wind and weather part two – see the blazing yule before us

star wars su­per spoil­er dis­cus­sion ahead
con­tin­ued from yesterday

Over­all, I re­al­ly loved the film af­ter I left the the­atre. Then I start­ed think­ing a lot and no­ticed it’s a quite un­bal­anced film. The qual­i­ty dif­fer­ence be­tween the good and bad bits are so great and I am tend­ing more to­wards neg­a­tive. I do praise the cre­ative di­rec­tion of the film, but Force Awak­ens was bet­ter struc­tured and had few­er mis­steps which make the lat­ter tech­ni­cal­ly better.

stuff i have no com­plaint about
•  The main Jedi sto­ry­line. This is per­fect, fresh, and I love it so much.
•  Vi­su­als, both prac­ti­cal and digital.
•  Act­ing (even from the char­ac­ters I didn’t like, which re­sult from the script, not actors).
•  Porgs, which I found not as an­noy­ing as I thought, and used very carefully.

stuff i have is­sues with
•  Mu­sic. Just like in The Force Awak­ens, the sound­track is not as cre­ative or mem­o­rable as be­fore, and I think John Williams lost his edge. You can hate the pre­quels all you want, but at least the sound­track was amaz­ing. In the se­ries of gen­er­a­tional changes both in sto­ry and pro­duc­tion, John Williams is one of the few peo­ple who were oblig­a­tory, and I wish it was done by a younger and more cre­ative composer.
•  The most point­less and an­noy­ing char­ac­ter, which is not Porgs but C‑3PO. He has be­come just a check­box for the se­ries and no longer serves the main plot. He just keeps talk­ing when­ev­er he has a chance and no­body wants to com­mu­ni­cate with him; Leia tells him to shut up, Poe tells him to shut up, and Luke doesn’t even speak to him (ad­mit­ted­ly that wink was fun­ny). I think C‑3PO has be­come the new Jar Jar Binks in this trilogy.
•  The en­tire Fynn’s sub­plot, not just the plan­et casi­no but every­thing that hap­pens around him. The code­break­er is in­con­se­quen­tial (was Del Toro the guy they were look­ing for and he got his badge stolen?), so is the end of the track­ing de­vice (it was nev­er turned off, just de­stroyed with the ship it­self). The Chi­nese me­chan­ic and Del Toro are sub­se­quent­ly un­nec­es­sary. In this plot, Fynn does not ac­com­plish any­thing, nor does he have evo­lu­tion in his char­ac­ter. He just kills his for­mer boss, not by his own abil­i­ty but by sur­prise. This plot also high­lights the shady war mer­chants, but the point could have been made much bet­ter than this. Just re­fer­ring to their ex­is­tence does not make a good scene since it does not af­fect the main plot. Lan­do Cal­riss­ian was a far bet­ter char­ac­ter in this respect.
•  Poe’s sub­plot. I think what they were try­ing to do was the twist on ‘the only guy who knew every­thing and proved every­one wrong.’ His hot-head­ed hero­ism caus­es him to make mis­takes and learn to lis­ten, which is an in­ter­est­ing mes­sage. They also want­ed to push a girls pow­er mo­ment with Lau­ra Dern and Car­rie Fish­er, by let­ting the main guy make a mis­take. Prob­lem is, there was ab­solute­ly no rea­son for the es­cape plan to be se­cret. Lau­ra Dern’s stub­born se­cre­cy cre­at­ed very ar­ti­fi­cial ten­sion and brought the Re­sis­tance army to jeop­ardy for no rea­son. I think the cost of mean­ing­less se­cre­cy is too great for the points of the plot.
•  Fol­low­ing the pre­vi­ous two points, the fact that the film al­ready doesn’t know what to do with the said two main characters.
•  Snoke. On one hand, I am glad that the film killed him off. Star Wars al­ways had two or two goals, which was per­son­al and gen­er­al one, name­ly Vad­er and the Em­per­or. Now that they are just one per­son, which is some­how new in Star Wars, I like that the sto­ry is get­ting more per­son­al. How­ev­er, giv­en the whole his­to­ry of six episodes be­fore him, The film re­al­ly need­ed to ex­plain who Snoke was. In con­trast, the Em­per­or Pal­pa­tine or Simi Skywalker’s cas­es were very dif­fer­ent. We didn’t know any­thing pri­or, and it didn’t mat­ter. You can’t make a mys­tery like this in a sequel.
•  How Maz Kana­ta found Luke’s lightsaber. Just like Snoke, this was an­oth­er ques­tion made force­ful­ly ob­so­lete, and it now seems point­less to re­vis­it in the fu­ture. I re­al­ly hate that the script is con­stant­ly dis­re­gard­ing the ques­tions it doesn’t want to an­swer. The de­tails of the unan­swered ques­tions were ap­par­ent­ly not planned at all when Rian John­son start­ed writ­ing the script and every­thing was open, so you can­not say they were planned to be ter­mi­nat­ed this way from the start. He just de­cid­ed to end the dis­cus­sion with­out payoff.
•  The Jedi’s orig­i­nal text and the tree house. Rey claims to have been there be­fore (which I feel will be ig­nored in the last episode), but it was brought up only in this film and al­ready dis­card­ed. An­oth­er set­up with­out payoff.
•  The First Order’s di­ver­si­ty. They are sup­posed to be bad guys we hate, to­tal­i­tar­i­an white male hu­mans, es­sen­tial­ly Space Nazis. The beau­ty of the Rebels is the unit­ed di­ver­si­ty, and I think they should have kept the con­trast. This is of course not new and ap­plies to The Force Awak­ens too.
•  The skat­ing speed­er. Its red trails are vi­su­al­ly im­pres­sive, but I feel that’s all they want­ed to do. Those speed­ers are easy tar­gets from any threat above, and have no weapon or de­fence. Se­ri­ous­ly, what were they try­ing to do with that thing?

i have an idea about how to fix fynn and poe’s stories
The rea­son why the First Or­der could track the Re­sis­tance fleet is stu­pid. In­tro­duce a dou­ble agent with­in the Re­sis­tance, who is con­stant­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the First Or­der. Make the Re­sis­tance doubt each oth­er this way, es­pe­cial­ly Fynn giv­en his back­ground. Fynn needs to find out the true spy on board while evad­ing the en­tire Re­sis­tance now on the hunt for him; whether Poe helps Fynn or doubts him is op­tion­al. This also gives the rea­son as to why the es­cape plan needs to be secret.

I think the best can­di­date for the spy is Cap­tain Phaz­ma but with­out her ar­mour; you could eas­i­ly es­tab­lish that no­body has seen her true fig­ure and she could eas­i­ly pass by Fynn un­less she speaks, which could be her re­veal. And I think Gwen­do­line Christie de­serves some face time.

Po­ten­tial down side to this is that all the con­flict and fight hap­pen in­side the ship, mak­ing it more Star Trek-ish and the film will lack a mid­dle ac­tion se­quence. The dra­ma and sus­pense needs to be re­al­ly good in or­der to make this work.
 
 

—toshi oma­gari

Flom­mist Toshi Oma­gari fights many things, most re­cent of which is the auto-cor­rec­tion of his ti­tle to florist. Copy­right © 2017 Toshi Omagari.

MOR D’ARTÍCULOS  MOR FLOMM !

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im­pres­sive­ly güd eh screw it, i’ll write one too watched solo star war dis­ney to rian: ‘here’s some mon­ey. go make a star war.’ it’s not a spoil­er to say kylo tit­ties is it? ‘you ru­ined luke skywalker!!’ hail the new – heed­less of the wind and weather