Friday, January 10, 2020

A media post on Star Wars

This is Joseph.

So a few thoughts on the newest Star Wars movie.

Needless to say: SPOILERS ahoy!

One, the movie was beautiful. The special effects were stunning and the visuals were memorable.

Two, are there no proof-readers in Hollywood? Can we not decide what the antagonist's plan is?

But the part that was the most challenging to me as a viewer was that there was simply no continuity with previous plot points in the other movies. Some of this is forgivable, when you decide on an awesome twist it can be okay to have to patch over a rough spot. Think of Obi-Wan's retroactive deception about Darth Vader, once the writer puzzled out the family tree (or the even more awkward Leia is your sister moment).

But Kylo Ren is just confusing. The second movie seems to give him every chance to decide on his allegiance, even insofar as there was much doubt after the first movie. His history of misdeeds is . . . extreme. He was involved in a mass murder terror attack (Starkiller base). He murdered his fellow students at a school because he disliked the teacher (and focused so much on the other children that the teacher survived). He massacred a village in a terror attack. He murdered a family member as a part of a gang initiation. So his final arc is redemption?

It isn't that it couldn't have been plotted well.  It is just that writers seemed to keep changing their minds, and that is only worth it if the overall outcome is exceptional. The movie was fine, but the plot had a lot of obvious holes (why where the ships buried and were the crews on them when they were)?

Finally, it detracts from the previous movies. What is the point of the middle part of the trilogy now? The heroes fail at pretty much everything and not in a way that teaches lessons or because of a character flaw. No, they fail because the Emperor can survive being blown up and the protagonist doesn't sense the deception.

So it was nice to watch and I am glad I saw it. But it will generate a month of people wondering exactly what happened.

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