First Impressions: STAR WARS: The Rise of Skywalker

Have you heard about this Coronavirus thing? The nation is gripped by fear and uncertainty, under a pandemic lockdown and fearing the repercussions of a widespread shut down of non-essential services. We are truly just beginning to understand what this means for us as a society and culture as well as the greatest economic shutdown in history.

But there is still something far more terrifying. That would be third film I saw over Christmas Break and am just now finding the time to ramble about it. The first film being Uncut Gems (2019), and the second being CATS (2019). The third was far, far worse. That of course, was Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.

I put off this post for three months I think because I was afraid of how dedicated I would have to be. My Star Wars posts have been ridiculous in length and I want to get this right, because I loathed this movie in a very specific way. Certainly unintentionally this film became the nexus point for why everything about Disney's takeover of the Star Wars films became a tremendous, mutli-billion dollar misstep.

Now, time for some disclaimers and rational thought with regard to what commercial success means. First of all, success is all relative. TROS is currently the #14 domestic film of all time, one of only fifteen movies to gross over $500 million domestically. It's #32 all-time worldwide, which is still pretty good, but to be quite honest, this isn't enough for Star Wars, particularly the culmination of a new trilogy like this. The standard should be the very top of the heap.

I don't like judging a film on the money it brings in, but here it's inexorably tied to what this movie is all about. It is supposed to be a cultural phenomenon, a pervasive, permeating, ubiquitous experience that brings an entire world culture together. We didn't get that. That was Avengers: Endgame (2019) last year. TROS felt like an afterthought. We spent all our emotional energy on Endgame, and as we'll describe in more detail later, this reflects the actual plot and character energy of the film. Nothing was earned. TROS wasn't the event it wanted to be and never created an urgency to watch and see what happens.

We spend a lot of time here on Norwegian Morning Wood dissecting this concept. I am endlessly curious to figure out what makes films "events" and how they break through the cultural noise to become important pieces of the zeitgeist. Even films with strong financial success don't always make a strong landing. Why did Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) feel less significant than Jurassic World (2015) which in turn felt less significant than Jurassic Park (1993)? I think we're in this great age of chasing yesterday, but it never feels the way we think it should. We crave new stories and innovation. We always have. But there is so much noise that we can't latch on to the new stories, and so we retreat to what is comforting, even though absent of novelty, of true vision, and of creative understanding, those comforting stories come up empty.

I am an unabashed Marvel fan. We spent a lot of time talking about this, but it's true that Avengers: Endgame really isn't even a movie. It's the culmination of many many movies. It's a brand. Having said that, it still hits incredibly sincere emotional beats - to activate them, though, you must be aligned and invested with the brand, not the film. It's a game-changer because it's not a film anymore. It rises above the noise by not only putting in the work of laying out years of planning and character work, but by self-mythologizing that work from a genuine standpoint, or at least a standpoint that appears genuine. The New Star Wars Trilogy stumbled here. It felt like an imitator, not an innovator. Even if Marvel is pulling wool over our eyes and painting by numbers, it is enormously capable of presenting the illusion that it's not, until the lines between genuine earned emotional outcomes and a corporate fabrication become indistinguishable. To some extent that matters less than what the actual reaction is, which to me is still getting choked up at "On your left" which is one of dozen immortal lines we all remember.

How do you achieve that memorable distinction? It's not the writing of the specific line. It's everything else that functions around it. Every other franchise that chases this can't understand. They imitate the look, the surface details, the hype and marketing, but fail to earn the outcomes on screen. The corporate interference becomes apparent and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The irony is that the corporate attempt to fabricate genuine emotional connection instead creates a pale facsimile. Instead of letting art be art, fear drives imitated art, which instead hurts the bottom line. And to be sure, the bottom line according to Norwegian Morning Wood isn't what is earned that weekend, but what happens five, ten, or thirty years down the line.

So, what's the problem? It's mostly simple market saturation. When everything is important, nothing is. The ease and proliferation of special effects have dampened creativity and the need for competent writing, as well as creating a scenario where every movie can be a "big" movie. We used to have a column here, "Road to a Blockbuster" where we would discuss the commercial, critical, and cultural prospects of every big film released every weekend. It was pretty fun. But exhausting. It's just noise after a while. Weekends and months that once seemed to be blockbuster poison are now up for grabs. A tentpole can be released any time with the right momentum.

Now, let's clarify because this is not all a bad thing, but I will admit to some bias. I loved a film like Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) which was assuredly a poor attempt to smash a lot of childhood dreams together in a cacophony of incoherent noise. It was a glib, transparent corporate shared universe cash grab. But I loved it! Why? Why did I love that movie and not TROS? Maybe it was investment in the characters. I'm a lifelong TOHO Kaiju fan and the kind of mayhem they vomited over the screen is akin to what's been in my head for decades. The human characters were shitty, but dude they always are, and the emotional pay-off (to me) has always been the monsters, not the people. The film did that well - Godzilla really had to earn his title as King and Ghidorah is a delicious villain. It builds on an already coherent universe (one might argue the original shared universe with a 50-year history), and never felt like a huge forced leap, more an update of corny rubber costumes. Almost most importantly, though, there was never a moment in that movie where I can go on and on about KotM. Maybe we should talk about Star Wars now. Only 1000 words in...

I have covered my history with Star Wars a lot. It spilled into The Last Jedi review as well. I may be like many people who have had such a close relationship to this fictional corporate property that I have my own vision as to where this should have headed. I like to think that that maybe isn't the case, but I really couldn't help it with this film. It's easy to fill in the small details, like the planets, the jokes, the character interactions, but the big emotional movements seemed far off the mark I thought they would reach. This happens all the time. Usually it's great. Movies are unexpected and that final catharsis is great and fulfilling. So often it's the little things. KotM avoided all scenes which I hated so much it took me out of the movie. TROS only had those scenes.

Let's try to go through this from the beginning, which is immediately terrible. I'm actually glad now I waited a few months for this, because we have a lot more information to go on thanks to the film's novelization. Spoiler here, it doesn't make anything better. So, Emperor Sheev Palpatine has returned for reasons that are never, ever ever fucking explained. This is more and more common with J.J. Abrams' work. With Mission: Impossible III (2006) and Star Trek (2009) this energy felt really fresh and exciting. It felt new, but ultimately it's become emblematic of all the problems with these new re-booted franchises I mentioned earlier. There's no actual substance, so the pace and flash replaces everything else. There is an excuse that we didn't have a lot of information going into the Original Trilogy, but there is a significant difference about not needing a lot of info on someone we don't know much about and needing some catch up on thirty years of missing history. Also, last we saw him he was fucking dead.

Side note here - the Sequel Trilogy seems to bend in the opposite direction of the Prequel Trilogy in many ways. Those films clearly went too far in the other direction, overexplaining everything in many ways that made no sense (We don't complain enough about how Darth Vader built C-3PO. What the fuck is that). The Sequel films seem to think we need no explanation of any kind. And it's not like we're craving poorly place exposition, but rather some clearly thought out, coherent, and transparent motivation. There is an overwhelming assault of lore and it catches because it comes across so jarring it almost feels like a non sequitur to the previous films.

Try to track the conflicting motivations here. We open on Kylo Ren scouring the Galaxy for a Sith Wayfinder in order to track down a mysterious message from the long-dead Emperor Palpatine. Carrying on from TLJ this is immediately interesting because Kylo Ren is the most interesting character in this entire trilogy. He's the Supreme Leader of the First Order, but he's a still a dragon, so it's like the insane young dynamo in charge of this Galactic Superpower. It's exhilarating and dangerous and could be fun. Then it stumbles immediately.

First of all, he's apparently on the planet Mustafar, which should have huge obvious symbolic implications. Isn't it worth us watching him visit Vader's castle? It's the planet where Anakin's final transformation into Darth Vader was complete, isn't that of worth to Kylo, who worships him? But we never even know it's Mustafar. What follows is demonstrative of the single-most pertinent structural issue of this film - everything is far too easy. The film opens presenting a great struggle for Kylo to find the wayfinder. Then he just kind of finds it. It's supposedly a huge dangerous journey to navigate to Exegol. Then he just kind of goes there. This happens again and again. JJ never challenges his characters. He presents quick threats that they defeat immediately. Nothing is ever earned.

So, right from the beginning, if I was writing my own film, I want to see Kylo struggle to balance governing the First Order, see the tension between him and Hux as the former would clearly see Kylo's active dragon role as unbefitting of a Supreme Leader (in both a practical and ideological sense) and to see Kylo in turn struggle with what he wants to do with what he needs to do. This is a common experience for a lot of young people in prominent roles. I'm there right now in my professional career. You see older people fail and you think it's easy to cover those mistakes, but it's not. Look at that, we're relating to a character, whose personality is so outrageous while simultaneously faces no accountability. It's raw and brutal and INTERESTING. While in this position of Supreme Leadership his desire to quash the voice of Palpatine makes a lot of sense. Why not have him tête-à-tête with Rey and continue to develop his ideals as he attempts to track the message down?

Instead he travels immediately to Exegol and meets Palpatine. My own nerdiness took me out of this, too. Why wasn't this Byss? Or Korriban? It seems like in addition to a crippling fear of association with the Prequel Trilogy the Sequels also like to avoid all references to the original Expanded Universe, despite having a wealth of locations and concepts to draw from. Anyway, Palpatine is there for no reason, along with clones of Snoke in big tanks that are I guess his backstory? This doesn't help.

The novelization has revealed that the Palpatine we see in this film is a clone. Okay. This also doesn't help. Why then was Snoke in the position he was? Was he an imperfect Palpatine clone? That's like...what a parody of the Sequels would do. Like, that was literally his function in the story - a shittier version of Palpatine in every meta sense. But Palpatine was a clone who I suppose, couldn't contain the power of Palpatine? Clones are so bad in fiction. It removes all possible tension. Even if we kill him, does that then mean that he could just return again? Did we kill all the clones of Palpatine in the universe?

This undoes a lot of Return of the Jedi (1983) in the worst ways. It cheapens Vader's sacrifice and position as the Chosen One. It lessens the intimate bond forged between Vader and Luke. As we will see later, this also means that Palpatine's goading of Luke to kill him was very genuine so he could transfer his spirit and when Vader's lightsabre interjected in one of the most famous shots in the film, it was actually against Palpatine's wishes. Just, what the fuck. More on that mess as we move to the climax.

As we move on, the same issues continue to mix and feed off each other. Kylo's motivation changes without any conflict or challenging progression. Palpatine tells him to kill Rey and he's cool with it, despite their will-they / won't they love and seems ready to bow to Palpatine despite his own 1) Worship of Darth Vader and 2) position as Supreme Leader. It just doesn't make any fucking logical sense as to where these characters have been, even in the first few minutes of this movie. It's JJ's continual desire to be cool and ingratiate to fans while bankrupt of ideas.

And maybe we can side-step again for a second and talk about how maybe this isn't totally JJ's fault. It is completely astounding to me to slowly realize that Disney had absolutely no plan of any kind when it came to this Trilogy. They threw out what George Lucas came up with. They through out all Extended Universe ideas. They let JJ do whatever he wanted with The Force Awakens (2015) and then Rian Johnson could do anything with TLJ. Bringing in Colin Trevorrow to do whatever he wanted and then trashing that as well. By all accounts they just decided to make this up as they went along, which is baffling considering how well they've handled a steady guiding hand with the Marvel movies.

This isn't entirely a bad thing except that Johnson and Abrams couldn't be more different filmmakers and going back and forth feels like cinematic whiplash. Abrams was all about reconnecting with the Original Trilogy and is generally a filmmaker who attempts to emulate his directing heroes, but is ultimately soulless. Johnson is a director who pushes hard against conventions and doesn't idolize or bow to nostalgia at all. It doesn't gel or flow, and Rise of Skywalker feels like the correction of a course that did not need adjusting (I will forever believe that TLJ was the most brilliant Star Wars film of all time - the epitome of all the noise-breaking we mentioned earlier). The end result is a series that feels rushed, disjointed, and always trying to restart itself.

Anyway, while I clearly dislike Abrams, he got a bum job with this film. After producers were dissatisfied with Trevorrow (some blame the script, I blame The Book of Henry [2017]), Disney through it back in Abrams' court who had two years to write and film one of the most anticipated film conclusions of all time from scratch. The end result is a cobbled together mess of ideas that largely don't work. Some kind of vision, allowed to develop and gestate would have resulted in a better experience - or at least someone who actually has his or her own ideas instead of Abrams, who it seems at a desperate point gave up and went with Palpatine.

This is the core of most of the issue with this movie. It seems like Abrams didn't know what to do with a Star Wars film without a major Sith Lord baddie at the core, and Johnson took care of Snoke. Maybe a little of this has to do with SOLO (2018)'s relative failure, but no one seemed to want to acknowledge how strong of a villain Kylo Ren is. Let's get back to this mess of a movie.

One aspect that has always felt false is how this movie seems to want all its characters to be best friends with the camaraderie of the Original Trilogy but again, it never quite earns that kinship. In his first video essay, Film Crit Hulk describes this in significant detail by way of analyzing A New Hope (1977). Interactions and meetings are organic, need-based, and crystallized through shared experiences triumphing through adversity. This Sequel Trilogy has always rather had its characters split up. Poe Dameron has suffered from this the most. He seems like a cocky Han Solo-type in TFA until he's presumed dead, but then he comes back fucking midway through the movie. He never shares experiences with Finn or Rey. In TLJ  he's stuck on the ship (while the movie brilliantly pins holes in all his Han Solo-esque misguided masculinity. Yeah, TLJ is the only movie to understand what to do with this trope character) while Rey and Finn have adventures with Luke and Rose respectively. No one has a chance to bond.

Thus beginning this film with a "Oh, here we go again!" sense of adventure feels so incredibly hollow. Not only that, but these characters aren't even allowed to grow together on their own adventure. So much is assumed. The characters travel to the Burning Man Planet for bizarre reasons but again always move on without consequence. They are found out by the First Order and then just kind of escape them. Then they get trapped in quicksand! But it's okay, it's just a cave. But then there's a big monster snake! Don't worry, Rey calms it down. But then they're trapped! Just kidding, there's a hole this Sith Assassin never found in years of searching and they escape. There is never a moment of real danger. A little later on I was struck by them charging through a hallway blatantly shooting Stormstroopers and thought back on A New Hope when Han does much of the same thing, only to be totally outmatched and run back the opposite way. The movie has such a desire to just move on and move on that there is no struggle at all.

They are always chasing a MacGuffin. Again to the point of parody. MacGuffins aren't terrible, Marvel gets a lot of flack for them, but there are hundreds of classic movies that feature them and they're a great trope when it forces audiences to focus on how the characters react to this arbitrary item, not the item itself. In TROS, though, it's obnoxious. They literally search for MacGuffins in order to translate MacGuffins that allow them to find other MacGuffins. It's contrived, and again, just far too easy. We don't get to see any character TESTED and we therefore don't get to understand anything about them. It becomes boring, we lose investment, and thus cultural potency.

The movie is also terrified of real consequences to any of its characters, especially its legacy characters. There is a complete fake-out of Chewbacca's death that's bungled so severe I was actually relieved when we find out Chewie is okay, just because it's completely insane to give such a beloved character an accidental off-screen death. We don't even see how it really affects the characters. Again, the audience knows Chewie is alive, which diffuses all tension with the characters. It's angrifying. At one point C-3PO needs his memory wipe so he can speak aloud the Sith language. It's played up as a sincere emotional moment (that makes no sense because he doesn't know any of these people), but then moments later R2-D2 backs up his memory. There is no lasting consequence. This is time to go for broke!

My mind wanders again to Avengers: Endgame, a film with arguably more to lose by retiring a horde of its core characters. It gains respect because of its boldness. TROS is a timid mess. We hardly get a moment to grieve Leia. Of course Carrie Fisher's passing impacted the film and there was little they could do, but she seems like she dies for no reason here. Her passing does have a monumental effect in that it sways Ren back to the light, but the jump of both her death and his turn are again, completely unearned and rushed.

Due to Carrie Fisher's death, Maz Kanata seems to take that role, which gets to a cringey bit of fan service where she gives Chewie his medal right before the final battle. Like... does anyone fucking understand how a story works here? Does anyone understand why it's important to receive a medal AFTER the big action story beats? Like, why it's important that Leia, in a position of both friend and authority, give Han and Luke their medals? Maz is fine, but like, who is this person? What experiences does Chewie have with her? We are again supposed to assume they had some off-screen adventure. It's insane and empty.

There's a lot in the film that continually make no sense. They go to Keri Russell's planet, who has some history with Poe and it's supposed to be a big deal that Poe was a former smuggler. It's just full of interactions that make no sense. Why is this controversial? How did it not come up before? It's layering character attributes quickly over characters who had none. Might this be a good time to talk about Poe and Finn? Sure.

They're so damn gay. And Disney is so completely afraid of how gay they are. There is no other reason for their inexplicable and immediate chemistry, their genuine love for each other, a continual need to impress each other and stay with each other. The movie lovingly tries to give both potential love interests to prove that they aren't gay. Poe gets Keri Russell, who becomes a distracting Abrams cameo more than anything, and Finn gets another black girl, because surely it'd be inappropriate for him to date white Rey. I want to get into both of this. Actually, three things here. There's a lot.

For the hundredth time, I want to acknowledge my anti-Abrams bias, but I was really distracted by the cameos from his friends. Greg Grunberg, Keri Russell, and Dominc Monaghan just don't work here. I don't know why this bothers me. Maybe because they aren't even cameos, they're just kind of there. Directors always have friend cameos. I think of Bruce Campbell showing up in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies or John Ratzenberger in Pixar movies or basically everyone in every Tarantino movie. Why am I so bothered by Abrams stuff?

Maybe it's because Greg Grunberg is the most uninteresting actor of all time. Or that Keri Russell is perfectly capable and should have been either all in or all out, not a random side character. Same with Dominic Monaghan. We again talk about transparency. We all know that every decision here is a corporate one designed to increase our interest in a property designed to make money. Bruce Campbell is a niche weirdo who brings a lot of fun to any movie he's in. I don't think Dominic Monaghan is that level. Maybe I'm a curmudgeon here. Call me out.

Okay, black girl. Her name is Jannah, which I had to look up. She comes in near the end as the leader of a troupe of former Stormtroopers, rides some horses on a Star Destroyer, and helps bring down their communication tower. It's all fun and there's a not-that-subtle nature vs. technology vibe that works fine and aligns with some light side one-with-the-universe themes this universe enjoys. But then it's heavily HEAVILY implied that she's Lando's daughter, and he then also kind of hits on her. What the hell is going on here? Are black people so rare that they must all be related? It just feels so Abrams. Johnson made an entire movie whose cogent them was that everyone has the potential to be special and we make our own destiny. Abrams just lives in a world where every single named main character HAS to be related to someone else. It breaks my brain.

Maybe now is a good time to get into fan service. This film is just full of it. Let's got to Endgame again because that movie is crazy with fan service. Cap and Thor's hammer. There. Why does it work there but not here, though? It's again about earning your service, moderating your service, and focusing it in service to the story. Chewie's medal is thrown in in such a way that it distracts from the story. As does Lando's daughter. Endgame's fan service is either in support of or in addition to, never at the expense at. That's a lot of prepositions, but at its core it's still about story and character.

Finn. Fucking Finn. I can't believe they dropped what he was going to say to Ray. That's not even a Chekov's Gun. That's literally just a dropped plot point. It's unbelievable. On a more racist note it seems like they couldn't admit this black kid was force sensitive, even though it's something I had assumed since the very first scene in The Force Awakens. It's pretty clear by the end of this film that Finn has force powers and it would have been awesome to seem him use them. I always thought this new trilogy was going to be about the both of them, and that never really happened. It's frustrating.

Rose. Hey - Rose! How the hell did she get the Jar Jar Binks treatment. Seriously - it's as if Abrams cowered to a minority group of online male harassers and wrote her out of this movie. It's part of blatant distancing from TLJ that recesses rather than innovates. There are a few more moments of shade, like Luke's ghost catching his own lightsaber instead of chucking it aside. It seems devoid of the heavy symbolism of the progression Johnson imbued in the character for a cheap potshot. This keeps happening throughout the whole film.

So this goes on for a while. Our characters chase MacGuffins and rally the troops and eventually wind up on Exegol in a last-ditch effort to stop the Final Order (the combined forces of the Sith Eternal and The First Order. Yeah, we need some explanation there, too, like who the hell are all these people). There is a little bit of TLJ here in that the universe rallies against the evil of Palpatine, and that's a nice message, but it makes no practical sense.

See, JJ really really doesn't care about logic. Like, how did Lando and Chewie fly the Millennium Falcon across the entire Galaxy to rally everyone against the Sith in like...what, fifteen minutes? This happens a lot. It's readily apparent that he doesn't understand that you can't see planets from space, after both Star Trek and TFA features characters witnessing planets being destroyed despite being across the Galaxy at the time. He likes playing with established universe rules. He messed with beaming all the time in Star Trek (to be fair, that often added to tension and excitement), but he really loves playing with the force. There are a lot of new abilities added here, from life force draining to the Dyad. The Dyad is cool, but also again just makes things so easy, like when Rey is able to give Kylo a lightsaber in his fight against the Knights of Ren. Let's get into those two Force things and how they ruin everything. This is a fun column.

Force Heal isn't without precedent, although it's pretty recent. It popped up in The Clone Wars and The Mandalorian before TROS. It's not even that crazy if it's something long forgotten Rey uncovered in the Ancient Jedi texts Luke gave her. Still, it's set-up and pay-off. Just set the scene up. Show Rey reading, learning, discovering. Instead we just see her doing it to a random sandworm on Burning Man Planet. It comes off like Rey just instinctively knew this stuff that would have been essential to like...every Jedi that ever existed ever. That's the thing about messing with mythos that have, if you want to conservatively begin with The Phantom Menace, has 67 years of canonical history. I know it's all fictional and this is the kind of thing that annoying fanboys bring up, so maybe I'm just adding to that pile, but when you add a cop-out healing technique this late in the game it begs the question why characters couldn't do this earlier. Once again, it's writing that exists without consequences and a Qui-Gon Jinn is still dead.

Knights of Ren. What is the deal with these guys? Again - set-up and pay-off. Show them doing something actually cool! What is the threat here? We are TOLD so much in this movie. It's like Captain Phasma. Who is this person, what is her motivation? I went into this film still believing Phasma would return because we saw no body and of course why would she be gone? We need something more. Again, because RJ killed Phasma, JJ needed the Knights of Ren. They stand around, do nothing, and then Kylo executes them all like punk bitches. They're stormtroopers. They could have been stormtroopers. When your characters are interchangeable there's no reason for them to exist.

Apparently there is a lot more interesting facts to read in supplementary material like the Visual Dictionary, the novelization, and hell, interviews with JJ Abrams. This is all terrible. Movies should exist as a text upon itself without the need for additional context. More and more films are leaning this way, in part because it promotes good synergy, and also because films like this simply move too fast to bother fleshing out context in a coherent way. Or they're too complex for their own good.

My mind again wanders. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) is very much in this vein of revisited properties in a shallow cash-grab, but the result was not only a piece of art, but one that surpassed its original material. It establishes a boffo world quickly but with simple elements that viewers can immediately understand and relate to. Every action sequence raises stakes. Every beat is a set-back or move forward. It's one of the best constructed action films of all time. There isn't a reason why TROS couldn't be this. You don't have to explain everything but also don't have to rely on outside context.

Heading down this path, some of the issue is that there is no leap to be made to get to Fury Road. Not only is every Mad Max film connected only through its protagonist, but it explicitly makes an effort to work on its own merits. There is too great of a jump from the prequels to the OT to the sequels for this to work. I think a lot about the First Order. Their presence or power makes no sense in the world set up from Return of the Jedi. In my own head I liked to believe that they were a cult of Empire-worshiping insane misguided youth, like Neo-Nazis who are trying to emulate the look of the Empire without really understanding the refined class of Tarkin, the restraint of the Emperor, or the calm presence of Vader. That was always an interesting angle to me and sometimes in TFA this is blatant. They don't have a compelling reason to destroy a planet, they just kind of want to. This concept could obviously be developed a little more and it'd be fun to see them a little scrappier instead of inexplicably in possession of the most powerful navy in the Galaxy, but a lot of good ideas are there.

Palpatine's Final Order both feels a lot older, even more inexplicably powerful and resource heavy, and with a much less transparent mission and methodology. What did Palpatine actually want? Seriously. His motivations change every minute in the final moments of the film. He originally wanted Kylo Ren to assassinate Rey because she was a threat. Then he wanted Rey to kill him so that his spirit could take her over (was this always a thing? Wouldn't his spirit have taken over Vader, then? Or Luke when he attempted to kill him?). But then he decided to drain her life force. Again, this all proved to be no consequence. A drained Rey just got up and then killed him. Oh yeah - she did kill him! Why then didn't anything happen?! I felt like my brain was melting. Did it not count because it was his own Force Lightning directed back at him? Why didn't it just roast his face like in Revenge of the Sith (2005) or do nothing like Luke in RotJ? Why didn't he just....stop? Because then Rey would strike him down. THAT'S WHAT HE WANTED. My blood is getting agitated. I don't know what to do with this movie.

I hate getting caught up in these details, but understanding basic character motivations is one of the hardest things to do, and I can't remember a movie this big that fumbled so blatantly and so hard. It's indescribable. What did anyone want in this movie? It's all surface. Who was finding themselves? Where did we end up?

Rey is the main character and I haven't mentioned her at all. That's because the film gives her nothing interesting to do despite thrusting upon her one of the biggest revelations and giving her the biggest temptation. Except...no, she's not tempted at all! It gets back to Abrams' destiny thing. Luke was tempted by the Dark Side because he's impatient and childish and he wanted to save his friends and saw that as an easy means to do so. Anakin was tempted because he's angry and afraid and saw it as an easy way to save his wife, Padme. Rey certainly has an edge here, but where does it come from? Her love of Kylo? Her desire to save him? Her hatred of the First Order? The murder of her parents? No, none of these really holds weight. She sees a vision of herself as a dark side user that falls completely flat. She is most tempted by the Dark Side from the knowledge that she's Palpatine's granddaughter.

And we haven't mentioned it at all at this point, but your first thought at that should be...Palpatine fucks? And sure, he must, right? He's a powerful guy. But no, the novelization even eschewed that, citing that Rey's father was actually another clone of Palpatine. It's an unreal level of fucking up. It's astounding. It's a really weird feeling, actually, craving the maddening campiness of Ian McDiarmid's Prequel performance over his creepzilla take here. It's honestly more compelling! It's scarier when he's just a dude with machinations over the entire Galaxy rather than an all-powerful Sith God. It's so stupid. I'm so upset.

There is one more bit that the novel managed to screw up. For no reason. We weren't asking it to. At the end we finally get a Reylo kiss, which we have been dying for since Johnson dialed up the shirtless sex appeal in TLJ. Star Wars seems terrified of love or sex, though. How is the best love story we've gotten here Anakin and Padme and the sexiest thing they did was Force Slice pears and roll in the hills with shaaks? Is that why nerds like Star Wars so much - they can be fully invested and not worry about uneasy sexy time? So they removed any romance and made it a "kiss of gratitude." What is going on? Why can't we have nice things? Did Abrams understand the underpinning sexual tension in this movie? It just falls apart.

If you made it this far, congratulations. Suffice it to say that I did not care for this movie. It comes down to a core misunderstanding of both where the Star Wars universe has come from and to be honest, basic story structure. There is an obfuscation of character motivation, a petty script that rushes scenes instead of developing ideas, and a devotion to surface level fan service and action ahead of resonant themes or interesting characters. It's a mess on every possible level and although any Star Wars sparks a renewal of the backlog, it will not be fondly remembered years on down the line.

What makes this even more difficult is that this film premiered alongside The Mandalorian which is a show that did everything opposite of TROS and you now what happened? We're still getting Baby Yoda corona memes.

What do you think? Am I too petty and harsh? Let's chat below.

First Impressions: 10 Cloverfield Lane

I'm tempted to name 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) as the first really great movie of 2016 (as much as I loved Deadpool [2016], though!), but this flick has a lot going for it. While it executes a lot of great script conventions really well and it's an enormous well-shot film with compelling actors in a carefully crafted taught story, it does however, borrow heavily from a lot of other films, ironically none of them being Cloverfield (2008). Let's discuss this film at length here with a crazy amount of SPOILERS dropping all over the place:

The only monster here is Fred Flintstone.

First of all, it should really be said that this film doesn't have the slightest bit in any way to do with Cloverfield. It's totally not a sequel. No big white goobers show up to eat plucky camera people. Sure there is some kind of monster attack, but it's not Kaiju. To some extent there are thematic similarities - both involve an intimate look at the people on the ground indirectly affected by an unprecedented attack, although the conceit of Cloverfield's found footage style is traded for a tense bottle story with extremely limited characters and locations. For the record I'm more into 10 Cloverfield Lane's style.

This of course begs the question - why attach the brand recognition at all? After seeing this fantastic trailer once two months ago I was all in, and although the Cloverfield connection intrigued me in a sense of "How will they connect the two?" when it turns out it's not connected at all, that didn't detract from the quality of the film except for the cognitive dissonance created by the separation between content and brand identity discovered after the fact. So, why not let it stand on its own?

Apparently the actors probably feel the same way, actually having no idea that their cool little movie was a Cloverfield tie in until days before the trailer was released. It's clear that this was a cheap way to stretch some life out of Bad Robot's earlier successful movie and capitalize on some kind of familiar name to push this film. I'm simply not sure any of that was necessary considering the strength of that trailer that comes off very unique and interesting on its own before the final Cloverfield tie-in is dropped. Still, it probably helped get some asses in seats (since it's been pretty successful, all things considered), although I'm not sure that inherent cognitive dissonance will help the film in the short term. Considering how good it is, though, I'm confident about its long-term cultural impact.

In general, this means really weird things for the future of film branding. There have already been other ideas thrown around that would very tangentially connect otherwise unrelated films. Some of these may share similar styles or more often, production houses, but it seems like a desperate attempt to employ name recognition, which is quickly becoming the most valuable way to make money in Hollywood.

I actually personally disagree with this assessment and I think it's missing a big point - the way to make money isn't name recognition but by simply putting out a project that connects with people. Is there a reason why Zootopia (2016) should make way more money than The Lone Ranger (2013)? No, they're both by studios that have had a ton of success in their genre with plenty of name recognition in actor and director. One film hit a niche and the other didn't. That's all it is, folks.

So enough of this production crap, let's actually talk about the film. Mary Elizabeth Winstead gets her car wrecked by John Goodman, who then captures her so she can be his daughter in a post apocalyptic bunker (that may or may not be the apocalypse) along with a local village idiot who stands around until Goodman shoots him in the head and dissolves him in acid. MEW escapes but then has to fight aliens outside because IT IS the apocalypse.

Got all that?

Each of the three principal actors does a fantastic job. John Goodman hasn't had a role this meaty in a while, although he's had memorable turns mostly in Coen Bros films and Best Picture Winners. Still, he's a powerhouse in this film, able to appear kind and reasonable one minute, albeit with an air of inherent decent, and then instantly crank up the rage, exploding all over screen and totally dominating the scene.

Against this mighty foe, though, is Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who holds her own against the mad John Goodman. She's capable of a ton and it shows here when she's given long stretches of dialogue-free scenes to emote through problem-solving, creative ways to escape, and trade between moments of desperation and badassery.

Finally we have John Gallagher, Jr., who struck me as a young Jason Sudeikis with a beard. His role is mostly someone to bounce off of the two principal actors here, but he's an intriguing character nonetheless, who has his own failed dreams, naïve sensibility, and dumbness, but his heart is in the right spot, which ultimately gets him shot in his face. You know, you can't win them all.

And that's pretty much it. There's a brief bit with a woman with a burnt up face trying to get in the bunker, but she dies outside, and apparently Bradley Cooper's voice can be heard as MEW's BF who calls her right before the car accident. I only saw that in the credits, I have to watch it again for sure to train my ears on that. For as distinctive as Brad Cooper is, his voice tends to pop up in odd places melded pretty well with the source material. Alright, just Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), but I'm still impressed.

This whole film is a long game of claustrophobic subtlety, and MEW is really the star here. The screenplay inserts the most Chekov's Guns I've ever seen, but they're often organic, which lessens their obviousness in a good way. It walks this fine line between screenplay convention and trickery, giving our heroes all the items that would be found in an underground bunker and setting them upon the impossible task of figuring out how to get the hell out there. Towards the end it was almost like things came together too perfectly, as if there were all these bits hanging out there that MEW picked up and used for her final escape, but as I said, it's mostly organic enough that when all these items that are useful later are established you don't think about it that hard or believe it's out of place.

That said, there were a few continuity errors that seemed distracting. The timing of John Gallagher's character entering the bunker doesn't seem to fit in (he said he arrived a few days ago, but if Goodman was racing home and hit MEW the night before to rush in, that doesn't add up). The same goes for the previous abductee, Brittany, who supposedly went missing two years ago, although that also doesn't seem to add up with the conviction of Goodman's character to remain in the bunker that long. I'm normally never ever distracted by these things because despite the best intentions of "Everything Wrong With", it truly doesn't matter when a film is good, but it was distracting for some reason here. I suppose it's because everything is so confined and beautifully crafted otherwise, when your mind is scrambling to put together the mystery, when these impossibilities jack shit up it takes you out of the film.

That bitch Brittany stole some puzzle pieces!

The film also does a great job of slowly unraveling the madness of John Goodman's character. It drops hints to figure out rather than big dialogue or exposition, which is such a welcome rarity. You can eventually piece together that he's simply looking for another girl to be his daughter, regardless if Mary Elizabeth is into it or not. There are some awkward hints at a sexual desire, but I think it's more innocent than that. At least in the sense that forcing a woman to live with you in a bunker forever pretending to be your daughter but NOT raping her is innocent.

I would be remiss if I didn't think a little bit about Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. They end up being nice pairs for each other, on completely opposite ends of the "kidnap girls and keep them in a bunker while the fake apocalypse is happening outside" genre.

Of course, in a move that echoes Frailty (2001), it turns out that the Apocalypse is very real. I'm not sure if MEW's best course of action would be to settle into her role as John Goodman's fake daughter in a creepy bunker forever, but it's amazing that the film continues for quite a while after he explodes in a fiery, acidy mess as she fights some aliens. It's kind of an odd turn that suddenly vastly increases the scope of the film, although it retains the repetition of theme, tense mood, and MEW's ingenuity for finding Chekov's Guns.

We should talk about this a bit of course - namely that the final moment where MEW throws a Molotov Cocktail into the mouth of the weird bionic alien ship is totally an exact rip-off of War of the Worlds (2005), although it's arguably a little cooler. Actually, that weird green mist also reminded me of War of the Worlds in the sense that these cats are just spreading their shit everywhere to kill all humans.

Of course, this leads us to the most badass ending in recent memory where MEW is given a choice between the safety of Baton Rouge or to join in the mayhem in Houston. She elects to go to Houston. I had some fridge realizations though that this actually may not be that consistent with her character - wouldn't she want to just take a break? Or does she have those natural instincts, where she actually gets off on this stuff? I felt a little bit of  The Hurt Locker (2009) going on here. I'm not sure if it exactly lines up with the film thematically or with MEW's character, but it sure is a fist-pumping moment that really works as you're watching it. Maybe it works. I'm still going back and forth on it. Comments on this are appreciated. What do you think?

I'll rarely talk about more technical aspects of film because I'm still working on actually being able to credibly discuss them, but I thought the framing and camera work here was actually fantastic. There's a great moment after MEW whacks Goodman in the head with a bottle and tries to escape, but then he asks her to stitch up his brow. First-time director Dan Trachtenberg uses a wide shot with both characters melding with the edges of the frame until MEW reluctantly decreases the distance and comes to help him. It's a fantastic construction. The film is full of these really great shots and framing work.

So, it's not without its problems, but I really dug this flick. I'd stick it with Deadpool, Zootopia, and Midnight Special (2016) so far this year.

What did you think?

First Impressions: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

Are you ready for the awakening? Take a deep breath - you are about to read the most comprehensive impressions of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015) ever put to electrons and sent across the world. To begin, let's take a trip down the road of cultural context. And there will be SPOILERS everywhere for this movie discussion, so if you'd rather not find out that Chewbacca is Luke's biological father, stop reading now.

If only they'd bring him back as Indiana Jones

Here at Norwegian Morning Wood I'm always talking about cultural value. Every film has a commercial value, which is very obvious, and a critical value, which is subjective, but also apparent. How much money does a film make the people who create and distribute it, and does anyone actually like it? Culturally, though, is where films are most important. Film is an art form that can steer the way we think about things, or at least take control of future artistic conversations. This becomes most interesting when we take long-term looks at things. Why is Ghostbusters (1984) a revered cultural institution but no one gives a shit about The Last Starfighter (1984)? Does it come down to the merit of the film itself? Or just certain things that we've tended to latch on to and propagated over the years? What makes Alien (1979) so much more groundbreaking than Dark Star (1974)?

These questions plague me all the time. It's amazing that out of any film series, none is really the equal to Star Wars. Sure, only two of its films crack the Top 50 Worldwide All-Time and only three crack the Top 25 Domestic, but how many people would pick it over AVABAR (2009) or Shrek 2 (2004)? All of them. They all would. Star Wars means more to more people than any other American cultural artifact, and that is more valuable than any box office return.

It was only a matter of time, therefore that in this age of continuous franchise regurgitation, that the great-grandaddy of all blockbusters would take its turn at the podium to flex its muscles. I have spoken at length at my inherent problem with the presence of more of the same rather than creating anything new. I'm not totally into another Star Wars film as much as I'd be into an entirely new nerdy property to gush over. That's part of the reason why I've loved Pacific Rim (2013) and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) so much (face it - even though it was based on a comic, no one was totally looking at that as a faithful adaptation or whatever), but it also comes at a steep Jupiter Ascending (2015)-level risk. What's the balance? Well, don't make your world-building mythos retarded is a good bet, but there has still been a financial discrepancy between original and re-hashed properties, which is totes unfortunate.

If you take a look at the other high-profile long-term revivals this year, it becomes more obvious why certain things work and others don't. Creed (2015) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) both pushed their former primary protagonists to the side in favor of new, more interesting people, and although they act as straight remakes of Rocky (1976) and The Road Warrior (1981) respectively, they're imbued with different viewpoints, updated engrossing camera work and scene construction, as well as the feeling of fresh characters, new themes, and a carefree confidence towards casting off a reliance on the past. This creates the illusion of new cultural material despite the fact that it's more typically just re-branded or re-arranged.

The Force Awakens is sort of like this, but doesn't exactly pull it off, in part due to J.J. Abrams' nature as more of a fan than a man of any original ideas. There were minimal lens flares this time around, but by the time of that first circle wipe it was clear that he was trying to emulate Lucas' directing style. With more care for his actors, of course, because for once, they're great in a Star Wars film. Lucas trips over his need for homage far too often. Sticking with the concept of cultural value, despite his aping of Amblin and Spielberg, how much do any of us think about Super 8 (2011)...ever? His shining film remains Star Trek (2009), but even that film was stuffed with a little too much reverence and suffered from a weak villain and ending. I'd consider TFA to be cured of those ills, but the film gets bogged down by the unenvious position of balancing perceived fan needs with actual storytelling.

Now, there are of course moments where TFA elevates from this. The introduction of the Millennium Falcon is nearly perfect, precisely because it's as disregarded by the new crop of characters as the old generation did. It works really well because there's a tacit acknowledgement in the Star Wars universe that the Falcon is a piece of shit. The actual character introductions largely work because of this. Han Solo, Leia Organa, and Luke Skywalker all fit in pretty naturally, without too much issue.

My major problem with the film is that it follows a lot of similar beats to the first film and the OT in general. Lucas called these little homages, which lead to the Star Wars Ring Theory, which is a pleasant read, but totally not his original intention. Now, as I recollect here, there are plenty of scenes that are innovative and great, and I have a pretty positive appreciation of the film over all, but we need to slog through this first.

The film starts off incredibly strong, in media res similar to the original Star Wars (1977), where critical information is stowed in a small, cute Droid unit who then gets lost on a desert planet and is found by an orphan (okay, in Luke's case it was a soon-to-be orphan). TFA tends to amp everything up though, so it's not just any orphan, but a SUPER-ORPHAN named Rey. I don't understand why they used Jakku when they so clearly just meant to have a redux of Tatooine. Sure, I'm grateful that we didn't AGAIN head to Tatooine, but Jakku operates exactly like Tatooine, so who cares? It's actually more like SUPER-TATOOINE with even less civilization and an even harsher way of life. But for the purpose of the narrative it's all the same shit.

There's an old dude living there, Max von Sydow, who is the first of many characters introduced who seemed important and then whose stories are quickly dropped, in this case, due to him being killed immediately. Actually, if you look at this scene, which features him, Po Dameron, BB-8, Captain Phasma, Kylo Ren, and Finn, you'd think they'd all be important, but Po and Phasma are largely tossed aside soon after this scene. I'll get to more on that later.

You did NOT survive this.

Don't take this bitching too much, because structurally and cinematically, the first third of the film is fantastic. You know everything you need to know of all the above mentioned characters and there's a palpable danger to all the heroes, Kylo Ren has a fearsome display of power (I can't recall any Sith ever stopping a laser bolt and freezing it in mid-air so effortlessly), and you can instantly tell which Stormtrooper Finn is because of how particularly he acts. The central MacGuffin, a map to Luke Skywalker is at once something instantly significant both in-universe and to the audience and serves as a simultaneous metaphor to how lost the franchise has been without the steady hand of the old guard of characters.

The film gets better as it introduces Rey, its best character, played by Daisy Ridley, whose eyes can at once display enough strength, confidence, pain, fear, caring, and badassery to carry the entire film. She's truly the Luke Skywalker of the film, a sentiment even echoed in her dress, which recalls Luke's weird bandage leggings from Star Wars. She eventually morphs into an amalgam of Luke and Han as she demonstrates her technical knowledge, becoming the Falcon's new pilot, and learning under his guidance.

Finn, on the other hand starts off very Han-like with his urge to run away all the time, which is also reflected in his wardrobe, although the tan jacket and black undershirt is reverse of Han's typical attire. He eventually becomes more Luke-like as he ends up the unlikely inheritor of Luke's lightsaber and finds his courage. His and Rey's duties in the final battle are split with the same lightsaber, which also echoes the fact that they are both combinations to differing degrees of the same original characters. This is of course all bizarre because the film starts with Po Dameron being Luke-like in the desert with his X-wing and trusty astromech droid, and then revealing a very Han-like cocky attitude, but he's totally forgotten about around the twenty-minute mark so who cares.

Let's keep moving on with how TFA echoes the original trilogy. They soon move on to an intergalactic bar of sorts, which is totally just the Mos Eisley Cantina. Finn even tries to barter for passage off-world, which was Luke and Obi-Wan's original goal. It feels like it's striving for a classic moment full of weird goofy monsters that Jabba's Palace already ripped off from Mos Eisley, and then the prequels just did non-stop. The lush forest world was rad, though, and seemed like an actually unique planet, which was amazing, even if going to see a weird little ancient master on a swamp world is totally Empire Strikes Back (1980).

After this we totally have another Death Star. Again. To align with our theme, though, this is a SUPER DEATH STAR. That idea in itself is pretty cool, actually, and the Empire's obsession with super-weapons is well-documented. What helped Star Wars, though, was the discussion earlier in the movie proving their rationale in the form of the Tarkin Doctrine. This tended to give some political weight to their insane actions. The First Order is largely just a bag of dicks. More on that later.

Harrison Ford, by way of Han Solo seems to sum it up well, as if he's speaking for an audience, when he says, regarding the Stakiller "Why don't we just blow it up?" and then yes, there is indeed a way to just blow up the planet. I really liked the idea of having that planet-embedded superweapon and the sun-drawing power / hyperspace power as all really cool, even if it's just totally SUPER DEATH STAR. I mean, there's even a trench run! I wish they had found some other way to take it down besides just blowing it up like they way they blow up every Death Star. That's like three times the Rebels / Resistance just blow shit up! Why does the Empire / First Order keeping building this shit! And there's no way the First Order has the financial resources to do this anymore, right? These are the inane nerdy questions that shouldn't bog the movie down, but you have to ask, but this is STAR WARS. Discussions like this have so permeated culture, they're in other movies.

This is all to say that the plot beats and locales are fairly derivative. The final planet, which I'm not sure is ever named, but Internet tells me is just called "Starkiller Base," is pretty Hoth-like, but I actually appreciated the wintery forests, which offered a new and cool Star Wars locale. Of course, the inside was straight-up Death Star, with all the classic elements - those doors that open in a square, trash compactors, and a total lack of guards that allow anyone to walk around as much as they want.

The Empire was always like that, actually. Like when the gang is escaping the Death Star after disabling the tractor beam, they send like two TIE Fighters out to catch them. Don't they have a huge, disposable fleet? TFA brings this idea back - completely incompetent Stormtroopers and a total reluctance crush the Resistance with numbers like this instead of just one superweapon that's totes ineffective against small fighters.

The idea of the depletion of sunlight working as a timer for charging the superweapon was a great visual guide for both the characters and the audience, and actually provided a logical reason for why the planet was an ice world - because they keep killing whatever hear they should get from their sun. Of course, being in the middle of space would be a little bit colder than just a few snow flurries, and that's not even counting the gravitational destabilization that would occur with draining a sun, but Star Wars has always been pretty soft science, so who cares.

Once we get past the derivative plot, though, we find that we have a pretty good film on our hands. Finn offers us an unparalleled look at what it means to be a Stormtrooper, and it's surprising that more don't have serious problems with killing random civilians all the time, but then again, real armies do that all the time, and these guys were specifically trained to lack individuality. There is some awkwardness with Finn's hitting on Rey, but I'm more impressed that he isn't completely developmentally challenged since he was only a number until a few days ago.

See? Even his lightsabre is like, built shittily. Also this
shot is not in the movie.

Kylo Ren, though, is instantly the most interesting character in the film. He appears first as a total badass, but as his layers are unpeeled we find instead that he's actually mostly just an overcompensating poser pussy. It's an important scene when he unmasks himself and we see the neatly coiffed Adam Driver and not some monster or burn victim. It's as if everything he's trying to do is to prove that he has some angsty personal reason for his internal conflict, but he's really just a brat who can't handle the balance of the force inside him. You've got to believe that when he tells his father, Han Solo, that he faces a tremendous amount of pain that he really doesn't know how to deal with it at all. Just like this film is trying to live up to its predecessor, Ren tries to live up to Vader and is constantly insecure about the fact that he's failing. To deal with this he lashes out abruptly and arrogantly. When Vader was pissed he's just choke an Admiral and move on with his life. Gone is the propriety and formality of even young pussy Anakin from Attack of the Clones (2002). Ren is trying to hard to live up to something he can't obtain. By the end of the film after he's dealt a blow to Star Wars lovers everywhere and finally had some actually good ol' face mutilation courtesy of Rey he actually has hatred to claim.

This is a generational indictment. The whole First Order are just dicks for no reason. They're not trying to put down a rebellion or maintain order, they're just evil for the sake of being evil. They're attempting to emulate an ideology without anything substantial to back it up. At one point General Hux says something or other about "order" but he's not coming from a place of cool and collected strategy like Tarkin. He's instead coming from a place of irrationality, anger, and mistaken purpose. I don't think it's a coincidence casting Domhnall Gleeson instead of someone older who would have been alive during the Galactic Civil War. He and Ren battle for who the biggest pussy is in the First Order but they're ultimately both just kids trying to prove themselves. And did they escape Starkiller Base, btw? Who knows. At least Star Wars showed Vader's TIE Advanced stabilizing after hurtling through space.

Do we have to talk about Supreme Leader Snoke? I'm putting this out there - he's the worst part of this film. A total Emperor Rip-off that was startlingly weak CGI who looked like a weird giant at first (later revealed to be a hologram), who seems like the laziest a-hole ever. I actually thought there was a disconnect between the CGI characters and the real environments, which was weird. It's insane to believe that there were practically no sets in the Prequel Trilogy, and things like every single Clonetrooper were made in a computer. That gives it all a nice plastic feel looking back on it now, and the scope and sets of TFA are refreshing and awesome. The problem with that is actually populating them with lame CGI peeps who are suddenly juxtaposed and take you out of the story. That's so terrible to complain about. I really do love the weight and naturalism of the practical sets.

I also generally didn't understand the relationship between the Republic, the First Order, and the Resistance. The Republic is in charge now, but is the First Order still ruling over a few planets or something? And is the Resistance resting them on those planets? If the Rebel Alliance is totally just the New Republic, then why is it like, a secret, shady deal? Does the Republic not want to outwardly look like they are resisting the First Order? They blew up like five planets on a whim! This doesn't make any sense.

Despite the film's 2 hr 16 min runtime it feels oddly rushed, but that may just be because certain characters like Captain Phasma are totally thrown away after sweet introductions. I can't for the life of me figure out why I feel this way. Boba Fett is on screen for like six minutes in Empire and didn't really do much, but you felt like he had such an impact. Same with all the other random idiots in the universe. Like, I got more of a feel for Bossk than I did for Captain Phasma. Even someone like Finn who goes down like a bitch in the final fight, AND NEVER WAKES UP feels like he got the short end of the stick. I honestly don't know what took up so much time, because the scenes felt like they were paced really well, especially towards the beginning, but somehow some beats were skipped that would have fleshed out the world a bit more.

Some of this is probably due to the fact that this is more like being the first in a trilogy than working as a standalone movie, which each film in the first trilogy, and even in the prequel trilogy did really well. What's critical is that even though in the OT, Star Wars is definitely the call to action, Empire is rising action, and Return of the Jedi (1983) is climax and denouement, within each film lies similar beats. The prequels function the same way structurally, but we just hate the world, characters, and tone they built. TFA, especially with its ending scenes, feels far more like it was cut off rather than allowed to have a proper, cathartic ending.

On that note, we ought to talk about how Luke Skywalker is totally not in this movie, but I was pretty okay with that. It actually mythologizes him more. It was great to see Harrison Ford acting like he did in the 80s and less grumpy, though. Carrie Fisher didn't seem to have her Leia spark, but she's been through some shit. It's all good. I also enjoyed the direction of Chewie, having a lot more humour, along with the Stormtroopers even getting some good bits. Of course, C-3PO is still unbearable, tho R2-D2 had almost no time to shine. That's alright. BB-8 as Finn's wingman is just as good, if not cuter and therefore better.

The whole film actually felt very small despite the SUPER-ness of all the elements, likely due to its concentration on what's happening on the ground to a handful of characters in a handful of locations, which is again, much more similar to the OT than the Prequels, which is good. This is also a fine set-up for bigger, crazier movies to come.

We should talk predictions. Rey has got to be someone's daughter, right? Someone who was maybe left behind on Jakku because she was going to be a sweet force user? My guess is she's Chewie's. Has to be. I am curious, though, how this series is suddenly beholden to its bloodline twists instead of it being a sweet bonus. Star Wars and Empire both work without Vader being Luke's father, but that revelation pushes the stakes so much higher. Rey being related to someone at this point is an expectation rather than a surprise, as was the fact that Kylo Ren is Han and Leia's daughter, which didn't really come as a shock, tho I'm not sure it was meant to. It's like the franchise's bread and butter is suddenly big family reveals, but they've already blown their wad on that in the biggest cultural way possible.

We should talk about how her core conflict,
returning home, is actually the opposite of Luke's.

There's also the vague possibility that Ren and Rey are brother and sister, which would be sweet because she totally pwns him with superior force power in both their combative scenes together. I haven't even talked about how sweet and revelatory it is to see both a black Jedi and a woman Jedi and how casual it all feels, although of course we had Mace Windu and uh...shit...can you name one human female Jedi that's appeared in person in a Star Wars movie? My mind goes to Asajj Ventress, Mara Jade, Adi Gallia, or Aayla Secura. Looking it up now. Ah yes, totally - the Librarian from Attack of the Clones. Let's try again. Okay, found one - Bultar Swan. You know, I don't know what women complain about, they got Bultar Swan!

There's a shot of Rey out-forcing Anakin Skywalker's lightsabre from Kylo Ren and then lighting it up and my entire theater cheered. It's a spectacular shot that unbelievably took until 2015 to achieve.

And the cast from The Raid movies shows up! It'd be cool if they fought some of those monsters using their Indonesian pencak silat on some very Abrams-esque monsters in that weird First Order freighter that Han and Chewie were apparently running. There's a lot to go off on in that last sentence. I'll let you figure it out.

Where does TFA land in terms of greatest Star Wars ever? Well, it's at least the third or fourth greatest one, which is good enough for me. Time for pizza, which like Star Wars, is still good either hot or cold.

First Impressions: Star Trek Into Darkness

It already feels as if every movie this summer is filling the zeitgeist, grabbing pop culture by the balls and neglecting to let go until it's forcibly pushed out by the next big event film to come along. We are experiencing so many rapidfire additions to franchise film canon that we have barely room to breathe. No later are we jazzing on Iron Man than we are re-reading Fitzgerald, and then looking up Gorn Porn in favor of Star Trek. Oh, you haven't looked at Gorn Porn this week? Yeah right.

What? No pecs?

First thing's first - while watching Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), I hadn't gripped a seat like that since Star Trek (2009). That's saying something. It really is just about as perfect of a sequel as you can get, and it improves on the original in almost every way, at least in the moment. This movie seems incredible while you're watching it but after it settles in and you actually think about it for a few days it seems less special. This undoubtedly has much to do with the combination of a breakneck pace and genuinely thrilling action set pieces with a middling, derivative emotional narrative large the fault of its muffed villain reveal, which is becoming a stupid trend this summer. Needless to say, SPOILERS to come, although you must be abstaining from the entire Internet to still be into the darkness of what I speak.

It seems bizarre that for the first two really big movies of Summer, the marketing focused heavily on the supposed groundbreaking, iconic performance of the film's villain, and in both cases there was some level of deception involved that belied an ineffective twist. The first was Iron Man 3 (2013)'s mangling of the Mandarin, which had its own merits in making a statement on how we perceive villains both real and fictional, but ultimately falls flat because of a spurned expectation (both of fanboys and within the movie itself). It also ends up merely swapping one stereotypical comic book villain for another.

As for Star Trek Into Darkness, it isn't a total shock that James Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) is Khan, but he just ends up being less fearsome or interesting than he was made out to be in the marketing material. This is again a problem with expectation, and marketing shouldn't impact a pure evaluation of the film, but needless to say, using Star Trek's best known villain comes with some necessary comparisons. There is this notable riff between those purest of Trekkies who favor the psychological slow burn of much of the television series' as well as the earlier films, including The Wrath of Khan (1982), from which J.J. Abrams lifts much of Into Darkness' most potent scenes.

So let's really get into this dude, because in so many ways he's the core of this film. The narrative flows spectacularly as this mystery around James Harrison brews, but the conflict never seems as personal or drastic as it needs to be - again, it needs to be as intense as Ricardo Montalban vs. James T. Kirk in Wrath of Khan. It needs to be - you've laid the cards flat and need to deliver. Now, Cumberbatch's Khan did blow up a library and then executed Pike (how was that the only one hit in that chamber, by the way? Not just from a practical standpoint, but wouldn't it have helped the stakes if we saw more of the Starfleet leadership perish?), but after that everything seems murky. Maybe it's because Khan's plan is never clear (does he just want to take over the world with the rest of his Übermensch? I guess). Maybe it's because it feels awfully easy to track this guy back to the Klingon homeworld with the support of Admiral Marcus (that's because he wanted to start a war...I guess...maybe to profit from it similar again to Guy Pearce's Aldrich Killian from Iron Man 3?). Also similar to Iron Man 3 (it just keeps coming) there is something empty about standard hero-villain revenge plots.

Perhaps the most potent reason the film feels off from a narrative standpoint is because all of Kirk's rage over the Death of Pike is diffused by the time he is working alongside Khan. At the same time, for much of the film Spock has a level of emotional disinterest in him (duh) so it's then sort of unfulfilling for Spock to be the one to defeat him. It's a playful reversal of their fortunes in Wrath of Khan, having Kirk die of radiation poising rather than Spock, but Khan has always been Kirk's archenemy. At the end when Kirk is filled with Khan blood he could at least react like Jerry did when he learned he had a pint of Newman in him.

It is important to note that while the end is ultimately a meek re-hash of the end of Wrath of Khan (1982), with the roles of Spock and Kirk reversed, the rest of the film is a very original story. And of course, in a stroke of Transformers: Revenge of the Swollen (2009), the film gets its cake and eats it too - all the emotional weight of the main hero's death with none of the lasting consequences. Thus is the age of big franchise moviemaking.

Now, Orci and Kurtzman have talked at length at how they wanted to find a way to work Khan in naturally as if he fit the story and could have been any villain. That's the biggest bullshit you'll read this whole week. Why would an Admiral thaw out someone frozen in the 1990s to design weaponry and starships far more advanced than what everyone else had in 2259? Khan claims it was for his savagery - because no one in the contemporary Star Trek Universe understands war like he did in the 90s. That doesn't really stick well. If I want to develop the most advanced weapons in the world today I'm not going to thaw out Napoleon.

Benny is admirably spectacular, though, but doesn't really get any good scenes against Kirk that wasn't in the trailer. The other most notable acting job is probably Quinto's Spock, who has become very reliable at balancing emotion and logic to really flesh out what could have been a lifeless and tepid character. Giving Spock a GF to bring out these emotions was probably one of the best decisions made in this reboot.

As mentioned earlier, while there are many flaws to this thing, while watching it, it feels awesome. J.J. proves once again with this film he can direct the hell out of an action scene, probably better than anyone currently working in movies. It succeeds for so long based on its budding tension and genuinely heart-racing thrills, but there's ultimately a lot of homage bordering on plagiarism rather than innovation. The opening scene serves the same purpose as that of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and in this case, right down to the chase of the primiative people with spears. The idea of an unrelated scene opening up a movie to introduce the characters has since become a common trope, but its presence here seems to also justify Abrams as the heir apparent to the Lucas / Spielberg blockbuster throne. Considering this and Super 8 (2011), though, he is starting to build a career more on homage and nostalgia rather than from original work. Like Spielberg, though, he is aware that the "moment" in film is far superior to continuity.

That's ultimately the divergent moment in this film. The action is spectacular, but the actual set-ups and emotional pay-offs that center around the villain are lacking in a traditional sense. Sure Kirk defeated Khan in the sense that he sacrificed his life to save the crew, thus ultimately answer Pike's challenge to "dare to do better" than his father (which does wrap up his arc rather neatly), but the film needed if not a physical battle between Kirk and Khan, than at least an intellectual match between Spock and Khan to really justify Khan's presence in the entire movie. After all, his most devastating act, crashing the USS Vengeance into San Francisco isn't done out of hate but out of desperation.

On that note, there's this weird 9/11 moment when this happens. Khan is reduced to a terrorist rather than a grand strategist or warlord here (as it would seem, all contemporary movie villains), and his crash into a city, killing thousands of people can easily be seen as allegory to 9/11, although it is hardly commented on besides an otherwise non sequitor honorific at the end that reads more as an apology than anything heartfelt considering the relative disconnect between the film's contents and the tragic day of September 11th, 2001. My feeling is that early screenings made the connection and the producers though "Well, shit, we didn't see that coming" so they slapped on the tribute.

Overall, though, Star Trek Into Darkness is an upstanding film. It's time, however, to quickly abandon the stars for fast cars and hangovers. Now that's a summer.

The Road to a Blockbuster: Star Dark - Trek to the Moon

Welcome once again folks to that Oldest of Norwegian Morning Wood Summer Friday Traditions, the Road to a Blockbuster. In anticipation of each big Summer Movie, we're taking account of each films' potential for critical, commercial, and most importantly, cultural success. We are ever-vigilant for those big crazy movies that will really resonate - the ones we'll abandon our families to watch on Netflix months from now, and the ones that years from now we'll look back on most fondly and think "Hey...that was alright."

Shocked because he was upstaged in the marketing material...

Today we see the release of the latest (and possibly lastest) installment in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek universe, Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). This is a film so bold as to actually convert what was previously a noun in its title...to a verb. Holy shit. It all makes for a fairly stupid title that once again finagles a variation of the word "dark" into the title in order to appear edgy, I guess. Thus it follows a long tradition of blockbusters such as The Dark Knight (2008), Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and the upcoming Thor: The Dark World (2013), as well as smaller, dumber movies that I'm sure you forgot, such as The Darkest Hour (2011) and Dark Skies (2013). Needless to say, Dark IS cool (all of these blockbusters have so far performed excellently), but enough is enough. I can't really say that Star Trek Into an Area Obscured from Light would have been more effective, but it's still getting to be a fairly standard cliché in big movie making.

Four years back Star Trek (2009) arrived hot off the hands of LOST and Cloverfield (2008) whizzmaster J.J. Abrams, even though he hadn't really been heavily involved in LOST since its first season and was only a producer on Cloverfield. He also had a hand in creating the shows Felicity and Alias, as well as the screenplay for Armageddon (1998). Yes, that Armageddon. The only feature he had actually directed prior to taking on the most revered of all Nerd Franchises was Mission: Impossible III (2006), which was notable for actually not sucking, despite the hate on Tom Cruise associated with it at the time of its premiere. In general, I never never been tremendously impressed with J.J. Abrams as a visionary or even an auteur director, but his films do tend to be bold, clever, interesting, and competent - which places them on a pedestal far above many other Tentpole Offerings. So this is the guy going into Star Trek.

Star Trek has somehow been around for nearly 50 years, with 82-year old Shatner somehow still showing up everywhere, from Priceline commercials (that seem to have a strange ongoing story line with his daughter going on recently, you notice that?) to Jimmy Kimmel and reliving Gorn fights. But Shatner isn't quite the only thing Star Trek gave us. There's that Beastie Boys video.

But seriously, Star Trek has waddled between pulp intellectual property and big time action fest throughout its entire lifetime. The ethos of the show has always been that of discovery, intrigue, and exploration, while the films have trended more towards shit blowing up. While there have always been lulls, notably in the early-to-mid 1970s after the original series ended but before Star Wars (1977) turned everyone on to Blockbuster Sci-Fi, and in the early 2000s when Nemesis (2002) reminded everyone that a Trek movie that didn't involve Khan or a Whale was really awful.

Still, it has always been a niche property. Moreso than the broad adventure appeal of Star Wars, Trek had higher sensibilities. Gene Roddenberry was always attempting to comment on something; whether it be race relations, coming to terms with death and dying, or the need to be ever-vigilant when you see a bearded double, there was a lot going on here. This has caused it in general to be less accessible than its Wars counterpart, and a tougher sell to dumb kids who just want to see Chewie bang Leia once and for all. It found its way towards the more obscure end of the Geek Spectrum, and there it sat until a man named Abrams came along.

Star Trek, the 2009 movie, was an epic step towards the mainstream for the storied franchise. J.J., in his own words, Star Wars-ized the basic concept, moving away from a rigorous chess match and towards a big smashing of ships and monsters. It was a virtual success on all fronts - critics, consumers, and nerds alike were enthralled with the excellent cast and direction, as well as a story so bold as to push Spock and Uhura into doing it. And blowing up Vulcan. It existed as a perfect, time-travel-fueled excuse for a remake that allowed its creators to make a new universe while setting it in the same universe. Kind of. It worked on every level.

Oooh look! A lens flare!

Star Journey into Blackness seems to take the same loveable characters, who we've had the chance now to really sit with for years and enjoy on F/X broadcasts and other stuff like Unstoppable (2010) and Dredd (2012), and really fucks their day up. The star is clearly Benedict Cumberbatch, who is about to have a career like Mark Strong a few years back, playing the villain in every damn movie out there and doing a hell of a job. For those of you who forgot, Mark nailed it as the chief baddie in Sherlock Holmes (2009), Kick-Ass (2010), Robin Hood (2010), Green Lantern (2011), and John Carter (2012). Actually....damn he was in some terrible movies. After this weekend, Benedict will play both villains in the upcoming Hobbit: Unexpected Crack Party (2013), and is sure to hit leading man status.

Unless of course it turns out that Cumberbatch's character is actually just a drunken British actor pawn for some dude who can breathe fire. If only. Nah, he's probably Khan. Although, by all accounts he doesn't seem to fit the Ricardo Montalban superphysique supervillain. We'll just have to see tonight.

So what are the chances this becomes a cultural landmark? I'd say pretty damn good - it's poster already has its share of parodies, and with the Abrams trademark "fuck everything" approach to story, there ought to be some great narrative decisions in this to keep things interesting. It'll make a ton of money, although competition this summer is rough. Being sandwiched between Iron Man 3 (2013) and the Fast Six / Hangover III (2013) two-punch next weekend is not an enviable position. To really stick in our memory, this one ought to do something pretty damn crazy.

Live long and prosper, bitches.

Will you trek into darkness tonight?

First Impressions: Super 8

I gave Soup Or Ate (2011) a very minimalist treatment going in. The marketing campaign was mysterious enough it wasn't that difficult but I really attempted to avoid news, trailers and commercials. It was the kind of alluring mystery movie that shouldn't have had any spoilerage. What I got when I saw it was a very original, very good Summer Movie that invokes the Spirit of Amblin Spielberg more than anything Spielberg has done in decades.

The best part of this film is what it's not. It's not a flashy, star-studded, spellbound fast-paced mindless action flick that has plagued so many summers lately. It's the opposite of Butt Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Hides (the hides are strange because they're male hides and the pirates are used to female hides. Thus they're Butt Pirates now. I need to stop making overly long gay joke explanations). There's a whole lot less bullshit and the film calls back to an age of simpler blockbusters along with its actual setting during a time when simpler blockbusters existed.

I actually like that 1979-1981 timespan for a lot of settings. It seems just enough after Disco and before glam rock, out of the ridiculousness of the 70s enough but not fully into the worse ridiculousness of the 80s. It's a genuine time, man. It's that Wet Hot American Summer (2001) time. It's perfectly Spielbergian - most of us were little tots or at least little spermies at the time, just squirming around sandboxes/testicles waiting for the world to give us a chance. It's before the greed and insanity of the 80s started (highlighted here and here) but after the coke fueled nonsense of the 70s (here and here). Every time in history at some point in history is referred to as the time of innocence (except the 1340s and the 1710s) but this one really nails it.

So there are tons of obvious homages to Spielberg here, from the tonal viewpoint of a kid (by the way, all of the kids are pretty good actors, they sell their friendship spectacularly), parental issues (One my favourite readings of Jaws [1975] is that of a story of male impotence, citing Brody's struggle for the approval from Quint and Hooper as substitute parents) amidst a fantastical backdrop (A monster). J.J. Abrams himself has less of a distinctive style. Super 8 is only his third directorial effort after Mission: Impossible III (2006) and Star Trek (2009) and the only major element connecting all three is the prevalence of lens flares. I don't think I can think of a better description of Super 8 than "Spielberg with Lens Flares." That's how you get Abrams. I think people tend to think Cloverfield (2008) when they think J.J., which was his production but not entirely his effort (tho all his non-franchise efforts like Super 8, Cloverfield and LOST seem to have easter eggs among them, like Slusho machines everywhere). There is certainly a bit of Cloverfield here in some similar mysterious dangerous monster running amok through town but Super 8 tends to be far less gimmicky.

There is this very unique mystery throughout Super 8, something vacant in other contemporary blockbusters. I think the E.T. (1982) vibe wears off however when the Alien starts killing and eating people. He's really not all that sympathetic as the ending makes him out to be. That's all I want to say about the ending actually, there is a genuine mystique to this movie that I think is preserved only by viewing it in a 2-D theater. 2-D is the only way to experience this movie! Wha-hey!

The government conspiracy stuff is played pretty heavily and they're the major baddies here. The military actually hasn't been this unilateral evil in a movie recently, we've almost gotten used to the Michael Bay Hero Treatment. The anti-government paranoia and mistrust is obvious in a post-Nixon / post-Vietnam setting when the American populace was really on edge for what the Feds might be up to next (And who can blame them for their weapons going off and killing everything in sight, even if it's the Alien's fault why didn't they unload their guns or stop driving or anything?). This plays well here. Super 8 is actually notable in that it is really a "Slice of Americana" small town story that has some universal truths, so universal that a plucky small child can connect with a violent murderous alien. 'Nuff said.

And I feel like I'm the only one who noticed this - what's up with Mr. Woodward the Mystic Negro? It's not really the worst possible use of the trope but you get the feeling that this scary black guy was the only one who really understood the Creature and no one else would listen to his Magical Wisdom. He's also the only black guy in the damn film and ostensibly the most intelligent.

The last thing I'll mention is The Case (1979), the kids' completed film we get to see during the end credits. It may be the best part of the film (only if because it's the driving force for most of the kids' early motivation. And late motivation in some cases). Spielberg Abrams really nails the kids' viewpoint here and the payoff is hilarious as well as very honest and genuine. The thing about Super 8 is that it sells itself on nostalgia and reminiscence (not unlike Toy Story 3 [2010] actually) but it really delivers on this promise (again, not unlike Toy Story 3). It's a very good film int he sense that it delivers a lot of genuine emotion, adept storytelling (if not an adept story) and relief from the typical Summer Bullshit.

Praise to people wanting to be Spielberg.