Star Wars - Meandering Thoughts

I just finished watching The Force Awakens. I’ve been a Star Wars nerd for almost twenty-two years now, and I was swept away by the hype machine for this move – I won’t pretend it’s perfect, but I thought it was really good. I’d like to meander through my thoughts on this.

Spoilers.

*There was a stealth nerf to lightsabers, and it makes for much better and grittier saber duels. In the old trilogies, a lightsaber cut through people effortlessly: If you got hit by a lightsaber, that hand was coming off, or your chest was getting cut in half. In Ep7, though, it feels closer to actual broadswords wounds. Only two people get one-shotted with lightsabers that I counted, and both were impaled. 

Actual cuts, like what Finn and Kylo Ren suffer, inflict serious burns instead of decapitation. Think about how much dancing and flourishing was done in the prequels, just so they could have saber duels look energetic and tense. Compare that with the Finn-Ren and Rey-Ren duels in Ep7, where the stakes get jacked up by actual wounds.

*Credit where it’s due: The first half of the movie is the best that Star Wars has ever been. It’s different, because it’s not as mythical (Ep4) or trying to be as deep in philosophy (Ep5), but it’s cinematically the best Star Wars. The characters are instantly engaging, their relationships are fun and genuine, the wit is amazing, and the combat direction is brilliant and unexpected. I measure combat by the number of “Oh shit, that’s awesome” moments, like stalling out the Falcon or Rey slamming the door shut on the rathor (sp?). Finn and Poe being absurdly enthusiastic was great show-don’t-tell friendship.

*Let’s talk more about Poe, though. Poe feels like a relic of an earlier draft of the script, maybe one where the old generation stayed in the background. He’s a great character for the first half of the movie (when he’s in it), but after his cavalry charge, he becomes just a perspective character for the starfighter battle. Poe had to carry those battle scenes on his own – his squadron mates felt loose and weightless in their cockpits, no sense of stakes in their acting.

All three of the new generation characters are strongest when joking around with or defending one of the others, and having Poe flying with a bunch of extras after disappearing for so long makes the entire space battle bland. And it’s a shame, because I bought the space battle’s logic and the battle plan. I kept expecting Poe, Rey and Finn to establish the trinity dynamic of Han, Leia and Luke (plus Chewie and R2-D2), but they never did. In part because…

*… in the second half, the older generation becomes the focus. (Well, them plus Kylo Ren.) Until the Falcon reaches Maz’s planet, even when Han plays a role, it’s still Finn and Rey’s movie. After Rey’s vision, though, it becomes firmly Han and Kylo Ren’s movie. And it achieves important things for the future of the franchise, but I wanted the plot to be driven by the new generation.

The Ren half of the equation is good and rewarding, but Han and Leia… I know they’re going to try to save Ren. I know they’re distant but still love each other. That relationship worked in the original trilogy because of snark and sass and unpredictability, and this movie worked mostly off of enthusiasm; the Han/Leia/Ren relationship had neither of those. All of Han and Leia’s decisions and hopes and fears made sense to me, but it was like hearing them talk about it, not during and inside it. Like the grieving process had all already happened, and joined them just for the final step. (Also, Han’s growing role started treating the new generation like kids.) It’s not that it was bad, just plodding and unsurprising.

*Speaking of the Ren half of the equation, I like Kylo Ren as the villain. From the minute he locks the blaster bolt, from the second he steps out of the shuttle, he’s clearly different from Vader. Naturally – you can’t compete with one of the greatest cinematic villains ever. The type of power is important, too: It’s weird and different, powers we haven’t seen before. Force telepathy, full-body locks a la bloodbending? Compare that versus Vader being good at the foundational skills, flying and lightsaber combat, with a little telekinesis for flavor. Ren having exotic and different powers make him fit the prodigy archetype, which works well with him being divided and unsure.

Ren is really the inverse of Anakin from the prequels, I think. Anakin chose to live for multiple purposes, Padme and the Republic/the Jedi, and is divided because of it; Ren is trying to prune all other purposes out of his life, and is divided by the attempt. Also, because Ren doesn’t acknowledge the other purposes, just the division that they cause, he can’t waste screentime whining about how he can’t have everything. He has humility, oddly enough.

Also, I really like how his arc ends in Ep7. Ren’s crisis is his divided nature, but he doesn’t give a name to any of the light side things he wants. As a result, Han can’t appeal to them – he can only support Ren to do the right thing as Ren sees it. Look at all the terminology: If Ren were on the light side but used the exact same words, talking about the dark side seducing him, Han’s appeal would help Ren overcome his inner darkness. Instead, it’s flipped, because Ren has as generic a loyalty to the dark side as most people do to good; that lack of specificity helps him remain believable. If there were a specific reason he fell, the heroes could appeal to that. Instead, they can only say “follow your heart.”

*Star Wars is weird with emotional climactic moments, and Ep7 is no exception. What, exactly, does Rey discover about herself or her cause that lets her overcome Kylo Ren? Nothing. She’s just suddenly willing to connect to the Force, then she goes from there. It’s the exact same as Ep4, where the big turning point is Luke trusting his feelings. At best, it can be read as accepting the mantle of heroic responsibility; for me, it’s unsatisfying because they’d already started the fight, they’d already agreed to take the mantle.

It’s nothing new to Star Wars to skip big emotional turning points, though. What’s the big emotional turning point in Ep6 that makes Luke go to Vader then? What would Yoda have taught Luke in Ep5 that would make him more prepared to face Vader if he’d waited? What’s Anakin’s big emotional decision in Ep2 during the battle? It’s nothing new, it just… it feels unsatisfying whenever I think about it.

*Can we all agree that Ben is Jacen and Rey is Jaina? Please? Seriously, it’s all there, even if Rey ends up being a Skywalker instead of a Solo. And Rey makes for a great Jaina, because even when she has the Force trance moment dueling Ren, she follows it up with a grounded and gritty series of attacks, rather than the elegance of the prequel trilogy or the Zen of Luke in Ep6. She is on the side of good, but she fights to win, she fights like a brawler. The cut and kick combo she lands on Ren especially stands out; she’s much closer to Ep5 Luke than Zen Master Luke from Ep6, much more the Sword of the Jedi. (Also, Rey is clearly the same tech savant that Jaina is.)

… In other news, I want to go see Star Wars again.

(Edit from re-reading this the next day before posting: Yep, still do.)