I Had to Do It!

I had a few weeks off for the holidays, so I had to see the much (over)hyped Star Wars film, which was released a couple of weeks ago. I’ll cop to the fact that I’m sorta culturally illiterate at this point, so these are some minor and meaningless thoughts, typed in haste.

1. As the franchise has become more feminized, it has become more feminine.

While the original films offered a clear view of the sociopolitical situation, through which well-defined narrative developed the original characters we all know and love, the latest offering is hopelessly ambiguous. Star Wars now has all the depth and world-building of a trashy Spanish novela.

In this feature, we find Luke Skywalker’s character hiding out (from what? Child support? A false rape accusation?) on a miserable sort of ghetto planet. The “hero” in this film is a purple-haired Tumblr tranny.

There is a literary and cinematic place for complex plot-weaves, in which we are forced to feel empathy for the devil; but, this was never what made Star Wars a great story.

2. The aerodynamics of space travel is annoying.

While it’s common for Star Wars movies to feature space-pilots who can pull a 5 million G acceleration without passing out, all the prior movies were entertaining enough to allow the suspension of disbelief. This one isn’t. We’re treated to views of bombs dropping with the help of gravity-in-space, cannons screaming thanks to noise-in-a-vacuum, and a moxie-filled elderly feminist surviving a few minutes in the cold and empty blackness of the void, unprotected except for what looks to be a cheeseball evening gown.

Again, there are films in which similar things happen. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey comes to mind immediately. That was a great film, and the technical unbelievability gave way to an interest in the story. This is not a great movie, and thus such things stand out.

3. A New Hope: The Porg.

I saw this movie just after the opening weekend. The cinema I saw this film in wasn’t empty, but it wasn’t full either. At two points during the feature, the entire audience stopped talking and giggling among themselves to pay attention. The first example was when a penguin-like creature was roasted and eaten by Chewbacca. The second being when the surviving pal of said space penguin was riding shotgun in the Millennium Falcon.

If the screenwriters had any self-awareness, they’d jettison plans to pack the future films with trannies, faggots and wimminz, and just concentrate on the Porg. These tiny creatures managed to inject some legitimate emotion into a couple of brief scenes, and by the time the credits rolled, they stood out as an example of the only characters my audience was compelled to care about.

So, why?

Disney had forty years of history to draw upon, with a half dozen films, thousands of fan-fiction stories, and hundreds of already-developed characters along for the ride. There’s really no reason for them to make a bad Star Wars film, other than a desire to shit on American men and their collective childhood heroes. The Last Jedi has no coherent narrative arc to follow, no real heroism, and no cathartic ending. It was full of jarring, unfunny slapstick, stupid scenes and ham-fisted acting. It has nothing to offer anyone, and it was specifically designed that way.

The fact that critics are uniformly praising this movie to the stars (lol) is just more evidence of the grand, global disconnect between urban liberals from the core audience of the original Star Wars films, which was the average American.

In short: if you don’t mind suspending disbelief about standard physics in the cinema, check out an old Tarkovski movie. If you want to feel sympathy for the bad guy, read Cormac McCarthy. Even if you really love Star Wars, don’t bother shelling out cash to see this dumper. Get it on the torrents.

See other realtalking reviews of this film at Anarchist Notebook or Matt Forney.