Get Me A Hydrospanner - and More Tickets to Star Wars!

I’ve seen The Force Awakens three times now, and it seems to get better with every viewing – or at least to further cement itself in my mind as a classic and outstanding episode of the saga.  Do I even need to warn you about spoilers?  Go see the movie!

I just can’t stop thinking about this film.  I’m awed by the magnificence of the casting.  Did Daisy Ridley fall out of another "more civilized age"?  She feels like she belongs to the Golden Age of movies.   And she’s perfect in this role!  She captures characteristics of both Luke and Han from the originals, but makes this character feel unique in her own right.  On my third viewing of the film she seemed more young and vulnerable than she had before, but that did nothing to diminish the strength and brilliance of Rey.  If anything, it reinforced the drama of her story and the significance of her agency.  Ms. Ridley has achieved a deep and resonant character that can morph into different versions, depending on our needs and expectations.

Lupita Nyong’o’s timeless voice breathes life into a thousand-year-old alien and makes me want to sit down at the bar in Maz’s castle and talk with her about the Jedi.  John Boyega’s Finn is often played for humor, but consider his more serious moments: “We all need to run” and that wonderful, desperate, almost suicidal dash across the ruins when Kylo abducts Rey.  It’s powerful stuff.  Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren is cruel and yet regal, crazy and conflicted.  In the mask, he stalks through the movie like a demonic vulture, poised to devour his prey.  There are scenes where his movements are so smooth and eerie he almost seems like a special effect – in a good way.  Even Poe Dameron seems to get cooler with every viewing.

There are so many fun puzzles to muse over.  Of course, there’s the obvious question of Rey’s heritage, but there are plenty of other matters to consider.  Did Luke personally battle the Knights of Ren when his Jedi Order fell?  Why is he reaching for R2 at what seems a pivotal moment?  Who is Snoke?  How much does Leia know about him and his influence?  Will the Republic be reborn?  Who will lead it?  Are we going to pick up with Episode VIII immediately after this film – or will we never know exactly what Luke first says to Rey?

Do you have complaints about this film?  “Let go, Luke!”  It’s like the cave on Dagobah – perhaps you’ve brought too much cynicism and negativity with you.  Are you really worried about science in a space fantasy movie?  How does Starkiller Base shoot across the cosmos? ... Who cares?  Maybe it burns a hole in the fabric of space-time.  Maybe it’s secretly fueled by the power of the Dark Side!  Star Wars needs big space-guns and gigantic explosions.  Why does R2-D2 wake so conveniently?  For the same reason that Han showed up at just the right moment during the Death Star assault in A New Hope – to make amazing cinema.  Outside the film, J.J. Abrams actually provides a fine explanation, too, about R2 processing data from his long-ago Death Star interface, and slowly reawakening after BB-8 prompts him for information.  But maybe Luke’s mechanical hand has transformed his connection with the Force, transcending the ordinary boundaries of organic life and forming a spiritual-mechanical link with R2, thus stirring the droid once there is a great disturbance in the Force.  Anything’s possible in Star Wars.

It’s derivative of A New Hope, you say?  Classic Star Wars was derivative of all sorts of stuff – but it still managed to be amazing, and the same holds true here.  To me this movie feels fresh and dynamic – watch Rey and Han when they arrive on Maz’s planet and Rey marvels at the lush landscape.  Han can’t quite believe that this kid still sees the universe with innocent eyes, but she does, and so should we.  Okay, maybe this movie isn’t as seamless as The Empire Strikes Back, but I think The Force Awakens has a better closing scene than Episode V.  Cliffhangers can be frustrating, but this is in the tradition of the inspirations behind Star Wars, like Flash Gordon.  Besides, it’s all just so beautiful – the scenery, the cinematography, the music.  And Rey’s look and gesture at the end all but say “Help us Luke Skywalker, you’re our only hope.”  Yet, just as in the original film, the true hope may reside not in the old teacher but in the young student – in this case, Rey herself.

The Force Awakens is well and truly Star Wars – and Star Wars triumphant!  The old characters are there, exploring new elements of a familiar galaxy.  The new characters are as archetypal as they can be without turning into carbon copies of the old ones: a scavenger letting go of a traumatic past, a deserter struggling with his place in the world, a prodigal son who breaks his parents’ hearts.  The music is glorious, the battles are exciting, and there is wonderful alien weirdness throughout!  And such tenderness: that moment with Rey wearing the Rebel pilot’s helmet while sitting beside the wrecked AT-AT is priceless.  I admire the reverence for the legacies of the saga, as when Rey’s force vision shows her – and us –  “the future, the past… old friends long gone.”  It’s all here and I’m going to savor every moment of it.  There’s a little dialogue running in my head…

Me: “I love you.”

The Force Awakens: “I know.”

The Force Awakens: Myth, Mirth, and Mystery

The Force Awakens – Meditations from an Original Trilogy Fan

I won’t really focus on detailing the plot, but there are spoilers here, so please go see the movie before you read this!

Where to begin?  The Force Awakens is a great film.  I’m not going to analyze it as just any action film.  What matters to me is whether this is a good installment of the Star Wars saga.  To that point, I think it is a wonderful addition to the story.  Is it better than the prequels?  Much, much better.  I try not to waste my time with hatred, but I was disappointed in the prequels.  This, though, is a different story.  Then (dare we ask?), is The Force Awakens as good as the original trilogy?  Well, that depends on how you make the comparison.  It’s not really fair to compare one film to three, after all.  The Force Awakens is not as self-contained as A New Hope, which may make it frustrating for some fans.  It’s perhaps not as deeply evocative as The Empire Strikes Back, which could disappoint others.  And it’s not going to offer quite the feel-good fulfillment of Return of the Jedi, though you can’t really expect that in the first of the new episodes.  Given all those limitations, why do I love this film so much?  This is a great film because it honors the spirit and legacy of the original trilogy while setting up a wide-open and exciting future for the saga.  That’s actually quite an achievement!

It makes sense to me to compare this to A New Hope.  As I said, Awakens is less self-contained and therefore less immediately fulfilling than the older introductory episode.  Nevertheless, you could make the case that it’s actually more exciting than A New Hope – the action in the new film is more evenly spread throughout, the spaceship scenes are more dynamic, and there’s a better lightsaber fight at the end.  It’s also probably more intriguing – here we have a villain much more complex than the early Vader (and maybe the later one, too).  Of course, I have questions remaining: a few more than I would have liked, probably.  Yet there were a lot of characters to balance in this film – old and new, heroes and villains.  There just wasn’t time to develop everything.  In any case, the remaining mysteries, as frustrating as they may seem, will probably make me all the more eager to see the next film.  In the end, there’s no need to worry about whether A New Hope or The Force Awakens is superior.  It’s subjective and what matters is that they both achieve something powerful and dynamic in our hearts and minds.

I’ll talk through some of the characters.  BB-8 is magic… absolute magic.  It’s hard to believe they could make a droid that is cuter and more engaging than R2, but I think they did it.  He almost steals the show.  Poe Dameron seems a bit underdeveloped at this point, but he’s engaging and likeable.  The same applies to Maz Kanata – though its especially gratifying to see a wise matriarch holding court over the exuberant chaos of galactic society.  We need more Maz!  Finn is a good character to introduce us to the story – in some ways a curious mixture of Han’s self-preservation instinct and Luke’s wide-eyed wonder.  Yet he’s really something quite new and should be considered on his own terms.  Rey is absolutely fantastic!  Luke Skywalker is one of my all-time favorite movie heroes and Rey stands poised to join him as a hero for the ages.  Smart, tough, and sensitive, Rey should be a great role model for everyone and I think she will take us on an incredible journey.  The scenes with her discovering and then accepting her force powers are really quite moving.  She feels absolutely authentic and has unlimited potential for the future.  We should all be grateful to Daisy Ridley and the people who decided to cast her in the role.

What about the villains?  Captain Phasma feels really underused, but perhaps that only puts her in the tradition of the bounty hunters from Empire.  When this intriguing masked woman is dumped rather unceremoniously into the garbage chute, it echoes the abrupt and comic demise of Fett in Jedi.  At least it keeps her alive for a potential return!  And I do love the story forming in my mind in which Phasma growls over the scuffs to her shiny armor, wrestles and strangles a trash compactor monster, then broods about vengeance against Finn.  As for Kylo Ren, he may not be quite as iconic as Vader yet, but he’s more mercurial and complex.  In fact, I think he’s kind of what Anakin should have been in the prequel trilogy.  That alone makes him a worthy addition to the saga, even apart from the obvious drama that he embodied in this film.

Of course, the return of the classic characters is an important element of the movie.  We’ll have to wait and see what Luke really has in store for us.  I know his appearance here is brief, but check out that look on his face as he sees Rey and the lightsaber.  To me it’s filled with so much angst and dignity that it’s both inspiring and shattering.  Is he accepting with stoicism the battle to come?  Is he overwhelmed with doubts?  Does he recognize this young woman?  It’s so exciting to consider!  Leia, meanwhile, is great as the broken-hearted general just trying to hold things together.  Han is his old “scoundrel” self and has a movie where he’s really at the forefront.  He really feels like a logical extension of the old character, though now burdened by tragedy and loss.  But I think the showstopper of the classic characters could be Chewbacca.  I wasn’t expecting to see so much of him here and he’s put to brilliant use.  Chewie is comic relief as before, but now also more of an action hero – his old adorable self and Han’s most inseparable companion.

There are plenty of little moments that I found cool: the weird scavenger that captures BB, hyper-speed with a squid, flipping the Falcon for a straight shot, the alien Resistance leader I affectionately call “General Wolfie,” and, of course, BB-8’s unforgettable thumbs-up.  And there are definitely some cheer-worthy moments: Rey’s force powers, the arrival of the Resistance X-Wings, and the brief but magnificent appearance of Luke.  There are subtle moments that add to the magic, like the lightsabers reflecting in the eyes of Ren and Rey as they face off with one another in that enchanting snow-shrouded forest.  Also, the soundtrack is excellent – worthy of comparison to the originals even though it seems somehow more subtle… haunting, exciting, complex.  Rey’s theme, for example, has a brightness and hopefulness about it that is quite compelling – it sort of makes me think of some Irish vagabond or trickster roaming the hills, which works for her lonely but tenacious existence.

Despite its darker and more traumatic moments, this is a fun film.  Just as importantly, it’s a film with a soul.  Most of the stuff that comes out of Hollywood holds little interest for me, but this film has so much to offer.  As I watched The Force Awakens, I knew it was really good – I laughed, I cried, I smiled, and I applauded.  Yet it was – for various reasons – still a jarring experience, something that took a few hours to fit into the old, deep mythology that had been with me since childhood.  I had to think seriously about how I felt and what this film meant to me before I could fully come to terms with it.  Yet the more I thought about it, the more excited about it I became.  If the original trilogy, at its heart, was a film about the “Dark Father” and his son’s attempt at guiding him to redemption – this, by contrast, seems to be (at least in part) the story of the “Fallen Son.”  That makes a lot of sense as a new chapter in the mythology.  Can Kylo be redeemed?  By Luke?  By Rey?  By Leia?  He has a long way to go – and we’ll just have to wait and see.  And where is Rey’s family?  There are still uncertainties, which could seem frustrating.  Remember, though, Luke was (in a sense) just a farm boy in Ep. IV and Rey is (in a sense) just a scavenger in Ep. VII – we have to give her character time to unfold.  Along the way, I think we’re in store for an incredible adventure.

Sure, you could probably find some faults or limitations in this film – but why would you want to worry over that, when there is so very much to love?  If there were pieces missing here that you wished you could see, just remember that Star Wars has always nourished and stimulated the imagination of its fans.  What happens on screen is just the seed for all the dreams and possibilities we can imagine in our minds – and a wellspring for all the spirit and heart we can bring out of the theater and into the real world.  If this movie doesn’t offer you everything you wanted, use that tension as a spark to go out make some magic of your own.  In the meantime, let the new adventures begin!  The Force has indeed awakened.  For Star Wars fans it will be a refuge, an inspiration, a mystery, and a powerful source of creative energy.  That’s why this saga (a term I prefer over franchise) can be more than an escapist playground or consumerist frenzy.  It can be a globe-spanning vessel for the stories by which we shape ourselves – a collective dream-scape of the longing for adventure, individual dignity, and collaborative endeavor that blossoms in our childhoods and lingers, evolving, through our undiscovered futures.

Images:
Christopher Ables
AMC 3-D Promotion

Masks, Myths, and Star Wars

As The Force Awakens nears, with all its promise and possibility of awesomeness, I’m continuing my ongoing celebration of Star Wars.  I’d like to explore the concept of “the mask” as manifest in the first installment of the Star Wars saga (A New Hope, 1977).  I’m treading familiar ground here, I suppose, though maybe I’ll find some new geography beneath my musing feet.  Let’s begin with the most obvious and iconic example of a mask in the film: Darth Vader.  Vader’s mask is obviously meant to be intimidating, and is famously modeled after Japanese samurai helmets.

Later we will learn that Vader is “more machine than man” and that this “mask” actually sustains his life.  In A New Hope, though, Vader is a kind of hieroglyphic, a mystery that is difficult to unravel.  In some ways the mask marks him as a solider – for it is the military stormtroopers and TIE pilots that share such a hidden identity.  The officers of the Empire are not masked – cruel, of course, but ordinary enough in appearance.  Yet Vader moves among these military officials as a sign and symbol of things ancient and mystical – the Jedi and the Dark Side.  His mask puts him in the world of mythology, the deeper realm anchoring the film’s dreamlike power.

Yet, if we keep an open definition of the concept, there are other masks in Star Wars.  What of C-3PO?  Of course he is a robot, not a human with a mask, but in some sense this droid is nothing but a mask.  Working in the realm of etiquette and protocol, he is the false face that serves as any face, the symbol-talker.

He is almost the opposite of the trickster archetype, a placid blank face of subordination, the every-face of universal translation.   In some ways, he is the inversion of Vader – a golden face set against the dark one, a being of technology who masquerades as human and therefore becomes human.  Vader, in some ways, is a human masquerading as a robot who thereby becomes a robot – a slave to the Emperor, programmed into a network of fear and hatred from which he cannot escape.

Then there are the stormtroopers.  Their casual chatter in Star Wars proves that they are human, but their armor clearly marks them as a blank entity – beings not supposed to show emotion, or mercy.  The fact that they are effectively wearing masks – not just protective helmets – is reinforced when Luke arrives to rescue Leia.  She jokes about him being “short for a stormtrooper.”  He responds with “Oh, the uniform.”  A uniform is a mask for the body, concerned less about protection than with making a statement of power or authority.

By contrast, Chewbacca has no uniform – not even clothes!  Though the actor Peter Mayhew wore a mask, Chewie is perhaps the least masked character in the movie – and it’s easy to underestimate how essential he is to the mythic power of the film.

Essentially naked, powerful yet Other, Chewbacca is the alien that is a friend, a strength that is married to gentleness.  His seemingly incomprehensible roar contains a hidden language – linking the animal to the fundamentally human.  Chewbacca is the natural being, the one who cannot wear a mask, the pure creature living in the truth of his furry animalistic body – the stubborn ape-like ancestor beneath all human dignity.

Even the Death Star might be a kind of mask.  Its apparently blank and planet-like shape contains a secret bureaucracy and a terrible technology.  “That’s no moon,” says Obi-Wan, seeing behind the façade of its spherical shape.  It is a Cyclops mask, the single “eye” invoking the narrow, singular vision of authoritarian thinking – like Sauron’s flaming eye in The Lord of the Rings.  Just before the Death Star explodes we catch a quick glimpse of Grand Moff Tarkin.  Perhaps this is so that we can savor the defeat of this villain.  Yet maybe the Death Star is Tarkin’s vast and terrible mask, the technological incarnation of his ambition, a giant spook to frighten the galaxy into submission.  The solemn-faced Tarkin could be any of countless historical human militarists or dictators, eager not just to murder, but to terrify with their masks of power.

When Luke destroys the Death Star, the Empire itself is unmasked.  All that remains is for Darth Vader to step forward as the final mask of the enemy.  The agonized humanity that lurks behind that mask will only be revealed, however, in the films that follow.

And in the Star Wars that lies ahead?  Why, of course, there is another mask.  There had to be one.

Images:

Samurai in Armor by Felice Beato: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samurai#/media/File:Samurai.jpg

"Mask of Agamemnon":  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mask#/media/File:MaskOfAgamemnon.jpg

Chewbacca:

http://www.starwars.com/films/star-wars-episode-iv-a-new-hope

Death Star:

http://www.starwars.com/films/star-wars-episode-iv-a-new-hope

http://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-the-force-awakens-character-posters-revealed

Walt Whitman's The Force Awakens

I'm so excited about the new Star Wars film that I wanted to express myself in some way.  And since I like to be a bit unusual, here are scenes from the international trailer mixed with quotations from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855).  The sprawling, searing poem is considered one of the great literary achievements of American history.  I don't know the plot of the movie -- this is just me pairing the images with interesting passages. 

You can watch The Force Awakens trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdAUiyeJMFQ

 So here is the poetry, from the page... and the screen.

I celebrate myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to

            you.

Prodigal!  you have given me love! …. therefore I to you

give love!

The whirling and whirling is elemental within me.

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise would

kill me

Is this then a touch? […]

Flames and ether making a rush for my veins […]

My flesh and blood playing out lightning

Now Lucifer was not dead…. or if he was I am his

            sorrowful and terrible heir […]

I will either destroy him, or he shall release me.

I understand the large hearts of heroes,

The courage of present times and all times

I am given up by traitors; […]

You villain touch!  what are you doing?.... my breath is

tight in its throat

This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the

            crowded heavens

Agonies are one of my changes of garments;

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels…. I

myself become the wounded person

Great are the myths […]

Great are the plunges and throes and triumphs and falls