Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Everybody is wrong about it.
(Of course, major spoilers. What do you expect?)
Seriously, people. Everyone’s wrong about it, every single critic. Which, as we all know, means “everyone” these days. Generally speaking, the movie is just a-OK, going into mediocre.
I just saw the movie yesterday. That means January 24, 2016. So yes, that’s long time after its debut and you might think that I spent my time browsing through comments getting my hopes high or low or high and then low, and I finally watched it with a lot of crap in my head and that influenced my appreciation.
Nothing of the sort. First of all, I live in China, so The Force Awakens (TFA) was scheduled to open here in January, a full month after its world opening. Probably afraid of Chinese folks taping it at the cinemas and starting to sell it or stream it immediately which, yes, I can appreciate the concern. Secondly, no, I didn’t read a single review of it until I saw it. All I did was see the trailers back in November and got excited about them just like everyone else. Nostalgia, man.
Let’s get this out of the way: what kind of fan am I? You might have asked yourself that from the beginning, probably with a furrowed brow. Of course, here it is: I am 46, and saw the original three films (in Mexico) back in the day. And yes, like everyone else I was completely floored by them. Loved them. It was huge in Mexico. Made my own R2D2 with a can of Coke and my lightsaber with a flashlight and some random plastic tube painted white because, you know, 70s Mexico. That being said, I have never been what you call a rabid fan, nor even a particularly knowledgeable one. Yes, I used to buy the trading cards and I eventually got a couple of action figures from an aunt that went shopping to Texas, which I then proceeded to utterly and forget about. I seem to remember I found them later in one of those forgotten trunks where you keep childhood memories, and Luke in his snow uniform had lost his head. I don’t really know if the other one was Han Solo or not, because he didn’t have his white shirt and cool black vest, but an awful blue parka who gave him more of a Cruella de Vil vibe.
It never even occurred to me that you could get the full collection of action figures and set a special room for them in your house, where you could worship every night. I had a Star Wars t-shirt but I definitely will not put down “Jedi” when I’m filling out a form that has a blank for Religion. Seriously, who does that? I’ve read that people do that. For real? Snopes doesn’t seem eager to clarify.
Anyway. I guess you could call me an average fan. I also loved Star Trek and Galactica and all those movies and shows from the 70s. When the prequels came out I went and saw them and I was very entertained by most of the new stuff (go, Darth Maul!) and mildly annoyed by the shortcomings (why did Darth Maul start to Sith-tapdance instead of finishing Obi-wan?), but I do not think that Mr. Lucas somehow metaphysically defecated on any childhood memories nor that my generally optimistic outlook on life was desecrated irreversibly. I probably went for a pizza after Episode I, which is always a palate cleanser for almost anything. The prequels could have been better, sure, but I was not passionate about, I don’t know, writing fanfic to describe the awfully painful demise of Jar Jar Binks and the fate of his corpse being digested inside a Sarlacc. Just so that you know that I can make a Sarlacc reference.
Though, to be perfectly honest, I did have to Google it to see the correct spelling. I first wrote it as “Sarlaac”, which seemed perfectly appropriate to me. Who came up with that spelling anyway? Why not the double “a”? It seems more reasonable than the double “c” which doesn’t really add anything to its sound, does it? And the “aa” is in keeping with the nice tradition of evil-sounding-double-a’d names like Baal and Desaad. But hey, that’s just me, right? I don’t get paid to come up with ridiculous names but I should, come to think of it. I could come up with some rad-sounding names and I definitely wouldn’t stick it to my hated editor-boss by coming up with a foul thing such as Jedi Master Soon Baytes. No, I’m not kidding, there is in the Star Wars lore, or expanded universe or whatever, a guy called Master Baytes. Look it up, it’s in the Jedi Encyclopedia. Maybe that’s the real reason Anakin went over to the dark side. No sassy dame lost, no genocidal oopsies. Maybe all Palpatine had to say to him was, “Dude, come over. Here you will have a really cool-sounding, ancient, badass title: Darth. Say it. Just, make it roll out of your tongue: Darth Vader. You don’t want them Jedi pricks calling you Master Vader for the rest of your life, eh? Eh? Oh I’m hearing that Yoda now, ‘Master Vader, too much exerts himself, tired is of his struggles’. I hate that guy.” That should have done it.
Now, the thing is, if you remember, that I went to see the movie yesterday and thought is was a little on the side of crappy. I went with Chinese friends who only have a general, rather vague idea of the whole mythology so I couldn’t really get into details with them. But I thought pretty much the same that I later found out are the main complaints: a total, absolute, unrepentant rip-off of the first Star Wars (yes, I’m that kind of fan who refuses to say “Episode IV”) and a god-awful villain.
I guess the rip-off thing is the lesser evil (see what I did there? Hehe). But really, the bad guy. Come. On. The first time you see him, someone shoots him from behind and he stops a plasma blast mid-air. Holy crap. That’s something even Vader didn’t do. Honestly, you expect even the Emperor to do a slow clap at that trick. What I’m saying is, this dude is packing some serious Force.
And then a janitor and a scavenger, who have never even seen a lightsaber, hand him his own ass.
Luke trained hard, first with Obi-wan and then with Yoda and then he faced Vader, who proceeded to cut his hand off without breaking a sweat. This guy… well, the scavenger girl not only kicks him up and down the forest but humiliates him long before that. I guess her midichlorian count must be off the charts to have had this dialog with him:
- I am a high commander of the First Order. And you are at my mercy.
- You creep. Take off your mask.
- Er… OK.
- Pussy.
- Hey, watch it! I am a practitioner of the Dark Side and I will now proceed to invade your mind. Ah… aha! I can see your home, I can see that island you see in your dreams, I am now seeing you wiping your ass after…
- You bastard!!
- Hehehe. But enough of this. Now I will invade your mind again, in exactly the same way, to discover what really matters, the map! … But…um. I, er, suddenly can’t. That’s funny.
Seriously man. Focus. You just did it.
…
Well, that was a letdown. So yeah, the movie has a lot of weak points, like a lot of action movies do. So I left the theater a little disappointed. But then again, I have to say this: the scene when Han and Lea meet again as she disembarks from her ship… that alone was well worth the price of admission. It was great, I was transported back and all that. I loved that scene. That, and every second that Han and Chewbacca were onscreen. Also, C3PO and R2, of course.
But here’s the thing: it is pure, unadulterated nostalgia. Nothing more. That is why I think it’s just a run-of-the-mill action movie. I started to think about the rip-off thing, about the flash over substance and many more things, but then it really dawned on me, and it was the reaction of my Chinese friends that made it click. There were two things: the first one was during the movie, when Rey — the girl who has the Force in her — is captured and attempts the famous Jedi Mind Trick© on the guard (who, by the way, was played by Daniel Craig, agent 007). She tells the guard:
“You will remove these restraints and leave this cell with the door open.”
First she does not succeed, but after a second attempt, the guard (yes, Daniel Craig. Just wow) is appropriately hypnotized and releases her. Not bad, rookie! But at this point one of my Chinese friends turns to me and asks, “Why the hell did that just happen? How did she…?” I said, “She has powers”, so he just went “Oh OK”. Then the second awakening (ok, I will cut that out) came after we left the theatre and we were discussing the movie — as I said, not in too much detail. I said I loved the scene when Han and Lea meet and that seeing him die was quite, quite upsetting. On the first count, they were completely blank, until after I reminded them exactly when that had happened. On the second, they were like, “Yeah, poor guy” but, you know, like when you see a red shirt be killed in Star Trek. Then they started, “Well, I think Transformers was better”. “No, I liked Avengers better”.
Yes.
Yes.
I understand.
We are all wrong. We cannot judge it objectively anymore, it has become a cultural artifact, we are emotionally invested in it. It is part of our modern cultural landscape. We don’t have a pair of fresh eyes to judge it, as my friends did, not being aware that they were expected to know what a Jedi mind trick is. To them the bad guy is a weirdo that talks to a battered, dusty helmet, and little more. No, they didn’t all know whose that helmet was. They didn’t flinch when they saw Han die. Seen as they saw it, it was just an average action movie, nothing more.
It works in reverse too. When “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” took the world by storm in 2000, winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, praise was heaped upon it everywhere. In China, well, not so much. I don’t mean the Chinese thought it was a bad movie, they liked it alright, but they were rather surprised by the unbound admiration it got abroad. They said “What, really? We have 500 movies like that one with way better stories and actors. They only liked it now that someone made it with a bigger budget and saturated colors?”
Er… well, yes. Yes we did.
Exact same thing. It’s all about what you bring to the movie you watch. And sometimes we bring way too much. Relax, will you. Let’s hope the following Star Wars movies are better because this one was, kind-of-objectively, so so. But I’m not going to blast you if you loved it either. Just, you know, dial it back a notch. I saw one of those guys who probably does write “Jedi” as his religion in his tax forms — and yes, I know tax forms don’t ask you that — in Facebook just today. He is so invested in his favorite franchise that apparently he cannot stomach the idea that it will not break some box office record currently held by Avatar, aka Smurf Pocahontas. He came to the conclusion that The Force Awakens will not break the record due to its less than expected performance in China. And he goes on to vent his outrage thus:
“Thanks to the ignorance of the fucking Chinese, The Force Awakens will not break the global box office record of the mediocre Avatar. What is with them that they weren’t turned on by it? I hope that because of that, this year their economy goes to hell and inflation shoots to the skies over there.”
Easy, chief, you were kind of on the sane side in the first two sentences. I mean, one sees all kind of depressingly stupid comments anywhere in online comment sections and we should be used to them by now, but. But you know what, no, we should not be used to them. This guy is not a even a random anonymous 14-year-old in YouTube, he’s 30-ish, has a decent job and signs with his own name. And of course, in his profile he has a picture of himself with one of the new, T-shaped, idiot’s lightsaber, which is a seriously stupid design. I mean, when the crossguard, the part of the sword which is there specifically to protect your hand, can literally cut it off, you are just not thinking ahead when you are talking to your dark side Hattori Hanzo. Yes, I know masters of the Force are superhumanly accurate and capable but, see above, “untrained random people hand him his ass”.
I seriously hope Episode 8: The Force Awoke and is Having a Bad Hair Day is an improvement. Come on, Kylo, cowboy up! You may still win the Chinese audience.
Focus, man.
