Revisiting A Classic: The Star Wars Saga (Part Three, Episodes VII – IX)

Star Wars is the one go-to franchise for myself when I want to shut off the outside world and feel good. I’ve written about the original holy trinity (Episodes 4, 5 and 6) and the prequel trilogy (Episodes 1, 2 and 3)

But I haven’t as yet chatted about the third trilogy of films (Episodes 7, 8 and 9). So, here’s some quick, concise thoughts on this final act trilogy from a life-long fan!

Episode 7 - The Force Awakens

 OK… wait! Let’s set the scene a little first!

In 2012, the news broke around the world - George Lucas had sold his LucasFilm Ltd. for an undisclosed figure (estimated at $4 billion!)- so he retired! What this meant was Disney bought Star Wars and all other intellectual properties of LucasFilm (including Indiana Jones). 

Kathleen Kennedy - an established producer and well-known to fans of Lucas and Spielberg; the woman has literally produced dozens of modern day classics (such as ET, the Back To The Future trilogy, The Goonies, and the Jurassic Park films)- was appointed the Managing Director of the new Lucasfilm arm of Disney. That same time as the announcement of this sale, Disney announced that a new trilogy of Star Wars was going to be made! That was the news I had been wanting to hear for decades! Episodes 7,8 and 9! The fabled chapters of Star Wars- the continuing adventures of Luke, Leia and Han! Brilliant!

News came thick and fast that the original cast were returning. A photo was released of the cast at the first full read through. We waited….

2015. Episode 7 is released.

OK - first off the bat. Is The Force Awakens a bench mark, an all original adventure and continuation? Well, yes and no. But mostly no.

Now, I like JJ Abrams as a filmmaker- he’s made some cracking TV and films. I love Super 8 which is a love letter to Amblin and the 80s; also, the man and his team did the impossible in 2009 when they reinvented and recast the original bridge of the Enterprise. Star Trek was a respectful update of a franchise that pays respect to what came before. My point is, this filmmaker knows the genre and is a massive Star Wars fan. But, most importantly, he’s a damn good filmmaker.

So the plus points of Episode 7: the new characters are great – well, mostly two of them are great; Finn and Rey are both rounded, interesting characters. The set pieces and action are outstanding and, particularly important, there is the return of a large percentage of practical effects. The set design and cinematography all feel like the original holy trinity!  This episode also is very much great because of the return of writer Lawrence Kasdan (who wrote The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark)!

Minus points? Well, Poe Dameron is a cardboard cutout of a ‘hero’ in this episode and pretty much pointless! Then there is the fact that the entire film mirrors Episode 4: A New Hope - lazy! I say lazy but mirroring story/plot points is a theme in Star Wars

In all, Episode 7 sets up some refreshing ideas, characters and a return to a galaxy far, far away. But I have to say the treatment of the original characters was not handled that well at all and I would have preferred to see the original characters be much more involved (Han Solo aside that is; he was back and played a massive part in the plot. Was I upset at his death? Yes, but at the same time, I understood it made sense for the story!)

Episode 8 - The Last Jedi

2017. So JJ Abrams did not return to the director’s chair, nor did Lawrence Kasdan to write this episode. I was a little worried- but surely there is an outline for Episodes 8 and 9 by Abrams and Kasdan? Must be… it’ll be fine… They announced the writer/director: Rian Johnson (whose main credit up to that point was the sci-fi film Looper, which, I’m sorry to say, my opinion of that film is- politely put- pants!) So again, I was worried!

The film releases to critics hailing it the second coming, saying it’s the best Star Wars since The Empire Strikes Back! Well, all I can say is- what are they watching? It cannot be this awful, embarrassing pile of crap!

Johnson threw out any outline from the people who started this trilogy. He then goes ahead and makes a film that is a mess. It has all the action you expect, but it has way too much humour (and I mean slapstick levels of embarrassing moments and stupid jokes at inappropriate moments of drama)! The way the character of Luke is handled is just… well yeah, unforgivable! The subplot that finds Finn hurtling around the galaxy with a new character- Rose- is just pointless and utterly tragic on how tedious it is. 

The main plot is also tedious- Leia (played by the late Carrie Fisher) is wasted and again ‘legacy’ characters are either underserved or written terribly. The reveals of Rey’s parents in under whelming, Snoke being killed off makes no sense! The whole film is style over substance, and I could slag it off for hours.

Positives - The end scenes with Force projection Luke is great. Yep, that’s it!

Negatives – The other 90% of the film! It takes a massive dump on the fandom, what’s canon and basically isn’t a Star Wars film- it’s a cheap knock off (and again, Poe Dameron is basically useless and spends the entire film whingeing)!

So… all hope was lost - this was the start of a turbulent time as a Star Wars fan! 

Rogue One had been released December 2016, it was a massive success and now that’s the best Star Wars film since Empire! But there were rumours of reshoots and a change of director during reshoots and post-production on that film - hindsight, and the fact that the original director (Gareth Edwards) hasn’t worked since 2016 can tell you a lot. But that was a success.

The Last Jedi is loved by critics- but importantly fans are divided, with a lot of diehard fans hating it!

They announce that Colin Trevorrow (who made the fourth Jurassic Park film) was working on the script and would be directing Episode 9. OK, I thought, at least the hack from Episode 8 won’t be involved! But again, I was a little worried as Jurassic World stank and was very much a carbon copy of Jurassic Park!

They also had troubles on the next Star Wars story - the original directors were Chris Miller and Phil Lord, who had made The Lego Movie! I mean… what? Who are you hiring to make these films?! Well, they were fired at about 50% the way through filming. Kathleen Kennedy hires Ron Howard (finally a director with a clue and talent) to complete and reshoot the film! Then they released Solo in May 2018 and that doesn’t do well in the box office. 

I liked Solo. It was a by-the-book prequel and the actors who played the younger version of loved characters were great. And the cameo villain at the end? Bravo! Kudos! It all felt like Star Wars - but I think too much of a good thing was what this franchise was and is suffering from! I mean from 1977 to 2015, we had 6 films (six films in 28 years). From 2015-2020, five films in five years. That’s oversaturating your fanbase! Plus, releasing Solo in May 2018 was a stupid idea - there had been less than five months since The Last Jedi stank the cinemas out!

But… there was a new hope! Colin Trevorrow is out (which makes three directors replaced in the last 3 films) and JJ returns! Oh, hope of hope… oh wait, Kasdan isn’t coming back. They’ve got the guy who wrote Batman V Superman… Oh... Wait, he did write Argo as well! OK, all’s not lost then!

Episode 9 - The Rise Of Skywalker 

2019. This is the final film in what Disney has dubbed The Skywalker Saga. I rewatched it today on its BluRay release and it is the third time I’ve seen it.

It’s absolutely fantastic. It is fan service- but it’s the final episode. The film manages to bring to an end not only the complete nine films and also deliver a cracking third act of a trilogy. The film comes in at a staggering two-and-a-half hours, but the speed of the plot is fantastic; action, adventure - everything you want from Star Wars.

Better still is the return of Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine - this is genius writing, that retcons all of the damage of The Last Jedi and links back to the prequel trilogy (with the story of Darth Plagueis who found a way to cheat death)! Also returning- finally- is the great Billy Dee Williams as Lando - again though, he’s underused!

The films characters are well paid off. Rey’s journey and twists are perfect, Finn shines as a hero and Poe Dameron finally becomes a useful interesting character. I especially loved the bigger inclusion of C3PO in the main core team of heroes. Kylo Ren is a very modern complex villain and is a tour de force of how to make a multilayered character. What was so well done is how the filmmakers managed to have Princess Leia in the film using audio and unused footage from other films! Carrie Fisher is missed but the film is as if she were there to film the scenes! Truly well crafted!

This is how you make a Star Wars film - tragedy, adventure and a very strong villain. Plus, the humour is balanced correctly! I could gush on how great a film this is - but I’ll stop.

Rhys

Review: X-Men: Apocalypse (UK Cert 12A)

After tackling the 1960s in First Class and the 1970s in Days Of Future Past, the new X-Men franchise reaches the 1980s with Apocalypse. 

It's 1983 and an ancient mutant, En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), is awoken in Cairo. Recruiting mutants- including a grieving Magneto (Michael Fassbender)- to serve as his Four Horsemen, Apocalypse seeks to raze the world and rebuild it. Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and his mutant charges must help to stop Apocalypse from completing his plan.

There are some particularly strong action setpieces- one shows off the speedster skills of Quicksilver (Evan Peters) to the tune of 'Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)' by the Eurythmics, whilst another shows exactly how Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) get out of the Weapon X facility; a moment sadly spoiled by the latest trailer to be released. If that particular reveal had been left secret, it would have made a really brilliant moment even more so.

Performances are generally strong across the board, especially amongst the younger generation of mutants with Sophie Turner a real standout as the young Jean Grey. The returning cast- Fassbender, McAvoy, Hoult and Lawrence- fit back into their roles with no issues, with Fassbender really giving an air of gravitas and woundedness to his role. The only bum note is Oscar Isaac's curiously uncharismatic Apocalypse (but that's more to do with the writing than his performance, I think). 

My main gripe about X-Men: Apocalypse is that it never seems to kick into top gear. Both First Class and especially Days Of Future Past crank up the adrenaline towards the final act, but Apocalypse never seems to quite get there. The final smackdown between Apocalypse and his Horsemen and the X-Men is good- especially its resolution- but it never feels epic. It also doesn't help that several characters really get shortchanged, with Angel/Archangel (Ben Hardy) and Psylocke (Olivia Munn) virtually relegated to the sidelines. 

The film is a lot of fun and is enjoyable, and is a perfectly good ending to this trilogy. And hey any film that's content to throw a bit of shade at X-Men: The Last Stand is good with me.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Tez

Review: Ex Machina (UK Cert: 15)

There’s a chance that Ex Machina could have passed me by – another science fiction film about artificial intelligence. What made me near enough hurl myself into the cinema seat was when I saw the film’s poster, which said, “Written and directed by Alex Garland.” If you’ve never heard of Garland, he’s an author and screenwriter, responsible for – in my opinion – one of the best films to ever come out of the UK, 28 Days Later, as well as writing screenplays for Sunshine, Never Let Me Go, and Dredd. To say Garland is talented is like saying the Arctic is a bit nippy.

The very best science fiction should make you think; not just about your life, but what it means to be alive. That’s not a rule written in stone, but it’s how I separate decent, watchable sci-fi from classic science fiction. Garland’s directorial debut falls into the latter.

Ex Machina will get you thinking, but its complexity has a sting in its tail. Oscar Isaac’s Nathan creates Ava’s (Alicia Vikander) mind, her thoughts, her interactions using popular results from Internet search engines, as well as hacking into the cameras and microphones of every phone on the planet. There are warning signs going off right there! When security agencies such as GCHQ are making the headlines, tracking our Google searches and social media interaction, you have to wonder how much of a personal profile are they building of you when you go online? Also, is a person ever really themselves when they talk down the phone to someone or have a conversation via Skype? This is only a couple of the many questions that Garland fires at you during Ex Machina’s hundred-odd minutes.

Garland’s scriptwriting tends to be claustrophobic, with only a small cast, and his latest work does not buck this trend. You have three characters here: Isaac’s egotistical, playing God, computer genius; Domhnall Gleeson’s shy, careful not to offend, gentle coder, Caleb; and Vikander’s machine, unnervingly swapping from compassionate to aloof with no warning, suggesting there is much more going on behind those eyes. For most of Ex Machina, you have mind games and paranoia going on between the three of them, wondering what the other person knows, all keeping closely guarded secrets. From the first time you meet Nathan you know he’s playing a game with Caleb, you’re just trying to work out what he’s up to. Ava, for the most part, is caring and innocent, a damsel needed rescuing from a glass box instead of a tower, until she turns the tables on Caleb, interrogating him, firing question after question like a computer might do in an online exam. You quickly realise Ava is not as childlike as she seems. Caught in the middle of it all is Gleeson’s Caleb. He’s attracted to Ava the second he meets her – Double Negative’s CGI is subtle and gorgeous to look at, Vikander’s torso a collection of tangled gold wiring encased in gel, her brain visible from the back of her head, giving a gentle blue glow, while Vikander herself is striking in an angelic, otherworldly sense – refusing to listen to Nathan’s warnings that Ava has the ability to flirt and seduce, instead trying to help her escape when she tells him Nathan is not to be trusted.

While Ex Machina is playing the three characters off against each other, it is tense, uncomfortable and wickedly clever. It’s not spoiling anything by saying that the last twenty minutes is standard monster-on-the-loose science fiction (the trailer gives this away) which, while entertaining, is nowhere near as satisfying. Alex Garland doesn’t ruin things, you just wish the whole film was never-saw-that-coming inventive and constantly had you thinking. This is a tiny flaw that can easily be forgiven. Ex Machina is old-school science fiction in the vein of Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov’s novels; it’s seductive, sinister, and thought-provoking, as well as being surprisingly feminist. Plus, any film that can throw in some spontaneous disco dancing to Oliver Cheatham’s Get Down Saturday Night gets huge thumbs up from me.

5 out of 5

Matt

Review: The Two Faces of January (UK Cert: 12A)

With The Two Faces of January, screenwriter Hossein Amini (who skilfully adapted the James Sallis existential pulp novel, Drive) swaps to the director’s chair to bring one of his favourite books by Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr Ripley, Strangers on a Train) to the big screen. The film is a love letter to the chase thrillers of the fifties and sixties: murder, suspicion, adultery all set in eye-catching locations, starring ridiculously good looking actors; all of them dressed in stylish clothes and somehow managing to make chain smoking look cool. While there’s nothing wrong with paying homage to what went before, you can’t just come up with the same old tropes and not add anything new. This is The Two Faces of January’s only problem, stopping a good film from being a memorable one.

Set in sixties Greece, Rydal (Inside Llewyn Davis’ Oscar Isaac) is a tour guide, using his good looks and charm to trick college girls out of their money, who finds himself caught up in the lives of Chester (Viggo Mortensen) and Colette McFarland (Kirsten Dunst). Discovering the McFarlands are not who they say they are, Rydal unwittingly ends up as an accessory, forced to join them as they travel to Crete and Istanbul in a bid to escape.

As you would expect, the three leads all give impressive performances. Mortensen has this gift of taking complicated, contradictory characters and making them totally believable (The Road, Eastern Promises), and he does the same here as Chester, who starts off as this flamboyant, charming man, until his mask slips. Becoming increasingly paranoid and desperate, his jealousy towards Rydal gets out of control. Chester is petty and spiteful; his answer to everything is to get drunk and lash out.

Oscar Isaac’s Rydal is the closest we get to a protagonist. When we first meet Rydal, all he is interested in is stealing as much money off Chester as he can, while also trying to talk Colette into bed. It’s not until events tragically spiral out of control that Rydal discovers he has a conscience. Isaac easily matches Mortensen in the acting stakes here, scenes between the two of them, Chester and Rydal struggling to control their hatred for each other, exuding slow-burning tension.

Usually in chase thrillers, especially those set around a love triangle, the female role asks the actress to look stunning, make sure her make-up is always perfect, and say her lines; she’s there to push the plot forward and that’s it. To Amini’s credit, he gives Dunst a lot more to do here, Colette discovering just what kind of man her husband is, but realising all too late. Like Rydal, Colette is weak in terms of morals, but you pity her because of how naïve she is, only now does she raise her head out of the sand.

The film is always stunning to look at. For most of The Two Faces of January, Marcel Zyskind fills each scene with bright Mediterranean light; it’s not until things begin to reach their inevitable conclusion that Zyskind lessens the colour onscreen, the majority of scenes in the third act set either in darkness or what colour you do see looks pale or natural. Every frame during a police chase through Istanbul resembles a work of art, Rydal and Chester dashing through dim alleyways, cafés, even a mill, giving us brief glimpses of intense colour before plunging both leads back into the dark.

Equally impressive is the film’s score, penned by Alberto Iglesias (The Kite Runner and The Constant Gardner being his most well-known work).  Just like Amini, Iglesias is inspired by the globe-trotting thrillers of the fifties and sixties, the music brilliantly over-the-top, piling on the tension in each scene with bursts of short, quivering strings.

What stops The Two Faces of January from being one of the greats is that anyone who has seen an Alfred Hitchcock film, or any of the glamorous thrillers from that era (the audience Amini is aiming for), will know what’s going to happen. They’ll know that not everyone is going to make it to the credits, or that a private investigator will suddenly show up. By sticking to the traditions of these films, there are no surprises, the tension that Amini tries so hard to build is lacking. You could argue that Amini is simply following Patricia Highsmith’s novel, and if it had been translated to the big screen back when these films were popular, it would be hailed as a classic. If you compare The Two Faces of January to Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder or Minghella’s more recent adaptation of Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, it’s not quite up there. The Two Faces of January’s character-driven exploits, while entertaining enough, are run-of-the-mill compared to other thrillers.

The Two Faces of January is a successful, rose-tinted homage to the early Hollywood thrillers, but because it sticks so rigidly to the traits that audiences know so well, it’s nowhere near as exciting as it should be.

3 out of 5

Matt

Review: Inside Llewyn Davis (UK Cert 15)

OK, confession time: I'm not the Coen brothers' biggest fan. I don't actively dislike them and I have enjoyed a number of their films (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Fargo and True Grit) but I don't class myself as a fan of their work. Usually, I have to be in the mood for a Coen brothers film as sometimes their characters may strike me as quirky or idiosyncratic at one sitting, but downright bizarre or annoying at another. And let's not even go near their ill-advised and downright awful remake of The Ladykillers... But the trailer for Inside Llewyn Davis seemed intriguing, so I thought I'd- in the immortal words of The Watchers- give it a punt. 

Inside Llewyn Davis is a bit of an odd film to categorise. It's probably best described as a character study, I suppose. Set in New York's Greenwich Village in 1961, Llewyn (Oscar Isaac) is a struggling folk singer, performing at the Gaslight Cafe and sofa-surfing with friends and acquaintances. What happens next is a series of vignettes rather than a fully-formed plot or story; in fact, Joel Coen has remarked that 'the film doesn't really have a plot'. Llewyn ends up having to carry a ginger cat around with him until he can reunite it with its owners. He's previously slept with his friend Jean (a fiery Carey Mulligan) and she's pregnant but it could be either Llewyn's or her boyfriend Jim's (a dimwatt Justin Timberlake). He sees his manager. He gets some session work. He rides to Chicago with an obnoxious jazz musician (John Goodman) and his laconic valet (Garrett Hedlund). And so the film goes on. 

Performance-wise, it's all good enough. Isaac makes for a compelling lead, even though Llewyn isn't that likeable as a character- he's abrasive, condescending, slightly big-headed and a little too sincere, baulking at his sister's suggestion that he could always go back to the merchant marines if the music doesn't work out. Sometimes, the Coen brother's films are comedies of embarrassment, piling misfortune on misfortune on some poor schmuck (for example, A Serious Man or Intolerable Cruelty), making it almost excruciating to watch them struggle against the mounting absurdities around them. There's an element of that to Inside Llewyn Davis- although, in this case, some of those circumstances are of Llewyn's own making.

Other performances are similarly good. John Goodman's character Roland Turner embodies my previous statement about Coen brothers' characters; this time I found him quirky, another time I might have found him too brash or too oddball. Carey Mulligan doesn't have a lot else to do except snarl and throw some great one-liners at Llewyn, but she does it well and her singing voice is quite lovely. The music, produced by Marcus Mumford and T Bone Burnett, is- as you would expect- excellent; there are a few stand-out numbers such as 'Hang Me, Oh Hang Me' and 'If I Had Wings'. Bruno Delbonnel's cinematography is particularly good and overall it's a well-made piece, but I didn't love it and I'm finding it difficult to articulate why. 

Perhaps it's the lack of a clear-cut story? Maybe the script is a little too obtuse, a little too vague (although naming the Gorfiens' cat Ulysses is a none-too-subtle tip of the wink). Maybe it's the fact that the central character is actually a bit of a jerk. During one scene, Llewyn's manager mentions another character- a singing soldier called Troy Nelson (Stark Sands)- and predicts he'll be big because 'People connect to him' (unlike Llewyn). The film also frustratingly leaves the character hanging.

So, in summary, certainly no Ladykillers but far from being a Fargo. 

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Tez