As I mentioned in a status update, I watched the newest Star Wars film for the first time today, and I wanted to discuss a few things in the movies that bothered me in particular. I do want to make a note that I enjoyed the movie much more than I didn't; these are just some of my most prominent takeaways.
For anyone like me who waited until the last possible moment to see the most popular film of all time, I watched via an online streaming site called PubFilm. They've got all kinds of stuff in varying quality, so be mindful of when recent movies like Batman Vs Superman say it's "CAM" quality.
Now that we've all seen it and are up to speed, I'll go with list format.
1) Kylo Ren is terribly written.
I didn't think he was poorly performed so much as it was written anomalously. For someone who idolized the grandfather he never met, he's surprisingly eager to take the helmet off. Especially given his conflict about his parents. The helmet is literally all he has to cling to about his grandfather other than stories (which somehow despite his direct family never seemed to include the fact that Vader, not Luke, killed Palpatine), so why wouldn't his mask become an ingrained part of his identity now?
Since he has the helmet at all instead of a hood, it's obvious that Ren is using it as a connection to Vader. You would think that, as such, he'd be borderline ashamed of showing his actual face in terms of behavior. I'm not saying he should NEVER have taken it off; I'm saying that the moment when his father asks him to should have been a much bigger moment for him with at least some resistance about it. It's a way to show Ren's denial about his true family and to hide from his father, yet he so easily sheds it without a fight.
I will say that at first I liked seeing him literally lash out when things go wrong because it fits with his role on the dark side. However, the scene where two stormtroopers just turn around and walk away ruined the temperament because it portrays these moments as hissy fits rather than the unhinged rampage of a murdering psychopath. Vader choked out henchmen like it was going out of style. Ren's lashing out accomplished much less menacing results: basically forcing his general to visit the Apple store and deal with the geniuses while they replace the consoles Ren destroyed.
2) Rey has too much deus ex machina going on and it undermines certain scenes.
Rey has no training in the Force and no real spark of anything until she touched Luke's lightsaber (which I will point out never affected Luke the way it affected Rey), and the only one who told her anything about it on screen was 1) Han Solo telling her it was real and 2) Han's yellow, non-Jedi friend whose name I forget telling her to close her eyes and take a deep breath. And that advice is enough to turn the table in a 1v1 lightsaber duel with the highly (yet for inexplicable reasons incompletely) trained Kylo Ren?
Anakin, or arguably Luke, was the Jedi's prophetic chosen one, so why does this particular girl have more natural ability then either of them ever did? Why can she go into Kylo Ren's mind on her first try and get to his memories and feelings more easily than he gets into hers (not to mention that she does it while he's doing it to her). It's a terrible imbalance between the two with no real justification for it other than "Rey is just awesome". Luke had to spend three movies earning every minute bit of progress in controlling the Force; it feels much too easy for Rey.
And just one other thing about her, the flimsy paradigm that she's been waiting her ENTIRE LIFE on Jakku waiting for her parents to come back and feels the need to keep waiting for them is absurd. In a crappy place like that where people are quite obviously being abused around her, even Butters Stotch couldn't possibly endure it without beginning to resent the parents for leaving at that point. And the fact that she tells this secret to the droid to connect with it but won't tell anyone else is also a bit weird.
3) The Droids Were Made With Too Much Soylent Green.
Remember how the robots used to be, for lack of a better term, robotic? Luke and company generally treated their droids like people, and granted R2-D2 at least appeared to have quite the opinion on occasion (though that easily could be Luke hamming it up with them in most scenes of the original trilogy), but to my memory most everyone else just treated them like machines. It is entirely too ridiculous to believe that R2 would experience the droid version of depression when Luke disappeared and kept himself in power-save mode all this time. Not to mention BB-8's childlike fearful reactions to just about ANYTHING when mama bear Rey isn't around.
4) Finn's excitement over the thought of putting Phasma in a trash compactor would have been much better if we'd ever gotten to see her treating him like shit in a trash compactor.
We know from a small moment that Finn's job before his only deployment as a Stormtrooper was sanitation and that Phasma was his boss, but we don't see too much of her verbally or physically abusing him and we get no other direct correlation to the trash compactor that makes us even remotely as giddy as Finn was about it. That's the kind of "inside joke" delivery that pays off 1000 times better when the audience is in on it.
5) Snoke.
Not only does Snoke not look at all threatening, mysterious, powerful, or unlaughable, but there's absolutely no way this trio of films ends without revealing him to be the size of a mouse in person. His projection is far too large to be reasonable, so I must assume he's doing that to overcompensate. Vader and Palpatine worked initially because of their mystery. Snoke's only mystery is how he roped anyone into following him.
6) Rey's relationships connect WAY too quickly.
It's not long after this mysterious man shows up on her home planet and makes her a target on the First Order's radar that Rey become so connected to Finn that she can't stand to let him leave even after finding out he's been lying to her the entire time. I gather that she's been alone for so long and desperate for a place to belong, but logically that should make her more wary of Finn rather than more attached. There's an unspoken but implied "love at first sight" thing going on with them, but it's just not developed in any realistic way. Their bond feels like its there simply because they are both good guys and are supposed to work together.
The fact that she never gets any skepticism about Han either after meeting the legend and seeing first hand that he's not quite the hero said legends made him out to be is also weird to me, and the fact that she admits that after such a short time of barely knowing him she sees him as the father she never had is absurd. They literally had one moment to connect on any level and it was minimal at that.
7) The Rey and Kylo Ren we were given make more sense if their allegiances were flipped.
Rey is a loner, abandoned by her parents and naturally talented with the Force. She has a desire to belong, but has managed to take care of herself without fulfilling that need just fine. It would make more sense for her to be attracted to the power and uniformity of the dark side.
Meanwhile, Ren is born into a family with a twisted history and he feels connected to both sides. His presented affliction with feeling the light side and desiring the dark side paint the picture of a metaphorically gothy teenager who is making some mistakes that he'll want to make up for. His story as it was presented makes MUCH more sense as a tale of redemption after temporarily losing himself.
And as a side note: how in the hell does it make sense that Ren could be the leader of the Council Of Ren (implying that there are other siths out there who aren't as skilled as he) and given free reign in the world already if his training is not complete? My memory isn't perfect, but I don't remember any of the enemies in the past two trilogies to have only been partially trained before they go out into the world. The Sith usually are on top of that. It's the Jedi who have had members too green for their own good before. It feels weird to me.
It's still possible that their roles will reverse during the course of Episode 8, and I hope they do. Rey's characterization is just too lazy right now and Ren is right on the line of becoming downright pitiful if something isn't done.
Do you agree with my points, or do you think I'm an idiot for at least one of them? Sound off in the comments and let me know about it.
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Quotes Of The Day
"Just be ready for some different flavors and you should be alright..."
-Chronic_Guardian
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Today In Music (March 31st)
Presence by Led Zeppelin released on March 31st, 1976. Also released on this day:
- Burn Halo by Burn Halo (2009)
