Fan edit review: "The Fallen Knight" edit of "The Last Jedi"

http://thefallenknight.com/

I've dabbled in fan edits of Star Wars films before, having watched the "Hal9000 edits" of the Prequels, Cloak of Deception, The Approaching Storm and Labyrinth of Evil. These were interesting as an exercise, but didn't change the fact that the Prequels have uninteresting narratives, clunky direction and confused performances.

I've said in many of my articles on The Last Jedi that I enjoy the Luke/Rey/Kylo plot, but don't find the Finn/Poe/Rose plot to be interesting. As such I recently went looking for a fan edit that removed that part from the film, and thus I found The Fallen Knight, by one Clark Zuckerberg.

The Fallen Knight removes the entire Canto Bight and Poe vs Holdo plots from the film, focusing the middle act entirely on Rey, Luke and Kylo Ren's interactions. Finn and Poe only really appear in the first and third acts, Rose and Holdo are reduced to minor characters, and DJ and Phasma don't appear at all. The sections with Rey, Luke and Kylo are my favourite parts of the film, so I was keen to see how a version of the film would play out with those parts uninterrupted by the narratives I didn't enjoy.

As of writing I've just watched The Fallen Knight, and overall I enjoyed it. Its cuts excise an entire 45 minutes from the otherwise two-and-a-half-hour film, and the briefer running time and change of pace are welcome. Focusing the middle act entirely on the Ahch-To island (with cutaways to Kylo aboard the Supremacy) makes Rey's story much more straightforward to follow, as I wasn't mentally jogging back and forth to remember what Rey was supposed to be up to. It's much easier to see how desperate she is to find someone else to save the Light side until she finally realises that she needs to take the lead herself. This is probably the greatest benefit of the edit.

That being said, the edit inevitably requires characters such as Rose and Holdo to appear without really explaining who they are. That's fine, but it emphasises that this cut is more like "edited highlights" for a viewer who has already seen the theatrical release than an entirely coherent narrative in all of its parts. It's also, as a result, less thematically rounded, as the disparate parts of the official film do reinforce each other; I just don't find them terribly interesting. Similarly, Finn and Poe no longer really have character arcs in the edit, which obviously isn't ideal in typical storytelling, but because I didn't really enjoy watching them in the official version it doesn't bother me too much.

In addition, partly due to its policy of removing humour, and partly due to the larger cuts, I did miss a few moments I enjoy in the film:

• Part of the Poe-Hux exchange: "Can he hear me? He can?"
• The controversial scene of Leia using the Force to survive in space
• Luke tickling Rey's hand
• "You're wrong!" "Maybe."
• Luke reaching out to Leia through the Force
• Finn fighting Phasma ("Let's go, chrome dome!" is a guilty pleasure)
• Hux considering shooting Kylo in the throne room
• Poe introducing himself to Rey

However, I understand that the editor made these for his personal satisfaction, so it's okay if I miss a few bits; I can always watch the theatrical version if I want to see them. The same goes for the film being a more thematically consistent experience with character arcs for all three protagonists; I'll just watch the official version for that. To be honest, I would rather that the opening bomber attack and the Crait battle were cut down, as I don't find either of them to be terribly engaging; I'm constantly waiting for Rey, Luke or Kylo to appear.

Purely in terms of pacing and content, while I enjoyed the much greater focus on those three characters, I would have retained the destruction of the Resistance bridge, the Leia in space scene, and the scene introducing Holdo. I'd maybe even retain the scene introducing Rose if it would fit, but perhaps then you'd have to retain Finn's attempted sacrifice too, and Rose saving him only works if they've spent time together. Nonetheless, I would have also retained, within the bounds of the edit, the hand tickle and Luke reaching out to Leia.

The edit also reinstates a bit of deleted material: Finn's conversation with Poe about the Resistance and the tears Luke sheds for Han, which nicely cuts to the shot of Leia sitting alone on the bridge. The Finn-Poe scene is useful for Finn, although it doesn't pay off much in the edit. It also makes Poe come across as unpleasantly arrogant ("I was saving the entire fleet"), which speaks to the film's wider problem with Poe's characterisation: it uses him to deconstruct the classic "shoot first, think later" hero, but does so in a way which makes him seem like a jerk rather than just a guy whose priorities are a bit muddled.

In a broader sense, by making the rapidity of Rey's character development more apparent, as well as by bringing Luke and Kylo's flashbacks closer together, I think the edit as a whole reinforces what a poisoned chalice Rian Johnson was handed by Abrams and Kasdan with The Force Awakens' cliffhanger ending: Rey reaching out to Luke, Finn in a coma. I almost wish he'd just jumped ahead in time and explained the resolutions to these in dialogue or even have left them to our imaginations. People complain that Johnson failed to make an adequate follow up to Abrams' film, but I would argue the reverse: that he was constrained by it, and he had to do double the work to be able to tell his own story with the characters because Abrams hadn't grown them in a substantial way, palming off the job of developing them to his successors; imagine if A New Hope ended before they attacked the Death Star. Frankly, despite how wobbly The Last Jedi is, and at times it's incredibly frustrating, dull or even cringeworthy, Johnson should probably be applauded for managing to do anything with these characters given how little Abrams handed him beyond their names, appearances and locations at the end of the previous film.

Regardless, The Fallen Knight was an enjoyable alternative way to watch The Last Jedi in a manner that appealed to my personal tastes in what I preferred in the film, and I'd recommend it to anyone who similarly wished that the Rey-Luke-Kylo plot proceeded without interruption. It's also a much quicker way to watch the film if you're in a rush before The Rise of Skywalker releases in December 2019...

"Star Wars: The Last Jedi": Initial (Baffled) Impressions

The title crawl should have been in red.
That would have really pissed people off.

Another year has come and gone, so the other night I dutifully donned my homemade Emperor Palpatine robes and m'colleague and I trudged off to the cinema to watch another Star Wars film.

I looked like this about halfway through.

I have to admit that, despite my criticism of The Force Awakens, I was quite eager for The Last Jedi. I'd gotten it into my head that Rian Johnson was the right man for the job, and that what he was going to deliver would be a solid, satisfying Star Wars outing which would probably be a bit better than The Force Awakens. We'd have Rey and Luke, Finn and Poe, some action, and a set up for things to come. I wasn't as hyped as I might have been, but I was ready to watch a Star Wars film which would leave me thinking that what I'd just seen was a sci-fi action film which would be a worthwhile addition to the Star Wars rewatch cycle along with the despecialised editions of the Original Trilogy and the occasional touch upon Episode VII.

This'll be exciting in the finished film, right?

That's not quite what I actually got, and if I am to give The Last Jedi credit for anything, it ought to be for the fact that it surprised me. This was overtly not J.J. Abrams' Star Wars, almost wholly lacking the slavish devotion to George Lucas' narrative style and cinematography which dominated Episode VII. The Last Jedi in many respects feels like its own beast, although admittedly at times it feels, like its predecessor, like a remix of its equivalent episode in the Original Trilogy. This, I think, is what made The Last Jedi challenging for me, and at first viewing ultimately somewhat disappointing, as I juddered back and forth between thinking "This is a bold take on things" and "What the hell am I watching?!"

Tosses the tone over his shoulder too.

My initial reaction is that The Last Jedi is an overly-long, rambling, unfocused, confused mess of a film which doesn't fully appreciate its own strengths and is torn between two parallel narratives, one which is fundamentally engaging and another which is intrinsically tedious. This is a result of a problem with pacing and structure which makes the film suffer substantially. The film regularly snaps back and forth between Rey and Luke scenes on the planet Ahch-To, which I found engrossing, and Finn and Poe stuff with the Resistance fleet, which over time bored me to tears, and as I often say about films regarding which I have mixed feelings, this is a game of halves.

"What should I do with Kylo Ren in the middle acts?"
"I dunno, stick him in a room for hours."

It's my impression from one viewing that, as both director and screenwriter, Rian Johnson comes across as overwhelmed, trying to give a substantial narrative to all of his growing cast of major characters: Rey, Finn, Poe, Kylo Ren, Leia and Luke, as well as newcomer Rose, and whether of his own volition, or mandated by Lucasfilm/Disney, the film ultimately fails to wholly recognise that it is only Rey and Luke's story (and by extension Kylo Ren's) which is especially interesting or substantial. This is particularly egregious in the final act of the film in which Rey, notionally our main protagonist, almost disappears, being relegated to manning Luke's old firing position on the Millennium Falcon rather than actively participating in the plot. That's not to say that the ending isn't about Luke and Kylo Ren, but it has a particular insistence at the same time in focusing on the Resistance, as represented by Poe, Finn and Leia, a narrative which in my view wasn't the crux of what the film explored most effectively: not the idea of resistance, but rather of balance. I particularly wondered as I watched whether the depiction of the First Order as an unstoppable tyranny, despite being crippled at the conclusion of the previous film, was some kind of political statement reflecting  the popular conception that "the bad guys are running America" at the moment, which is arguably true in a greater-or-lesser-of-two-evils sense, but feels inconsistent with the previous instalment and almost exhausting; if the First Order is still so strong, and the Resistance so utterly weak, it's hard for me to care. I want to avoid delving into hypotheticals in this article, but I can't help but feel as if the narrative would be more interesting if it was more microscopic in scale, with the conflict limited to a small section of the galaxy and the belief that even the most remote and seemingly-unimportant part would be worth fighting for if its freedom was threatened.

Was he not played up as much in the
promotion for this one?

The fact is that the film is a bombardment, much like a First Order dreadnought firing lasers at the Reistance fleet, with a plot which seems to take place over the course of about seven acts and is constantly assailing the viewer with new elements and situations; calling them developments might be overstating matters. I was constantly wavering between deep interest, particularly when Rey and Luke were onscreen, and complete bewilderment whenever we returned to Finn and Rose or Poe, wondering why their plot needed to exist at all, why I should care about it and when it would get back to the half of the story which I found interesting. Another thing which occurred to me is that this feels less like an Episode in its own right and more like a followup to The Force Awakens, especially in the reuse of settings and the close connection of the two narratives, which leaves me feeling like there should be another couple of films rather than just one. Who knows? Perhaps there will be if the Disney accountants have anything to say about it. Perhaps this trilogy will bleed into Sequel Trilogy II.

Let's cut the rest of the fat and get to what I liked and didn't like.

What I Didn't Like

1. The Resistance Plot

Stay in the pod, Finn!

As I've established, I simply wasn't interested in the large percentage of the narrative devoted to the Resistance fleet trying to escape from the First Order. This element, depicted equivalently in the first act of The Empire Strikes Back, here covers almost the entirety of the film. It reached the point in which it became utterly absurd, in my view, that the two fleets were pursuing each other through space seemingly in first gear, with neither side able to catch up to or outrun the other for reasons which weren't clear to me. I understood that the fleet couldn't jump away without being caught again, but why was it so hard for the First Order to simply catch up to the Resistance and blow them out of the sky? They have a ship the size of a small country, but they don't have the technology to go a little bit faster than their enemies?

Dead Phasma toys: only $9.99 each.

Somehow, the course of this pursuit gives Finn and Rose time to go to a completely different planet, find help and come back. Furthermore, after it's over, following multiple scenes of devastation on the part of First Order battleships, Finn and Rose going to a casino, Finn, Rose and Benicio del Toro going to the First Order flagship and getting captured, BB-8 driving an AT-ST and hyperdrive ships slicing other ships, the Resistance lands at a giant bunker which looks like a snow plow to have yet another fight with the First Order. By this point I couldn't believe how long the extended conflict between the two parties was going for. It was just too much. If this had been, say, half an hour of the film it would have been tolerable, but it dominates it, and distracts needlessly from the film's strongest elements.

If only he'd stayed dead.

I also didn't particularly enjoy Poe's character arc in this. In The Force Awakens he came across as a fairly pragmatic combatant who was, for instance, prepared to abandoned the Jakku village if it meant he could keep the map from the First Order. Here he just seems like some cocky try-hard who can't take orders and needs to learn a lesson about leadership. Was it really necessary? Oddly enough, despite liking the character in The Force Awakens, in this film I found him a bit annoying.

Monkeyshines.

2. Too Much Humour

Obviously Star Wars is pretty lighthearted at times, and the Original Trilogy has plenty of memorable one-liners, but The Last Jedi is somewhat overwhelming in this regard, starting with a joke featuring Poe pretending he can't hear Hux over the radio and only becoming bigger from there. Hux looks like a complete buffoon, Luke plays practical jokes and delivers snarky one-liners, Finn and Rose exchange quips and so on to the point at which it's hard to take anything seriously. It feels like they took Poe's brief piss-taking of Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens, and a few sarcastic Han lines and excited Finn remarks, and blew them completely out of proportion in this script. I'm a miserable, joyless, self-hating, lonely, jaded wretch, but give me a break. The audience in the cinema was laughing it up, though, so I guess it hit the right spot for some. My biggest issue was that Luke came across as too flippant and dismissive a lot of the time, and insufficiently consistent with the character we last saw in Return of the Jedi.

Luke's Star Wars: The Card Game set.

3. The Best Stuff is Not Fleshed Out Enough

So Luke's a recluse who wants the Jedi Order to die, Rey and Kylo Ren have developed a telepathic link, Leia can survive a hard vacuum and the Force still needs balancing. These are all interesting elements of the film, but they just don't get the attention they need to really satisfy. There are conversations between Luke and Rey about the Force and the Jedi which are too short and leave us begging for more. Meanwhile, when Rey is communicating with Kylo Ren, we don't have a good sense of what Ren is doing at the time in order to contextualise his experience of this link. He just seems to be standing around in a room. We get some philosophising about the Force, including a surprise appearance from Yoda, but it's all glossed over in a few short scenes. If we'd spent less time mucking around with Finn in Casino Night Zone and the Resistance and First Order fleets participating in the slowest car chase of all time, I feel as if the screenplay could have really come to grips with these elements, which instead to me felt rushed and incomplete, as if we were only seeing edited highlights of something more complex and profound.

"Steady, Dack. Attack pattern delta."

4. Lack of Atmosphere

Just a small thing, but when we met Snoke for instance I felt like there was very little sense of tension and presence. It was similar with Rey being around Luke, I suppose. Something in the cinematography and sound design at these points made me feel distant rather than immersed, as if I were watching the film through a window in another room. Perhaps that was an effect of exhaustion and Irish whisky, but I can't help but feel that a trick was missed at some of the notionally most awe-inspiring moments of the film. Then again, perhaps it was deliberate, as I'll detail in the next section.

What I Did Like

1. Spins on ideas set up in The Force Awakens

Phone home.
...I've never seen E.T.

Who's Snoke? Just an arrogant, overconfident idiot with delusions about how much control he really has, like the Emperor but even more foolish and blind. Who were Rey's parents? Nobody important. What has Luke realised in his time away? That the Jedi were selfish hypocrites. All this stuff seemed fairly bold to me, with Rian Johnson slicing through all the "mystery box" bullshit set up by Abrams in the previous film. The answers are straightforward and convincing. Killing off Snoke in particular was a sensible and gutsy move, preventing him from seeming entirely like a rehash of the Emperor (although he still kind of is; he's just a shittier version of the Emperor, basically). Here I wonder if the lack of atmosphere was deliberate, so that we could recognise that Snoke was not all that he seemed. Establishing that Rey's parents were nobodies is a refreshing touch of realism. In this respect, the film seems like an antidote to the more egregious rumour-mongering elements of Episode VII, which only really existed because of the famed twists from the Original Trilogy.

The lightsaber kind of looks like a plastic tube in this scene.

2. Rey and Luke

Although we didn't see enough of them, both of these character were welcome. I still think Daisy Ridley's Rey is the best part of the new Trilogy, despite the fact that I think she could have come across as a little more aware of the nature of Luke's successes and failures and how they could be applied to her own experience. I suppose she possesses a little hubris, which ultimately is another way in which aspects of this film echo both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, as the film is somewhat like Luke's motivation in Jedi with Empire's outcome: tries to turn villain back to the light but fails.

Good thing he didn't really quit voicing the Joker.

Mark Hamill is entertaining as Luke, and although at times I thought he came across as too dry and jaded, he fitted well enough into the role of a character who has been scarred by his experiences. In particular, the cool confidence Luke presents in Return of the Jedi is gone for much of this, replaced by self-awareness and resignation. In his final confrontation with Kylo Ren, however, much of the strength of Luke in his prime re-emerges, as we see Rey re-ignite something of his faith. This would all have been improved if the film had simply had more time to devote to these characters. I'm almost reminded of the Hobbit films, which became endlessly distracted from Bilbo in an effort to be more epic. In this, I feel like the film keeps wandering away from its titular Last Jedi (singular or plural), which is frustrating, but when they're around they're generally worthwhile. I criticised the lack of "atmosphere" surrounding Luke, but again, perhaps it was deliberately to make his later scenes more satisfying. This would have worked better if we'd seen more.

"My nose still hurts."

3. Kylo Ren

Dildo Ren was a bit more interesting in this than he was in the previous, particularly in his Force-based conversations with Rey, in which they test each others' character. With all this stuff it's not contextualised or developed to its fullest extent, but it's still interesting. In particular, we gain a more complex insight into his backstory, thinking that Luke betrayed him and establishing his Vader-like desire not just for power but for order, and this is played upon by showing him, unlike Vader, killing his master in order to seize control. We're left wondering where the narrative can go next, which I suppose is as good a selling point for Episode IX as any. I liked the idea of Ren usurping Snoke's place as Supreme Leader of the First Order; it's noteworthy that when he tells Rey that they need to dispose of the past, he collectively refers to the Sith and the Jedi, but only to the Resistance in isolation, establishing that he cares more about the ideology of the First Order than might otherwise appear.

4. Leia can breathe in space

She still didn't hug Chewie.
...oh wait, yeah she did.

A lot of people didn't like this element, apparently, but I thought it was kinda cool. She's meant to be strong with the force, albeit untrained. Why shouldn't she survive being blasted into a hard vacuum? I only wish that I understood better her role in the plot overall. It was pretty obvious that she wouldn't be killed so abruptly on the bridge, although I fear that this sequence was intended to set up Episode IX elements which will no longer be possible to fulfill.

"Gawsh, this Jedi training is rrrather
different to what I expected, eh what?"

Conclusion

I still don't know where I stand with The Last Jedi. Was it an occasionally-good blockbuster which is receiving rave reviews because it's full of big explosions, corny one-liners and over-egged "cool" moments to please the dummies, or is it subtler than I'm giving it credit for and warrants more viewings? Perhaps it's a little of both. Perhaps I'm no different to the Original Trilogy fanboys walking devastated from the cinema in 1999 because they didn't get exactly what they imagined in the preceding years. Maybe the film's composition is meant to represent its themes, with the balance between light and dark being reflected in the balance between interesting reflection upon the franchise and mindless slush. On the other hand, maybe it won't bear that much scrutiny. Perhaps only time and an endless cavalcade of better or worse Disney Star Wars films will tell.

So anyway, do the Jedi need to die out or not? Luke thought so, and Yoda seemed to agree with him, but then at the end Luke seemed satisfied that Rey would allow the Jedi to continue on. I'm sure there's some deep and detailed explanation buried deep in the film...

Do Wookiees age in reverse? He looks
a lot more sleek than he did in '77.

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens"

The Force sleeps through its alarm for thirty years.

Holy shit, Star Wars is back! By my own admission, I'm hardly the world's biggest Star Wars fan. At the same time, I may have more affection for them than some. When I heard that Disney was continuing the film franchise with a sequel trilogy, I was pretty sceptical, but now the film's out and I've seen it twice. Is it any good? "From a certain point of view", perhaps, but not entirely from mine. The Force Awakens is not a bad film and it has a number of strong elements, but it's very flawed and rather disappointing. To sum up the positives, I'd say that the performances are pretty strong, there were some good casting decisions and effective characterisations, some of the design choices and uses of practical effects paid off well and it gets one thinking about Star Wars again. On the other hand, as I stated in my first impressions post, the plot is very derivative and elements of it are extremely predictable, there is some unnecessary CGI, the storytelling and world building are often weak and the pacing is inconsistent. Overall, The Force Awakens feels like a lavishly produced fan-film: on the one hand it follows that arguably desirable fannish impulse of "let's avoid what we disliked from the instalments we like less" (ie the Prequels in particular) while also indulging a fannish impulse of "let's do what's already been done but bigger and more quickly."

Why do all mysterious sci fi people do this pose?

The use of the standard opening title and crawl is all well and good, although I think the information conveyed is a little thin on the ground. Luke's disappeared and both a Leia-led Resistance and an evil First Order are trying to find him. There isn't much else about what happened between Return of the Jedi and here. Everyone's looking for Luke and some guy's been sent to the planet Jakku for information on him. That being said, and I know it's a soft option to bash the Prequels, but few opening crawls could be worse than one that begins with "War!" and has a first paragraph including the absurdly juvenile sentences "There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere." Anyway, Star Destroyers are present and a bunch of mannequins in Storm Trooper armour are shuddering inside transport vehicles headed for the planet. Down below is a humble village where Max von Sydow gives a data chip or something to ace pilot hotshot Poe Dameron and his highly marketable 'droid, BB-8. He's about to hit the highway in his distinctive X-Wing Fighter™ when the First Order transports land and a bunch of Stormtroopers all charge out with blasters, blazing the ever-loving shit out of the townspeople. I get that maybe the First Order are meant to be just more extreme and unnecessarily violent than the Empire (although tell that to Governor Tarkin), but I was confused here: are the villagers resisting, or are the First Order blowing everything up and causing mayhem just for shits and giggles at this point? Having gone to all the trouble of doing up his seatbelt and everything Poe returns to battle, only to be caught when a mysterious new dark-berobed red lightsaber wielding chappie with a modulated voice arrives. Max von Sydow delivers some sterling words hoping to convince viewers that this new baddie is Luke before being promptly killed. Poe, by contrast, is captured. Once again, I'm not one hundred per cent sure why they bother capturing Poe alive, especially when black robe man orders the Stormtroopers to massacre the locals. The only one to not join in is some blood-spattered guy whose buddy was smoked by Poe, who turns his neutral Stormtrooper helmet expression into a sad frown.

The planet Notooine.

The First Order pisses off while BB-8 has escaped due to his modern ability to move more quickly than the old fashioned R2-D2 prop could. We're now introduce to Rey, who hangs out in crashed Star Destroyers nicking stuff and going for sand dune toboggan rides, before riding into town on a giant floating ice cream. She turns her loot in for packets of dehydrated muffin from giant alien Simon Pegg and lives in an AT-AT, amusing herself as young people do by sitting on the sand with a big heavy space helmet on her head. Then she rescues BB-8 from some alien bloke riding a really slow-moving robot dinosaur thing, and I feel really sorry for Daisy Ridley having to speak the ridiculous alien language she has to shout with in this scene, much like I feel sorry for any actor in these things who has to say the word "Jedi" or talk about the Force. Rey's motivation is that her family ditched her on the planet years ago and she's waiting for them to come pick her up, like a kid abandoned in the endless post-soccer practice pick-up wait of the soul. Rey's a well-realised character in a situation to which viewers can relate: she lives a mundane existence living hand-to-mouth, making do with what little she has and clinging to a nebulous hope that things will be better in the future. Naturally she's the right person for BB-8 to cling on to as they're similarly lost and definitely not just because Rey is a human who speaks English.

Helmets clearly aren't ventilated.

Upstairs on the Star Destroyer, Poe is dragged off for torments most foul, succumbing to the sheer mind-bending terror of Darth Vader-substitute Kylo Ren extending his hand in front of his face. Maybe it's the sight of Ren's rather undesigned hat store style gloves. After spilling the beans that the map to Luke McSkywalker is in a droid down on the planet they leave him be, just in time for our reluctant Stormtrooper of earlier to come to the rescue. He's earlier identified as FN-2187 after he's reprimanded by his superior, Captain Phasma, who, as a Stormtrooper in silver armour with a cape, is essentially an action figure come to life and clearly a minor character intended for kids and fanboys to latch onto. FN-2187's had a crisis of faith and sneaks Poe out to a TIE Fighter so they can escape, but it's absurdly tethered to the inside of the hangar. This was a bit of a stretch to me. That'd be like if a plane tried to take off from an aircraft carrier in a modern navy but it couldn't because all planes were by default tied to the deck with a piece of rope. Also note that while FN-2187 won't massacre the inhabitants of the village, he's perfectly prepared to blow four shades of shit out of all his erstwhile Stormtrooper chums in the hangar. Nonetheless Poe and FN-2187, or "Finn" as he is shortly renamed as being, have a good rapport which is established both quickly and well and the scene of them escaping from the Star Destroyer is a good one. That being said, the Star Destroyer's missile launchers don't seem very "Star Wars" to me. They reminded me too much of the stupid "bigger phasers" that the oversized bad guy's version of the Enterprise had in Star Trek Into Darkness.

Fly, yes.

So the ship crashes and apparently Poe's bitten the literal dust so Finn nicks his jacket and stumbles off into the wastes, and despite the endless desert stretching in all directions he happens to arrive at the settlement where Rey comes to trade for her instant muffins. Simon Pegg's after BB-8 but she's having none of it. Finn sups from a big space hippo's watering hole and tries to come to Rey's rescue when shady characters attempt to abscond with BB-8, but she can hold her own thankyerverymuch. BB-8 points him out and she whacks him with a big stick. To save his arse Finn pretends to be a member of the alleged "Resistance" fighting the First Order who needs to deliver BB-8 to headquarters. Then, of course, the First Order immediately show up with Stormtroopers and TIE Fighters galore and start blowing everything to smithereens, forcing Rey and Finn to seek transport in none other than the abandoned Millennium Falcon. Wahey. Rey flips a bunch of switches to make it fly, Finn sits in the baby seat from the original film to blow up some enemy ships and they go into an extended and honestly somewhat overlong chase sequence in which they outfight and outsmart some dastardly First Order types. Saying "Imperials" was easier. The First Order needed a better name. What's so "First" about them? I think they should have had some grandiose name for themselves (or possibly still refer to themselves as "the Empire") and a different, pejorative name used by the Resistance and people who didn't like them. I don't know, the big armies of Stormtroopers and fleets of ships and what not made sense for a huge organised society like the Empire and the latter days of the Republic before it but it seems a bit unbelievable here for what seems to be more like a really elaborate paramilitary organisation. There's no sense that the First Order runs anything or controls any locations other than the one planet. As other reviewers have pointed out, this is a failing of this film: because the filmmakers are so terrified of reflecting the "boring politics" of the Prequels, they completely ignore any substantial world-building, such that the First Order is simultaneously this immense force against which "the Resistance" is appropriately named, and is a fringe organisation rebelling against the legitimate authority of the established Republic.

Make Indy 5 before it's too late!

Nonetheless, everything up until Rey, Finn and BB-8 escape from Jakku feels more or less like "Star Wars", albeit a little contrived and unnecessarily redesigned in some respects. For instance, I don't mind the redesigned Stormtrooper armour particularly, but I'm not fond of the reworked look of the TIE Fighters and other ships. In any event, I'm more or less on board, even though at times this feels more like pastiche than "real" Star Wars in terms of the design particularly, as if they've gone "Let's make things look the way Lucasfilm did previously, but moreso." Then the Millennium Falcon is captured by some other ship and it's piloted by none other than Han Solo and Chewbacca. While their entrance is rather heavy-handed, it's treated unironically enough, especially Chewie. A more insecure and self-loathing production, like modern Doctor Who, wouldn't treat the characters this way. While this film uses Chewie's reactions a little too often as a source of comic relief in my view, at the same time there's no sense that they're embarrassed by or ashamed of using a character from the 70s who's a big brown hairy guy who talks by making moaning noises. Han cracks out some exposition about Luke disappearing after one of his Jedi trainees turned on him, obviously Kylo Ren. Harrison Ford really just feels like Harrison Ford here. He's a fine actor who owns the screen, but I'm not seeing Han Solo, just Harrison Ford, perhaps because we've far more recently seen him as Indiana Jones than as Han Solo. In any event, Han appears to have regressed: he's gone back to being a smuggler who spends his time truckin' across the galaxy with Chewie making dodgy deals. There's a narrative explanation for this, but it still feels kinda lazy to me, like they couldn't be arsed doing anything more interesting with the character or doing something that logically follows on from where he was in Return of the Jedi, which is to say becoming a leader rather than a lone wolf. Now that Han 'n' Chewie have the Millennium Falcon back they're going to ditch our new heroes somewhere, but then a bunch of affectedly "weird" space dudes show up demanding Han pay them back lots of money. It turns out Han's been spending left and right trying to transport a bunch of bizarre Lovecraftian alien squid monsters to some king somewhere. At this point I feel like the film just turns into some generic 21st century space action flick evocative more of Firefly or indeed Abrams' Star Trek than anything else. You've got weird space dudes in silly costumes with out-of-place accents or languages, giant CGI alien thingies rampaging all over the place killing everybody, and a big murky spaceship full of dark corridors. In a sense I feel like this is inspired by films and shows that themselves took their inspiration from exaggerating the "used future" aesthetic of Star Wars itself, and to me this sequence really doesn't fit. It's pointless CGI action that wastes time and doesn't really serve any purpose beyond keeping Rey, Finn and BB-8 in the same place as Han and Chewie.

Is that thing Rey's bike as a transformer?

The film goes from bad to worse when Han and Chewie take the other three to the planet Takadona. Here they go to some bar which is meant to evoke the Cantina from the original film but is far less interesting and they meet a diminutive orange alien named Maz Kanata who seems to be all knowledgeable about the Force and what not despite the fact that we've never heard of her before. I really didn't enjoy this bit either time. Who's this alien? How does she know all this stuff? Why should I believe her or trust that she knows what she's on about? It doesn't make sense to me; it's like "If in doubt, have the characters visit a wizard." Note that in The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda is introduced very succinctly, but introduced nonetheless: Obi-Wan tells Luke that Yoda is the Jedi Master who trained him. It's simple. Who's Maz? Just some person? She even says herself that she's not a Jedi but just knows stuff about the Force. Okay then. Meanwhile, at the Hall of Doom, Kylo Ren gets all pissy when he learns that our heroes have escaped, indulging for the first time his penchant for carving up the room with his lightsabre while some bloke cringes in the background. He's also not on good terms with the more official leader, General Hux, aka Bill Weasley in an SS Uniform. They have a teleconference with Supreme Leader Snoke, a big hologram of a CGI alien dude who looks like the Emperor's foetus crossed with Voldemort. This is a rubbish character who simply didn't need to be CGI, much like Maz Kanata in fact. He looks obviously fake compared to the two people he's talking to, and simply isn't intriguing. He just seems like some generic Dark Lord dude with a robe and a throne. What is the logical progression after the Emperor? It might actually have been more effective if there was no Supreme Leader and that Kylo Ren and Hux were making it up as they went along in a kind of uneasy duumvirate. "Snoke" is also a particularly stupid name in a whole galaxy of silly-named characters. Sounds like something to do with snooker or snow cones. Anyway, he warns Kylo Ren about the challenges of facing Han Solo, who is revealed to be Ren's father. Well, we saw that coming. I mean, those were the two sensible suggestions given in the lead-up to the film: Ren's either Luke, or Han and Leia's son. Luke was clearly a step too far so there you go. The old Extended Universe narrative already did this with one of Han and Leia's children. It's a bit predictable. It's also odd to think that the whole 'evil relative' thing was done in the Original Trilogy after they'd had a whole prior film and three years of waiting. Here the character is introduced and his familial connections are busted out in all of an hour.

On Jakku, real sleeves were a luxury.

Back at the bar, Finn starts having a massive crisis. I thought that his actions here were too much too soon. Suddenly he's freaking out about how the First Order must already be on their way, how there's no stopping them and how he's going to piss off to the Outer Rim and hide. So was he just using Rey and BB-8 to escape from the First Order? At other times before this it seems as if he actually cares about helping the Resistance. Maybe I'm not paying close enough attention, but it feels a bit out of the blue. He asks Rey to come with him, but she asks him to stay. He 'fesses up about his origins, which doesn't really change anything. It's not like he lied about being a member of the Resistance for that long, really. Rey doesn't seem to be especially fussed either way. Finn decides to skip town nonetheless, while Rey starts hearing funny voices and heads down to the cellar where she discovers Luke's old lightsaber in a box and has a bunch of funny visions about Luke and Kylo Ren and R2-D2 and being abandoned as a little kid and stuff. When Maz Kanata shows up to tell her that it's her destiny or whatever, Rey gives the old orange crone the big finger and runs off to the forest for no discernible reason. I guess she's traumatised by remembering her abandonment and being forced to admit that her family isn't coming back for her, but this is all a bit spontaneous as well. This whole double rejection on the part of our two new characters didn't work for me. They happen within mere minutes of each other and both seem to have little build-up for them. Rey talks about needing to go back to Jakku a fair bit, but also seems to have already more or less given up on that. It's odd. She also realises with Maz Kanata's assistance that an alternative to waiting for her family is to go seeking out Luke, and Rey says "Luke" as if they're on a first name basis and that it's really important that they meet up. I didn't follow this bit.

I bet he really has trouble breathing now.

Elsewhere, on a planet that has a big cannon in it, Dildo Ren sits around meditating in front of Darth Vader's mangled helmet seeking guidance away from the Light. Probably talking to the wrong guy. It's a nice idea I suppose, an evil guy trying to resist the temptation towards good, although I'm not sure that really works. Isn't the Dark Side meant to be the easy path? Where'd he get the helmet from anyway? Endor? Guess so. General Hux gives a big speech to a bunch of troops who don't appear to give a shit about what he's saying before firing the really big cannon, a huge laser in the planet that squirts five big blobs of red light across space that blow up a bunch of planets. It's basically the Death Star on crack. Well, that was unexpected. The Death Star again? There's playing it safe and then there's this. It's so unexplained. Hux gives this big spiel about how the Republic is supporting the Resistance and how this will very conveniently wipe out the Republic's seat of government and its fleet in one go, but I'm a little hazy about what's going on. Not enough work has been done to explain the relationship between the Republic, the Resistance and the First Order. They probably should have just given the Resistance a different name. Supposedly it's all explained in spin off crap like Young Adult fiction, but surely the film is the main event. Can't they at least tell us what's going on here? How does the First Order have such a powerful weapon? If the Republic is the galaxy's government, why are the Resistance called the Resistance when they're clearly on the side of the Republic and therefore the established authorities? Hux's speech almost makes the First Order seem like some pissed-off group within the Republic that has gone rogue. I don't know.

"Meanwhile, the sinister FIRST ORDER will not rest
until the true recipe for Wookiee Cookies has been found."

In any event they're conveniently able to see the explosions from Takodana, and Finn decides to go back. Maz Kanata gives him the lightsaber and doesn't explain to Han how she got it. It's a good question. If it fell out of Cloud City into the atmosphere of Bespin, a gas giant, surely it'd fall towards the surface and be crushed by the pressure. In any event, First Order bad dudes are showing up, I guess because they've tracked our heroes there and because some spy sends messages to them earlier. So it's time for another snooze-worthy laser battle as a bunch of guys in white armour run around shooting red laser beams everywhere and stuff gets blown up. Dildo Ren pursues Rey into the woods while Finn develops spontaneous confidence with a lightsaber, enough to fight off a Stormtrooper with one of those anti-lightsaber weapons that Grievous' bodyguards had in Episode III. Convenient how they forgot about them during the Original Trilogy. Han goes on about liking Chewie's crossbow. They've been together for how long and he's never used it before? Fortunately their collective hides are saved by the arrival of the Resistance, and there's a well-shot scene as, from behind Finn on the ground, we can clearly observe Poe's X-Wing taking out a number of targets with skill and confidence. Unfortunately, Ren catches up with Rey and discerns that she's got the map. Getting a little cocky, he puts her in a trance and absconds with her back to his ship, claiming that it's no longer necessary to secure BB-8. Finn gets all upset seeing Rey get captured and Han's like "Yeah, well."

"I think our son was adopted."

Then the Resistance lands and we're reintroduced to Leia and C-3PO. Carrie Fisher is perhaps even harder to believe as Leia than Ford is as Han. She just looks like someone's grandmother, and that's no bad thing, but there's little identifiable continuity between her character here and her character in the older films. I guess she just mellowed out a tonne. Anthony Daniels sounds a little different as C-3PO as well. I'd forgotten about him so his appearance was a pleasant surprise. Han reveals that he's seen their son, it's all very grim and then they head off to yet another planet where the Resistance has its very Rebel Alliance-esque headquarters. Apparently this planet is called D'Qar: I can see why they never bothered to explain that. Finn discovers that Poe survived the TIE Fighter crash earlier in the film and was rescued. If they were able to rescue him from Jakku, why couldn't they find BB-8? It's deeply unclear. At the First Order base, Kylo Smile-o is trying to get Rey to reveal the map (although surely she'd only have a fairly hazy memory based on the brief glimpse she had of it) but she's too strong with the Force, and this gives us our indication that Ren's not necessarily all he's cracked up to be, lacking training and finesse to get the job done and being overconfident. It's not bad actually, although I think it could potentially be argued that Rey's a little too competent a little too soon here. She also mocks Ren by telling him he'll never be as strong as Darth Vader, and it sounds a little odd given that she's never mentioned Vader before and previously regarded all that history as myth and legend. I guess she just read his mind and was using the terms that would upset him the most, but hearing Daisy Ridley have to say "Darth Vader" with loads of intensity and gravitas is a bit much, obviously meant to be more for the benefit of the audience than the characters. This can be contrasted to a good moment with Han and Leia discussing their son in which Han says "there's too much Vader in him". That works, I think. For his own part Ren sees Rey's visions of an island, which looks towards the end of the film and is something that confused me both times. Without his helmet, Ren just looks like some young guy with longish hair and a big nose. As a fellow big nose haver, I sympathise. One thing that this revelation does succeed in emphasising is the sense that the members of the First Order seem to all be quite young, which creates an atmosphere of insecure, impressionable people being manipulated to evil things by a cynical, exploitative figure. Ren doesn't look much like he'd be Han and Leia's son, though. In any event, he's messed up by failing to get the map once again, and has to go tell Snoke-and-Mirrors that Rey's a powerful Force user who should be trained. I don't remember what Snoke says back, probably just more waffle about Han Solo.

Poe's ultimate weapon: flipping the bird.

At the Resistance Base, Finn reveals that he knows where they've taken Rey: Starkiller Base, which is like the Death Star only bigger and capable of firing more shots. Now I kind of get what they were going for here: the First Order don't have the resources to build an entirely artificial station capable of generating its own energy like the Death Star, so instead they've hollowed out a planet and turned it into a kind of crude improvised weapon which gets its power from sucking up fusing star matter. That's interesting, but the justification for its existence is based largely on implication. It's more just presented here as "There's another Death Star we've gotta blow up," and that's pretty tired after the original film, Return of the Jedi and, if you think about it, the Droid Control Ship from The Phantom Menace. Finn says he needs to go there in person, and it's clearly just a trick so that they'll help him rescue Rey. There's an interesting thing here about how Finn lies a lot in order to try to do the right thing, which could be important later. As usual there's a weakness: take out the shield generator and you can blow up the oscillator which keeps the star matter under control. It just feels a bit Star Trek to me: I'm not sure we need to know how Starkiller Base works, just that it does. Stuff about sucking material out of stars and so on feels like something that belongs in other sci fi properties that are more concerned with how things work than Star Wars traditionally is. It basically only exists to stop Starkiller Base from feeling even more like the Death Star, and they could have handled it differently. Don't ask me how, but they could have. So Han, Chewie and Finn are off to take out the shield, rescue Rey and maybe bring Kylo Ren back to the light before the X-Wings fly in to blow up the weak spot. The one arguably nice thing about all this is we get to see some old favourites like Admiral Ackbar and Nien Nunb. The rest of it feels a lot like "new Star Wars film, better have a bunch of people in a control room talking about how to blow up a big superweapon." As it has nothing to do with the plot's main thrust, finding Luke, it seems like an arbitrary obstacle placed into the film for the sake of a climax. It would have made more sense if, instead of having this fake Death Star and gaining the map at the beginning, they only knew where the map piece was and had to try to get it and get out before the First Order did. Yeah, look at me coming up with my good ideas. Take that, Hollywood.

Only $19.99 at Toys R Us.

Rey escapes by tricking Stormtrooper Daniel Craig into releasing her, showing her Force powers once again developing at a prodigious rate. I wonder why Craig did this cameo. In any event Kylo Ren gets pissy again and we get a mildly amusing moment as two incoming Stormtroopers turn around and walk away rather than risking walking by. The Millennium Falcon arrives and there are a couple of other amusing moments when Finn, revealed as having no idea what he's doing, says that they'll just "use the Force" and Han Solo says that's not how it works, while Chewie complains about being cold. They go into the base and force Phasma in her one other role in the film to lower the shields. It's pretty simple. Apparently she can just lower the shields and no one like Ren or Hux or any of the other high ranking officers are alerted. Then they see that Rey's already escaped so they run into her and concoct a plan to blow up the building they're in for some reason. Maybe to stop the shields going back up or something? It might be to give the X-Wings an easier time. The odd thing is that Kylo Ren tells them to lock down all the hangars to stop Rey from escaping, yet the TIE Fighters are released to attack the X-Wings anyway. It would have been more interesting if they were thrown into confusion.

I wonder if it burns your hand at the top of the grip.

While setting the charges, Han realises it's time to confront his son, revealing that Ren's real name is Ben. Han steps out onto a big thin bridge over a crevasse and we know he's going to die, especially when he asks Ben to come back and Kylo Ren says he needs help to do something - of course he means to kill him, that's what they've been going on about for ages: Ren's struggle is not to go back to good, but to fully embrace evil. So of course Han gets snuffed and after thirty years Harrison Ford gets the resolution to his character that he wanted. I suppose that makes sense, but it's obviously very similar to Obi-Wan getting killed in the original film. Furthermore, it's not the most glorious exit for the character, getting duped by his rogue son into getting killed. Then again, a stereotypical self-sacrifice may have been a little banal. It would probably have been too much of a stretch to have Ren convert back this early, but it might have been more effective if he'd been wracked with Hamlet-like indecision and rendered impotent as a result (not in the reproductive sense). There's an okay cutaway to Leia obviously being affected "through the Force" or what have you but the best part of this is when Chewie shoots Ren in retaliation. The survivors high-tail it out of there, but somehow Ren gets ahead of Finn and Rey, despite being shot, and fights them, firstly engaging Finn in a lightsaber duel. Gone are the over-the-top lightsaber battles with loads of jumps and flips of yesteryear. Here it's just people whacking the shit out of each other's lightsabers, which confused me at first, but I guess it's a more back to basics approach. Finn's able to hold his own surprisingly well, which either makes Ren look inept, or is meant to show us that Ren is inept, basically a Darth Vader cosplayer with delusions of grandeur. I'm not keen on Ren's lightsaber. I get that it's meant to be something cobbled together by an inexperienced guy, but it just looks like them trying to do the "Darth Maul's unconventional lightsaber" thing again. Finn is overcome, however. When I originally watched this I foolishly thought that Luke was going to arrive to save the day, but of course Rey steps up to the plate and with the aid of her immense Force powers overcomes Ren and gives him a bit of the old stabby-stabby. Then with the planet disintegrating due to the successful X-Wing attack, the ground absurdly splits open exactly between them, separating the combatants in time for Chewie to come to the rescue in the Millennium Falcon. Back at base, R2-D2 wakes up so that he can combine his map of the galaxy with the missing piece held by BB-8 to show where Luke is. Why do they need the map? I get that they seem to have lost a lot of space knowledge with the collapse of the Empire, but it still seems pretty contrived. Couldn't it just be coordinates? In any event Finn's still out for the count so Rey heads off with Chewie after a perfunctory "May the Force be with you" from Leia. They go to a watery type planet, Rey walks up some steps and beholds the sight of craggy old Mark Hamill, now going down the Obi-Wan route with the cloak and beard, but not speaking any lines. Thus endeth the film.

On the poster, Rey's positioning makes
her look like one of the bad guys.

The more I think about it the more I think that The Force Awakens isn't a bad film but it could have been better. It's certainly not the masterpiece that many, but not all, viewers and critics are hailing it as being. My "initial (bad) impressions" as linked above are more or less my main ongoing criticisms of the film. I don't like the middle act on Takodana, I don't like Maz Kanata or Snoke and I don't like the plot's lack of ambition. On the other hand, the returning characters are welcome if a little unimpressive (apart perhaps from a few particular moments in which Chewie gets to shine), the new protagonists are pretty likeable and the whole thing looks quite nice (apart from the aforementioned unnecessary CGI). More world building would have been useful, less generic sci-fi crap like the stuff on Han's other ship would have been appreciated and a more original plot wouldn't have gone astray. Oscar Isaac also should have received more screentime as Poe Dameron. I wonder if much was left on the cutting room floor and, although I daresay Disney would perhaps consider this too similar to the widely-disliked Special Editions, if there's room for a Director's Cut of this film to introduce some valuable material that might have been omitted for cinemas. Kylo Ren is okay but I found him a bit predictable and he seems to really exist to maintain the Vader cachet in the unavoidable absence of that character, which is something Lucas at least avoided with Dooku if not with Maul. For me the standout from this is Daisy Ridley as Rey. John Boyega's good as Finn but I think has to do a little too much comedy; it's not that he's bad at the comedy, but it makes his character as a man trying to discover his identity amid a world of confusion and horrors (note that he trades the certainty but tyranny of the First Order for the freedom but confusion of life outside it) less prominent and at times makes Finn seem more like a bit of a buffoon. Considering the returning cast, hopefully there's plenty of Luke in the next film, but I'd like something a bit more true to form from Mark Hamill than Harrison Ford's routine performance in this as Han Solo. Carrie Fisher's Leia really seems to just be there for the sake of it, and I can't help but wonder if the film would have been more successful if they hadn't bothered with returning characters. Abrams balances a lot of new and returning characters by doing something familiar with the plot, and arguably that pays off, but a somewhat more ballsy effort in the writing department could have transformed this passable film into a truly striking new direction for the franchise. As it is, this is a competent piece of filmmaking and a reasonably well-handed sequel to some beloved films, but they do little to rival the originality and significance of the films they try to evoke. The direction, dialogue and acting are all probably stronger than the prequels, but that's no great achievement and the very limited involvement of Lucas makes them feel inauthentic and fan-service-focused rather than completely natural developments of an existing narrative. I should also mention that, apart from the use of existing pieces, the soundtrack is wholly forgettable. I can't remember a single new tune from it. People talk a lot about Star Wars viewing orders and how the parts fit together, but really I think this film, like the prequels before it, is a product of its own time, and is probably best appreciated when viewed as having a kind of nebulous connection with the originals rather than having a hard-wired link to them in an artistic sense. Nonetheless, I'll be interested to see the next one, and that suggests that they did at least some things right.