The best movies have cool-looking things happening, but for reasons that make sense and in furtherance of film-long (or even series-long) arcs and plots that make sense.
Terminator 2, for instance, is a movie which had (for its day) as many whiz-bang pew-pew blowie-upie special effects as any ever, but which also has a plot and a throughline and dialog and character development which all makes sense. There are no random mcguffins. There are fairly few obvious solutions to problems that characters ignore just because. There are fairly few moments which totally invalidate or ignore rules established earlier in the franchise, etc.
I’m basically the same way. But I still want to be told a story. I don’t just want to see a bunch of cool visuals.
Like the opening crawl starts off with “Palpatine is back!” Like what the fuck? Like what in the previous two films gave any inclination that Palpatine was still around? And why would he tip his hand by announcing himself before his fleet took off?
Really, I agree with the guy in **Mahaloth’s **link. They basically crammed like six movies or several seasons of a television series into a couple of films. So it never feels like anything is developed.
I was particularly amused when Rey symbolically burns Kylo’s Tie-Fighter, then realizes he has the other wayfinder inside. But it’s okay, because I guess it was in a fire proof box, or something. Also, how do you set a Tie-Fighter on fire without it exploding? But I quibble.
Because it includes a plot spoiler for The Mandalorian, I’ll put it in tags. [spoiler]Let’s compare and contrast two “cool” scenes of characters fighting tie fighters, one from this movie and one from The Mandalorian.
Mando vs. Tie Fighter. Awesome visuals. Moff Gideon is hell bent on capturing or killing The Child and flies over in his Tie Fighter to blast Mando’s entire party to smithereens. One strafing run fails to hit the party, and he circles around the mountains for another pass. Mando puts on his jetpack and flies during the second strafing run to get close enough tow cable himself to the Tie Fighter and take it down with a thermal detonator, defeating Moff Gideon and clearing the way for the party’s escape.
Rey vs. Tie fighter. Awesome visuals. Rey is in the middle of a desert. Kylo Ren is flying at ground level directly at Rey. Why? I don’t know. Rey stares at the fighter. Kylo keeps flying but doesn’t fire. Why? I don’t know. Rey turns around and runs. Why? I don’t know. Rey, while running away from the fighter does a giant kicking backflip (why?) and cuts off one of the Tie Fighter wings, clearing the way for Kylo to land safely nearby. (Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing, right?)
Two scenes with individuals taking out Tie Fighters. One where every characters motivations make sense, and where the action advances the plot. One where nothing about any characters choices can be explained, and nothing about the plot changes. You could literally re-write Rey vs. Tie Fighter as “Kylo lands his shuttle nearby” and nothing about the narrative would change.
This reviewer has an excellent take on what’s wrong with Rise of Skywalker, and I think it agrees with what Cheesesteak said:
Basically, he describes it as “no scenes, all plot”. By “scenes”, he means characters engaging in a character-driven discussion, resulting in some decision or resolution which leads into the next scene. Instead, each scene is just characters running around yelling expedition about how they have to go somewhere or do something, getting interrupted by bad guys showing up from nowhere. There are no consequences or emotional payoff.
I’d guess that Abrams starts with the action scenes/effects, and then writes the story around them. I mean, I had the same exact thought as you with the Rey/Ren’s TIE Fighter scene. Why wasn’t he firing the blasters? What was his ultimate goal? Why did Rey walk out in the middle of the desert for that?
But it was cool and suspenseful, so it was in the movie, even if it didn’t make sense from a storytelling perspective. That seems to have been a lot of the motivation of a lot of the newest trilogy’s effects driven scenes.
You can see the same methods and its shortcomings Abrams used in Star Wars as he did with the LOST series. He can make some important looking and exciting scenes that really pull you in but they never have a payoff down the line because he never thought what that payoff might be. Like crafting some magnificent clues but having no idea what the mystery is.
I wasn’t a fan of The Last Jedi at all. So I waited until tonight to see TRoS, and kept my expectations low. If I had to sum it up, it’s the Fast and Furious of Star Wars. Some really great visuals, lots of action, lots of fan service, plot was uneven but still better than The Last Jedi. Left me wanting more and I actually want to rewatch it to catch some things I missed. Haven’t felt like that about Star Wars since Rogue One.
Overall I think this fixed a lot of TLJ issues and was a somewhat satisfying (if nonsensical) conclusion to this trilogy.
I went into it with low expectations, so I enjoyed what I got. I wish they would come up with some plot device that does not involve blowing up planets. It was nice to see Wedge again.
The scene isn’t dreck because it fails to advance the narrative. It’s dreck because every character involved is performing actions that make no sense over and over again simply to allow the “cool” visual to happen. It’s lazy. The writing team couldn’t be bothered to fit this cool visual into a competently written scene. The fact that it doesn’t impact the plot (or any other part of the movie) in any way is just the cherry on top.
Agreed. I can be entertained by watching a clip reel of well-done special effect scenes. But I will be more entertained if I can engage with the material on a slightly deeper level by caring about the characters and being able to try to predict how they will act based upon their personalities, past behavior, rules of how the world works, and the ongoing story. In a well written movie there’s a sense of satisfaction that can come from seeing events play out the way you expect, and a separate pleasure from seeing a twist that is, in hindsight, explicable. If things happen randomly in order to serve the needs of the cool visual then you’re robbed of both of those payouts.
Here’s a quote from Chris Pines, who played Kirk in Abrams’ reboot of the Star Trek movies:
To me that’s abdicating a huge part of the writer’s role, and that makes a difference to me even if it’s a movie about space wizards with laser swords. Yes, you can make a movie in which the character’s actions lack in-world motivation, and that movie may even be very successful. But with more effort you can have the flashy effects and exciting action scenes while still having a solid story core, so why wouldn’t you want that?
The sad thing is, we’re not overthinking it; it’s just not hurdling the low bar of “space wizards with laser swords”. No one is complaining about the movie not being thought-provoking hard sci-fi, the complaints are that it’s a mess of “this will look cool” moments glued together by nonsense. Even by B-movie standards.
I tend to really dislike, you are overthinking this B-movie sci fi. No one says that when they talk about Jupiter Ascending (for example), which REALLY looked cool, but made no sense. Do the same people say the same when people critique that the characters in Prometheus (a movie I liked, btw) acted dumb? People only tend to say that about things like Star Wars or (at times) Game of Thrones - things people are invested in and, IMO, therefor struggle to admit it wasn’t that good.
