12.28.2015

Star Wars: Episode Back-to-the-Same-Ol'-Same-Ol'

Alright, I can't say I disliked the new Star Wars movie.

In fact, it's pretty good—only an idiot would bitch about "diversity hires" with Boyega and Ridley fitting their roles so well—and someone appears to have slapped the glaring plot holes out of J.J. Abrams (although maybe this is more an effect of the universe having nothing to do with science, and therefore nothing that can be as thoroughly bullshat as that 'red matter' crap in the Star Trek reboot). Like many other decent action/adventure movies, the big stage is offset by up-close-and-personal conflicts, and there's enough twists and turns to keep an audience interested. Even the Lucasy film transitions, which look like they were ripped from a seventh grader's PowerPoint presentation, were unobtrusive.

And yet....

I get it, there's nothing wrong with falling backward in nostalgia, all the little shoutouts to the old movies and 21st century revisions where blatant shoutouts don't make sense or wouldn't be possible. In fact, it's only fair to expect as much after the incredible letdown that was the prequel trilogy, but I think we are giving far too much credit to this admittedly successful rehash of old ideas. If you know that everyone likes Kit-Kats and then sell a chocolate-coated wafer that breaks into three pieces, what exactly have you done that's so praiseworthy?

Granted, there is that one thing towards the end which, if it turns out to be an actual thing and not, say, Kirk at the end of the second Star Trek movie, deserves at least some credit for daring to mess with the hitherto untouchable nostalgia characters...but really, even that's been done before, and if my memory hasn't failed completely in somewhat of a similar setting, too.

Maybe I'm guilty of expecting too much from modern Hollywood, where a new concept is practically synonymous with too much risk, but still. Has so little changed since the 70s, from the collapse of the old world order to the rise of modern technology, that no creativity is merited?

By and large, feel free to enjoy this one, and don't act as if the wheel has been reinvented, because it hasn't.

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