View from the Cheap Seats is kind of an extension of the newsroom. Whenever our three regular reporters, Calvin Daniels, Thom Barker and Randy Brenzen are in the building together, it is frequently a site of heated debate. This week: What did you think of the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens?
Meh
I’ve never been a huge Star Wars fan. Frankly, if Tower Theatre had not managed to get a copy, I would have waited for it to come out on DVD.
On the plus (or should I say light) side, as usual, the cutting edge graphics are obviously a draw. I saw it in 3D and have to admit, it was pretty cool.
On the neutral ground, the story was formulaic. It was enjoyable enough, but predictable and nothing to write home about.
On the dark side, the science, as usual, sucks. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the famed astrophysicist debunks some minor details like the implausibility of the movement of BB8, the rolling spheical android, but the big problem for me was the weapon. It is impossible for me to suspend my disbelief because it is absolutely ridiculous to envision a technology that could suck in all the energy of its star. The planet disintegrates long before the operation completes and possible creates a black hole.
I also always have problems with “The Force.” The practitioners of the force always seem to be either too powerful or not powerful enough to me based on the immediate needs of the narrative.
A classic example was that Kylo Renn (spoiler alert: Han Solo’s and Princess Leia’s son) senses immediately when Solo arrives at the planet, but then doesn’t sense it when he’s standing right behind him.
If I don’t think about these things very much and just watch, it was okay. It is, of course, no Star Trek.
-Thom Barker
Comparative crap
It has been nearly a quarter of century since Return of the Jedi hit the big screens.
Myself and a legion of other fans have been waiting ever since to find what happened to Hans Solo, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker.
Yes there were the three ‘prequel’ films, detailing what led up to the movies of my childhood, but I would generally like to forget those.
Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens was the movie I had waited for nearly 25-years. It was then late in debuting in Yorkton, weeks after its initial release, so the wait was longer still.
I trekked to the theatre last Tuesday full of excitement and expectation.
And I left the theatre questioning how the poor film I had just witnessed was the best writers could come up with in nearly 25 years.
So let’s start with a couple of example of the tiny peeves.
There is Supreme Leader Snoke. I recognize the part is portrayed by Andy Sirkis but does Snoke have to look like they went to a cave where Gollum had been eating steroid laden fish since the end of Lord of the Rings, and made him the big bad guy here?
Now we know stormtroopers are pretty generic as a crew, so to make the leaders of the troops stand out writers wanted something different.
To which someone in props said he had just the thing. He found a cylon suit circa the 1978 Battlestar Galactica TV show and silver clad stormtrooper was born.
It was at this point the writers realized if they could scam a cylon suit from 1978, why write anything new. They could just rehash the first three films, add funky 3D glasses and makes scads of money.
And that is what we got.
There are minor annoyances, such as Finn being a garbage man among stormtroopers, but he can operate a light sabre and actually stood toe-to-toe with the main bad guy Kylo Ren of a bit.
Or Rey just deciding she could bend a stormtrooper to release her, without any training. Of course she had bested Ren in a mind battle already, again sans training.
Ren is shown to count himself as being as powerful as Darth Vader was in the past. He is right. He stinks as the main face of the dark side.
Then it gets worse.
Vader and Skywalker fighting on a catwalk with the emotion of a father and son moment … err I mean Hans Solo and Kylo Ren.
And then there is the big bad guy weapon; a deathstar that can only be taken out by a miraculous fight strife by Skywalker.
Oops sorry, in this film the baddies have checked previous scripts and realized the error of Darth Vader and company. The Deathstar was simply not big enough.
Make the weapon of mass destruction 10-times bigger via CGI and the film will be 10-times better.
So instead of one fighter shot to blow it up, it takes a squadron. Hmmm seen it!
And that was the problem; I have seen the best of this film before.
As a movie in a vacuum The Force Awakens would be an 8-out-of-10.
But it is not in a vacuum. It is the next chapter in the Star Wars saga, and a big chapter at that, and it failed miserably to the point you’d have to be using creative math to give it a 5-out-of-10.
- Calvin Daniels
Don’t know, don’t care
The new Star Wars movie is apparently a big hit, yet I couldn’t care less about it even if I wanted to.
I’ve never been a Star Wars fan. I watched about half of one movie – which one I can’t even remember – and thought that it was complete drivel.
I didn’t think it was bad, nor did I think there were entertaining and fun parts. No, I thought it was complete and utter garbage and should not have been shown the light of day.
Now, my colleagues are most likely going to rant and rave about how great the movie was, about how wonderful it is to finally have another edition to one of the most historic movie franchises ever, but if you’re like me then you didn’t watch it because it’s not good, and most likely do not intend to watch it because again, it’s not good.
In fact, there are several boring things that would be more entertaining than any Star Wars movie. Watching paint dry comes to mind.
So does watching grass grow from a seed to a full-blown lawn.
Heck, even licking a frozen metal pole and waiting for it to warm up enough so that you can pull your tongue off of it is better than Star Wars.
None of those things are good, but they do all have one thing in common: they’re all better than Star Wars.
-Randy Brenzen
