TV Shows #14

Only Murders in the Building – Season 3 (ongoing)
Disney+ / Hulu – 10 episodes, 37 minutes each

Created by John Hoffman and Steve Martin; starring Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez, Meryl Streep, Paul Rudd, Michael Cyril Creighton, Jeremy Shamos, Jesse Williams, Linda Emond and Wesley Taylor

As Oliver’s new play is about to get its premiere, its high-profile lead is murdered on stage.

Back for a third season and the show finds room for improvement. The cast is as delightful as always and adds some A-listers to its roster who fit right in.
The script is even more clever than before with cool twists and a nice mix of hilariously funny and nicely touching.
Let’s hope that the now necessary season 4 will live up to this excellent one.

Rating: A

Foundation – Seasons 1 & 2 (ongoing)
Apple TV – 20 episodes, 55 minutes each

Created by David S. Goyer; starring Jared Harris, Lee Pace, Lou Llobell, Leah Harvey, Laura Birn, Terrence Mann, Cassian Bilton and Isabella Laughland

Having predicted the fall of the Galactic Empire, a scientist is exiled to a distant planet from where he puts into action a masterplan to save mankind.

The first season, and particularly its opening episodes, have a hard time drawing you in between impersonal galactic stakes, parallel but unrelated narratives and generation long time jumps.
If you hang in there, the show finds its footing and becomes a quite unique blend of classic thought-provoking sci-fi and high-quality space-opera action that, ironically coming full-circle, manages to be more fun, epic and cool-looking than any of the pitiful Star Wars dregs Disney+ has been relentlessly putting out.
Some Asimov purists might balk at the new material inevitably created for the show but most is actually quite faithful to the legendary author’s vision, at least in his final incarnations of his work
In the lead, Jared Harris gives a reliable performance but it is Lee Pace that steals the show as the Galactic Emperor and the subject matter gives him ample opportunity to vary his take on a highly memorable character.

Rating: B+

Secret Invasion – Season 1 (stand alone)
Disney+ – 6 episodes, 44 minutes each

Created by Kyle Bradstreet; directed by Ali Selim; starring Samuel L. Jackson, Emilia Clarke, Don Cheadle, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ben Mendelsohn, Charlayne Woodard and Olivia Colman

Nick Fury must uncover a plot by rogue Skrulls to start World War III and exterminate the human race.

Symptomatic of how Marvel is struggling to make the MCU still relevant after “Avengers: Endgame”, this latest show has a hard time dragging you in.
Even with its excessively short runtime for a mini-series (probably less than four hours of content once you excise the overlong credits), the show feels like it drags through needlessly wordy moments and pointless scenes that fail to imbue it with meaning and depth. Whatever plot is left isn’t exactly bad but neither is it original or particularly thought-provoking or thrilling. The last two episodes are somewhat better than the rest as the story moves decently toward an unwarranted climax but feel like too little too late.
Making it even more disappointing is how the show gives so little to do to exciting newcomers to the franchise such as Emilia Clarke and Olivia Colman. At least the latter enjoys an offbeat part that allow her to shine in the show’s best and only truly entertaining moments.

Rating: C –

Ahsoka – Season 1 (ongoing)
Disney+ – 8 episodes, 44 minutes each

Created by Dave Filoni; starring Rosario Dawson, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, David Tennant, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ray Stevenson, Ivanna Sakhno, Diana Lee Inosanto, Erman Esfandi, Hayden Christensen and Lars Mikkelsen

A rogue Jedi knight must stop an exiled Imperial leader from being brought back to the Galaxy and resurrect the Empire.

The show’s outstanding quality is how good it looks. Not only do the sets and costumes give off an authentic Star Wars feel but there are cool lightsaber battles to feast your eyes upon and some explosive space action, something the Disney era of Star Wars had been curiously lacking so far.
That is unfortunately all the show has to offer. The plot wavers between mediocre and silly, with chunks of cheap fan-fiction of the worst kind and, for a show that overall lasts as long as an entire trilogy, definitely does not have enough substance to justify its length. The dialogue is hopelessly heavy-handed and the cast, many of which have shown some definite skills in other projects, constantly deliver it in a listless manner and spend way too much time just standing there, trying to convey gravitas but mostly only coming across as ponderous.
Similarly, the direction is sluggish, something of a trademark for show runner Dave Filoni whose previous animated Star Wars shows suffered greatly from the same problem.
Speaking of which, “Ahsoka” is technically a sequel for both these shows, “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” and “ Star Wars Rebels” but makes no effort to ease new viewers into their narrative. The solution would obviously be to watch those shows first but, as already mentioned, they suffer from the same lethargic vibe, not to mention that there’s over 140 episodes of it.
Those shows and this also go out of their way to bring into the Star Wars canon the worst dregs of the Extended Universe that had for a moment been mercifully erased by the latest sequels, or so we thought.
All in all, the combination of weak plotting, lame direction and stilted acting weighs down the show with a lack of energy that goes against everything the IP is supposed to be, though it’s definitely consistent with what Disney has been doing with the property of late.

Rating: E+

This Is Not a Plot Hole: Return of the Jedi

Many out there think that the rebels in “Return of the Jedi”, could have destroyed the shield generator protecting the Death Star from space. Or, alternately, send a couple of Y-Wings swooping down to bomb it to oblivion. They hold this up as a plot hole where logic was sacrificed for the sake of coolness. They are wrong.

The shield generator protects both the Death Star and itself. The shield surrounds the Death Star and goes down through the atmosphere all the way to the ground to encompass a vast area around the shield generator and its base (including the Ewok’s village).

Which is why the rebels fly a stolen shuttle to Endor’s forest moon, ask for the shield to be deactivated and then land within the shield’s zone. Once they are inside the shielded perimeter, they can then reach the base and destroy the generator.

Addendum: the real plot hole

This is something you’d wish J.J. Abrams had understood. Because, just as “The Force Awakens” shamelessly duplicated most of the beats from “Star Wars” and “The Last Jedi” did the same with “The Empire Strikes Back”, “The Rise of Skywalker” xeroxed “Return of the Jedi”. Unfortunately, to intelligently copy something, you first have to properly understand it.

The last act of “Return of the Jedi” is a massive three-way action sequence and so is the end of “The Rise of Skywalker”. It’s a somewhat gimmicky yet efficient technique to keep up suspense, always shifting from one place to another at the most opportune time to maintain the audience on edge and was first used by “Return of the Jedi”’s writer Lawrence Kasdan at the behest of Steven Spielberg for “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.

Hence the showdown between The Emperor, Luke and Vader becomes the fight between The Emperor, Rey and Kylo Ren; the space battle where Lando leads a fleet against the Empire becomes a space battle where Lando leads a fleet against the Last Order and the ground battle to destroy a generator becomes a ground battle to destroy an antenna.

Except, in “The Rise of Skywalker”, the resistance could absolutely have blasted the antenna from space or sent a couple of fighters to bomb it. That is a not only a plot hole. It’s one more piece of evidence that this last trilogy’s authors had a limited grasp on both Star Wars and decent writing. And we have now seen what kind of results that can yield.

Star Wars and the Scapegoating of Fan Service

Well, here we are. “The Rise of Skywalker” is finally out and has confirmed the fears we’ve harbored for four years. Ever since “The Force Awakens” kicked off Disney’s sequel Star Wars trilogy, we’ve pretty much always known these three new films would fail to deliver a satisfying, or even functional, ending to the saga.

The reasons for this failure are many. The most obvious is that, eager to recoup its massive investment as soon as possible, Disney set the films’ releases to a two year schedule. This in turn forced them to hire distinct filmmakers for each installment. And that resulted in a lack of coherent narrative for the overall project, something made even worse by Rian Johnson’s deliberate sabotage of the plot threads, however mediocre, that J.J. Abrams had started in the trilogy’s first film.
Of course, another obvious flaw is that the first film didn’t setup its connections to the pre-existing movies properly, nor did it define that trilogy’s stakes well enough.
Yet another problem is handing over the saga to filmmakers with an unclear understanding of the fundamentals that made Star Wars work in the first place.

But a culprit that seems to be getting its fair load of blame is fan service. Now, I’m not denying that those three films contained a significant amount of it. (And though the finger gets mostly pointed at J.J. Abrams, the most blatant example of it is actually Yoda’s scene in Rian Johnson’s “The Last Jedi”.)
The inference here however is that fan service and quality filmmaking are incompatible. Doing what pleases the fans will inevitably lead you astray from the true creativity needed to deliver something both good and original.
And that’s not true. It is possible to write an entertaining movie that wraps up a saga’s main threads in a meaningful and satisfactory manner and deliver the fan-pleasing moments that will draw cheers from your core audience.

How do I know this? Because I’ve seen it being done. And you have too. This year. And, to add insult to injury, from the exact same studio that botched Star Wars:

A Reasonable Dislike for Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Of course: SPOILERS! You’ve been warned.

Since its release, Star Wars: The Last Jedi has raked up ticket sales and divided viewers. A month later, rather than coming to a consensus, the debate has become strangely polarized.

On one side of the argument are very vocal fans who loathe what writer/director Rian Johnson has done with Luke Skywalker. This sentiment was given even more weight by the very publicized comments from Mark Hamill, saying he disagreed with the choices Johnson had made for his character.
Now, the fans’ reaction is not entirely surprising. After the end of Return of the Jedi, it was implied that Luke would become the wise master who would found a new Jedi order to restore justice to the galaxy. Due to where the new trilogy picks up, that part of Luke’s story will never be depicted on-screen and the frustration the fans derive from this is possibly the foundation of their aversion to Luke’s portrayal in this movie.
And yet, Johnson’s decision when it comes to Luke, despite Hamill’s opinion, is the correct one. It’s the one most conductive to drama. The relationship between Rey and Luke, the various flashbacks to Kylo Ren’s turn to the dark side, and the following confrontation between Kylo and Rey are arguably the most interesting and emotionally charged parts of the movie.

On the argument’s other side, the supporters of The Last Jedi are quick to point out that the fans seem impossible to please. Two years ago, The Force Awakens was hugely successful and loved despite everyone rightfully observing that the plot was a rehash of the first Star Wars. And while fans liked the film, they claimed to be disappointed by its lack of originality. Yet now that they’ve been given something new they reject it, blinded by nostalgia and the inability to accept something different as part of the Star Wars canon.

The Last Ripoff

I, however, feel that this isn’t true. In fact, one of The Last Jedi’s most damning flaws is that it isn’t original. Just like The Force Awakens copied its plot from Star Wars, with bits of Empire and Return of the Jedi thrown in here and there, so does The Last Jedi with The Empire Strikes Back. Let’s check it out, shall we?

– Both films starts with the rebel base being found by the villains. Their fleet arrives, prompting the base’s rushed evacuation. From there, the movie splits into two parallel narratives.

– In one, a young aspiring Jedi travels to a distant planet to find an aging and recluse master, hoping he’ll teach him or her the Force. The master, initially reluctant, agrees.
Halfway through the training, the young Jedi enters a cave where the dark side is strong, only to be confronted by an enigmatic vision of himself/herself.
The young Jedi ultimately leaves against the master’s advice to confront the dark side’s apprentice.

– In the other thread, the rest of the heroes are being chased through space by the villains’ fleet. Normally, they’d escape by jumping to hyperspace, but something prevents them from doing so.
To solve their hyperspace problem, they travel to a luxurious city, later revealed to have a darker underbelly, to seek help from a gambler.

– The movie’s major land battle involves a base in a cave defended by a massive door being assaulted by walkers approaching across a white desert plain and the rebels defending themselves using small low-altitude speeders.

– The film’s major reveal concerns the parentage of the young Jedi.

Other elements have been lifted from Return of the Jedi and Star Wars respectively:

– The dark side’s apprentice brings the young Jedi to his master only to turn against the later to save the young Jedi.

– To distract his old apprentice and allow the rebels to escape, the old master confronts his former pupil, ultimately becoming one with the Force.

Despite a few occasional twists, The Last Jedi can’t really make any claim at originality. Even worse, the narrative frequently feels forced as The Last Jedi tries to replicate Empire’s structure but has to resort to clunky plot points to get its characters where it wants them to be. For more on this, check out:
https://notanotherscriptguru.wordpress.com/2018/01/15/every-plot-hole-far-fetched-coincidence-and-convenient-happenstance-in-star-wars-the-last-jedi/

Themes

But it doesn’t matter, claim the film’s supporters. Because where The Last Jedi truly shines is with its themes. Never in a Star Wars movie have such deep and meaningful themes been developed. Again, no.
What are those themes? Very clearly: failure and sacrifice. (Let’s gloss over the fact that the movie isn’t too subtle about them since it has scenes that specifically exist to lecture the audience about those themes.)

The first, failure, isn’t uninteresting. As I’ve said earlier, Luke and Rey’s arc is the best part of the movie and develops that theme well enough.
But it certainly isn’t original. What other film of the saga already dealt with that theme? That’s right, The Empire Strikes Back. Again. And it did so in a much more nuanced, personal and cinematic way. It sure beats Yoda bluntly blurting it out.

The second, sacrifice, has potential. But the movie can’t seem to make up its mind about what it wants to say. The rebel pilots bravely sacrifice themselves to save the fleet and destroy a dreadnought but Leia then demotes Poe for this mission. When Admiral Holdo later sacrifices herself however, Leia now exalts this as great leadership. Moments later when Finn is about to make a similar sacrifice, Rose saves him making it clear that it would have been a mistake.
The movie goes back and forth with this theme and the inconsistency ultimately comes across as meaningless to the audience.

Fan service

Defending his script, director Rian Johnson said “Lucas never made a Star Wars movie by sitting down and thinking, What do the fans want to see?” Here, he implies that he tried to come up with something original and different, without trying to please the fans.
That is either delusional or disingenuous. As I’ve made clear, The Last Jedi isn’t original at all. But neither is it free of various instances of fan service.

One concerns Rey’s parentage. The good thing, admittedly, is that Johnson decided not to have Rey’s parents be anyone. That’s possibly the most clever and original choice in the film and he deserves some credit for it.
But that’s also the first thing Rey says when grilled by Kylo Ren. And it’s out of character, because what Rey had wanted so far was to have a family. She wanted to know that her parents were still out there, hoping to find her again. Who they actually are was never relevant to her. Guess who it was relevant to? The fans, who have obsessed over it for two years.
So the movie has Rey say something utterly out of character, in a blatant attempt to shock its fans.

Another clearly is the Yoda scene. For it, the production painstakingly recreated a Yoda puppet similar to the one used in the original trilogy. In the prequels, Lucas had opted to portray the old Jedi master with CGI. And while that was different, it definitely gave us a much more expressive character.
Why then go back to a less versatile puppet? Because it panders to the fans. It’s the director’s way of saying: “See? I used a puppet just like the one you loved in the old movies.”

But that’s not the scene’s only problem. At the end of Return of the Jedi, it’s Luke’s insights into his father’s feelings that allows Darth Vader to return to the light side of the Force and defeat the Emperor. Yoda and Obi-Wan on the other hand didn’t see it; they were the masters who allowed the Emperor to take over in the first place. By the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke proves himself to be wiser than both his teachers.
Hence, bringing Yoda back to urge Luke on now is not only fan service, it contradicts the character’s arc. Here, Hamill and the fans are right to criticize the movie.
In fact The Last Jedi, just like The Force Awakens, is very happy to reset its characters original arcs: Han is again a smuggler, Leia again the leader of a small group of rebels, and now Luke, still depending on Yoda for guidance. Why? Because the filmmakers behind those films, despite their claims to the contrary, would rather give the audience the same thing they already know it likes rather than take risks.

And then….

Ultimately, The Last Jedi is not a bad movie. Its production is certainly flawless, its visuals stunning. The cast performs more authentically than in any other film of the saga. Half its story is engaging and has a couple of clever moments.

The Lost Art of Epic Screenwriting or Why The Last Jedi Disappointed the Saga’s Fans

But, as I’ve outlined in the above post, it lacks a certain epic feel that was integral to the Star Wars experience. Add to this:
– A blatantly unoriginal plot that only poorly rehashes The Empire Strikes Back,
– Clunky plot twists often brought about by an attempt to hide the script’s derivative nature,
– Confusing themes with tacked-on unconvincing payoffs,
And what you end up with is a movie that audiences have a legitimate right to be disappointed with.

 

Every plot hole, far-fetched coincidence and convenient happenstance in Star Wars: The Last Jedi

For a month now, Star Wars: The Last Jedi has dominated the box-office and divided the saga’s fans.
There definitely is much to say about the film but here, I’d like to focus on what I see as its most glaring flaw: a constant recourse to cheap convenient plot points to further its story, hence the following list.
Is this nitpicking? In a sense. None of the following is a significant problem on its own. But their accumulation is. One could even argue that this one film has more plot holes than the rest of the saga put together. Here goes:

– When Poe disobeys Leia’s orders to break off the attack, the Rebel fleet waits for the fighters to return, risking being destroyed by the dreadnought. The fighters however are capable of jumping to hyperspace on their own so there’s no reason for the fleet to wait for them.

– The dreadnought fires on the base and only then on the escaping Rebel fleet. A better tactic however would be to fire at the ship first and, once it’s destroyed then fire on the base. The base isn’t going anywhere.

– Initially displeased by Hux’s handling of the attack, Snoke is relieved when he learns that they can actually track the Rebels through hyperspace. This is however quite a breakthrough and furthermore, it’s installed on every ship in the fleet, including Snoke’s personal flagship. That he’s only been informed of this ability just now is bizarre. Also worth mentioning is that this is not something that was available to the First Order in the previous film, though that film and this one are contiguous.

– Finn tries to flee the Rebel fleet using an escape pod. Escape pods however have limited range. The most likely result in using one is that it’ll be picked up by the pursuing First Order fleet.

– The First Order keeps chasing the Rebel fleet hoping they’ll run out of fuel. There’s however no reason why part of the First Order fleet can’t go to lightspeed to get ahead of the Rebels and block their flight.

– Finn and Rose realize as they talk how the First Order’s hyperspace tracking works. Not only is there no real way they can be certain that all their speculations are true but it’s been established that Finn is a low level trooper often relegated to janitorial duties. While it’s fine for Rose to make all those deductions as she’s a trained engineer and mechanic, it’s out of character for Finn.

– They then explain the plan to Poe, saying they’re being tracked by the lead ship. Poe suggests blowing up that ship but Finn and Rose counter this idea by saying the First Order would then track them from another ship. That means that while every ship can track them, conveniently only one can do it at a time for no clear reason. Nor is there a rational way that Finn and Rose can know that.
Also, how do they know which ship is currently doing the tracking? They assume it’s being done from the larger ship, Snoke’s flagship. However, that ship wasn’t present during the initial escape over D’Qar; which means another ship tracked the Rebel fleet when it jumped to lightspeed. There’s really no way Finn and Rose can know the tracking has been taken over by the other ship, nor is there any reason why it did.

– Since they can’t blow up the tracking ship, they decide to board it and to do so, they must get past its shields. At no point do they consider that they could be seen boarding the enemy ship, despite the fact that throughout this film, and the whole saga, characters are constantly looking out windows into space and see other ships flying around.
Also worth noting is that, while getting past that ship’s shields is a major plot point now, earlier during the attack on D’Qar, the dreadnought they take down didn’t seem to have shields since Poe could knock out all its guns and the bombers make their run unimpeded.

– Anyway, the way to get past the shields is to hack them so they contact Maz Kanata to ask her to do it. It’s interesting to note that the scene implies that it’s Poe’s idea to ask Maz, despite the fact the Poe doesn’t know Maz. She was Han’s contact and, in the previous film, only met Finn and Rey but not Poe.

– Maz however can’t help them because she’s embroiled in a gunfight she describes as a union dispute. The last time we saw Maz, she was standing in the rubble of her cantina that had just been destroyed by the First Order. Considering this film and the previous one are contiguous, it’s just strange that Maz could have become involved in that, presumably on a different planet, only a day or two later.

– Also, that they have no difficulty contacting Maz means the First Order doesn’t jam their communications, even though that’s something that’s been done in other films. Maybe. But then, one of the Rebel’s repeated goal is to find a base with a transmitter allowing them to send an SOS to their allies. Apparently, they can’t do that from the fleet but since they can contact Maz, we can only assume they could contact some of their allies which, in turn, could relay that call for help.

– Maz, being busy with whatever, points them in the direction of a master codebreaker, wearing a red flower brooch on his lapel that they’ll find at the gaming table of a casino. First, that seems a lot more complicated than just telling them his name.
And second, there’s really no way she can know what he’ll be wearing or where he’ll be. What if he’s sleeping when they get there? Or out for lunch? They’ve got very little time to find him and there’s no way Maz can be certain he’ll be in the casino right when they get there.

– Regardless of how flimsy that lead is, they get on the journey and take a ship to Canto Bight. Which means that apparently, you can leave the fleet at any time without the First Order at their heels caring or even noticing. Why they can’t also evacuate the fleet’s personnel this way is a mystery.

– The auxiliary Rebel ships run out of fuel one after the other, transferring their crew to the main cruiser but the ship’s captain stays on the ship and dies when the First Order destroys it. What is achieved by the captain not leaving with his crew is unclear.

– On Canto Bight, Finn and Rose get thrown in jail and the one person they find themselves with coincidentally can do the one thing they’re after. Despite Maz having said that this was a rarefied skill only she and her famed codebreaker contact could. And apparently the first guy the heroes run into. A pity no one on the Rebel fleet could. Or that the Rebels had never before managed to recruit someone which such a useful and, apparently, widespread skill.

– Now, Finn and Rose are initially wary of DJ but, to their surprise, he soon demonstrates some skills by easily breaking them out of the cell. So what do they do then? Run away from him, in the complete opposite direction. Despite that fact that maybe he could actually be the solution to their problem and also, he probably knows how to escape the prison better than they do.

– DJ then runs into BB-8, come to rescue Rose and Finn. Later events indicate that BB-8 then follows DJ to steal a ship. There really is no reason for BB-8 to trust DJ or care about him (since BB-8 didn’t see DJ hack the cell’s lock), yet BB-8 immediately hooks up with him and stops looking for Rose and Finn.

– Aboard the ship bringing them back to the fleet, DJ asks Rose for her pendant as an advance upon his payment. Now, it’s weird that the pendant would be so valuable. It seems however that DJ asks for it as a test of Rose’s commitment, but he has no way of knowing how valuable the pendant is to Rose.
Later, we find out that he actually needs the pendant to short-circuit the controls of the door to the tracking system’s room. But it’s a far-fetched coincidence that Rose’s valued pendant is the exact size, shape and alloy that DJ needs for that, just as it is far-fetched that he knew ahead of time this is the exact tool he’d need.

– As said before, Finn, Poe and DJ board Snoke’s flagship without being seen by anyone on that ship or the dozen of other ships escorting it.

– After he takes over command, Poe rushes to the cruiser’s bridge. The first thing he does when he sits in the command chair is switch off the lights in the ship’s hangar, hence giving Holdo an opportunity to overpower her guards. There’s no clear reasoon why the lights in the hangar have to be turned off however.

– Holdo then sets her plan into motion to evacuate the fleet with shuttles. While the shuttles have cloaking devices that make them hard to detect, they certainly are not invisible. Holdo can be seen watching them depart from the bridge and later, Snoke shows them to Rey from his ship. Yet nobody on the pursuing ships seem to see them, nor is Holdo’s plan taking into account that someone could and ruin everything.
Holdo chooses to remain on board the cruiser, telling Leia that for the shuttles to escape, someone has to fly the cruiser. Yet later, Holdo simply stands on the bridge of the cruiser watching the shuttles leave and doing nothing.

– As Finn and Rose are about to be executed, they are surrounded by Captain Phasma and hundreds of troopers. Yet after the Rebel cruiser catastrophically collides with the flagship, Finn and Rose are fine. All those troopers however are dead or gone. Except Phasma who shows up a second later, unharmed and coming from a totally different side of the hangar with a fresh new squad.

– When Phasma kicks Finn down a pit, he miraculously survives thanks to a levitating platform that just happened to be there. A moment later Phasma dies because the very portion of floor she stands on collapses.

– When Poe awakes, Leia tells him that Holdo’s plan relied on the fact that she knew the First Order was only tracking the cruiser. Let’s ignore that there’s no rational way Holdo could know that, or that since we’ve been told all the ships in the First Order fleet could do the tracking, it doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t track every ship. But if that’s true, then why did all the auxiliary ships stay and get destroyed instead of jumping to hyperspace?

– As Luke confronts Kylo Ren on Crait, Poe realizes that if Luke could get into the base, then they can also get out that way. However it’s later revealed that Luke isn’t on Crait but only projecting an image of himself through the Force. The fact that there is a way out that the Rebels use to flee is a complete coincidence.

– At the film’s end, the surviving Rebels flee Crait aboard the Millenium Falcon. The film’s major obstacle for them though was that the First Order could track them through lightspeed. At the end though, despite the fact that they’ve never solved that problem, they manage to escape nonetheless.

That last item is particularly revealing as it highlights the film’s most damning flaw. Epic action stories like those of the Star Wars franchise work on a simple basic principle: give the protagonists a goal, set obstacles before them and watch the heroes try to overcome those obstacles by being resolute, clever and brave.
But if the obstacles come and go willy-nilly, if the heroes solve their predicaments by resorting to contrived methods, two things happen. First, you rob the audience of the ability to anticipate what will come next. And that precludes any possibility of suspense, an essential trait of a successful action film.
And second, whenever the heroes achieve anything, it doesn’t feel earned. The audience rightfully feels cheated and that is possibly the most prevailing feeling among those who didn’t like The Last Jedi.

The Lost Art of Epic Screenwriting or Why The Last Jedi Disappointed the Saga’s Fans

Two weeks after its release, the latest installment of the franchise has split the Star Wars fans. Can you blame them for being so demanding? After all, Star Wars wouldn’t be the most successful franchise in film history if it hadn’t been kicked off decades ago by arguably some of the most perfect films in the medium.
Yet, despite some incontrovertible qualities, The Last Jedi has faced backlash unheard of since The Phantom Menace. (None of which affected either movie’s box-office numbers for such is the franchise’s power.)
The first prequel however was plagued by some glaring flaws. The Last Jedi’s problems are more subtle to see. Here is what I think they are.

And, obviously: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Scope

At heart, Star Wars is an epic saga, taking place over decades and spanning an entire galaxy. And George Lucas had very clever ways to make us feel that scale, both within each movie and in between.
Within because whenever characters traveled from one planet to another, even though that involved the magic known as hyperspace, the story either cut to another location, or the traveling characters could be seen doing something en route. This lent the galaxy a sense of scale: you could go from one planet to another but it still was a journey.
In between because every movie took place a significant amount of time after the previous one and this had two distinct effects. First, it meant that each movie felt fresh. Time had passed, the characters had experienced things in the interval and while we didn’t know what, we could see that they had changed. Characters arcs were furthered off-screen and we were coming back just in time to see the interesting stuff that derived from this. And second, it meant that the story took place over months or even years, contributing to its gravitas. Struggling for the galaxy’s freedom was not done over a weekend. It took a steady and prolonged effort to achieve things and the heroes’ ultimate success was earned in a satisfying way.

On both counts, The Last Jedi falls totally short. To be fair to writer/director Rian Johnson, J.J. Abrams had set him up to fail on the latter issue by ending The Force Awakens the way he did and making it impossible for The Last Jedi to start any other way. Here, the lack of vision from the producers of the new trilogy rather than the writing of each individual film is to blame. Yet the flaw remains and consequently Episode VIII opens with the least interesting crawl of all the episodes, diminishing the film from its very first image. In fact, the only people who can derive any benefit from the crawl are those who haven’t seen The Force Awaken, which is literally nobody.
Additionally, The Last Jedi follows in its forebear footsteps, with characters zooming from one place to another in mere minutes, from fleet to planet back to fleet as easily as taking the bus.
And they shouldn’t, because Star Wars isn’t really science-fiction. It’s fantasy masquerading as sci-fi. Going to another planet should be like sailing to a distant island. It can be done but it’s supposed to be an adventure, something you don’t undertake without good reason. By forgetting that, the makers of those new films rob them of the scope that contributed a significant part of their epic feel.

Continuity

Another thing that made Star Wars great, and stand out from the beginning, is how good the films were at immersing us into a familiar yet exotic and cool universe. Never before in film history had a movie so intricately depicted a fantasy setting with such authenticity and that has always been a major part of the franchise’s appeal.
And yet, The Last Jedi seems more intent on ignoring many of the basic rules of that universe than The Force Awakens was. While the latter mostly took liberties with how hyperspace worked, allowing starships to jump in and out of it whenever and wherever, The Last Jedi now allows ships to be tracked through hyperspace, Force ghosts to rain down lightning and ships jumping into hyperspace to crash into heavily defended cruisers to deal catastrophic damage.
Is it just fan nitpicking to fault the film for this? An inability to accept new ideas? No. A fantasy universe needs to be bound by rules. The characters must work within the framework of those rules to succeed. But if anything can change at the writer’s whim, then two things happen.

First, the character’s previous achievements are diminished. If you can jump to hyperspace through an enemy ship to destroy it, then why not use that technique to destroy the Death Star? If you can jump in and out of hyperspace anywhere, anytime, then why didn’t Queen Amidala’s ship do that when leaving Naboo rather than force the Trade Federation’s blockade? Or the Millenium Falcon when taking off from Hoth? Or the rebels to land on Endor’s Forest Moon? Changing the rules means the actions the heroes have taken in the past are not the best they could have been and this lessens how clever and heroic they were.
Second, if the rules are not constant, then it becomes impossible for the audience to anticipate what the characters will do next. And that ability to anticipate what comes next is essential to creating suspense. So the negative reaction to the liberty taken by The Last Jedi with some fundamentals of the Star Wars universe isn’t just fans unwilling to embrace change. It’s robbing the movie of the ability to create the most essential feeling an adventure movie requires to thrill an audience.

Purpose

At its core, the Star Wars saga is a simple tale of good and evil, and so characters were consistently given simple objectives to fulfill, in each movie and for each sequence within each movie.
In The Last Jedi however, half the cast spends the movie on a side quest that keeps stringing along plot holes and deus ex machinas. And even if you can get past those, when ultimately that quest fails, it leaves the audience feeling that they’ve been cheated into watching a sequence with little payoff. That lack of payoff can also be said of various other moments in the movie and, compounded to the previously mentioned inability of the filmmakers to imbue the movie with scope, makes the audience feel cheated again and again.
This is also true of the movie as a whole. All other episodes move the larger story forward and set up expectations for the next installment. But The Last Jedi doesn’t really achieve anything, leaving the story pretty much where it was when it started and doesn’t make us crave for what comes next. We’re left to make do with Poe’s statement that “they’re the spark that will reignite the resistance”. Isn’t that already what they were doing? And, once more, the short time span between that movie and its predecessor hasn’t allowed the conflict to evolve enough for this to carry the weight it needs to be meaningful.

In fact, the only character to truly achieve anything in this film is Kylo Ren who takes Snoke’s place as Supreme Leader of the First Order. Yet this too is underwhelming, as Snoke was never truly developed as a character, despite having been teased as the major villain in the previous film. Here is yet another example of how this trilogy’s makers have failed to understand Lucas’ work.
In the original film, we didn’t know who the Emperor was. And it didn’t matter because this was the story’s starting point. But we then watched heroes suffer and fight to defeat that Emperor through three films. We derived enjoyment from their success. If all of that has been erased, then we rightly feel entitled to an explanation as to how this could have happened.

Ultimately, these are not The Last Jedi’s only flaws. Major plot holes repeatedly plague the story. Attempts at comedy are poorly place, often undermining the action and the drama rather than heightening them. And, just like The Force Awakens came across as derivative for too closely following the plot of A New Hope, so does The Last Jedi with The Empire Strikes Back.
But put together, these flaws reveal a deep failure on the part of these movies’ production team to grasp what made Star Wars awesome in the first place. And the result is a movie the utterly fails to deliver the exhilarating epic vibe that George Lucas could craft so well and that audiences rightfully expect from each new installment of the franchise.

[SPOILERS!] The Good, the Bad and the Disappointing: an objective look at Star Wars – The Force Awakens

Now that every serious fan has seen the last installment of the beloved saga, reviews abound, message boards are being flooded and sentiments ranging from adoration to revulsion are being bandied on every possible aspect of the film.
As a long time aficionado of everything galactic, it is my obvious duty to do likewise, hence this three-part review.

Also, just in case you forgot the title of this column: SPOILERS AHEAD! You’ve been warned.

The disappointing

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I have a bad feeling about this…

Cinematography
Clearly, The Force Awakens (TFA) has a more modern cinematography than its forebears. From the quick cuts as Rey loads her scavenged parts on her speeder to the aerial last shot of her and Luke facing each other, these are more dynamic and modern techniques than you can find in any of the other episodes.
Is there anything wrong with using contemporary techniques for the newest film? Yes. Even back in 1977, Star Wars was not breaking any grounds with its camera work. George Lucas was paying homage and revisiting the serials of his youth and the samurai films that inspired him. To do so, he deliberately filmed Star Wars using older techniques.
It gave the saga a timeless feel that was adequate to its narrative material. Not only does the new film have a different feel than the others, it has lost that classical connection.

The new evil
For a new trilogy, you need new villains. The First Order is an acceptable resurrection of the Empire, yet its existence is not well-enough introduced. True, Star Wars did fine without a long rambling explanation of the Empire’s rise and jumped right into things. What worked in the first film is simply not enough here.
We’ve followed the characters’ efforts to bring down the Empire through an entire trilogy. We rejoiced at their well-deserved victory. Erasing it with a couple of sentences in the crawl is simply too unsatisfying.
Kylo Ren, with his compelling background story and Adam Driver’s lank frame makes for an exciting antagonist. Supreme Leader Snoke is another story. While his appearance as a giant hologram is ominous, his design is cliché and unmemorable and his name is poorly chosen. Sure, Jabba is a grotesque name and Jar-Jar is simply silly. But it’s a good thing to give a grotesque character a grotesque moniker and a silly character a silly one. Snoke feels like the name for the rejected fifth teletubby.

Lackluster structure and drive
However high or low you rate the six previous installments, they all do something quite well: climax. Each film efficiently ramps up to its thrilling final battle in a way TFA fails to match.
Even the individual fights are poorly structured. This is true aboard Han’s cargo where Han and Chewie simply disappear for a couple of minutes as the story focuses arbitrarily on Rey and Finn. Even more so during the battle on Takodana where Finn’s first sparring with the lightsaber has him fight a nameless trooper who happened to conveniently have a melee weapon. Clearly, Captain Phasma would have made a much more meaningful opponent in that scene. (And would have met a much more satisfying end.)
Not everything in the previous films is stellar but characters had purpose. Where is Kylo Ren going when he crosses that improbable catwalk except to a convenient place to showcase Solo’s demise? Where is Rey going when she scales down that chasm and sneaks into that compartment?
Decent at best, the overall structure and drive of TFA doesn’t quite make the film as exciting as a Star Wars episode deserves to be.

John Williams’ score
Of course, Star Wars wouldn’t be Star Wars without its music. Many would argue this is the one area where the prequels lived up to the original trilogy.
While TFA’s score is nothing to be ashamed of, and a couple of new pieces are nice, it never reaches the range and beauty of any of the six previous works.

The bad

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Maybe not that bad…

The design (or lack thereof)
From its inception, one of Star Wars’ most amazing feature was its elaborate and hugely creative design. The film featured countless aliens, all weirder than the next; heightened exotic locales; and vehicles the design of which seemed more cool than functional. Every episode after the first contributed its share of that.
TFA is pathetically lacking in this area. Almost everything is a variation on something existing. Planets: Jakku is basically the new Tatooine, Tokadana is a mild Endor and Starkiller base a more hospitable Hoth. Starships are vague upgrades, whether it’s a slightly redesigned X-wing, an upside variant of the Imperial shuttle, or a Star Destroyer look-alike. The new ones are worse, from landing crafts that look like vague flying barges, to Solo’s cargo which is the least interesting ship in the entire saga, only to be topped later by Leia’s featureless cylinder transport. And aliens as memorable as Jawas, Tuskens or Tauntauns? Not one in sight.
Sure, this cornucopia of ships, aliens and planets was possibly fueled by the mercantile nature of the saga. It sold toys. But it also looked mightily cool on-screen and was one of Star Wars’ most iconic features. Here, it is conspicuously absent.
(An exception to this is BB-8 which, while certainly being an R2-D2 derivative, still manages to be a clever improvement on the older droid’s design, allowing it to more dynamically follow the characters during the more fast-paced sequences.)

The scale
One thing George Lucas did exceptionally well was convey the epic scale of the universe his story took place in. Planets were vast, the galaxy vaster still and while you could go from one planet to the next quite easily, it still was a time-consuming adventure. All of this lent Star Wars a gravitas that enhanced its narrative.
TFA was particularly poor in this area. It shows quite ubiquitously when Starkiller base destroys the Hosnian system. (A system, by the way, whose purpose is quite unclear.) As the weapon fires, Kylo Ren can watch the beam leave the planet from the bridge of a Star Destroyer. The system’s destruction is witnessed with their unaided eyes by Han and Finn on Takodana. Minutes later, Kylo Ren arrives to capture them, as if all these planets and systems are only minutes away from each other. Similarly, Han happens to be just moments away when his beloved Falcon takes flight and characters jump back and forth from one system to the next without even pausing for breath.
Lucas masterfully made us feel the scope of his world and adroitly depicted the passage of time in order to convey a palpable importance. Abrams has no such clear vision. Speaking of which…

Universe inconsistency
It wouldn’t be the first time Abrams has been accused of being slapdash with a universe he was brought to rejuvenate. Star Trek suffered that same fate, yet the film was a reboot and reboots, by their very nature, allow room for change.
TFA, on the other hand, is supposed to continue the saga. And Star Wars at its heart, has an invariable context: a vast galaxy permeated by a mystical energy called the Force. Abrams blatantly ignores both.
First, the galaxy. It works the way it does because hyperspace allows travel from one system to the next. During all previous films, it has been established that to jump in and out of hyperspace, you needed to be a certain distance away from a planet. This is why the Millenium Falcon runs into the Star Destroyers above Tatooine. Or Hoth. Or the Queen’s ship does the same above Naboo. Or Obi-Wan when he pursues Jango to Geonosis. Apparently, all of this was unnecessary and maybe flying through hyperspace is like dusting crops after all.
Second, the Force. The one thing we’ve always known about it is that it takes quite a time to master it. Yet, within a few hours Rey can do mind-tricks, telekinesis and fight a trained Sith with a lightsaber.
Certainly, consistency is not an absolute. Things can change if narrative commands it. But a fantasy world needs clear rules for the audience to be able to anticipate what the characters can and cannot, will and will not do. That is how you build suspense. If you renege those rules for no clear reason, you rob your audience of this indispensable ability.

Recycled ideas and cheap plot points
One thing that TFA makes very clear is that it will steer clear of the prequels’ flaws. It takes little risks, a common notion in today’s industry. Yet the film does reuse existing ideas so much that you could almost call the film a remake.
This is evident very early on when a gun springs out of Poe’s starfighter much like one did out of the Falcon in The Empire Strikes Back. The trend keeps repeating itself as a droid is entrusted with vital information, a giant weapon destroys a star system and a raid of fighters must take it down after its shield are disabled.
This unoriginality is compounded by the cheap coincidences that plague today’s writing like Luke’s lightsaber just waiting to be found on the first planet the heroes randomly land on or Finn conveniently running into Rey on Starkiller base.
Despite some of their flaws, none of the previous films stooped down to that level of laziness and had the decency to respect its audience with a sensible, if not always brilliant, plot. There is only so much we can ascribe to the will of the Force.

The good

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Nothing wrong here. Move along…

Comedy
If there is one area the prequels were truly awful at, it’s humor. A light comedy touch was always part of Star Wars’ makeup, yet from The Phantom Menace onward, it veered away from the wry tone of the original to delve into gross slapstick that diminished everything around it.
TFA again strikes the right tone of clever and witty banter that made the Original Trilogy so fun to watch. Humor is consistently cool, well placed, and delivered by the right character.

Character development
Not always the most well-handled item of the previous films, specifically in the prequels where the complexity of the task was often dealt with too hastily, all the characters in TFA are convincing and have interesting back-stories that develop into moving moments.
This is both true of the new characters which are original and likable as it is of the old ones for which the writers have had the courage to craft new twists that have shocked audiences.
Particular care has been taken in the writing of one of the franchise’s most memorable character: Han Solo. His connection to Kylo Ren is meaningful and his ultimate demise is a fitting and moving end to such an iconic character.
Though many have still to recover from that shock, it was a well crafted moment. The earlier scene where Han confronts two groups of pirates might have felt a bit extraneous. But in the light of the character’s fate, it was a nice touch to give us a never-before-seen glimpse of Han Solo as the smuggler before Harrison Ford put down the mantle for good.

Acting
Often excessively criticized in the Original Trilogy, acting quality did reach an all-time low for the prequels. This was even more surprising since most of the cast consisted of renowned thespians that have proved their skill elsewhere.
TFA in this regard is impeccable. Again, Harrison Ford rekindles his old charm to embody Han Solo and the newcomers are convincing and display amazing range throughout.
This is particularly true of Daisy Ridley who steals the show as Rey.

Dramatic tone
The dissent between George Lucas and producer Gary Kurtz regarding the tone of the upcoming Return of the Jedi famously led to the later’s departure from the production. Often criticized for being too childish and upbeat, many felt that Return had failed to bring closure to Empire’s gripping drama.
The prequels’ subject matter should have marked a return to that tone. Yet a combination of gross humor, heavy-handed dialogue and wooden performances marred that too.
It is a welcome sign that TFA’s writers have chosen to start the story with Luke’s disappearance. This is a classic development for a heroic saga, as identified by Joseph Campbell, the inspiration for the original film’s theme and structure.
Drama is at the heart of the franchise again. Moving, convincing, meaningful drama.

Conclusion

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Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back will remain timeless classics. You can watch those films again today and find literally nothing that you could change to make them better.
None of the other five episodes of the saga stand up to that test.
All of the above items are objective flaws and qualities. How much weight each one has and, as a result, how you ultimately feel about The Force Awakens, I leave up to you.

Star Wars shot echoes through time

A day after the release of the second Star Wars Episode VII trailer and the shot that left everyone in thrall is this one:

Yes, Han and Chewie finally back home on everyone’s favorite bucket of bolts had fans everywhere moved to tears.

However, it takes a slightly more knowledgeable Star Wars aficionado to see that this is not just any shot. Specifically, this shot is a re-staging of this one:

This shot, that doesn’t show up anywhere in the finished film, was a promotional shot extensively used to promote the first Star Wars movie and appeared on many products such as mugs, tee-shirts, etc.

The relationship is obvious: the positions of the characters relative to each other are identical, the Falcon is the backdrop for both, Chewie holds his famous crossbow (mostly famous because he hardly ever uses it) the exact same way and if you look closely at the most recent one, you can see Han also carries his signature DL-44 blaster. It’s a sure bet that, had the trailer been cut only a few frames earlier, the postures would have been identical.

This is intentional and is J.J. Abrams’ way of connecting his new trilogy with the old. Whether this is a good thing is debatable.

Abrams’ previous love letter to the movies of his childhood is Super 8. The film did a perfect job of recreating the mood and feel of the 80s. It also had little to offer in terms of plot and thrills, ending up being a very accurate, but very empty, attempt at recapturing an ancient glory.

What the original trilogy did well was break new ground. The Empire Strikes Back brought us an ice planet, a wizened Jedi master, a city in the clouds. Return of the Jedi introduced us at last to Jabba, dozens of new starships and a lightning spewing emperor.

Creating a new Star Wars doesn’t just mean updating a few designs and adding a couple of small blades to the side of a lightsaber. It means bringing something fresh to it. That’s what I’ll hope Abrams understood when I step into the theater next December.