Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, a film named Star Wars was released. It was a very big deal indeed, and spawned an enormous media franchise lasting decades. During that time, the franchise’s reputation fell to the Dark Side thanks to the infamous prequel trilogy.

After a decade away from cinema screens (the animated Clone Wars film doesn’t count), the series finally returned with much goodwill and anticipation being generated prior to the film’s release on December 17, 2015, and ecstatic reviews following the film’s release.

This writer is typically slow on the uptake with these things, yet was fortuitous enough to avoid that spoiler (you’ll know it when you see it). And so, a visit to the cinema was in order, a month after the rest of the world had seen it already…

As would be expected, the film definitely looks and sounds the part. New music by John Williams sits naturally alongside returning tracks from the previous films seamlessly, and the new outfits, ships and creatures look excellent thanks to a mix of practical sets and CG, creating a more balanced effect than the prequel trilogy’s overreliance on CG. The camera swipes between scenes remain in place, as does the opening text scroll accompanied by the booming theme song. All this combined means there’s an undeniable kick from watching the film, a real sense of “It’s freaking Star Wars!” One thing that doesn’t come back is the po-faced, clunky dialogue from past entries. On one hand, the dialogue is much more natural than before, and it’s possible to imagine people speaking this way in real life. On the other hand, the old dialogue style had a melodramatic charm to it, and the new film isn’t nearly as quotable as the old ones. Of course, it is still new, so that could change over time.

Likewise, the new characters fit into the setting naturally, almost as if they’ve always been there. One of the big advantages that Star Wars has is the huge universe that can be expanded forever and populated with numerous new characters and that shows here. The highlight of the new cast is Finn, because he offers a new perspective on the Star Wars universe as a former Stormtrooper defecting from the First Order. The film also makes the wise decision of having the older characters be mostly cameos, with the focus on the new characters. This way, the old characters manage to avoid overshadowing the new ones, allowing them to get their time in the spotlight.

On the flipside, the film does play things very safe. The plot is recycled almost entirely from A New Hope, with bits of The Empire Strikes Back filling up the rest, and another reason the new characters fit in so well is that they fill the same character archetypes as the old ones. For example, Rey is the new Luke Skywalker, Poe Dameron is the new Han Solo and BB8 is the new R2D2. The same is true of the villains, even more so in fact, with Kylo Ren as the new Darth Vader and Captain Phasma as the new Boba Fett, right down to being anticlimactically beaten like a chump. To be fair, it is justified in Kylo Ren’s case, as he is obsessed with Darth Vader and models himself after the OG Sith Lord, albeit with the composure of a conflicted, temperamental mood swinger prone to acting emotionally, which is no bad thing as it makes him unpredictable in a way that previous Sith Lords were not. This combined with his backstory brings to mind Expanded Universe villains Jacen and Anakin Solo, Han and Leia’s sons who went over to the Dark Side. Finn benefits from not being an obvious stand-in for an existing character, though you could make a somewhat tenuous connection between him and Lando, as disillusioned bad guys who switch sides, but their circumstances are very different.

It is worth noting however, that in my opinion, the insistence on sticking as close to the old films as possible is no accident. The prequel trilogy, Episode I in particular, shifted the focus towards the political machinations of the galaxy and lots of discussion on taxes, trade routes, sanctions and so on, and we all know how well that went down. The Force Awakens faced the unenviable task of having to win back the crowd, and it did this by distancing itself as far away from the prequels as it could. What better way of doing that is there than mimicking the films just about everyone liked? They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. I don’t know who they are, but if The Force Awakens were a picture, its thousand words would be “We’re sorry about the prequels” repeated 200 times. There is only one part in the film that really sticks out as a risk, and even then it’s a calculated risk 30 years in the making, with steps in place to stop it from being too damaging.

Yes, it’s true. Dexter of Dex’s Diner is no longer with us. Let us take a moment to think about the pivotal role he played in the Star Wars saga, as without him Obi Wan would have never been able to find out where Jango Fett’s poison dart came from, and without that, the Clone Army may never have come about, and galactic history would have taken a radically different course. In the arms of an angel…

The Force Awakens is well put together and certainly enjoyable enough to watch. Unfortunately however, the large amount of self-plagiarism going on is too noticeable to allow you to be fully immersed in the adventure, as you’ll be too busy playing “Spot the New Hope Reference”. I suspect and hope that this was just a one-off thing to get audiences back on side, and with that done, the next films can do something more original. The Force Awakens is good enough for now, but Episode VIII better not be a rehash of The Empire Strikes Back.

Episode 7/10 (See what I did there?)

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Misery

Misery

Author: Stephen King

Have you ever felt as if there’s a lot of pressure on you when you’re writing something? You probably have. I’m feeling that pressure right now as I hope not to write a load of rubbish here. With that said, I am at least doing this of my own free will, and there hopefully won’t be any severe consequences should I disappoint. Paul Sheldon, the protagonist of Misery, does not have that luxury.

Paul Sheldon is the author of the highly successful Misery Chastain books, which have developed a huge and obsessive fandom, though he thinks little of the quality of the books. As such, the latest book ended with Misery’s death, and Paul intends on using the funds to write some more ambitious novels. The new novel is finally ready to be published, but a combination of drunk driving and dangerous weather leads Paul to crash his car, destroying his legs. He is recovered from the wreck by Annie Wilkes, who identifies herself as Paul’s Number One Fan, but she has still yet to read the last Misery book. She does this while nursing Paul back to health, and needless to say, she isn’t happy at all when she finishes it, and demands Paul write a new Misery book bringing her back to life – or else.

For most of the book, there are only two characters, Paul and Annie, and the majority of the action takes place in Annie’s guest bedroom, where Paul is being kept prisoner. This makes the novel feel very claustrophobic, giving the reader a sense of what Paul is going through as his world has shrunk following the accident, and there’s little opportunity for the reader to get some reprieve. The solitude causes Paul to start gradually losing his mind, which is reflected in the repetition of several statements or words that Paul remembers vividly and starts to think about more often as his captivity goes on. This could be seen as either his attempt at clutching onto some semblance of familiarity in a surreal situation, or as a breakdown in his coherent thought depending on the situation or the reader’s interpretation of their use.

A big part of the reason why Paul’s situation is so tense is his jailer Annie. She is very temperamental, prone to severe mood swings and seems to suffer from every mental condition in the book, as well as a fair few that have yet to be discovered for good measure. Her unpredictability is her greatest asset, as she will be calm and sickeningly sweet to the point of inducing diabetes in the reader, yet switch to screaming in rage over the most mundane things at the drop of a hat. She acts very childish in some ways, such as losing her temper when her favourite tv show cheats by contradicting the cliffhanger at the end of the previous episode, and using words like cockadoodie as substitutes for swear words, which makes it easy for her to be underestimated when she does things that are more cunning than would be expected of her.

Annie’s behaviour tortures Paul mentally as well as physically. This also has an effect on the reader, as it’s hard to tell before it happens how she’ll respond to Paul’s acts of defiance. There’s no way of knowing whether she’ll laugh it off, not notice, punish Paul immediately or give him enough rope to hang himself with, which helps to crank up the tension further. It gets worse later once Paul discovers the skeletons in Annie’s closet and just how much danger he’s in. At this point, the reader is hooked, desperate to know what’ll happen next. Fittingly enough, the appeal behind cliffhangers and the idea of “How are they going to get out of this one?” is one of the recurring ideas of the book.

Despite having been written in 1987, the concept behind the book, that of the loony fan, is still relevant today. While there were cases at the time of obsessive fans, such as Mark David Chapman’s obsession with The Catcher in the Rye leading him to kill John Lennon, such things still happen today via internet fandoms, though they are generally less serious than these extreme cases. It seems as if some online fandoms are becoming more fanatical, becoming obsessed with the work they’re fans of and working themselves up into a state of mass hysteria and appearing off-putting to others outside their fandoms, with examples including My Little Pony, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Steven Universe, and the current flavour of the month, Undertale. This may be because people want to be noticed and become internet famous, which is harder to do now because everyone and their grandmother’s on the internet. For example, five or six years ago, 100,000 views on Youtube was huge. Today, it’s nothing, and even a million views is small potatoes, which means that being noticed requires drawing attention to oneself, and the more extreme you act, the more attention is drawn to you. There’s also the disconnect that something about the internet means people don’t stop to think about other people’s feelings or how they come across to others, making it easy to be an asshole online. Combine this with fandoms and “Notice Me Senpai” Syndrome, and you get ugliness like the Steven Universe fandom harassing a teenage girl to attempt suicide because she drew one of the show’s fat characters as being thin, which happened a few months ago. Then again, I could be completely wrong about all of this and it’s just me being old and not grasping how these things work because I’m too busy yelling at the youngins to get off my lawn. Anyway, I digress.

Fun fact, telling someone they’re gonna have a bad time is now more likely to be recognised as an Undertale reference than a South Park reference, even though South Park did it first and Undertale was referencing South Park when it used that line.

To conclude, Misery is a very tense book that draws the reader in and takes them prisoner alongside Paul. They will be unable to leave, much like Paul, and the tension is cranked up to the max until the delightfully cathartic climax, where Annie finally gets a taste of her own medicine.

This is where I'd put the Family Guy parody with Brian and Stewie as Paul and Annie, but unfortunately it's not on Youtube, so this picture will have to suffice.