I went to the Fathom Events rerelease of They Shall Not Grow Old last night. Very powerful and moving to see all that WWI footage and hear the voices of veterans who lived through it. It really surprised me to hear how lax recruiters were about sending teenage boys to war, and how badly some of the returning soldiers were treated by British employers. Not the picture of national unity and cooperation Dunkirk implied at all.
I wasn't as big a fan of the film restoration job as many seemed to be, however. A lot of the soldiers' faces looked eerily superimposed onto their heads. (I should not have been thinking of Vlad in cat form from What We Do in the Shadows during a war documentary!) And the colorization was a big mistake, imho. For someone who's committed some amazing visuals to film, Jackson seems to have very little awareness of when his work dips into the Uncanny Valley.
While I was watching it, Rise of Skywalker was just moderately dumb shiny fun. A full night's sleep later, I find myself becoming more and more sad/angry about it. JJ Abrams is such a goddamn coward.
As an alternate Christmas movie outing, may I suggest a CATS/Little Women double bill?
It's definitely a JJ Abrams movie. That said, I loved it. It gave me my feels.
It's definitely a JJ Abrams movie.
That it is. But I liked it. It hit all the notes I wanted it to.
I liked some, disliked some, and hated
the way the fuckers sidelined Rose.
I wasn't surprised by just about anything, though.
Yep, that was about what I expected. I had fun time overall, but I LOVED both TFA and TLJ so this was a bit of a letdown. It had way too much busy work -- Like, I felt like I was on one of those bus tours that go through 7 European countries and 12 cities in 2 weeks. It would have been a better film if it was allowed to breathe once in a while.
Also what Consuela said in her white font. That and the
disappointing reversal of Rey's parentage, which I knew was coming
were the two things that sat most uneasily with me. And I wish I had more feels about
the Leia stuff, but the left-over footage they used of her was so generic, it left me relatively unmoved.
The
Trio
stuff was great though -- I enjoyed that thoroughly. I've been
more invested in Kylo Ren/Ben Solo's fate than most fannish friends I know, and
I was more or less pleased with what we got. Also, sneaky of them to introduce the whole
force healing thing on The Mandalorian just before the movie! I mean, I understand it has been in a thing in
expanded universe material, but for most casual viewers, this would be the first time they encounter that ability.
My new favourite thing though, might have been the
critter we met who fixed up 3PO in that planet with Keri Russell's character. Let me see, Internets tell me his name is Babu Frik. He was tiny and he had the adorable squashed cat face and his sheer enjoyment at all the goings-on made me smile.
I THINK the thing Finn was trying to
tell Rey all movie was that he thought he had some force ability? You know, with "I just feel it." If that was made explicit, it would have made me feel better about the whole "the force belongs to only the ones with speeeeecial lineage" BS.
The only immutable truth is the sequel trilogy seems to be that Oscar Isaac is just indecently handsome.
When the
Ben/Rey kiss then death happened,
I actually muttered,
"Time to avoid the internet!"
I haven't seen any of the
shipper wars
that I'm sure are out there, but I'm willing to bet
they're NASTY.
I haven't seen anything either, but
if it had to happen, I'm perfectly fine with the way it happened. The Kylo/Rey people can fix it without much effort at all, and for those of us who don't care, he's gone.
And frankly, that's how I feel about
the redemption as a whole. I wish they'd felt like they could tell another story, but if they had to go with it, I'm okay with the way it was done.
From what I can see from the corner of my non-involvement in SW fandom, the
Reylo shippers are pretty gutted. Whereas I'm like, the dude got way longer and more complete a redemption arc than Vader... and I can't believe you guys expected him to live after that. He's done too many heinous things for that to stand. As someone who loved the Rey/Kylo dynamic without at all expecting any kind of HEA, this is as good as one could have expected. The dude was so gone over her, he poured his life force into her to BRING HER BACK FROM THE DEAD. I mean, how much more romantic could you get?? But no, people still want their schmoopy happy ending, even though this particular ending for the character has been telegraphed forever.
On the other side of the spectrum, I've seen some folks spitting mad that
Rey lowered herself enough to kiss a mass murderer. I mean, I love the character, warts and all, but you can't really find fault with that position either? *shrugs* Equal unhappiness all around!
We did not get a lot of
redeemed!Kylo, but
Adam Driver is a good enough actor that
you could see him *carrying* himself differently after his turn. Some of the mannerisms while he was fighting Knights of Ren was downright Han Solo-esque. In a way, I feel like Kylo/Ben got a more complete character arc than Rey did, which I am slightly bummed about.
