Film Review: Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)

Partly because Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi was released today and partly because I am not really happy about spoilers, or feeling like I need to reveal events from the movie just to be one of the first (thousands) of people to be able to claim to talk about the movie, I am going to just talk about my impressions rather than specifics.

First off, I was very happy with SWEVIII:TLJ (hereafter referred to only as SW8* for simplicity sake) over all.  The best way I could think of to describe the film to someone who has not seen it yet (The Kid earlier today), was that it very much felt like a movie in the Star Wars universe, but that it did not feel like any of the other Star Wars movies.  Similar to the same way that Rogue One felt like a Star Wars movie, but not of the numbered seven.

Another way I feel that better describes (sort of) the movie, is that its tone and the way the story was told reminded me a lot of The Clone Wars animated series.  The way that the story followed certain characters, actions of characters who were not part of the main cast, all reminded me of the way that The Clone Wars would often tell their stories, if the particular story did not follow Ahsoka, Anakin, or Obi-Wan.  Even a couple of the sets looked almost too clean, like they were computer generated, but were in fact real objects, but I suspect that that was a visual choice by the director.  And having only seen Looper, I think Rian Johnson did a pretty good job with this IP.  My childhood Star Wars is still intact (Ewoks and all), and I look forward to what his plan is for the next Star Wars trilogy.

Was it a perfect movie?  No.  In one instance, there was part of a story-line, that while I liked it, I was not particularly happy with how it played out.  I also wish that some characters were handled a little differently, but that is the way a Star Wars movie goes.  Maybe it is because I either did not listen to fan theories about characters and their yet undisclosed backstories, or that I just dismissed them outright.  And after the initial teaser, I did not watch any of the trailers, partly because Conklederp was not watching them, but I heard that some of the subsequent trailers contained spoilers and I personally wanted to try to remain spoiler free for as long as possible.

But it was still a Star Wars  movie.  Entire planets are still treated like a single city, time is still handled pretty loosely, and John Williams music is still there.  And actually, I felt that the score for The Last Jedi overall sounded more Star Wars-y than his score for The Force Awakens, and I am not just saying that after watching the movie, but listening to the soundtrack as well.

The point of all of this is, is that I really enjoyed TLJ and while I would love to see it again, there are three other movies that are currently out that I would like to see as well before they leave (1, 2, 3).  Will you like it?  Maybe.  Unless of course you were one of those people who was banking on Chewbacca being Rey's father, and that Emperor Snoke was really Arvin Sloan's twin brother who was running a secret black ops organization out of SD-6 under the guidance of Jack Bristow, but that is something we will talk about next week.

Until then, keep your cups full, but your minds fuller.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

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Book Review: Star Wars: Before the Awakening

Well, I finished my second Star Wars book, and this one, Star Wars: Before the Awakening by Greg Rucka, is in the reconfigured, now canon series.  Before going into this book, I already knew that it was geared more towards "young adults" and I was alright with that fact.  The reviews over on Amazon were positive and I figured for the low-low price of whatever low price I paid for the book, it would be worth it.  And I would say that for the most part it was.

Before the Awakening is a relatively short collection of three short stories from the perspectives of Finn (FN-2187), Rey, and Poe and each story takes place over the course of a couple of months to just under a year (depending on the story) and all take place before The Force Awakens.  One thing that I have noticed (in the now two Star Wars books that I've read) and my biggest critique of the entire book, is the the lack of character descriptions and frequent name dropping without descriptions.  Had I not seen the movie, or looked at the cover and illustration per story, I would not know what any of the chapter characters looked like,  I would not know that BB-8 (spelled phonetically as Beebee-ate, which I found rather distracting, but I assume that it was supposed to be similar to the spellings used for Artoo-Detoo and See-Threepio) was a small droid in the general shape of a ball, or that it had a white base with orange highlights.  Throughout the book, I found myself Googling what a "Maxima-A heavy cruiser," a "Lancer" class frigate, a "Dissident class light cruiser" and what a Ghtroc 720 ship looked like.  No descriptions of any kind.  And only from watching the movie did I assume what a "Luggabeast" (on Jakku) was based on the context in the story.  I felt that because this is a Star Wars book, that the reader must already know what various ships, and alien species are and what they look like.  It was like finding your self on the outside of an inside joke and you have to look up the context and the punchline yourself.

The first story, being Finn's, I will say that I was initially afraid that he was going to be referred to as "Finn" as opposed to FN-2187, which would not make any sense story-wise as he was given that name by Poe during the movie, which takes place before the movie and Finn even says that all he'd ever been called was "FN-2187."  This possible anachronism was thankfully avoided.  As I was telling Dellaños this last weekend, FN-2187's story felt a lot like the clone centered stories in The Clone Wars TV series, which felt very appropriate since audiences have never seen Stormtrooper training on screen.  In this story, there was no explanation given for the "FN" prefix, which I had just assumed was simply part of their serial number, possibly a "lot" number rather than having identifications such as ST-2971654755201, considering how many Stormtroopers the Empire and now First Order must go through if/when a Star Destroyer were to go down.

In Rey's story, the problem with writing prequels after a movie is made, I feel will frequently run the risk of creating events that are significant in the characters life that are never mentioned or referenced in the movie because those stories had not been conceived yet.  However, if the stories being told have no emotional weight or bear no significance to the development of the character, the reader is going to question why they are even reading the story in the first place.  One aspect of Rey's story I liked was how much importance it placed on the scavengers of Niima Outpost of finding scrap parts from downed ships.  There was even tidbits about the prevailing religion around Niima (although how far spread this religion was on the whole of Jakku was not made clear), which I enjoyed.

Poe Dameron's story offered snip-its of The Resistance, its relation to the New Republic and their frustrations with the New Republic not recognizing the growing presence of The First Order.  It also offered the most in the terms of character backstory, which made sense since FN-2187, as per the movie, was taken away from his family when he was a baby and Rey was "left" on Jakku when she was a youngling.  

As referenced earlier, Poe's chapter was the one where I ended up looking up most of the Star Wars-y ships.  I knew what X-Wings, A-Wings, and Star Destroyers were, but that's about where my knowledge ends by names alone.

As a whole, Before the Awakening was a pretty decent and very fast read (and I'm typically a slow-ish reader).  It contained little bits about the Star Wars universe 30 some odd years after Return of the Jedi that were not covered in The Force Awakens.  None of the stories offered answers to any of the "big" Enquirer-type questions raised by The Force Awakens either, so while I do recommend this short collection of short stories,  I would not go into it expecting any revelations anywhere near The Empire Strikes Back.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

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