Friday, January 15, 2016

The Force Awakens

You know the drill. I saw The Force Awakens. Here are the notes.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows - It looks like big, stupid fun so at least it looks better than the last one. Will Arnett is the perfect choice for Vernon.


Civil War: After the trailer, someone actually said the date aloud. That’s a person who wants to see a movie.


Superman versus Batman: After the trailer, a small child said, “I like Superman.” I hope that kid’s not disappointed.


Zootopia: Great trailer.


God of Egypt: This looks so terrible. I like how the ground fire is faster than this guy, but snakes around him instead of burning him alive. This is going to be the biggest piece of steaming pile of CGI set in Egypt since the last steaming pile of CGI set in Egypt.

Waitwaitwait. Since when does The Empire care about Jedi? They’ve always been an evil empire with a side of destroying those who could oppose their power. Force-user ideologies have always been incidental.


I don’t know how one force user could change the--


...is this movie visually flipping me off?


--the galaxy unless they kill other force users with a lot of conventional power, y’know?


A sack of pennies. Wow. This bit is not well written. Rebel fighter/spy better get on a crazy-ass creature to get out of here.


In Louisiana, you can drink in theaters so I could take a sip for EVERY ONE OF THESE LENS FLARES, JJ!


Storm Trooper: *Destroys a small village*
Storm Trooper: *Shoots old man*


Oh my god, there’s still more lens flare.


This Star Destroyer. We need to talk about the Sci-Fi Temporal Texturing Effect, where new version of old things are updated by adding unnecessary texture to the surfaces...Star Trek.


They reveal everyone’s faces like we’re supposed to know them already, which we do, but…

I like the sled Rey has. It’s a nice touch.


If this was Tatooine, it’d be almost as big of a coincidence as BB-8 finding Rey.


Kylo remembers that guy’s number? How long has it been? Is being a force user...does it come with a good memory because that’s nice.


Right. This is Jakku, not Tatooine. They said that in the title crawl, Kris.


Finn to Rey: “I’ve been a protagonist for five minutes and I’d really like to help.”


Ok, but what if BB-8 was Lying Cat?


Is the Falcon, like, gonna be Han’s mid-life crisis? Hot rod.


Mega-Gollum is scary enough. I assume he’s really that big and not a hologram. Pulling for Luke in a mecha for Star Wars VII.


Han: “...it’s all true.” and Harrison Ford’s acting talent grew 3x that day.


I feel like in the OVA, Kylo Ren masturbates over the Vader helmet.


So JJ Abrams will never understand planets then. We can accept that it’s just the way his character is written.


WTF? How did BB-8 get ahead of Rey on Yellow Yoda Planet? Is he a ninja?


“A good question for another time.” Um,that feels a lot like Doctor Who’s “I’ll explain later.”


Oh no! Not the statue that Yellow Yoda made of herself!


WHY IS HAN USING CHEWIE’S WEAPON!? WHY IS NO ONE TAKING ANY STORMTROOPER GUNS!?


Well now that the action has waned a bit I’m thinking about the Darths and Droids where they debate whether or not it’s the same day.


But seriously, is it the same day?


Tumblr told me about the lip bite, but that was really, really homoerotic.


So I can only assume that like angels in the classic American Dad episode, “The Most Adequate Christmas Ever,” BB-8 and R2-D2 get smaller and cuter every time they save a protagonist.

But really, between a smuggler and a princess, Ben Solo was destined to have a pretty bad case of affluenza.


The “this is not technically a Death Star” scene. Drinking game for this movie: Take a drink every time something is explained as totally not the same as something from the original trilogy.


The callbacks to earlier films are fine. We all expected that. But I don’t know if these compliments are supposed to be characters being supportive, older generation approving younger generation, or just self-congratulatory.


Your kid’s wired all backwards Han, don’t--well I guess I didn’t have to worry about his mid-life crisis.


It’s okay everyone. Harrison Ford is in a better place now.


Chewy, I respect that you’re in a bad place right now, but your folks are really close to those explosions.


Finn’s not very good at this, but he held onto that lightsaber better than every Jedi I have ever seen.


This trench run is way too on the nose, folks.


Well, okay. You successfully mixed it up.


Alight Rey, you’ve beat him, now drag the bitch.


No, Rey; literally drag that bitch into a volcanic ravine with the force.


Mega-Gollum: “Time to complete his training.”


Motherfucker, you didn’t want to do that before launching a galactic coup?


No Chewbacca/Leia moment? WTF?!


*Tries to wriggle mouse to see how long is left in the movie.*


STAR. MAPS. DO. NOT. WORK. THAT. WAY!


She sees Luke and he’s been playing Minecraft this whole time. Like, these stairs? Bam! Minecraft.

Can’t wait for the infinitely looped gif of Luke and Rey staring at each other.

3 comments:

SkilTao said...

It's satisfying that Han's career had grown beyond the Falcon. And--granted, I already enjoy things that are constructed out of references to other things--but am I the only one who thinks it's great how extremely telegraphed his last scene was? It fulfills the audience's expectations for Star Wars Story Structure so that they're less prepared for when Chewie dies next movie, or the revelation of Rey's family ties (I'm hoping for reverse clones of Amidala & Anakin).

I really enjoyed that the characters said NOBODY IS EVER COMING BACK TO DESERT PLANET, combined with how the smaller-yet-bigger-than-Death-Star seemed to be blowing up all the Prequel Trilogy worlds.

That star map looked worryingly like it led from Star Wars over to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

VanVelding said...

I was sucked into that movie. I didn't realize Han was going to die until he was on that bridge.

I didn't get the symbolism about the prequel trilogy worlds, but I could see that. I'd be a little disappointed if that's what it was, the prequels were generally bad, but there's a lot of salvageable stuff in there and they are someone's first Star Wars, y'know.

SkilTao said...

I've been informed that those worlds were not, in fact, Coruscant et al but the imagery still tickles me. I do expect things to be salvaged from the prequels, but probably mostly in the way that Tatooine => Jakku, angsty epII Anakin => Kylo Ren, and so on.