what should have been the central moment of the movie. The Han death scene, though decent, should have been … better. It should have been less pre-ordained, less obvious, less catwalk-y. And it definitely should have been dwelt upon for longer than it takes to sum up Donald Trump’s policy positions. When the heroes return to Leia after the battle, there should have been at least a ten minute funeral. Instead, Leia kind of shrugs.

This is Han Solo. He has literally saved the galaxy on multiple occasions. His death deserved more.

And finally, the last scene, I just don’t understand. The story was complete. Imperfect and derivative of A New Hope though it was, the story was enjoyable, it was satisfying, and the next movie still had the biggest poker chip to play: the revelation of Luke Skywalker. The Force Awakens should have ended with Rey and Chewbacca going off to hunt for Luke, not find him. Why would you waste that moment?

Of course, it could be that it all works out. If Rian Johnson does turn Episode VIII into a worthy descendant of The Empire Strikes Back, most of the errors in The Force Awakens will be (basically) forgiven. As I’ve written before--and in fact, linked to before, in this very post--it was Empire, not, the original Star Wars, that made Darth Vader into Darth Vader and bestowed on the Original Trilogy every last bit of gravitas that it has. If Empire had stunk, I highly doubt anyone would remember A New Hope as anything more interesting than Jaws or E.T.—a momentary cultural phenomenon, but nothing that a 26-year-old who wasn’t even born at the time of its release would spend thousands of hours obsessing over.

(…way, way too much.)

So here’s to Rian Johnson. He hasn’t made a bad movie yet and he’s made at least one great one. If he parks Episode VIII, I’ll remember Episode VII as an imperfect but engrossing story that started us afresh and gave us another mid-trilogy masterpiece. Otherwise, The Force Awakens was a fleeting but unique moment of anticipation, anxiety, thrills, irrepressible smiling, and not-quite-but-almostism. Either way, I walked into the theater a jittery mess, and walked out a jittery mess, and it was awesome.

~Right Thumb~