Forced: The New Adventures of Old Star Wars

Note: I have made no attempts to conceal spoilers in this review, so read at your own risk.

After the last three films in the Star Wars franchise, The Force Awakens had nowhere to go but up. While all the superfans were still basking in their space opera reverie from opening weekend, I managed to see an afternoon showing of the latest Star Wars. Here’s my history regarding this franchise, in a nutshell: I resisted them until 4th grade because everyone else was so into them; then I really loved them for a few years, until one of my best friends—a Star Wars devotee if ever there was one, who made Star Wars home movies with his brother—scared me straight. I wasn’t going to be that cultish about it. (There were so many other things to be cultish about.) The Force Awakens is a relatively clever and entertaining jaunt into space opera, but it hits all its predictable beats with such self-satisfaction that you know what’s coming before it happens. This is pure nostaglic giddiness on the part of director J.J. Abrams, pure “Look-at-me-getting-to-direct-a-Star-Wars-movie!” 

Nostalgia is the wind in the sails of The Force Awakens. J.J. Abrams has genuine affection for these movies, and he deftly adheres to all their idiosyncrasies. Force mirrors Star Wars (as in A New Hope) in a number of ways: it establishes new, young heroes Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac), a new (old) threat in the form of Han and Leia’s corrupted Jedi son Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). And now Luke Skywalker has taken on the Ben Kenobi aura of mystery, having fled civilization in despair. (His attempts to train his nephew backfired, and he feels responsible for Kylo Ren’s conversion to the Dark Side.)

Rey is essentially the new Luke Skywalker, although Finn may sort of share that credit. Rey is a scavenger living on a bleak desert planet called Jakku, where she awaits the return of her family. (It's not quite clear what happened to them.) Her existence is very Mad Max. We see her trading machine parts for food and sitting with watchful yearning (like Luke did in A New Hope) for something better to happen to her. She's pulled into the drama of Star Wars via an adorable droid named BB-8, who's carrying important information regarding Luke Skywalker's whereabouts. (Another mirror-plot checkpoint.)

Let’s remember that the original Star Wars was itself a nostalgia trip, culled by George Lucas from serials he remembered watching on Saturday mornings as a child. That makes The Force Awakens a nostalgia trip within a nostalgia trip; add to that the fact that the kids who grew up on the originals have now lived long enough to spawn their very own Star Wars-loving progeny, and you’ve essentially got third-hand mythology. That was why, about an hour into the movie, I began to pull away from it. The new characters’ stories are compelling, but Abrams cannot fully overcome the ring of familiarity. And he’s too much in love with the series to really want to, try as he might.

There are little moments of humor that really pop, and the performances of the three young leads are winning. Acting has improved so much over the years that they’re leagues ahead of Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill when they first debuted in 1977. Those three, naturally, return for this new installment, with varying degrees of screen time. (Hamill seemed like a no show for most of the film, but Abrams pays it off smartly at the end.) 

J.J. Abrams has a knack for tweaking pop culture iconography into his own re-packaged product. But I’m not sure that qualifies him as a storyteller. It’s perhaps good enough that Abrams is better than George Lucas. But as a director—of movies, particularly—Abrams is erratic. Some of the action (meaning plot development, not merely fight scenes and explosions) is well-structured, like the climactic lightsaber showdown between Rey and Kylo Ren. At other times, Abrams fails to fully set up a scene. When Rey is attacked by some stormtroopers in a marketplace, we see it from afar through the perspective of Finn. The scene doesn't really work unless we're up close, watching Rey's reaction, watching her fend off the stormtroopers, rooting for her. Of course, the purpose of putting it from Finn's perspective is to have him rush to save her, only to get there after Rey has dispensed with her attackers on her own. She doesn't need his help. It's a cool, enlightened moment for a Star Wars movie, and yet the scene doesn't totally work as structured.

Likewise, the dialogue fluctuates in quality. Abrams wisely goes for silence in two key dramatic scenes: when Rey and Leia embrace after the death of Han Solo, and when Rey hands Luke Skywalker his lightsaber at the end. It’s hard to imagine any dialogue that wouldn’t have sounded cheesy in those moments. But in other scenes, the dialogue is laboriously clunky, like a laughably bad moment when Han Solo and Leia discuss their son’s temptation to the dark side, like they’re expounding on the ingredients of a chicken soup recipe. It’s some of the worst dialogue in the movie: utterly lacking in emotional truth, and utterly functional. (Perhaps it’s an ode to George Lucas’s hackneyed dialogue.)

Pauline Kael once said that Star Wars was like a box of Cracker Jacks that was all prizes. J.J. Abrams has adopted a similar storytelling method. He doesn’t have the patience to let the weighty moments in the story be earned. They’re revealed quickly and haphazardly—like when Kylo Ren removes his mask. (Remember it took us three movies to see Darth Vador’s face.) And when the young man kills his father—the beloved Han Solo—it feels both too late and too soon. (Harrison Ford apparently wanted Lucas to kill his character off in Return of the Jedi, but Lucas balked at shooting such a dark ending.) It’s the right choice, but a misplaced one. Perhaps it should have happened in Part Two, but without Solo’s death, The Force Awakens would have no dramatic weight to it.

But despite all my quibbles, I basically enjoyed The Force Awakens, even if I was expecting more from it. It's certainly better than the previous three installments, although that's not saying much, and Abrams has potentially laid the groundwork for a really first-rate middle section just like the original trilogy did with/for Empire Strikes Back. We'll have to wait and see.

With Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels, Lupita Nyong’o, Domnhall Gleeson, Andy Serkis, Max Von Sydow.

Star Trek Into Darkness

I felt compelled to go back and re-familiarize myself with the plot of Star Trek (2009) in order to be fresh enough to see the sequel, although I must say it wasn't necessary. Star Trek Into Darkness is a lucid follow-up, both visually and structurally, and for that I was extremely grateful to the filmmakers. Why other movies of this variety aren't following suit is baffling to me, but generally when you go see a big, eye-popping fantasy movie like this, ten to one you'll have no idea what's going on, particularly during scenes of large-scale conflict. It's usually a combination of unfocused editing and camera work--which is a foolish attempt to tell a story through chaos--and sloppy, user's manual style writing.

I'm far more compliant with big movies that operate the way Star Trek did: they tell a vivid story visually, and are bent on having fun. Of course, the studios are bent on wowing the viewer with marvelous special effects (especially now that everyone wants 3-D, even from The Great Gatsby!). The studios, who churn out these expensive adventure flicks quicker than second-tier public universities churn out Bachelor's degrees, somehow manage to let someone like director J.J. Abrams inject enough good in with the bad, neutralizing it or when he's really on fire, transcending it. Abrams doesn't spend a lot of time trying to create new problems: he's more interested in letting these characters interact inside the old ones, and that is what gives the two latest Star Trek films their pull, their ability to make people like me--who generally despise giant epic fantasy movies--go see them.

Admittedly, Into Darkness began to wear on me toward the finale: there were about three too many false endings, and I was apparently invested enough in the story and the characters to be annoyed when something happened that I didn't like, but it was still an enjoyable two hours. There's always a delicate balancing act for what I must assume is the middle film of a trilogy: the middle entry has to move things along to a resolution while simultaneously not resolving them ultimately, so that Part Three can manage the finishing touches.

The plot picks up with Captain Kirk (the magnetic Chris Pine once again filling William Shatner's shoes) and Doctor Spock (Zachary Quinto) fleeing an angry, primitive tribe on an unknown planet that is enveloped in red foliage. These plants look something like potpourri if it grew naturally. The crew of the Enterprise is trying to neutralize a volcanic eruption that would unquestionably wipe out the entire race of the indigenous people living on the planet, but these people don't know that. There's some argument over the momentous act of allowing them to see the ship emerge from the sea and into the air (since they won't have any clue what it is), and we're left with this tribe tracing an image of the vessel in the sand. Surely this is a little bit of foreshadowing. Abrams leaves it behind for another movie.

There are plenty of other complications that hound the crew of the Enterprise once the story gets back to Earth, where we find that the Starfleet is under attack from an unknown human assailant (played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who's equal parts rogue and British mastermind and plays both of these to the hilt). As is to be expected, there are various twists and turns and clashes of character that occur here, most of which are either believable or at the very least intriguing and therefore worthwhile. Captain Kirk leads his crew in a retaliatory mission after Cumberbatch bombs their archives building in London, and soon we discover that he's got a lot more on his mind than destroying public records.

The design of the film tries to merge old with new: London-set two hundred or so years in the future--has that "space station" look mingled with remnants of the Victorian and Georgian eras: an old Tudor hospital that has a futuristic expansion melded onto it like an artificial limb where the real magic happens. The trick of designing a realistic looking future world has always been somewhat of a fools' errand: the technology of 2001: A Space Odyssey doesn't look anything like reality, but perhaps this is the advantage of setting a movie in the 2200s: who in 2013 will be around to notice that they did or didn't get it right?

The movie has a lot more energy than it knows what to do with, which might explain why it clocks in at two hours and ten minutes or so, but feels half-an-hour longer: every time one problem gets resolved, another one is compounded, and the solutions grow increasingly less convincing. But by the time you get to the end, you're so emotionally invested, you can't do much but hang on and let whatever comes come. I suppose this is one of the signs of an effective movie, or perhaps of an affective one. I was certainly riveted, but at some point it started to feel like overkill.

What saves Star Trek Into Darkness--and this is true of just about any movie, really--are the characters, who have a ridiculous banter and a bond between them which is genuinely disarming and fun to watch. And I suppose there's a bit more weight to this sequel, even though I think I enjoyed the previous one more. Abrams seems bent on not treating this like an unsatisfying middle film: it has its own beginning and end, even if the story threads are meant to connect both backwards and forwards. Abrams, and his scriptwriters--Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof--do a good job of keeping this balance and making it work--most of the time. And yes, the visuals were stunning, even if some of them seemed unconvincing. (One example: the photos taken of the after effects of the London bomb: the people and buildings in the pictures look too XBox 360.) Still, cinematographer Dan Mindel manages some nice little touches. For example, he juxtaposes two scenes with something being dropped into a glass: in the first one, a ring (filled with some kind of explosive material) sets off the explosion of the archives building in London. Then we cut to a round ice cube falling into Captain Kirk's drink at a bar in San Francisco.

If I have any hopes for this genre, they are rooted in the fact that these two Star Trek movies managed to show a non-fanboy a good time. With Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Bruce Greenwood, Peter Weller, Alice Eve, Noel Clarke, and Leonard Nimoy. ★★½

Star Trek

I have never seen any of the other Star Trek films in their entirety, although I remember watching part of the first one in school a long time ago. So, I did not have a lot of expectations or foreknowledge about the most recent incarnation of this incredibly long-lasting storyline.

It's been a while since I've really enjoyed a movie like this. It pulls you in immediately, but not simply because of astonishing visual effects, but because from almost the first moment the audience is able to care about the characters, even ones who have very little screen time.

Without a doubt, Simon Pegg's portrayal of Scotty was the funniest part of the movie.



He came in kinda late, and you could instantly see the difference with his comic appeal. Meanwhile, however, the story is momentous and absorbing enough to maintain itself all the way. Most space epics seem to run out of steam, but I was glad to see that the new Star Trek carried its weight.

What was really amusing about Star Trek 2009 was observing how much it clings to the past in spite of its attempt to be hip. I'm really not trying to criticize the story at all--again, it was thoroughly engrossing--but you can see how much its roots are in the 1960s with those Vulcan haircuts and goofy sayings (a la "live long and prosper.") I think my favorite was the emotionally charged exchange between Uhura and Spock: "I'll be monitoring your frequency!"

Note that this is J.J. Abrams' feature directing debut. Up until now, his directing work has been confined to television shows. I think he made a fairly smooth transition, although one of the things that bugs me about many of today's movies is a lack in directorial style. Sure, special effects can be effective, but only the style of a director can make a movie special.

But, ultimately, the movie delivered some enjoyable escapism, and not the cold, cynical kind that has become vogue in Hollywood, but something a lot more sympathetic and disarming. ★★★