"The Last Jedi" Rant 1: Why Do People Care About Snoke?

This post is about Star Wars: The Last Jedi. If you haven't seen it or don't care, don't blame me for not understanding what I'm talking about. I couldn't be bothered explaining it in detail.

Seriously, why does anyone care about the backstory of Supreme Leader Snoke? A common complaint I've seen about "The Last Jedi" is that Snoke, the leader of the evil First Order, who supposedly seduced Kylo Ren to the Dark Side, was killed off (by Kylo) in this film with no explanation of his origins. People seem to have wanted to know how he came to be such a powerful force user and how he came to take control of the First Order.

Now, I'm not going to make the argument other people have been making: "Well, we didn't know anything about the Emperor!" That doesn't work because we can assume that an evil Empire is ruled by an evil dude who goes by the name of "The Emperor". With something like "The First Order", which emerged from said Empire, I suppose it's natural to wonder about the origins of its "Supreme Leader". Simply by watching The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, here's what we know about Snoke:

1. He runs the First Order as its Supreme Leader.

2. He's an alien (apparently).

3. He's fairly strong with the Dark Side: he can use force lightning and mess around with people over long distances, and what not.

4. He seduced Kylo Ren to the Dark Side, seemingly telepathically: it doesn't seem like he turned Ben Solo's mind in person, but rather whispered to him from afar. Admittedly, I'm interpreting that a bit.

5. He's dead now.

Note that I'm not including anything stated in any supplementary text, like the novelisation of The Force Awakens or one of the Visual Dictionary books or whatever.

So I have two questions.

1. Did we need any more information than that?

People seem to be asking, "If he's so powerful, where was he during the Empire?" Not around, I suppose. The galaxy's a big place. Presumably after the Empire fell he showed up and established control over the remnants, and their descendants, either seizing power over the already-forming First Order, or taking it upon himself to found the First Order. Around the same time he began luring Ben Solo to the Dark Side. What else do we need to know? Again, the galaxy's a big place. Maybe when Palpatine fell he saw his opportunity to rise. Palpatine's rise from Senator to Emperor in the Prequels took all of fifteen years. The thirty years between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens is plenty of time for Snoke to show up and take over. Again, any statements not made in the script of the film about how powerful he is, how old he is or what he was aware of aren't important.

2. Why would any of the characters be interested in it?

As Rian Johnson pointed out, Snoke's backstory isn't relevant to the characters. It may be relevant to the interests of some fans, but it's not relevant to Rey's story, and ultimately it isn't even that relevant to Kylo's beyond the fact that Snoke seduced him to the Dark Side.

This leads to a couple of points.

1. Snoke is a plot device. His characterisation isn't important.

So far, the Sequel Trilogy has had a number of major protagonists: Rey, Finn, Poe, Han, Luke and Leia. It has a major antagonist: Kylo Ren. It also has a number of supporting characters: BB-8, Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2, Rose, Holdo, General Hux and Snoke. Snoke is Kylo Ren's supporting antagonist. He's not really a main character in his own right. This is normal in fiction.

Snoke should be compared to the character of Professor Moriarty. Putting aside years of adaptations which have ludicrously overinflated the character's importance, Professor Moriarty isn't really a character at all. He's a plot device invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to kill off Sherlock Holmes. In "The Adventure of the Final Problem", Holmes reveals that he has been working against Moriarty, a master criminal, for a long time, but Watson has never even heard of him. A few days later, Moriarty and Holmes fall to their deaths. He's fiction's first supervillain, arguably, but he's really just a plot device intended to affect a more important character's story.

Snoke only exists as a plot device to serve Kylo Ren's character development. He provides an explanation for how Kylo fell to the Dark Side: Snoke seduced him. He also now provides an explanation for how Kylo became Supreme Leader: Snoke was killed by Kylo, who took his place. Snoke doesn't need some kind of "arc"; he doesn't need elaborate character development. He's an archetype which was created to serve the characterisation of the real antagonist, Kylo Ren.

I will concede one point here, however: the character of Snoke should never have been created. He's a lazy piece of shorthand to facilitate Kylo Ren being where he is, and a more creative explanation for their place on the Dark Side would have made Kylo Ren and the First Order more interesting in The Force Awakens. I never liked the character of Snoke because he seemed like a rehash of Palpatine. This is why I'm glad he was killed off in The Last Jedi, because he's a piece of lazy storytelling and the Sequels are better off without him. This leads me to my second point on Snoke:

2. Snoke doesn't deserve a backstory. He's a crap character.

As I just said, Snoke's entire existence is due to narrative laziness. He should never have been written in the first place, so it's best to minimise how much he dominates the script. He's not "cool" or "badass". People seem to think he is, but I feel like the people with that attitude are often modern-style nerds who have had their imaginations so warped by games that they can only appreciate characters in terms of their "power levels" rather than their characterisation or role in a story. He's just a generic villain presented through impressive but unambitious motion capture. He's a boring video game villain and the Sequels are better off without him from now on.

I'm sure if you genuinely care about Snoke, some shite novel will be written in a year or two explaining his bland and uninteresting rise to power.

Ranking the Star Wars films

Putting things in order is one of the most predictable habits of the common garden nerd, and one of which I'm not actually that fond, but I thought it would be amusing for me to "rate" the Star Wars films that currently exist in order, much as I "rated" the Doctors from Doctor Who some years ago, in terms of my personal preference. This should be noted: I am not by any means trying to rank these films in any kind of "objective" order based on a close and detailed study of filmmaking, because I'm not well informed about filmmaking. This order, rather, is from the film I like the least to the one I like the most. Like my list of Doctors, I'll also do it in "tiers", so you can imagine that groups of films are ordered as well. My reason for this is that I think that films made in the same era are more comparable than those made well apart, and because I think the Star Wars franchise currently lacks any substantial outliers which would make this not work.

Tier 3 (Bottom Tier): The Prequels

10. Episode III – Revenge of the Sith

You can read my thoughts here for why I think Revenge of the Sith is the worst Star Wars film. The main reasons, put simply, are because I think it looks horrible, it's poorly conceived and structured, and it features weak performances. I can't abide the overly-crisp, clean CGI look of everything, such as the opening battle and the clone troopers. I abhor the character of General Grievous, who is an unnecessary and stupid villain, and am consistently frustrated by how much time the film wastes on him and how absurd it is to kill off Christopher Lee's Dooku in the opening scene. Ewan McGregor is completely phoning it in as Obi Wan and Ian McDiarmid's extraordinarily hammy performance as Palpatine is cringeworthy. I really don't like this film at all.

9. Episode II – Attack of the Clones

This film is boring. That's the first and most vital thing that needs to be said about it. It's slow and dull. I'm not just talking about the ineptly-written romance scenes. I'm also talking about, for instance, the weightless and unbelievable CGI chase sequences and battle sequences, especially at the end. As is always said, Anakin is annoying and unsympathetic, with cringeworthy dialogue, while Christopher Lee brings presence but cannot redeem the weak and unbelievable script. Like Revenge of the Sith this also suffers from looking completely fake. Perhaps the only thing that elevates this above Episode III is that McDiarmid's performance is more restrained and it has Christopher Lee and not General Grievous, although there still isn't enough of Lee. The soundtrack also has at least one memorable new tune, "Across the Stars". Returning to negatives, however, I also dislike the depiction of the Clone Wars as clones versus droids, and this film establishes a trend continued in Episode III and the animated series of depicting a universe that I simply can't believe is the same one that is featured in the originals because of how it looks and feels.

8. Episode I – The Phantom Menace

This film is also very boring, being extremely poorly paced with weak direction that derives very unengaging performances from much of its main cast, but I've always been marginally more forgiving of Episode I than the other two. I still don't like the Trade Federation, including both the annoying Nemoidians and the lame battle droids, or the extremely tiresome podrace, but this is one in which I somewhat appreciate the depiction of a world we didn't get to see in the Originals. Naboo shows us a more "civilised" part of the galaxy without being too busy; I can almost see it fitting into the same universe. Of course the problem of an overly busy setting instantly occurs when we go to Coruscant, which always annoys me because I think "Why did we never see Coruscant in the Originals?" Jar Jar is annoying, but I've never found him that annoying; young Anakin is annoying too, but I find him to be less cringeworthy than teenage Anakin. I kind of like Ewan McGregor in this as Obi Wan before he's turned into more and more of a buffoon in the subsequent films, although like all the others his performance suffers from uninspiring direction. Also, while I think that the character of Qui Gon didn't need to exist, Neeson and McGregor make for more watchable leads than McGregor and Christensen in the subsequent films. Even though he's a complete waste, Darth Maul is kind of visually interesting. One of the biggest problems with this is how unnecessary it is, but the biggest problem is the poor pacing. The podrace is far too long, and is completely uninteresting, and too much time is spent with characters tiresomely planning things and discussing them rather than actually doing them, which doesn't work when the stakes are so low and the characters are uninteresting.

Tier 2 (Mid Tier): The Disney Films (so far)

7. Rogue One

In my "Initial Impressions" post I pointed out that I think Rogue One, in contrast to all the praise it's getting, is quite a dull film. My main problem with it when I saw it, and a problem I still feel now, is that the main protagonists are not very interesting and engaging, and I didn't care about them. That's my immediate reaction. There's some decent enough action, and some of the fan service is successful while some isn't. CGI Grand Moff Tarkin looks weird, but I like the inclusion of the character. Vader looks and sounds off, but again I like the inclusion of the character. Jyn Erso and her gang I simply didn't find interesting enough; we're offered a few scraps like Cassian's remark about his life in the rebellion and Bodhi's character development, but I found it insufficient. I mostly kind of enjoyed K-2SO and Chirrut because their pronounced traits gave me something to latch onto, but they were just supporting characters. Jyn and Cassian needed more. All that being said, I can't rate Rogue One lower than any of the Prequels because, even though it suffers from one problem they also have, being boring, this has far less cringe and overall it's more competently made.

6. Solo

Solo is a mediocre film which suffers clearly and obviously from extensive reshoots and rewriting, creating an inconsistent-feeling product, but it's better than Rogue One by virtue of being simply more fun and entertaining and taking itself less seriously. While Rogue One is an empty, hollow film pretending to be profound, Solo is just a romp with no pretensions to the contrary. While it is hindered by a meandering plot (the train job could be excised with no impact on the story) and having too many characters (Val, Rio and L3 serve little purpose), the performances are largely watchable even though the lighting at times is dark and muddy. Ehrenreich and Glover stand out as Han and Lando. While I can't really see this as Han Solo's actual backstory, and while in many respects it actually fails as an exploration of who the character might have been before his development in the original Star Wars, it's diverting enough.

5. Episode VII – The Force Awakens

The Force Awakens has a lot of problems, largely being the laziness of the plotting and some unnecessary CGI. If this film had replaced Maz Kanata with something else, had Snoke as an actor in makeup rather than a fake-looking CGI character, scrapped the rathtar sequence and replaced Starkiller Base with a plot point that wasn't just another Death Star, it'd be a much better film. It also suffers from having a somewhat weak soundtrack lacking in memorable new tunes. All that being said, what elevates this substantially above Rogue One in my opinion is that I personally found the characters to be far more likeable and interesting, particularly Rey, but also Finn and Poe. Finn is probably the weakest of the new characters as he's used too much for comic relief, but overall I find the characters sufficiently entertaining to watch. I also think that the film is visually fairly pleasing in terms of its cinematography, colouring and the like. It's a somewhat decent piece of action sci-fi cinema let down by a number of annoying elements.

4. Episode VIII – The Last Jedi

Despite the frenzied, over-the-top online backlash, The Last Jedi is at least half of an interesting film, albeit grafted to, in my opinion, a rather boring film. Almost everything that happens with Luke Skywalker, Rey and Kylo Ren in this film functions as a fairly interesting character study, exploration of the themes of the franchise as a whole, and effort to take things in a new direction. Unfortunately, this is lumbered by the distracting plots involving Poe, Finn and Rose. While I think, arguably, these plots serve the same thematic interest of the film as a whole, they're so clumsily-presented, and so awkwardly intercut-with and so much less interesting than the other half of the film that they become doubly frustrating to watch in comparison to the rest. That's what I think The Last Jedi's biggest problem is: in its desperation for absolute thematic consistency at every level it over-intellectualises itself to the point at which its ideas become obscured and inscrutable. That being said, everything involving Luke, Rey and Kylo is so stylishly-presented and so much more interesting than anything in The Force Awakens that for me it has to take the top spot of the Disney-era films thus far.

Tier 1 (Top Tier): The Original Trilogy

3. Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back

The received wisdom is that this is the best of the Star Wars films, but it's not my favourite of the original trilogy. I still like it a lot and think from a technical standpoint it's probably the strongest. It also has a number of classic sequences. Things like Han being frozen in Carbonite, Vader force-choking Admiral Ozzel, the AT-AT assault and of course the final duel are all extremely well realised. Yoda is a particular highlight, benefiting from a superb performance both vocally and in terms of puppetry by Frank Oz. The reason this one isn't my favourite is because at times I feel like it's just a little bit too slow, particularly the opening sequence up until Luke's rescue and some of the scenes when the Millennium Falcon is hiding in the asteroid belt. I also think that the development of the characters and progression of the story is just a touch more understated than is effective, because to me the "failure" of the characters in this one could be a touch more prominent in its representation. I'm sure there are plenty of arguments for why the "craft" of this film is the best; my personal reaction to the film is simply not quite as high as many people's is. That being said, it also has a terrific soundtrack and the all-time great moment of Vader revealing that he's Luke's father. This is the film that made Star Wars what it is today.

2. Episode VI – Return of the Jedi

In some respects, Return of the Jedi is my "favourite" Star Wars film because I greatly enjoy Luke's character development in this one, as he becomes a more confident character with greater wisdom. The scenes with Luke, Vader and the Emperor are classic, as is Luke's initial confrontation with Vader on Endor. I also rather enjoy all the puppetry used in the opening act of the film at Jabba's Palace, which is convincing and amusing, although I'm not the biggest fan of the rancor fight. The film's biggest weaknesses, obviously, are the Ewoks and the fact that Han and Leia have nothing to do as characters. I don't hate the Ewoks. I just think they go a little too far, and the earlier idea of setting that part of the film on Kashyyyk with the Wookiees would have been much better. The Battle of Endor, however, is my favourite space battle sequence of the films. Overall, I think this one could have been better in some respects, but is elevated by some extremely strong aspects, the most important of which being that it gives a satisfying ending to Luke's story.

1. Star Wars (or Episode IV – A New Hope)

Star Wars (or A New Hope if you prefer) isn't strictly my favourite but at the same time I think it's the most consistently enjoyable of the Original Trilogy. It has good music, good effects and engaging, likeable characters. The opening sequence is exciting, Luke's journey as a hero is a classic tale, the stuff aboard the Death Star is very fun and the final battle, featuring superb model shots and Vader himself manning a TIE Fighter to take the combat to the Rebels is all extremely entertaining. What I think elevates this film above the others in the Original Trilogy is that in addition to our consistent cast of Luke, Leia, Han and Vader (plus R2-D2, C-3PO and Chewie), this one also features Peter Cushing as Governor Tarkin and the largest role in the trilogy for Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan. These two bring an extremely watchable level of old-school class to the film that you don't get anymore and just elevates it slightly above the other two in my view.

One thing that has greatly improved my experience and enjoyment of the Original Trilogy is the release of the "Despecialized Editions" of the films, and I would highly recommend watching them if possible. I personally think that these are the best way to view the original films and appreciate their achievements and best qualities without the distraction of elements changed or added later.

"Who?"

"The Force Awakens" Redux: One Year On

"They used two different fonts in the earlier films!
How can I complain that they chose the wrong one!?!"

In my "Initial (Bad) Impressions" post on Rogue One, I said that I'd "mellowed out" towards The Force Awakens, after initially disliking it, and that's more or less true. When I first saw it I was unimpressed. I enjoyed it more on rewatch. Then it came out on Blu-Ray and when I watched it then, I liked it less. Then I rewatched it again the other day and I liked it more. I wonder if it's a situational thing; when I settled down the other day and watched it over a beer (and perhaps a couple of whiskies) it seemed far more agreeable than when I watched it the previous time. I watched Star Wars (or A New Hope if you prefer) the other day as well, and I had a beer (and perhaps a few whiskies) then too and I greatly enjoyed it. I watched The Empire Strikes Back the following day stone cold sober and enjoyed it less. So perhaps when I say enjoying a Star Wars film is situational, I mean that it's best consumed with alcohol. Maybe next time I watch The Phantom Menace or, heaven forbid, Revenge of the Sith, I should do ten shots of vodka beforehand.

"My nose hurts."

As usual, my opinion seems to fail to align with the consensus, which I don't object to, but becomes exasperating at times nonetheless. When The Force Awakens came out, everyone was raving about it, and I was frustrated because, while I thought the film had strengths, it didn't deserve the level of praise people were giving it. A year on, it seems that there's been something of a backlash. Now when I say "something of a backlash", I mean "on the internet". I bet if you asked your average punter who didn't spend all their time arguing with people in comments sections what they thought of The Force Awakens they'd probably still say "I liked it" or "it was pretty good". I'm not saying I'd wholeheartedly agree; I just think that's what most non-internet-lurking viewers would probably still be saying. The denizens of the internet, by contrast, seem to have collectively (and it worries me how collectively these people think) decided that The Force Awakens was bad for various reasons and that, by contrast, the Prequels are good. For my part, I probably find the Prequels to be less enjoyable than ever now, while, as I say, I've softened towards The Force Awakens. As such, here are my thoughts about twelve months down the track.

Things I Still Don't Like About The Force Awakens

"I'm as real as Grand Moff Tarkin."

Maz

I don't like the idea of some know-it-all character who appears out of nowhere, is wise in the force, knows what all of the protagonists ought to do in order to fulfil their character arcs, and possesses Anakin's/Luke's lightsaber. She comes across as a stereotypical "wise old lady" to me and I think the character is a cheap and lazy invention intended to force a vague sense of mystery into the story. She's annoying.

Snoke

There are only practical effects,
and those too weak to use them.

I hope they do something interesting with Snoke, because at the moment he just feels like "the Emperor's substitute". This is going to sound a bit mean-spirited, but I also wish they'd cast someone with a bit more presence than Andy Serkis in the role. I feel like he was cast just because he's an experienced motion capture actor and Snoke is a motion capture character, not because he'd be good at playing an evil supervillain.

"If you join our crew, you have to be
in the young adult novels about us."

Maz and Snoke

I still don't like how these characters are CGI motion capture creations. It seems unnecessary to me and they look too fake, which takes me out of the film when so many practical effects were used at other times, yet inexplicably were often relegated to the background. It doesn't make sense to me that they would leave detailed, believable practical effects work in the background, and have the focus be on computer-generated characters who look fake. There's a rumour floating around that Snoke is going to be performed through practical effects in Episode VIII, and I hope that's true.

Starkiller Base

Three years until Indy V.

This giant planet-destroying weapon is still an annoying rehash of the Death Star and I don't like it. I don't mind a snowy planet with an enemy base on it but it frustrates me that the film pulls a Death Star out of its arse halfway through. I also don't like Hux's over-the-top speech on it to the troops. I know it was meant to be over-the-top, but I still find it a bit cringeworthy, like one of those grandstanding speeches from New Who that are meant to sound impressive but aren't.

It's got physical immunity and magical immunity.

Han's Ship and Takodana

The sequence in which they're being chased around Han's other ship by the "rathtar" monsters doesn't feel right; the closest thing I can compare it to is the fight with the rancor and the sarlacc sequence from Return of the Jedi, but more drawn out and using annoying CGI. This combines with the boring stuff featuring Maz on Takodana, particularly Maz's mysterious-sounding dialogue and Finn and Rey's simultaneous freakouts, which makes the middle of the film feel slow and turgid to me. If something different happened between Rey and Finn leaving Jakku and the Resistance arriving to attack the First Order on Takodana, I'd find the film more consistently entertaining.

The Lack of Worldbuilding

"How many assholes we got here?"
"Yo!"

It still bothers me that the film doesn't go into more detail about why the Resistance is the Resistance and how the Republic and the First Order relate to each other. This is spelt out in spin off material, and I've looked it up and it seems to largely make sense, but the film still suffers due to lacking these pieces of explanation. It would have only taken a few remarks here and there to fill in the details.

The First Order can't afford the special
pen pockets the Empire uniforms had.

Some of the Dialogue

I think some lines in the film, especially quippy exchanges between characters, are a bit unbelievable and are less funny or clever than they think they are, like "You have to hide" "You have to leave" and "You're not hauling rathtars on this freighter are you?" "I'm hauling rathtars." This takes me out of the moment a bit because in my experience real people don't speak like that.

Anyway, those are my continuing gripes with The Force Awakens. Moving on...

Things I Like About The Force Awakens!

Rey!

"Gosh, it's rather nice out here in space, eh what?"

I like Rey. I think she's an effective protagonist; she's fairly likeable and pleasant and competent. Her rather delusional belief that her family will one day come back is a less effective piece of characterisation, in my opinion, and some of the character's critics argue that she's too competent, but I think her competence is either self-evidently explained or sets up things that I expect to be explained later. I think it's a bit rich to say that she's "too competent" or is some kind of flawless female empowerment symbol when she's psychically overcome by Ren on Takodana and carried off in his arms in a classic "damsel in distress" pose. That makes her seem pretty vulnerable to me. She also accidentally released the rathtars, didn't she? I'm looking forward to seeing her being trained by Luke in Episode VIII and I hope they have an interesting on-screen relationship.

"They brought me back using CGI."

Poe! (and to a lesser extent Finn!)

I like Poe. I think the character again comes across as likeable and I rather wish we got to see more of him in the film. Again, I hope more use is made of the character in Episode VIII. I think perhaps that he's a little too glib towards Kylo Ren at first, but by and large I think his characterisation as a cocky but not overconfident pilot is effective and his relationship with Finn is good. Finn is probably my least favourite of the new three largely because I don't think his characterisation is particularly consistent with his background (he seems awfully humorous and normal for an indoctrinated soldier) and I think his role as comic relief is heavy-handed, but I find him somewhat endearing and he has an good rapport with the other two.

Supporting Characters!

Isn't having your whole body roll
an incredibly inefficient way of moving?

I like aspects of the use of Chewbacca, even if I think he's used for comic relief too much, and I somewhat enjoy the sparing use of R2-D2 and C-3PO. I think BB-8 was an effective invention as well. I particularly find that having C-3PO talk to BB-8 in a familiar way makes the viewer feel more familiar with the character, which is sensible. Han and Leia are the two I can take or leave, really; it's nice to see them, but their presence still feels perfunctory to me, like they don't really need to be there.

Ship, sweet ship.

It Looks Nice!

As some modern films are (and many aren't), The Force Awakens is largely a visually pleasing film. I'm not talking about the use of camera angles or anything in particular. I just think that the film quality, the texture of the sets and costumes, the use of colour and so on make the whole thing quite appealing and in some respects comfortable to look at and watch even if I think some of the designs (particularly for the First Order's gear) are not entirely successful (seeming somewhat like arbitrary tweakings of what has come before).

Conclusion

Did he shoot this wearing a green glove?

As should be evident I've mellowed, and that's largely due to the film's pleasant look and effective characterisation, the latter being a strength of The Force Awakens which at first glance Rogue One appears to be lacking. One thing I want to see in the next film (besides plenty of Luke) is for Rey to interact with Poe in some capacity. I'm interested to see Episode VIII and I hope that something interesting is done with the next step of the story. Then again, I said that before. I still think The Force Awakens is flawed and could have been better, but let's say that I can live with it.

Hindsight: A 2015 Cinematic Retrospective

It appears that I saw more Hollywood films in 2015 than I did in 2014. Damn. You win this time, culture industry. As usual, let's begin with some films I didn't see.

Six 2015 Films You Might Have Expected Me To See, But I Didn't:

The Bad Education Movie

It's not exactly top-notch sitcom material, but I quite like Bad Education. It has some funny moments; it's better to watch while a bit drunk. Anyway, the film looked pretty uninspiring: the cringe factor of the show cranked up to a million, and the contrast between the "crazy" comedy characters and the scoffing, eye-rolling "straight man" characters exaggerated to an even greater degree. I don't think it would have ever been shown in cinemas over here.

Ex Machina

Apparently this is quite good. I just haven't seen it. Why haven't I seen this?

Update in 2017: I've seen this now. It was good, and rather challenging to my beliefs. It's odd to think about when apparently the director saw the robot, Ava, as the protagonist, while I viewed Caleb, who ends up trapped in the facility, in this role. Ava ends up becoming a murderer, but in a sense so was Nathan, and Caleb was his inadvertent stooge with a controlling saviour complex. At the same time, I wonder if the film's focus on punishing Caleb for his patriarchal decision-making overlooks the extent to which our actions are influenced by historical and social forces beyond our control. Also, we are left wondering how to view Ava; does she have emotions, but behaves selfishly, or is only following a routine? Is she justified in killing Nathan, who murdered several of her own kind (in a sense) and abandoning Caleb, who tried to save her for arguably selfish, patriarchal reasons of his own, because she was essentially created as a tool to manipulate men rather than as a person with her own identity and individuality? One to think on further, I suspect, and in any modern film that has to be a good thing.

The Hateful Eight

I don't mind a bit of Tarantino and I heard this was pretty decent. I just haven't seen it yet.

Update in 2017: I've seen this now. It was all right.

The Lobster

I understand that this weird dystopian satire is quite good too and I want to see it. It's supposedly a society where if you don't couple up with someone romantically and/or sexually, you turn into an animal. I'd be buggered, then.

Update in 2019: I was motivated to see this after seeing the director's film The Favourite, and I enjoyed both that and this. While as a dystopian text the equally oppressive nature of the City/hotel and the Loners could be construed as a false equivalence, as a reflection on the hypocrisies of both couplehood and singledom it was effective. The dull, stilted delivery really enhances the sense of the artificiality of how many relationships, both romantic and platonic, are navigated, the costuming is simple and effective, and the music and occasional dark humour create a sense of hyperreal oddness that tends to hit the spot for me. It's definitely not for everyone but I enjoyed it a great deal.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

More like the Man from C.U.... etc, am I right? I didn't really want to see this; I can't believe they're still trying to make films by rehashing old twentieth century spy and crime TV shows. Henry Cavill should play James Bond, probably.

Victor Frankenstein

Another horror film featuring Daniel Radcliffe? Can I expect more Woman in Black style quality? Probably not; I understand that this film is quite shit. I still want to see it, but it sounds like Universal is completely fumbling their attempts to bring their classic Horror franchises back to life.

Moving on...

Ten 2015 Films I Did Actually See:

Ant-Man

This was basically the definition of a generic superhero flick. Scott Lang (played by Paul Rudd, but underutilising his comedy potential) is an "honour among" style thief with a heart of (stolen) gold who just wants to be back in his young daughter's life. Thus he is hired to become the new Ant-Man, succeeding his new employer Hank Pym as a superhero who can become tiny and run inside people's ears and so on. The plot is incredibly derivative of Iron Man and Iron Man 2: the villain is an evil Ant-Man with his own, more powerful suit, who is going to cause terrible evil by flogging the suits to the military and/or Hydra. He and Ant-Man have a big punch up; Ant-Man wins. There are some good moments where normal things become tiny or huge, although it doesn't really make sense because the technology is said to just increase the space between atoms; if you turned a little Thomas the Tank Engine toy gigantic, for instance, it wouldn't smash through the side of the house, because it's still the same flimsy plastic, just stretched out further; the toy would still be the thing that broke. Also, if it just changes distance between atoms, how can Ant-Man shrink into subatomic size and risk disappearing into some weird microscopic dimension? Anyway, I believe this started off under the direction of Edgar Wright of British comedy fame but he quit part way through because Marvel kept interfering, and the film was finished by another bloke who played it safe. It shows. Rudd's Ant-Man is more interesting and funny in Captain America: Civil War than in this, his own film.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Ugh. This sucked. You can read my review of it here. At the time I didn't think it sucked that much, but in hindsight (which is the whole point of these annual articles) I'm pretty sure it did. The Avengers run around and have a fight with a big robot. A city gets smashed up in the process. Everything is basically Iron Man's fault, as usual. It feels like a piece of pointless filler padding out the cinematic universe.

Back in Time

I wouldn't have thought of this as a 2015 film but Wikipedia said it was, so let's say it was. This was a documentary about Back to the Future, because 2015 was when Marty came to the future in the second film. The bits in this where they were interviewing the actual cast and crew of the films was quite interesting, but loads of it was padded out with pointless bullshit like: fans at conventions who build their own DeLoreans (who cares?); some company trying to build a real life hoverboard (who cares?); the bloke who made that cartoon show "Rick and Morty" banging on about "Rick and Morty" (what does this really have to do with Back to the Future?) They should have made this just about the making of the films and reflecting back on it 30 years later, and relegated all the stuff about the tedious fans and the Rick and Morty guy patting himself on the back to a separate "fan" documentary that no one would have to watch.

Cinderella

I thought this was okay, to be honest; nothing special, but a pleasant enough way to pass the time. It's just a live-action remake of the classic Disney cartoon, which might seem like sacrilege to some but I'm just not nostalgic enough about those old Disney fairytale cartoons. It just felt a bit generic, kind of like that Gaiman adaptation Stardust. If they wanted to update the film, they could have provided a more realistic motivation for why the evil stepmother is so horrible. By contrast, if they wanted to keep it a bit absurd (as it still was at points, like when the fairy godmother appeared), they could have had the mice talk and stuff as well. Bonus points for having Hayley Atwell as the mum, but then negative bonus points because she gets killed off five minutes in.

Fantastic Four

Jesus. This was really terrible, and I'm honestly not saying that to go along with the crowd or something. I consider myself more of a Fantastic Four fan than your average punter (I have a medium-sized collection encompassing parts of the Lee/Kirby, Byrne and Hickman eras and, for whatever reason, the whole Waid era)  and this somehow was even worse than I expected. In some ways it tries to be its own thing too much, sort of like a B movie about teleportation rather than a superhero film, but it's also way too similar to the equally derided 2005 adaptation, with Doom having superpowers and the thin characterisation. I reckon this was done on the cheap, too, because huge amounts of it takes place in a single lab set. If you want more of my thoughts, see here, or listen to this podcast for thoughts which suspiciously coincide with mine. This probably gets my "worst film of 2015" award.

It Follows

This premiered in 2014 but come on, it's a 2015 film. Everyone saw it in 2015 (I actually only saw it this year). This was an interesting premise: a murderous "thing" is following a person; the only way they can fob it off onto someone else is by having "sex" with another person, and then the thing will start hunting them instead. They too must copulate furiously with someone to pass the curse or whatever off again. In contrast to The Lobster mentioned above, this wasn't too scary for me because I'd be completely safe from it wahey. Anyway, the idea is engaging and ominous, although the film isn't that scary in general. What it benefits from the most is an unsettling electronic soundtrack (by the same composer as that of the very pleasant soundtrack of the indie game Fez) and a curious dreamlike atmosphere in which the decade and time of year is very hard to pin down; it's sort of the past and the future at once, and the seasons seem to change between scenes. It's a film worth watching even if the premise is rather contrived.

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

Much like The Farked Ones last year, I, uh, didn't see this at the cinema. I only saw it the other day, in fact. It concludes the franchise, supposedly, and in a sense it does a decent job in wrapping up the plot: apparently everything that happened was in service of giving the demon a body... in 1992, despite this being set in 2013. As such, the time travel used in The Marked Ones continues here, and permits some unsettling moments. It also follows up the plot of the third film, giving a reasonable sense of closure. My main issue with the film was that there was way too much CGI; a special camera is introduced that allows us to see the invisible supernatural things, and it turns out that Toby the Demon just looks like a mass of CGI smoky shadows with a Voldemort face in the middle. A bunch of big CGI tentacles are used to kill some of the characters, and little girl du jour is abducted to the past through a big CGI time tunnel. That wasn't my cup of tea. It's no better or worse than the last two, really, and more or less gets the job done, but its use of CGI hampers the suspension of disbelief a bit. There are also two secondary protagonists, the main male character's brother and the main female character's friend, who exist purely for comic relief and fan service respectively, which makes this instalment feel perhaps the most "generic horror" in terms of the scenario of all the films.

Spectre

It's a crappy James Bond film starring Daniel Craig with a completely misconceived attempt to reintroduce Blofeld and the eponymous evil organisation. Read my full review of it here and some further thoughts here. The plot and the climax are a complete rip-off of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It's not worth discussing any further. First Craig was leaving, then he wasn't, and now he is again. Who knows anymore. I don't have high hopes for the next one.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Am I still talking about this? See my initial thoughts here and my full review and recap here. It's a mediocre film with a few memorable moments. I rewatched it recently and found it quite dull, especially the middle act on the planet Takodana. The performances and screenplay are all tolerable but the story is cynical and lazy and it doesn't really tell much in the way of a complete story, making it feel far too much like a piece of product designed to keep consumers on the hook (which of course it is) rather than a logical and necessary continuation of the narrative of the original films (which it isn't). Is it better than the Prequels? It's directed in a more interesting way, but feels "off" - it feels like a J.J. Abrams film that happens to be "Star Wars", rather than a Star Wars film that happens to be directed by Abrams. The screenplay is probably less clunky than those of the Prequels, but again, a good deal of that is to do with the direction. In many respects it feels far less original because it relies so heavily on call backs to the original film and The Empire Strikes Back. Its use of practical effects also makes the use of CGI, when it does appear, more noticeable and very irritating. I want Episode VIII to be better than this.

By a process of elimination, because the above films were all mediocre to bad (except for It Follows, which is decent), my top film of 2015 is:

The Witch

This is a weird, disturbing horror film about colonial settlers in North America succumbing to their own isolation, paranoia and religious fundamentalism. It's atmospheric and creepy, exhibiting clearly the traumatic consequences of severe puritanical practices and the repression of human nature. A family of seven are exiled from their colonial town because of the father's heresy and they try to eke out a poor living in the woods, but accusations of witchcraft begin flying around among the family members when the youngest child, a baby, disappears. The characters speak in an early modern idiom appropriate to the time period, night scenes are really dark, and everything feels eminently realistic and believable, even as apparently supernatural things happen. In keeping with some of the best horror narratives, it's never completely clear whether the supernatural events are real or just paranoid hallucinations. Overlaid with this are traditional themes of spiritual terror about the theological complexities of salvation and damnation. It's good.

That's twice now I've given a horror film my "film of the year" award. Do the "good" horror films somehow get more exposure than the "good" films of other genres, like sci-fi, for some reason? Are other genres too saturated with Hollywood action hybrids, so we don't notice when the more cerebral stuff comes out? I guess so. I need to see Ex Machina. (Seen it now, but I think I still preferred The Witch)

On "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"

If I'm going to be really honest, I don't particularly care about Rogue One. Disney is just printing money at this stage and anything they make with the Star Wars logo on it will turn a profit, so I have no stake in whether the film is any good or not. Disney paid four billion dollars to own another man's intellectual property and they're doing what they like with it. In my head this isn't really Star Wars, it's just glorified fan fiction; I felt the same way about The Force Awakens. Don't get me wrong, I'll go see it, but in the same mood of self-contempt that would be the source of my powers if I was a rather unappealing superhero.

One thing the recent trailer for Rogue One has provoked, however, is the typical response from the group of people who take objection to everything. I don't know what to call them. They're a sort of weird hybrid of pseudo-libertarians with trolls with, I dunno, just plain old insecure people. They always turn up in comments sections on the internet accusing people of being various "-isms" and initialisms. Their issue with Rogue One is that it has a lady in its lead role, apparently, judging by the teaser trailer. Apparently the fact of this and the fact that The Force Awakens also had a major leading lady is a problem for some reason. Typically in the minds of these people it means that, like, some nebulous group is "taking over", usually feminists or something.

I have an armour-piercing question that shatters these arguments like an Ordnance QF 17-pounder gun being fired at the flimsy hull of a Panzer III tank:

WHO CARES?

Seriously. Why do you care so much? If you think this is a slippery slope where more women in lead roles in Hollywood genre franchises means that people are going to end up in concentration camps or something, you're a deluded conspiracy theorist. It won't change your life in any way.

Apathy is your friend. Common sense dictates whether something is:

a) Just some thing a company is doing to make money while maybe feebly trying to look like it's making a point in order to make more money, or

b) The sinister rise of totalitarianism.

You might also want to consider whether your freedom or whatever is limited by activist groups or whether it's, and this might be a shock, actually primarily limited by a small group of very rich people with undue influence over Western governments.

Also, "political correctness" doesn't actually exist (it's a reactionary myth perpetuated to silence criticism of the status quo, the classic trick of making your enemy appear to be doing what you yourself are actually doing) and it's only "censorship" if what you say results in you being put in jail or executed. I've really tried to avoid being "political" on this blog but when one side comes across as if they just care way too much about shit that simply doesn't matter, I've got to put my foot down.

That is all.

P.S. Sorry if you expected my actual thoughts on the Rogue One trailer but I couldn't really be bothered going into detail. Seeing Original Trilogy costumes and young Mon Mothma is kind of cool, notionally, but I'm so cynical about the fan wank nature of it that I'm more negative about it than positive. The cliché dialogue, especially from the apparent mentor character, was excruciating. Now piss off.