Sunday, June 24, 2018
Star Wars vs MCU
Star Wars has always been about the story. The audience cared what happened to the heroes because they were the catalyst for what happened to the galaxy. the struggle of the Rebel Alliance was the story of the galaxy. Star Wars tells stories that last not just for a single movie, but that span multiple films in trilogies that all focus on the same story.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe turns this concept on its head. Because the characters are indestructable, it truly does not matter what happens to them in any individual book or movie. In Thor Ragnarok, Odin dies and Asgaard is burned to ashes, and in both cases Thor literally tells the audience that it does not matter. Marvel movies are all about the characters and their immediate environments. Story is not important. Story is mutable. Something could happen in the narrative in this installment which will be reversed and negated in the very next episode. Asgaard will rise from its own ashes the next time around. No one is really worried that Odin has gone for good. It is axiomatic that no one ever truly dies in a comic book world.
And that is one of the strengths of the format. You can have dramatic conflicts and huge seemingly world altering events take place without sacrificing continuity, because change is continuity for a superhero universe. Instead of being a single long story, MCU films tend to be a series of short stories told within a single movie. From the previous example, we have a series of three giant set pieces (for example the Hulk vs Thor fight, the Thor vs Hela's army, the destruction of Asgaard). Each of these set pieces is only marginally related to each other.
Sunday, June 10, 2018
Solo: a review
So first, a few notes about the overall film.
This was a competent film, a decent heist movie, and a ok buddy film. That was all it needed to be, and it worked on that level. It wasn't a grand epic with galaxy-altering consequences, but it didn't aspire to that, either.
It seemed to me as if it was originally titled, "Solo: a smuggler's story" because that was what it was, a story about the smuggler's side of the Star Wars universe. It wasn't about Jedi, or the Force. It wasn't about the Rebellion, though that was mentioned. Instead, it lived in the world of the pirates, smugglers and the common man, living in the shadow and under the boot heel of the Empire.
I loved the visuals of the ore train, clinging to the side of the mountain. But mostly the cinematography was small, close, simple. It wasn't a particularly beautiful film, either. We spent some time on the mean streets of Corellia, but many of the shots were closely framed interiors while the long shots of the chase sequence had the flat feel of cgi over a matte.
It was a story on the level of one of the better Clone Wars episodes. I liked the introduction between Chewbacca and Han and the development of their friendship. I especially liked the fact that we took time to give Chewie a chance to make his own decisions about the duo, and that he didn't just fall in with Han by default. He got to make a conscious choice, and he did so based on Han's character.
Now a few words about what this film was not. It was not a horrible betrayal of Star Wars, and of all the movies that had come before, and of the ethos and philosophy which Star Wars represents. It did justice to the established characters, and didn't destroy Han or Chewie or Lando. It did introduce L337, fixated on the equality and liberation of her fellow droids, and was suitably over the top in her vocal protestations. If audience members were looking for a trigger to bring up all the simmering feelings of Vice-Admiral Holdo, L3 was it. But as it was realized in the film, these things didn't seem so out of place.
The role of droids in Star Wars lore has always been a point of contention, from the the earliest moments of Episode IV onward. Lucas has always explored the second-class status of droids, and continually compared their plight to slavery. "We're not allowed in there. It's restricted." "Your droids, we don't serve their kind here. They'll have to wait outside." "Well, I can see that you're serving drinks." "We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life."
Rather than being a jarring distraction from the story, L3's rebellion seems to compliment and further the story of the escape from Kessel, And we take the time to humanize L3 by showing us how she sees herself. At the same time, the movie's portrayal of L3-37 (who's name spells Leet in geekspeak) did not invite us to take her entirely seriously. She may have been parodying her SJW overtones as much as seriously pushing them. Donald Glover shows the way that Lando doesn't take her seriously, but also convinces us at the end that he genuinely cares for her.
In the end, it wasn't the missteps or the cultural anachronisms that damaged Solo. It was the mediocre scope of the tale. It started out with a desperate escape and a daring train robbery, but then it started to go down hill and got lost in boring talky parts. For example, I hate to say it, but I felt like Enfys Nest and the proto-rebel Cloud Riders were terribly underused in the later half of the story. The final confrontation with Dryden Vos was stolen by Qi'ra, while Solo had yet another underwhelming, talky scene with his former mentor Beckett. The climactic scenes of betrayal were all of people standing around a room talking. The show went out with a whimper.
It felt like the film had ground to cover, rather than a story to tell. Rather than having a core narrative thread, it had things to do, boxes to check (millenium falcon, Kessel Run, Chewbacca, speaking Wookie, Lando, fair and square, etc. Check, check, check. Random easter egg callbacks to expanded universe comics, Check.)
And on the other hand, I didn't feel like there were solid Han Solo moments, here. Remember that line from Leia? "You do have your moments... You don't have many of them, but you do have them." This was what I felt Solo ultimately lacked, the moment when Han's daring and ingenuity pulled the whole thing off for us. I want the escape from the Maw to be one of those moments, injecting the coaxium, riding the lightening, squeezing through the collapsing opening. But, since Beckett did the injecting, and L3's navigational charts plotted their escape, Solo himself didn't actually do anything.
Which was true throughout the entire movie.
This was a competent film, a decent heist movie, and a ok buddy film. That was all it needed to be, and it worked on that level. It wasn't a grand epic with galaxy-altering consequences, but it didn't aspire to that, either.
It seemed to me as if it was originally titled, "Solo: a smuggler's story" because that was what it was, a story about the smuggler's side of the Star Wars universe. It wasn't about Jedi, or the Force. It wasn't about the Rebellion, though that was mentioned. Instead, it lived in the world of the pirates, smugglers and the common man, living in the shadow and under the boot heel of the Empire.
I loved the visuals of the ore train, clinging to the side of the mountain. But mostly the cinematography was small, close, simple. It wasn't a particularly beautiful film, either. We spent some time on the mean streets of Corellia, but many of the shots were closely framed interiors while the long shots of the chase sequence had the flat feel of cgi over a matte.
It was a story on the level of one of the better Clone Wars episodes. I liked the introduction between Chewbacca and Han and the development of their friendship. I especially liked the fact that we took time to give Chewie a chance to make his own decisions about the duo, and that he didn't just fall in with Han by default. He got to make a conscious choice, and he did so based on Han's character.
Now a few words about what this film was not. It was not a horrible betrayal of Star Wars, and of all the movies that had come before, and of the ethos and philosophy which Star Wars represents. It did justice to the established characters, and didn't destroy Han or Chewie or Lando. It did introduce L337, fixated on the equality and liberation of her fellow droids, and was suitably over the top in her vocal protestations. If audience members were looking for a trigger to bring up all the simmering feelings of Vice-Admiral Holdo, L3 was it. But as it was realized in the film, these things didn't seem so out of place.
The role of droids in Star Wars lore has always been a point of contention, from the the earliest moments of Episode IV onward. Lucas has always explored the second-class status of droids, and continually compared their plight to slavery. "We're not allowed in there. It's restricted." "Your droids, we don't serve their kind here. They'll have to wait outside." "Well, I can see that you're serving drinks." "We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life."
Rather than being a jarring distraction from the story, L3's rebellion seems to compliment and further the story of the escape from Kessel, And we take the time to humanize L3 by showing us how she sees herself. At the same time, the movie's portrayal of L3-37 (who's name spells Leet in geekspeak) did not invite us to take her entirely seriously. She may have been parodying her SJW overtones as much as seriously pushing them. Donald Glover shows the way that Lando doesn't take her seriously, but also convinces us at the end that he genuinely cares for her.
In the end, it wasn't the missteps or the cultural anachronisms that damaged Solo. It was the mediocre scope of the tale. It started out with a desperate escape and a daring train robbery, but then it started to go down hill and got lost in boring talky parts. For example, I hate to say it, but I felt like Enfys Nest and the proto-rebel Cloud Riders were terribly underused in the later half of the story. The final confrontation with Dryden Vos was stolen by Qi'ra, while Solo had yet another underwhelming, talky scene with his former mentor Beckett. The climactic scenes of betrayal were all of people standing around a room talking. The show went out with a whimper.
It felt like the film had ground to cover, rather than a story to tell. Rather than having a core narrative thread, it had things to do, boxes to check (millenium falcon, Kessel Run, Chewbacca, speaking Wookie, Lando, fair and square, etc. Check, check, check. Random easter egg callbacks to expanded universe comics, Check.)
And on the other hand, I didn't feel like there were solid Han Solo moments, here. Remember that line from Leia? "You do have your moments... You don't have many of them, but you do have them." This was what I felt Solo ultimately lacked, the moment when Han's daring and ingenuity pulled the whole thing off for us. I want the escape from the Maw to be one of those moments, injecting the coaxium, riding the lightening, squeezing through the collapsing opening. But, since Beckett did the injecting, and L3's navigational charts plotted their escape, Solo himself didn't actually do anything.
Which was true throughout the entire movie.
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