Star Wars: The Last Jumble

What do you get with “space bombers” actually dropping bombs on another ship? A terrible premise that falls apart before the movie even really begins. And then a low-speed chase? Anybody with a grain of sense would have just jumped out a few destroyers and then jumped back in just on top of the rebel fleet, knocked out engines or power, and let the rest of the fleet catch up. Rebellion over.

Though I am too “good” hearted to have been happy with that outcome, but really those are just the starting mistake and the rest of movie’s premise really just make it hard to suspend my inner-critic, or my disbelief at the very least; it just becomes hard to enjoy any of the rest of the movie.

I have almost no problem with saving Leia from the vacuum of space, except: Both the rebels and pursuers are burning fuel, and in space that means they are accelerating, meaning that Leia would have to react instantly to draw herself toward the ship, or be left very far behind. And she would have been shredded by debris if she wasn’t vaporized in the explosion, both requiring a presence of mind where she probably wouldn’t have floated out at all. The Expanse does it better.

Speaking of starship bridges, there are so many things wrong. Why is the bridge so close to the surface of the vessel? Does the retro style of Star Wars really explain large indefensible windows? And what is anybody doing on a starship that is so easily perforated without a pressure suit and helmet to hand? I guess it would mess with the flowing gowns the costume department insists on.

I don’t like the sharing visions, it just seems like a poorly conceived or explained way to cheat.

So if you kill a character, how fast do you replace him with another rogue? About half a movie, except this guy hasn’t bought in to the rebels, so maybe that is Episode 9? At least he is more interesting than most of the rest of the characters.

And the final jumble: Force balancing. The overall implication of force balancing makes this a very fraught subject. Does it mean, for instance, that Rey should kill all other “good” force users so that she is more powerful? Don’t train anybody? Maybe they will all end up stunted and she can be the most powerful. It’s almost Sithian.

Does having two equally balanced but supremely powerful force users mean that no others exist? Oh no that womp rat is a light-side force user, but only so far as a womp rat can be, but it means Rey is that much less powerful and unequal to Kylo Ren.

Basically they just introduced a philosophy for the world of Star Wars that is nearly impossible to continue without bending over backwards in order to explain it.

To summarize I give it full marks for getting deeper into a quagmire introduced in the Prequels,  full marks for a shiny but despicable cantina, almost full marks for imaginative action sequences, and far less than stellar marks for a plot line and any adherence to even in-universe physics.

Rogue One Review

Or bravery for consistency and stupidity for inconsistencies. Spoilers…

I am surprised by this movie, but then it makes sense: They didn’t want to break too much continuity in the Star Wars universe by having heroic characters just disappear into an entire galaxy. Oh wait, they could have just faded into another assignment. So it really was a brave decision to kill all the characters that we got attached to.

Of course we had to have the Disney parent complex, even if her father survives through half of the movie. For some reason, maybe unforeseeable complications, many parents in Disney movies are bumped off rather quickly in the movies. Once we see Jyn and her parents in the opening sequence it is only a matter of time before the parents are no longer alive/around. They even go so far as to kill her mentor, Saw.

Enough teasing Disney for now, just some straight criticism. Although an expected Star Wars standard they skipped the crawl, but without any bad consequences. But then they skip around to 4 different planets within the first 5 or 10 minutes. I was fine, but definitely heard complaints about missing what was going on. (The amount of world building is astounding, though somewhat repetitive.)

Finally we get into the meat of the story on Jedha, a convenient desert planet where they want to talk to a defector about Jyn’s dad. Of course complications ensue and they leave just barely avoiding the land tsunami set off by the Death Star… Which is only using one reactor… Which wasn’t supposed to destroy the planet, but… That much rock and stone in the air has to be energetic enough to make the planet inhospitable, essentially destroying it for all intents and purposes. Makes me wonder why they needed to use all the power and create a new asteroid belt with Alderaan.

They get to another planet and see/kill, or might as well have killed Jyn’s father. During this time we learn that the Jedi who isn’t a Jedi and is blind can take down a tie-fighter with a souped up bowcaster, but later can’t take out more than one stormtrooper at a time, very... convenient.

Of course when it is revealed that there could be a weakness we have to have the heroic divestment, or disenfranchisement by the good-guys-in-charge in order to cobble together a ne’er-do-well group of beings (mostly humans with a token alien) that do bad things for the good of the rebellion. And then we are off to see the wizard, or the library.

And then we have an entire planet protected by a shield. What? And the only thing mentioned, or shown in the shots, is the library tower on a bit of built-up reef. They could have done better with an asteroid or some other inconvenient location. I guess they like their comfort, with only vader’s palace being on what we assume is Mustafar, you know, that lava-y one? Sneak in with commandeered ship and pilot, land, grab costumes from inspectors. The usual.

Then it starts falling apart: Stormtroopers guarding the archives are sent to fight, no thoughts about diversions. The original rebel troop numbers seem a bit inflated as they die, and are more so when a small reinforcement ship disgorges its unit. You can kill or disable a stormtrooper with a stick to a helmet that should be built to withstand some reasonable amount of impact (forgot to mention in Jedha). The rebels come up with a deadly ship ramming technique that is never duplicated during battles where the closely formed Star Destroyers would be devastated. As we discover that planets are more numerous in our universe it seems Disney makes up plenty to just be blown to smithereens.

I think though the best/worst part of the movie is when you realize that the initial deaths of characters that you started to like are all leading up to a complete wipe of the cast. Whoa! Talk about a shock. The best thing, despite me being a romantic, is that the final scene wasn’t the culmination of a romance. At most it was two friends holding one another while they were annihilated. But again, on an ocean world I am pretty sure that it would take thousands of years to naturally recover from a “single reactor” blast and maybe decades using the magic tech in that universe.

One final terrible thing that I need to point out as a software guy: The final sequence where the disabled ship crew writes a disk(?) and runs it down the hall. IF THE CORVETTE IS ATTACHED AND YOU HAVE POWER TO WRITE SOMETHING, JUST TRANSMIT IT TO THE WAITING SHIP! None of this dramatic, last-man-standing sequence where Vader had plenty of time to rip it out of someone’s hand/pocket with the FORCE!! Arghhh. And then the final nail in the coffin is that the corvette with Leia in it was in the battle.

Whew, anywho, did you catch the creepy of Tarkin’s and Leia’s faces? Just barely on this side of Uncanny Valley. R.I.P. Carrie Fisher, but I am glad this is a one-off and not a series where they need to do that again so soon. By the way, how are they going to explain that in VIII? Or did they already do all the shots?

Despite my qualms I actually thought it was a stellar movie, much better than VII. By far it was great to go see with my wife, her family, and my friend. All appreciate Star Wars, but also were instrumental in discussing some of the above points.

Star Wars Review

Disclaimer: Reading the following will most certainly SPOIL certain plot elements or SPOIL your excitement to see the movie. SPOILERS ahead.

This movie goes loosely into my category where the Hobbit movies are, however, I was hoping that it might be a bit closer to the extended cannon. So I broke my general rule of lowered expectations for a better movie experience and had the reason why I hav my rule reinforced. I loved it and I hated it. Let's get the love part out of the way because it is much shorter:

Diversity of cast: excellent. Just the ships, the planets, and all but the desert scenes: awesome. Orange Yoda: necessary and pretty interesting, but this starts getting into the negative part of this whole thing. The story telling: if I hadn't seen episodes I and IV I would be enthralled and would have missed many of the weird plot holes and conveniences.

Alright, here we go down the rabbit hole of negativity. If you end up going to the dark side just because you hate me after this, well you might already be there.

First, the plot: Are you kidding me? Same exact story as much of the rest of the franchise, including a desert world, though this time Tatooine has a different name, but it seems to have less important cities, but the same terrain features and much more imperial interest at one point. No explanation why anybody cares so much about Jakku that the old empire ditched star destroyers on the planet surface. To have wreckage on the surface they must have been fighting in decaying orbits or even sub-orbital, but why would they be fighting over Jakku that close in the first place? Maybe they knew that someone would need some major obstacles to scavenge and then fly around. Or maybe ill-maintained ship breaker yards?

Also with all that imperial hardware on the ground maybe our force sensitive Rey may have come across a hidden stash of sith holocrons... Conclusion: imagery great, convenience too great.

Although BB-8 is somehow a cuter version of R2-D2, I have a problem with his physics, but I will leave that at that, though I would be glad to discuss it. Also a paint job that can stand up to a world full of abrasives and abuse by starship would be well worth looking into.

What is with the Orange Yoda? Maz is certainly one of my more favorite characters in the movie, however, she feels like a direct replacement for Yoda, a sort of under-powered orange version. I think a sister duet could have taken the obviousness out of such a direct replacement, but that probably would have taxed the already over taxed CG crew. And if she was my favorite character, what does that say about the rest of the movie?

But here are many major questions. What happened to the Yuzon Vong invasion? What happened to Jaina, Jacen, and Anakin Solo? Ben Skywalker? Basically all the cannon was thrown out. Bring back Chewie, kill Han. What? For as meticulous as Lucas was about cannon it seems that Disney just threw away everything. Ugh.

So as much as it is a fantasy in guise of a sci-fi flick I was hoping for a story fit into the existing universe. A universe, despite its magic, that is large and involved, a universe people have imagined for millions of hours, fitting events, characters, and technology together. A universe that has sabotaged many of my writing attempts because I feel the need to give everything technical specs and fill in back-stories to the point of overkill. I guess what really drew me to it was the amazing collaboration into one universe.

If you noticed I called it a fantasy, it has been called a space opera, and it might have been better as an opera in three acts. But it is a fantasy and I will be reading Star Wars on Trial after this disappointing repeat of a movie. It will hopefully help to lower my expectations and be able to concentrate more on my own universes.

I mostly stayed away from reading fantasy recently on David Brin's suggestion that we really need more forward facing literature. Although it is fun to indulge in well written fantasy it is too often looking back and not forward. But if you know me I do fencing, archery, and longsword, so how can I not be steeped in this stuff?

Well if you saw the scenes that passed for sword fighting in the movie, there are many authors and choreographers who know little to nothing about sword fights. Maybe we can learn from this article by John Clements? Of course the movie had two novices picking up a lightsaber for the first time, but what really disappoints me is that Kylo Ren wasn't any better, probably something to do with being injured? Still I guess they couldn't just kill the main characters in the first installment.

Enough. I will see the next one barring cancellation, however unlikely for either of us, with much lower expectations. Maybe I will write more about this later.