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The Last Jedi: A Space Rant *With Spoilers*

Ok so I watched The Last Jedi today. I do love Star Wars so I was damn hyped, especially with all the rave reviews comparing this film to Empire Strikes Back and throwing 5 Stars all around. And when even Arthouse lovers like Mark Kermode and Little White Lies give the latest sequel the stamp of approval it feels warranted to get excited.

I must say I really, REALLY enjoyed The Force Awakens. I watched it four times in the cinema and it always held up. I didn’t mind that it was basically a rehash of A New Hope, I just enjoyed the fact that JJ managed to recapture the magic of Star Wars and wash away the bitter taste of the shitty prequels.

Yet I left the cinema today underwhelmed, and the longer I think about it the more I’m actually getting pissed off. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for giving new directors a shot at Star Wars and I am actually happy JJ didn’t do The Last Jedi. He is great with relaunching franchises, but not so great at continuing them. For example I really loved his Star Trek reboot, but hated the sequel Star Trek Into Darkness as it showcased that JJ is unable to craft anything new himself without clinging to the past.

“Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. It’s the only way to become who you meant to be.”

These wise words uttered by evil space emo Kylo Ren feels like the mantra director Ryan Johnson applied to directing this movie: The way he chopped off story threads and ended characters could be seen as daring, but for me it just felt like bad storytelling and a big fuck you to the audience. 

Don’t get me wrong, the movie was kinda ok. But exactly like Bladerunner2049 there was no new epicness and weight added to the already existing lore. Just a couple of jokes and cool effects.

Without getting too sophisticated here , let me just unleash my inner Dark Side and slice through this thing! Maybe we have to let the past die. Maybe we need to grow up and acknowledge that nothing will ever be as iconic as the original trilogy. Maybe we should just stop trying to chase that first high A New Hope gave us back in the days!

Let’s be honest: THE PREQUELS ALL SUCKED! They were a heap of smelly CGI turd. ALL OF THEM! They stained and damaged the glory of the original trilogy even more than the horrible meddling of George Lucas with the original films that came after! So actually I don’t care about Lucas anymore and his opinions about Star Wars.

The other thing that I need to get off my chest is the practice of trying to fix weak storylines and plot holes with a slew of accompanying books… FUCK THIS ALSO! Either you make the story work in the movies or GTFO! I am not excusing sloppy writing with “Duuude you should have read the Prequel Book… they totally explained it there!” BOLLOX TO THAT! 

After getting this off my chest let’s jump straight to the new movie and my grievances…

WARNING, *SPOILERS AHEAD*…

3…

2…

1…

Ok so where do I start. Maybe with what I liked: I liked grumpy Luke, I LOVED the Yoda puppet. I love Kylo Ren and Rey. I love how they use practical effects and retro visuals to give us the Star Wars feeling back. And the Hyperspace Kamikaze attack from Vice Admiral Holdo had everyone in the cinema gasping. I loved how they explained why the always overacting doucebag General Hux was still kept around. So yeah, some nice touches there.

BUT…

Unceremoniously killing off Snoke without giving any insight into his backstory or deal SUCKED.

Having Leia doing some Superman stuff by surviving in space and casually floating back to the starship SUCKED. Especially as there no intrigue. There was no build up and no explanation.

Having Luke basically not train Rey but a bit but not really but a bit again was so underwhelming and SUCKED.

Rey pointless decent into the “Evil Zone” to find… nothing? SUCKED

Finn SUCKED, Rose SUCKED and their whole adventure on that Prequel Casino Planet SUUUCKED and pulled me straight back into the nightmare that is the prequel trilogy. Oh and Phasma? SUCKED!

I’m tired of Poe doing his “hot headed pilot” thing in every scene he is in. I’m tired of Finn as he is basically the Jar Jar of this new trilogy: Completely pointless. And all this added on crap about animal cruelty, Roses family story and that totally forced romance… SUCK SUCK SUCK!

I’m tired of the whole “Oh they got weapon X, we need to blow it up!” “Damn, now they got weapon Y, we need to blow it up also!” Really dudes? Let me guess… does it have a weakness? Is there an exhaust pipe? DO WE NEED TO BLOW UP THE REACTOR CORE? Seriously: First it was the Dreadnaught ship, then it was the tracking device and ultimately it was that gun on the fake Hoth planet. YES! HOTH! Just because you mix some red in there it doesn’t distract from the fact that you ripped off Empire!

Gorilla AT ATs on Hoth
Gorilla AT ATs on Hoth

More? Ok…

Reys “Put a shirt on” joke in the middle of an intriguing scene SUCKED

The wannabe funny alien nuns on Lukes Planet SUCKED.

All the new ship designs SUCKED too. Seriously… no iconic shapes, everything blocky and whatever. 

AND CHEWIE SHOULD HAVE CONTINUED EATING THAT ROASTED PORG!

Damn that looked tasty…

So what would I have liked better? What was my expectation?

I would have liked to know more about Snoke and the goal of The First Order apart from just being evil. At least the Emperor had the Sith thing going. But Snoke? Who was this guy? What was his connection to the Force? Wasted…

Same for Rey. I would have enjoyed some Jedi training, some insight into the Jedi culture. Some cool Luke monologues. Same goes for Kylo Ren. So how come he turned? Why was he in contact with Snoke although he trained with Luke? How did he grow up during the time after the Emperor was defeated. How did the First Order form? And where are the Sith in all of this?

I fear there is really nothing deeper here then some cheap story beats and killing off the legendary characters of our childhood. I fear that the next sequel will make it painfully obvious that there hasn’t been a strong vision for a story arch that’s unfolding in a satisfying manner over the time of a trilogy.

Talking about a satisfying trilogy: Each part of the original movies added new and exciting characters and story beats. So much iconic material! Maybe certain films just have their time. Trying to recreating the magic will ultimately fail.

If The Force Awakens felt like rekindling a love affair with a past lover, The Last Jedi feels like the week after where you realize you are clinging onto some old emotions of the past and it’s time to move on.

So maybe we Nerds need to let the past die. Accept that what has been will never come back.

I do want the new movies to be good, I want them to succeed. But the Last Jedi didn’t feel like it opened the mythology up, it felt like it shut it down in the most nihilistic way possible.

Anyway… let’s see how they wrap it all up in two years.

May the Force be with us until then!

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Bladerunner 2049 and the curse of the dissapointing sequel

When reading reviews of the sequel to Ridley Scotts Masterpiece from 1982, Bladerunner 2049 is getting heaps of praise. It’s 5 stars all around and even hard to please movie buffs like Mark Kermode called it “a future classic”. And I really wonder why.

Don’t worry this post is *SPOILER FREE*

Having just watched the movie I am compelled to (unfortunately) strongly disagree. After the visual dust settled and the epic soundtrack died down, nothing much of substance really stuck with me. Don’t get me wrong: The production design is fantastic and the soundtrack immense. Plus you have to applaud the filmmaker to ape the slow pace of the original. Yet the question has to be: Was all this effort warranted? Did Bladerunner even need a sequel?

Without going into any spoiler territory I felt the story was very bland and obvious, the villains very cookie cutter and the set up for a sequel felt forced. I have no idea why so many reviewers praised the movie for being a standalone story whilst it’s a pretty obvious attempt at creating a franchise. Bladerunner 2049 just has nothing new to add to the conversation apart from getting Harrison Ford back into the role of Deckard. Especially the last part of the movie was so formulaic that I felt I am watching a bad direct to DVD sequel. Harsh but true.

Plus: Can we please stop with all these prequel story mini-movies? Like Alien Covenant, Bladerunner 2049 has accompanying short movies on YouTube that supposed to fill in some additional info about the storyline. I really feel this added content cheapens the movie experience as it feels like crutches the screenwriters needed because they didn’t find a way to flesh out the story in the actual movie.

Although the cast is full of talented actors, Leto and Ford don’t actually have much to do in the film and I found the rest of the cast pretty bland as well. Even Ryan Gosling starts to grate on me, always playing the same type of brooding loner since his movie Drive from 2012. The more I think about it, the more I am disappointed that they didn’t find a way to really add something new and worthwhile to the Bladerunner universe.

So why are so few sequels great? And why do so many sequels suck? Don’t get me wrong… I have nothing against sequels generally. There are actually a lot of sequels I absolutely LOVE! I just feel most sequels try to fake it without actually making it.

So let’s have a look at some of my favorite sequels and why they work.

Expanding the storyline: The Empire Strikes Back

Let’s get the elephant out of the room first: Empire is just a fantastic sequel! After Star Wars told a pretty standard space story about good vs evil, Empire just added so many great characters, iconic moments and story twists that nothing felt like a tired rehash or simple cash grab. Yodas training, Hoth, Bespin, Boba Fett, that meteroid chase plus space slugs… fantastic! Plus it had the balls to end on a pretty bleak cliffhanger. Still the best sequel to this day. 

Go BIG in a good way: Aliens

The classic sequel concept: Just go BIGGER and LOUDER! But where lesser directors fail and fail again, James Cameron gloriously succeeded.

Doing a 180-degree on the first Alien movie and turning a claustrophobic horror piece into a full-blown war movie was just a stroke of genius that totally could have backfired. Just it didn’t!

I recently rewatched Aliens and it’s as tense, nailbiting and effective as back in 1986.

Again, it added so much new and great material to the Alien lore that it never felt boring: The space marines, the alien queen, the power loader battle… just fantastic! Even if the final end boss gets blasted into space yet again.

Have a standout performance: The Dark Knight

Although I feel that Christopher Nolan could have trimmed the runtime of The Dark Knight a little, this was basically the Batman movie I always wanted: Dark, gritty and more of a crime drama than a campy comic book movie. And most of the praise for making this an awesome flick just has to go to Heath Ledger for his portrayal of The Joker.

There is a reason why The Joker is the best villain ever to grace the pages of a comic book: Although he is a colorful jester with a variety of bold outfits, he always was a dangerous and twisted villain that should never be underestimated. This violent, psychotic and dangerous side of the character was never played before this such relish as by Heath Ledger who deservedly won a posthumous Oscar for this performance.

So to come back to Bladerunner 2049, Alien: Covenant, James Bond Spectre and the many other sequels that totally disappointed me: Without adding new, exciting and iconic material to the foundation laid by the original, there is not much merit in doing a sequel. And that’s why Bladerunner 2049 really disappointed me, despite its beautiful visuals and booming soundtrack. It just didn’t add anything fresh to the formula, just really well regurgitated the style of the first.

To wrap this blog post up… let’s talk about the only sequel that TRULY matters this year: Star Wars The Last Jedi! Let’s keep the fingers crossed that The Last Jedi will not fall into the same pitfalls I just mentioned and just rehash what came before. I really hope the film will be able to create new and exciting Star Wars moments… May finally a good sequel be with us!