A 150-minute commercial for authentic rebel merch: a review of Star Wars Ocho

Judging from the nearly unanimous positive reviews (93% on Rotten Tomatoes), I'm in a very tiny minority here, but I found the latest Star Wars to be just enough parts cheese and shameless commercialism to overwhelm its occasional charm. 

My personal relationship to Star Wars, because this is a movie where it kind of matters

I'm not a fanboy, which I suppose is important to put out there. Star Wars is a franchise where the level of devotion you have to it colors what your criticism means. I don't have a deep emotional attachment to it. I'm sort of an average Gen Xer, I'd guess. Episodes 4-6 came out when I was a kid. The first movie in 1977 is the first movie I can remember seeing. (It was part of a double feature at a drive-in, along with Herbie the Love Bug.) My friends and I went to see Jedi for my birthday in fifth grade. I loved those movies. As a young adult, I hated the prequels, like almost everyone. I thought episode seven was flawed--mostly because it was episode four again--but at least re-captured some of the magic. I'm neither a fan nor a hater.

I have to admit that I have a bit of a knee-jerk disinclination to like the new movies, because I feel like Disney paid $4 billion because they saw Gen X nostalgia as an incredibly value market to invest in. I feel I'm being manipulated to go ga-ga for every Star Wars thing they throw at me, and pass it on to my kids. If my son didn't want to see the movies, I wouldn't push them on him. But since he's expressed an interest on his own go to, I take him and I try to enjoy the experience.

I paid money to see the movie, I was there with my son, and I had no desire to sit there and dislike it. So I hope I have some level of objectivity here.

What's good about it--spoilers from this point forward

Rey is a great character. Most of the reason episode 7 managed to bring some of  the magic back to the series had to do with her. Where episodes 1-3 ruined the mystery of The Force by over-explaining it and giving it a genetic origin, Rey's genuine and charming innocence makes it new again. She feels the Force awakening within her, but is utterly at a loss to understand it. Because she cannot understand it, it is allotted its rightful position as a mystery for us to simply awe at, rather than a raw material to bend as the plot needs.

Episode 8 continues this re-mystification of The Force that makes it a potent narrative device worthy of building a mythology around. Rey stumbles and falls and she learns about it in very sparing lessons from Luke Skywalker. Luke explains what The Force is but does not explain too much. Rey learns a little bit more about how to control it, but only within herself, not in absolute terms. She is still very raw by the end, which is actually more appealing than having her master it.

Speaking of Luke Skywalker, he comes to a satisfying end, both within the narrative of episode 8 and also to all the people around my age who grew up with him as a hero. Luke has followed his mentor Obi Wan in becoming a hermit in old age, but is far more cynical than Kenobi ever was. Not much has gone right for him since he saw a trio of ghosts while passing the puff and jamming to Nyub-nyub at the end of Jedi. He's like a lot of great sports legends who find they aren't very good coaches. In his hubris, Luke thought he could teach a new generation of Jedi, but his best pupil turned to the dark side and destroyed the academy.

Luke's still not much of a teacher when Rey comes looking for a master to explain The Force to her. He offers her three lessons, but I only counted two--can anyone tell me what the third was? In any event, he really only wants to see the Jedi come to an end with him.

When at last Luke has a change of heart, it isn't to become young, heroic Luke. He outwits his old pupil, buying time for the rebels to escape certain doom. He dies, apparently having spent his life force in the effort. But it's a fitting end for Luke. The hero's journey isn't linear. It can easily slip backwards, and people fitted to one historical moment may find themselves ill-suited to others.

Luke's skepticism about the Jedi pushes forward a theme that episode 8 hinted at but didn't carry to its full conclusion. If it had, it might have been a much better movie. The movie has many moments where one might question whether the costs of the Rebellion are worth it. Besides Luke's litany of Jedi failures, we witness massive Rebel casualties. We realize that the Rebels buy their weapons from the same dealers who supply the Empire First Order.  For a moment, the movie seems to be deconstructing the entire notion of heroes.

Although it ultimately fails to deliver on this promise, it does provide an effective critique of the male hero. Not only are all the heroes of the movie women, they are also the most compelling characters. (Except Rose. Fuck Rose.) I've mentioned Rey. But Laura Dern as Vice Admiral Holdo is a huge surprise. We are meant to think Poe "Not Han Solo" Dameron has all the answers, but it's Holdo who has the right idea the whole time. Her "fly some shit into a bunch of star destroyers at light speed" trick is a little hokey, but it's also heroic in a way that Poe would wish he had thought of. Carrie Fisher had just enough acting chops left to anchor the trio of female leaders effectively. It's the ability to think outside the constraints of the male hero that allows them to escape the end of the rebellion. This movie was a mission that called for shepherding people to safety, and the three women in it carried it off.

What's neither wrong nor right: a quick word on Rey's parents

I'm fine with how they went with this. Rey's parents are nobody. That was one theory a lot of people floated. I think episode 8, trying to avoid the critique of 7 that it was just a rehash of earlier material, chose to go in the opposite direction. Every time it looked like something similar to 4-6 would happen, they shifted. Rey going to save Ben like Luke saved his father? Think again! Rey and Ben are twins, like Luke and Leia were? Nope! Rey's father is a character we all know? Not that, either!

I was okay with all of this, although I think there's a danger that trying consciously to be different at every turn could backfire. Did anyone say "I've got a bad feeling about this" in the movie?

What's wrong with it

Crap factor #1: Hoping hopefully for hopeful hope

Not only did the movie fail to follow through on its critique of clear good guys and bad guys and just-war theory, the same movie that tells us the good guys and bad guys buy their guns from the same sellers also wants to rhapsodize about the hope the rebels bring to a downtrodden galaxy. I think the movie mentions "hope" about a dozen times. And the rebels are, we are told over and over, something like the spark that lights the wick that burns the candle that ignites the flame that explodes the gas of hope or something like that.

It just gives me so much hope!

Why do we have any reason to think the rebels will give us anything better than what the Empire/First Order give us? They're certainly not very good at keeping order. They lost power once through a coup they let happen under their noses, then failed to make good on the advances they earned when they overthrew the Emperor and blew up Death Star #2. They're good at being a pain in the ass to the people in power. That's all they've proven.

But some downtrodden kid somewhere in the galaxy is secretly wearing Rebel swag because he's sure this is the answer to his troubles?

What do the Rebels offer? For that matter, if balance is so essential to The Force, why is the light side better than the dark? Because the dark side wants power for power's sake, whereas the light wants happiness for the ruled? But if the dark is greedy for power, the light seems to be so unwilling to wield it, it is unable to rule. Isn't the only way to end the struggle to join light and dark? Maybe that's where episode nine will take us, but right now, it seems like we're headed for the even greater hagiography of everyone in the rebellion.

And you know who is going to be happy to sell people here on Earth lots of merch with the rebel logo on it? One of the biggest corporations on the damn planet, people who have NO INTEREST at all in anyone rebelling against anything here in this galaxy.

This is the rebel insignia Disney wants to put on your t-shirts...

...and this is the Fire Nation insignia from Last Airbender. When I get them confused, I just remember that Last Airbender was the one that did everything the current Star Wars movies are trying to do better. 

Crap factor #2: Cheese

While episodes 1 to 3 bored us to tears with exposition, treaty negotiations, and philosophical musings on the qualities of sand, episode 8 gave us a plateful of cheese. My elder brother, a wise man I respect, described this movie as one that tried to swing big and missed a lot. I don't think that's something to hate. I'd rather see a movie have big aspirations and fail than play it safe. But when this movie struck out trying to swing for big emotional payout, it struck out big. The five worst lines/parts I can remember after one viewing:

5: In an otherwise very nice scene where ghost Yoda counsels Luke one last time, Yoda starts to talk like someone who just got religion from listening to Oprah. He gushes about the importance of failure. He sounds like the fatuous executives at my work who can't stop gushing about the latest faux-wisdom they received from reading some trendy leadership book written for the credulous. "Oh, my god, it's like...we all think of failure as, like, failure, but in fact, it's like, so important. It's like, in a way, failure is, like, success, if you think about it." It was a very 21st-Century self-help type of pop psychology for an ancient and wise master to make.

Related: "Page turners they are not" is a break from Yoda's former way of speaking. I am fine with the fact that episodes 7 and 8 have updated the series to reflect a more modern and ironic sense of humor, but to have Yoda suddenly bust out something so idiomatic from OUR galaxy was jarring.

Not a bad thing: Yoda ends the meeting with Luke with a much more restrained observation, words to the effect that a teacher has done his job well when the student doesn't need him anymore. I wish Yoda had just skipped the motivational speech and gone with that. This was mostly a nice scene that closed the loop on the Yoda-Luke relationship.

4. In the rebel deification vein:

4a) Finn actually uses an Arnold line when he knocks out his former Stormtrooper sweatshop boss. She calls him "scum," and he delivers the killing blow with something like "Naw, beyatch, I'm REBEL scum." And cue the Skymall magazine, placed in your movie theater seat, where you can buy all your Disney-approved rebel merchandise...

4b) A force sensitive kid being mistreated by his owner/parent/whatever at the end of the movie looks off at the stars and then reveals his secret rebel-insignia ring he's wearing. First of all, I guess that kid must be a Skywalker, too, because that's pretty much how both Anakin and Luke got their start, and secondly, Disney is a whore.

4c) Every line that has "hope" or "spark" in it.

3. You thought I was going to complain about the "not Ewoks" birds here, didn't you? No way, man. Those things are cute.

But why is Chewbacca still in the movies? Or C-3PO? Or R2? Because see my earlier remark about how Disney paid $4 billion based on the belief that Gen-X nostalgia is a highly profitable commodity.

2. Princess Leia force flies back to the ship after being blown up in an explosion out into the cold reaches of outer space. I...she...huh?

Okay, I'm glad Leia finally gets to show that Luke's not the only one in the family who's Force-sensitive. But has any fully trained Jedi ever pulled a trick remotely close to this? When Order 66 went out, the Jedi all got pwned in much easier situations that this, but Leia is capable of staying alive in the vacuum of space after an explosion and flying herself to a ship?

1. Rose, a Finn fanboy whose plucky grit is just off enough to grate every time I see her, says a line something like this: "That's how we'll win. Not by fighting against what we hate, but by fighting for the things we love. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhh." And dies. Or doesn't die, because later it looks like she's just in intensive care.

That's the line that went for the big inspirational swing and missed, and then the bat went flying into the stands and killed a mom who was pregnant with twins.

Related: She says that after crashing her vehicle into Finn to save him from crashing his vehicle into another vehicle. Finn is fine. She is dead. Or hurt. Or something. That was thirty minutes after they jointly crash-landed a space ship and were both fine.

Also related: They were the last two attacking a giant line of bad guys, because even Poe realized it was dumb to attack them after everyone started getting blown up. But for some reason, after they crash right in front of the attacking line, nobody shoots them and they somehow make it back to base safely.

P.S: That whole part of the story on the casino planet was okay-ish, but it helped make the movie feel pretty long for a Star Wars.

P.S.S. Kylo Ren is dangerously close sometimes to being so stupid, he's more like Dark Helmet than Darth Vader. 

*********************
This wasn't a terrible movie. Depending on what happens in episode nine, they might yet save this story line and turn it into something that really will stick with the zeitgeist of a new generation. That's especially true if they break more fully from a good-guy/bad-guy formula. Alternatively, they could give us a better reason to see why one side really are the good guys. Right now, they're stuck between a traditional good-guy/bad-guy story and a modern or post-modern anti-heroic blurring of the lines between the two.

Right now, this was a movie that tried for greatness, but hit just enough flat notes that the symphony couldn't quite achieve the effect it wanted.