Review: Halloween (2018)

The latest Halloween movie, directed by David Gordon Green, is technically a sequel to John Carpenter's slasher masterpiece Halloween (1978). The new film ignores and supersedes all other Halloween franchise films from Halloween II (1981) onward, wisely erasing the first sequel's backstory that there is a blood relation between Myers and his target / nemesis Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). This shift restores the original film's notion that Michael Myers is an impersonal killing machine, not a slighted brother looking for psychological vengeance. This is a good change that, along with its evocative visuals and (mostly) tight storytelling, makes this new quasi-"requel" a worthy successor to Carpenter's influential, entertaining horror classic.

Halloween (2018) looks higher-budget than Carpenter's film, with more sets and settings and more nuanced lighting and set design. Yet on the whole, it is aesthetically of a piece with the spare 1978 original. The camerawork, all superb, seems like it almost could have been shot by Carpenter, especially if he had a budget like this one. Produced by Universal Studios and Blumhouse, this new iteration is a slick, precise, exciting, terrifying slasher movie that works on its own terms while providing a satisfying "bookend" to the narrative of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. As the Red Letter Media guys say about nine and a half minutes into their video review, "we didn't even need this movie, but we have it, and it's pretty good, and now we need to be done. It's nice closure."

I agree with most of what the Red Letter Media reviewers say about the new Halloween, i.e.:

• Michael Myers (here played by James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle) is scary.
• The movie doesn't "do anything too stupid" (as Mike suggests here).  
• As usual, Halloween co-producer Blumhouse, the company also responsible for recent horror hits Get Out (2017), Split (2017), and the Paranormal Activity franchise (2009-present), "knows what they're doing."

"Hi, my name is Jason Blum. If you're a horror fan, just give me all your money now."

[SPOILERS FOLLOW]

The best thing about Green's Halloween is how it makes Michael a genuinely menacing, evil, frightening presence. He is genuinely scary every minute he is on screen, and his first significant attack, in which he brutally kills two true-crime podcasters in a gas station washroom, is one of the finest murder scenes I've seen in a horror movie in a long time. On this basis alone, I really enjoyed this movie a lot and feel more in harmony with Jay's enthusiasm for Green's Halloween than with Mike's more reserved response to it.

I like the film's sporadic comedy moments, especially those provided by young Julian (Jibrail Nantambu). Despite liking most of Julian's bits, Red Letter Media Mike claims that in general the film's humor "weirdens the tone" and breaks the mood of horror and fear the movie otherwise maintains so well. I don't fully agree, though I concede that the offbeat "bahn mi" dialogue between the two oddball cops late in the film is not as effective as would have been some serious talk about what's going on in Haddonfield, which surely the two cops, soon to die, know of via their police radio. Mike's dialogue idea (which he discusses starting here) would definitely work better there.

Mike and Jay also correctly assert that the twist that brings Michael within spitting distance of Laurie's fortified home feels contrived and clunky -- it sure is a lucky break for Laurie that Dr. Sartain (Haluk Bilginer) is a psychopath! However, despite its clunkiness, that twist moment works for me, or at least it did upon my first viewing. I like the idea of a "mad doctor" in this movie, since Loomis was always kind of an obsessed loose screw in the original anyway.

Yet I wanted to see Laurie take an even more active role in tracking Michael down and luring him to her isolated compound. That would be more compelling and thematically on-point than watching her driving around somewhat aimlessly in certain parts of Halloween's back half.

Haluk Bilginer as Dr. Sartain, the late Dr. Loomis' protege, Michael's new keeper, and the character whose story arc provides Halloween's major plot twist. 

That said, in addition to its depiction of Michael, Halloween's other greatest achievement is to give Laurie Strode an appropriate revisit and sendoff after 30 years' (ret-conned) hiatus. Though the previews for Halloween make Laurie look like a Sarah Connor-in-T2, gun-toting badass, the film's portrayal of her is more complex and rewarding than that. She is, in fact, frightened and traumatized to the point of being more or less totally unhinged. As Red Letter Media's Mike says, the scene where Laurie shows up at a celebratory dinner for her granddaughter and breaks down crying is basically the best (non-murder) scene in the whole film. And Laurie's hunting of Michael through her own house in the film's climax is a terrifying nail-biter that tops Michael's washroom double murder scene for intensity.

Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode.

I assume that anyone who likes well-made slasher movies and/or Carpenter's original will enjoy this sequel. It will never be 1978 again, so don't expect quite the same low-budget scrappiness in this version. But slick though it may be, this sequel has it where it counts: it is an exciting, scary, tightly paced horror movie with a top-notch soundtrack, newly composed by none other than John Carpenter (with collaborators Cody Carpenter and Daniel A. Davies).

In short, Halloween (2018) is a must-see for slasher horror fans.

Leatherface's Easter Egg Alert: Keep your eyes open in Halloween for at least two distinct homages to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). The first one involves Laurie's granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) only. The second involves all three generations of Strode women and happens right at the very end of the film.

Bonus Afterthought: The release of this latest "requel" in the Halloween franchise has kicked up some internet talk about Rob Zombie's generally maligned duo of Halloween films released in 2007 and 2009. Despite being a Rob Zombie film fan, I am no great defender of Halloween (2007), Zombie's Zombie-ified reboot of the 1978 original. The first portion of the film, about Michael Myers' white-trash upbringing, is interesting and well crafted but unnecessary, whereas the back half is simply a hasty, uninteresting rehash of Carpenter.

Yet as Richard Newby argues, "as a film lacking the beautiful simplicity of Carpenter's, Halloween '07 made a case for itself as an inelegant, raw and dirty psycho-fantasy drawn out of the idea that, as the Zombie-utilized Nazareth song goes, 'love hurts.'" Indeed so -- the Michael-Laurie family connection established by Halloween II (1981) and rejected by Green's reboot is front and center in Zombie's take. And Zombie builds upon and improves his focus on this theme in his criminally underrated 2009 sequel. As Newby contends:

It's in Zombie's Halloween II that the director is at his most interesting and assured as a filmmaker. Michael Myers takes a back seat to Laurie Strode and the trauma she's endured. [Scout] Taylor-Compton's girl-next-door vibe from the first film is stripped away and replaced with something damaged and genuinely human in its fragility. It's a performance, one of the best and most surprising to come out of horror in that decade, that rejects former notions of the final girl and her invulnerability.

Not only does Zombie's depiction of Laurie gain tragedy and resonance in his second Halloween outing, the film also renders Michael (Tyler Mane) as more of an animalistic wild man. The iconic Myers spends good chunks of the film trudging through the countryside, killing people, and seeing visions of his dead mother. It is weird, hallucinatory, and melodramatic, like Zombie's other hillbilly horror masterpiece, The Devil's Rejects (2005), and it works.

Indeed, Newby concludes that "Halloween II '09 is one of the most original films to come out of the slasher movie subgenre, and [it] ended on a note far more interesting than any of the sequels that had come before it." Agreed -- I would rank Zombie's Halloween II as the third-best Halloween franchise film overall, behind Carpenter's original and Green's.

To again quote Newby: "While so many horror remakes in the 21st century feel like a shadow of the original, Zombie managed to create two films that feel fully formed, even if audiences disagree over whether they enjoy the shape they took."

Review: Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

[MASSIVE SPOILERS FOLLOW]

Despite my mostly positive comments here, I recently tried to re-watch The Force Awakens and could not get past Han Solo's entrance. I find that, like Tony Zhou, I long for a different new-trilogy-kickoff film, one that spends more time on its new characters than its legacy ones. And one that tells a different story than the one that is already told more impactfully and economically in George Lucas's 1977 Star Wars.

However, despite my "blah" feelings about Episode VII, I stand by my concluding sentiment in that review, which says that

I sure look forward to seeing the next couple episodes of Rey's ongoing adventures. She is the single most compelling element of this latest Star Wars viewing product.

Indeed, I went into Episode VII with mediocre expectations overall but some hopes for interesting Rey / Luke developments. I ended up enjoying the film very much, at least on my first viewing. For me, The Last Jedi strikes a good balance between "soulless corporate pablum" and "a film somebody actually wanted to make." I like writer / director Rian Johnson's idiosyncratic touches and  I mostly found the tone of Last Jedi and the whole Luke Skywalker storyline to be spot-on. Kylo Ren continues to be the best-developed new character and Rey is compelling onscreen despite thin, predictable scripting for her this time around. I even enjoyed the Yoda cameo, an aspect I assumed I would hate. Yes, it was obvious fan service but it was handled well for the most part.

Even some of the gratuitous nods to the structure and visuals of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi didn't bother me too much. I am not sure we needed walkers attacking a rebel base on a "snow" (er, salt) planet yet again at the end, and some of the visual homages were heavy handed (e.g., the image of Yoda in the foreground, Luke in the background watching a ship take off copied from Empire). Along the same lines, the whole "gambler betrays the heroes" story element felt shoehorned in, but maybe that's because that whole Finn-Rose subplot, despite those two characters' good interpersonal chemistry and a fun animal chase, was clumsy, thinly plotted, and unnecessary.

All that said, I mainly enjoyed Last Jedi a great deal. Visually, it is a cut above most other Star Wars films (reason enough to see it in a theater) and there were enough new twists and fun ideas, mostly surrounding Luke's renouncing of the Force and his big astral-projection-trick finale, to keep me on the hook. I especially liked Leia's return to the ship after her brush with death -- FINALLY the series does something with HER portion of the Skywalker Force-imbued bloodline. That moment was weird and powerful and unexpected and I liked it very much.

The very best element of this film is its meta-commentary on failure:

In tackling this notion head-on—in being willing to not only challenge Star Wars’ happy ending, but to question whether happy endings actually exist—these new films are giving the saga something that it’s always somewhat lacked, even in all its constant grappling with themes of the spirit versus the machine: humanity.

Indeed, The Last Jedi, especially as it concerns Luke Skywalker, is the most humanly resonant Star Wars film since 1980's Empire. It is, as other reviewers have noted, a bit overlong and messy, but probably not too much the worse for it. I certainly enjoyed this film -- and had elements of it stick with me afterward -- in ways not even remotely achieved by any prequel or recent sequel.

The Last Jedi contains far fewer dead moments and outright imaginative failures than does The Force Awakens (e.g., Leia and Chewie failing to acknowledge each other post-Han's death) and I'm quite glad Johnson at least tried to take some chances (e.g., with Luke's character arc, with our understanding of what the Force can do). There were some subtle yet palpable misfires, such as:

• Holdo's big death scene should have been Leia's.

• Speaking of Holdo, why doesn't she just tell Poe the plan (or at least admit that she's got one) so as to eliminate that largely superfluous subplot he secretly and insubordinately sets in motion?

• Finn's self-sacrifice should have been allowed to happen, even though he's then a black guy sacrificing himself for the whities.

• Ren's bullshit talk of letting everything die, of letting go, seemed like a coded message to fans rather than anything he actually believed. He still wanted to indulge his hate and destroy the resistance. I guess we're supposed to just take it as bullshit, as lies he tells Rey to win her to his side, but it still felt weird and too meta-textual to really work.

"Hey guys, director Rian Johnson here. Be sure to let go of the past 
before you watch The Last Jedi!" 

Is Yoda a bit jokey? Yes, but this works for me -- he and Luke are colleagues now, not master and student. When Yoda blows up the tree and Jedi library, it fits the theme of the film and Yoda's approach to the Force. I like it.

But the smash cut from the end of that scene, Luke and Yoda sitting together watching the fire, to a ship hurtling through hyperspace comes a few seconds too soon and is emblematic of the film's most pervasive weakness: it is trying to pack so much in that it rushes things. It doesn't fuck up character moments as badly as J.J. Abrams does in the prior film but it still rushes them. I get that the casino planet sequence is ultimately a lesson about failure, a meta-theme of the movie, yet couldn't some of that material be eliminated or trimmed to give us a few more grounded character moments with Rey and Kylo, or even Luke and Yoda?

Also, as the Red Letter Media guys note, there is a real sense of finality at the end of this installment. The Last Jedi, even in its title, has the feel of a final chapter, not a penultimate one. So while it vastly improves on the lackluster Force Awakens, it doesn't really leave us with anywhere interesting to go. With Luke dead in the film and Leia dead in real life, two of the best characters are gone, leaving us with Ren and Rey. But what can they do next except battle it out some more?

I guess we'll find out.

JAY: See you again in two years for the next one . . . 

RICH: . . . when they just have to blow up a super-weapon and she has to get into a light-saber fight with Kylo Ren again. 'Cause they can't do anything new or interesting with Star Wars, they just can't, it's not there. I'm sorry -- you've wasted your life and your fandom.

UPDATE 1/2/2018: I saw The Last Jedi again yesterday and overall, I enjoyed it as much as, if not more than, I did the first time. It honors (most of) its characters and really keeps the viewer on the hook. I still think it is TOO fast-paced and overfull at times (that cut away from Luke and Yoda at the burning tree is quite wrenching -- it does not even wait for the last note on the musical score to resolve), yet overall the movie jells very well and is a real pleasure to watch.

That said, my main critique of it -- that the subplot involving Benicio del Toro's codebreaker character is especially weak -- still stands, and in fact was even more glaring to me on a second watch. As much as I love del Toro -- and I really do, I have sat through the shitty James Bond film Licence to Kill many times largely for his great performance in it -- his character in Star Wars is woefully underdeveloped and the whole plot involving him is, as I said, unnecessary. The "failure" theme is more than adequately covered by the Luke storyline, and the only part of the casino planet sequence that really comes alive is the stuff with the racing herd animals and the stable-cleaning kids. THAT part of that subplot IS narratively relevant, as it continues the theme of empathy for non-human animals that begins with Chewie and the porgs and concludes with the "crystal critters" on the salt planet.

But as for the "finding the codebreaker" stuff, it is weakly scripted (how and why do they meet Benicio in that prison cell?) and should probably have been cut. It would make far more sense to just have Rose be the codebreaker (or know someone who is) and have the side quest forego the casino planet altogether and head straight for Snoke's ship.

In fact, this time through I noticed what I think is The Last Jedi's one and only plot hole, and of course it involves the Benicio del Toro plot. (And let me preamble this by saying that I almost NEVER notice plot holes or continuity errors unless they are especially glaring. I did not catch this one until the second viewing.) It is this: when Finn, Rose and Benicio are in Snoke's ship at the end, and our two heroes learn that he has betrayed them, how does he know the information that he uses to buy his freedom? That is, how does Benicio know that the rebels are escaping in shuttlecraft when the film has already established that NOBODY except Holdo and possibly Leia know about that plan? Finn and Rose surely don't. So how does Benicio learn about it?

Review: Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

I fucking love Blade Runner. I first saw the original 1982 theatrical cut on VHS in the mid-1980s. That version intrigued me a lot, and haunted me, even though I didn't like the clumsy Harrison Ford voice-overs and weirdly upbeat ending. To be fair, I first came at Blade Runner with little understanding of film noir. Instead, I'd recently seen other fast-paced Ford vehicles like Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back. In contrast to these, Blade Runner felt slow and weird, but I still liked it. Its three principal characters -- Deckard, Roy, and Rachel -- stuck with me.

I happened to be living in Los Angeles in 1992 when the so-called "Director's Cut" of Blade Runner was discovered in a vault and screened at the Nuart Theater. That's when my true Blade Runner fandom began. That new version appeared just at the right time for me as a developing cinephile. I had started watching independent cinema, stuff like Do the Right Thing, Slacker, Reservoir Dogs, and sex, lies and videotape, so I was ready for a visually arty, downbeat, science-fictional neo-noir to sweep me away. Indeed, that cut of Blade Runner (and the essentially identical 2007 "Final Cut") remains one of my all-time favorite movies, even though I am made uncomfortable by the coercive nature of Deckard and Rachel's sex scene. I realize the dynamics of the scene are complicated by their both being replicants -- or maybe only Rachel being a replicant -- but it disturbs me. Nevertheless, I love Blade Runner. (I also love the Alien universe, so Ridley Scott has pulled me in twice.)

So I looked forward to seeing Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049. I went last weekend assuming I would like it and I did, very much. In my recent review of It I state that film is about 80% what I would want to see in an It movie. I mean that as high praise. I would say that Blade Runner 2049 is about 94% what I would want to see in a Blade Runner sequel.

The film often -- but not always -- touches on the mesmerizing quality that makes Ridley Scott's original so special. As with the noir-inspired original, Blade Runner 2049's main strengths are its beautifully lit visuals of grimy, lived-in settings and its overall melancholic tone.

Sure, Alex Garland's Ex Machina (2014) is a more compelling thematic follow-up to Blade Runner and is its true "spiritual sequel" ideas-wise. But Villeneuve's 2049 gets the tone and visuals dead right and introduces the reproducing replicant motif, a logical next step for the franchise that takes the story in an interesting, Pinocchio-like direction. And 2049 ends really well -- both its blade runners get superb final scenes and shots.

Although it ends with a haunting close-up of Deckard, 2049 features minimal -- just enough -- Harrison Ford. It's the new characters' show. Ryan Gosling is pitch-perfect as protagonist "K" aka Joe -- a strong silent type who is nevertheless more emotionally vulnerable than Deckard ever was (or is). Supporting cast members Sylvia Hoeks as Luv, Ana de Armas as Joi, and Robin Wright as Lieutenant Joshi (who I really thought was going to pull one more trick out of her hat before getting brutally murdered -- alas) are also especially good.

2049 does right to stay focused on Joe's present-day story, only bringing in Deckard when he becomes relevant to the mystery Joe is trying to solve. Indeed, too much emphasis on legacy characters weakens Star Wars and accounts for 2049's most awkward and least necessary scene: Niander Wallace's unsuccessful tempting of Deckard with Rachel 2.0.

There is no point to the Rachel 2.0 scene -- we know Deckard would never go for this ruse, and the use of computer generated imagery (CGI) to re-create a circa-1982 Sean Young looks, as CGI Peter Cushing in Star Wars Rogue One looks, uncanny, cheap, and (therefore) jarring.

Rachel sez: "Sorry folks, I should never have been in this sequel." 

2049's other main weak point is its almost comically underdeveloped depiction of an underground replicant revolutionary force. That scene only takes place to "explain" how Joe escapes Las Vegas, and there's a million other ways to do that -- he could just hijack some other vehicle from around Deckard's lair. Or the Wallace mercenaries could haul Joe back to L.A. along with Deckard, and Joe could escape at that point. Or he could be taken in the very same airport transport as Deckard, and would end up at the same climactic fight. The thing the rebellion leader tells Joe about his origin is something he could realize on his own -- he already suspects it before that dumb scene.

Deckard being tempted and Joe being rescued by an anonymous replicant resistance movement are stupid and unnecessary scenes. 2049 should just cut from Deckard being taken away in Vegas to "K" commandeering a new vehicle and pursuing him. No Ford / Leto meeting needed. The CGI Sean Young reveal is hackneyed in the film world and the real one.

I have been a Blade Runner fan since 1992 and was likely to want to see this sequel in any case. Yet the stellar track records of Denis Villeneuve, 2049's director, and Roger Deakins, its cinematographer, strongly contributed to my anticipation to see it. Villeneuve has made several excellent films over the past several years, including Prisoners (2013), Sicario (2015), and my favorite, his recent science-fiction film Arrival (2016). Deakins has worked with the Coen brothers since 1997, when he shot Fargo. He shot Prisoners and Sicario for Villeneuve. He also lensed the James Bond film Skyfall in 2012. He utterly rocks.

Is Blade Runner 2049 slow paced? Yes, of course it is. Like the original, 2049 is a bleak, moody, science-fiction film noir -- it is NOT an action film. There are basically two fights, two swift stabbings, and one extremely brief flying car chase. That's it -- the rest of 2049's two hour forty minute running time is people talking to each other on amazingly-lit and -designed sets. Don't expect much action, but expect a visually stunning, fully developed world of the future.

And expect me to crush people.  

UPDATE 10/28/2017: After reading my review, one of my friends noted on Facebook that she enjoyed Blade Runner 2049 too but had "some questions about Joi." Indeed, I share her concerns over the sexism of both the original Blade Runner -- the roughness of the Deckard-Rachel love scene has always disturbed me -- and its sequel. Honestly, I agree with everything Lauren Jernigan says in her penetrating article about the pervasive sexism of 2049. She writes: 

Joi has very little, if any, true agency as a character. She’s a programmed hologram that will be whatever K needs her to be, so he has his perfect fantasy woman. She is a literal product designed for the happiness of men.

Agreed. Like Jernigan, I find the sex scene with K, Joi, and her hired body double to be quite unnerving. Is this the film's way of critiquing this situation by making me feel unnerved and uncomfortable with it? Or is the film simply reinforcing the role of women as objects of desire for men? It's hard to tell. 

In defense of my Blade Runner fandom I can only say that film noir presents a strange case: it is so highly stylized and hyperbolic that I think it is possible to read the genre's abysmal treatment of women as a critique of patriarchal violence. But it is an ambivalent, ambiguous case, and there is no doubt that noirs like the Blade Runner films portray women as "only there to help move the story of men forward, rather than act as protagonists in their own right in a story very much about oppression against them," as Jernigan correctly asserts.

UPDATE 11/8/2017: I also found this piece by Joseph Aisenberg to offer an insightful interpretation of Blade Runner 2049. "Morose and morbidly meditative in tone, it gnaws around the edges of the assumptions underlying its plot mechanics, giving viewers time to think through the fakery in its themes about fakery versus authenticity."

Franchises, Fandom, and Film Criticism

It is hard for me to write about films of which I am not a fan. I can do it, and sometimes I have produced good analytical papers by doing so, but here on the blog I mainly post about films toward which I am positively inclined.

This truism partly explains why I have been so slow to complete my promised review of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. I want to get that piece out there, but it is more an intellectual goal than a passion project. I want to review a Star Wars prequel to show I'm a good sport and to inoculate myself against accusations of bias against them. But the truth is, I am biased: as a movie fan, I loathe and despise all three prequels.

Winchester: "I loathe you, Pierce."
Pierce: "I call your loathe and raise you two despises."

Conversely, I noticed recently that there are certain film-worlds I simply enjoy inhabiting and will take the opportunity to visit them even via relatively mediocre movies, e.g., the Tron universe or G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009) or anything involving the Fantastic Four. Then there are other cinematic universes, like that of the X-Men, that I don't find too compelling. I enjoyed X-Men: First Class (2011), for example, but I cannot rally the enthusiasm to make it all the way through Days of Future Past (2014). It's a perfectly well-crafted movie, and if I were really into the X-Men I would probably love it, but I am not invested and no X-Men movie, no matter how good, has much re-watch value for me. Maybe I am just Wolverine-fatigued?

Owen Gleiberman wrote a recent piece that gets to the heart of this issue. Ostensibly about his disappointment with Pirates of the Caribbean 5 and Alien Covenant, the article notes that

Franchises are the basic commercial architecture on which the movie business now rests, so the whole culture — audiences, critics, the industry — has a vested interest in viewing this situation without cynicism.

That is, the way the film industry is structured right now encourages viewers to buy into a whole different kind of movie -- the intertextual franchise entry -- than existed in the recent past. According to Gleiberman, our experience of sequels and franchises has shifted since the blockbuster era began in the 1980s:

One of the reasons the word “franchise” passed from industry talk to a colloquial term is that it sounds strong and powerful. You’re not just seeing a movie, you’re glimpsing a part of something larger. You’re not just watching it, you’re joining it. 

This "joining" with something larger can be great fun, and explains my enjoyment of the G.I. Joe films, yet sometimes I just want to see a well-made movie that isn't hyperlinked to a bunch of other stuff. As I said in my review, part of what makes Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman so refreshing is that, whatever its internal flaws, it mostly feels like its own movie, even if you can tell from its overuse of slo-mo combat sequences that it is part of the "DC Universe" and that Zack Snyder vaguely oversaw its production.

I ultimately advocate for both experiences. It can be fun to immerse oneself in a franchise-universe that you enjoy, and this kind of fandom creates a special relationship to (at least certain) films in the franchise, e.g., my love of Prometheus. Yet as Gleiberman suggests, "it can be healthy to return to the mindset of the ’80s and remind yourself that a sequel is often just a sequel: a movie that has no organic reason for being, even if it pretends otherwise." Agreed.

I greatly enjoy hanging out in the Alien universe, and absolutely loved Alien Covenant, but I totally agree with Gleiberman when he says that "the thing that can’t be recaptured, even by director Ridley Scott, is the essence of the original 1979 Alien: the sense of revelation, of seeing a monster that immerses the audience in transcendent horror." I agree. Yet as a committed fan of the Alien franchise, I don't go into Prometheus or Covenant expecting to relive the greatness of the original film. I go in wanting simply to hang out in that world some more.

Still, there are limits and contours to my Alien franchise fandom. For example, I find the abominable Alien Resurrection (1997) all but unwatchable. I re-watch Alien and Prometheus much more often than I do James Cameron's generally excellent Aliens (1986). And I am currently enjoying Ridley Scott's run of Alien prequels quite a bit -- see this EW review for a gloss of what I think of Covenant.

I have written about movie fandom before -- maybe the best thing I came up with (besides the catch phrase "Fuck the Tomatometer") is that "holistic film criticism is always colored by the history, tastes, predilections, hatreds, and fandoms of the individual reviewer." In saying that I am echoing Gamasutra's Katherine Cross, who writes that criticism is "the product of a gut reaction; it is a melange of values, emphasis, and personal judgement. It can never be objective."

To the extent to which that is true, criticism and fandom are somewhat inextricable. Yet it is the critic's job to be as clear as possible about their fandoms and leanings so that the reader can have some kind of barometer to use in evaluating the critic's work.

This means being able to talk about fandom -- a kind of gut-level, euphoric, gushy thing -- in concrete terms. I've been thinking that fandom has a few different levels:

• casual fandom, describing someone who will remain loyal to a franchise or genre or star in a vague way, but doesn't get too wrapped up in the deep mythology or details
• fandom proper, which exists in a big range but includes a certain loyalty to a brand, studio, star, director, franchise, starring character, etc. Often the true fan tries to protect what they see as the canon of their preferred genres and franchises, and probably has some apocryphal knowledge
• crazy-assed fandom that is so specific and particular that it destroys the fan's ability to enjoy a thing transposed into another medium or changed in the "wrong" way

I have this last thing with Lord of the Rings. I love the original J.R.R. Tolkien books so much, and they were so deeply influential upon me at an early age, that for me no film version of those works has ever really come close to the version I have in my mind. I find the Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings (1978) watchable, and Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) passable, but I guess I will always be swayed by my abiding fandom of those novels. Of course, the Rankin and Bass animated The Hobbit (1977) is an exception to this rule, since it is a brilliant and beautiful work of genius that is utterly enjoyable on its own merits, especially its delightful songs.

This is not to say that Jackson's Rings movies aren't good movies in some more objective sense -- though they do get worse as they go, especially screenplay-wise -- but simply that I will probably never love them the way many fans do. As a critic, I can see their positive qualities (e.g., high production values, great casting and visuals), even though I can also see the concrete reasons (e.g., contrived dialogue, shitty characterizations, numbingly bombastic battle sequences) that make at least the second two entries completely unappealing to me. My loyalty to the books plays a key role in how I respond as a viewer, and I acknowledge this in my criticism, but I also have legitimate critiques of the Lord of the Rings films themselves. I am a fan and a critic.

In "Hollywood Blames Critics for Its Movies Being Unimaginative Pieces of Shit," The Daily Beast's Kevin Fallon observes that

When a film like Get Out or Hidden Figures skyrockets to surprise box office success on the fuel of critics’ raves, it’s a credit to the value of positive reviews. But if a well-reviewed film is a box office bomb, then it’s used to argue that they don’t matter. What’s interesting, though, is how often critics and general audiences’ tastes align.

Indeed. Gleiberman echoes this sentiment in his article on superhero movie fandom, writing that "1) Critics are fans. 2) Fans are critics." As Gleiberman concludes:

Take the all-too-relevant issue of critics and comic-book movies. Do we critics reflexively dislike them? No. Do we sometimes dislike them? Yes. Do fans of comic-book movies agree with us? More often than not, I would say…yes. Four years from now, will people be talking about what a kickass movie Suicide Squad was? Prediction: Not really.

But all of us, critic-fans and fan-critics alike, will continue to passionately debate the films, franchises, and pop cultural loyalties we enjoy, nurture, refuse, and resist. The best thing we can do is to articulate these positions clearly and be as respectful as possible in how we communicate our ideas and passions.

Review: Wonder Woman (2017)

Wonder Woman is a big-budget superhero movie, and despite a couple of clever comments Diana (Gal Gadot) makes near the end about heroes being unable to solve complex problems like war and human corruption, it is fundamentally an earnest one rather than a deconstructive one. That is, it feels like it could have been made ten years ago, and probably it would have felt fresher then, situated among other straightforward origin stories like Iron Man (2008) and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011).

This is not Wonder Woman's fault -- Hollywood has dragged so much goddamned ass finally making an A-grade female-led superhero film that it beggars belief. We have been waiting for a Wonder Woman movie for so many years, even decades, and our having to wait this long for a movie centered on such an iconic character is glaring evidence of Hollywood's deep and pervasive structural sexism.

But the movie is finally here now, and it is a lot of fun. Like all superhero films, Wonder Woman takes its cues from the blockbuster writ large, inheriting its DNA from the 1980s Spielberg-Lucas template. So like any big-budget action-adventure film made in the wake of Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Wonder Woman is entirely predictable. There are no surprises or revelations here -- we've seen all this before.

However, that said, Wonder Woman is well-executed and possesses a few key strengths that make it a pleasure to watch:

• a very likable, positive, and non-brooding protagonist
• a particularly game and enjoyable supporting cast, especially Chris Pine as Steve Trevor -- Gadot and Pine exhibit delightful onscreen chemistry
• minimal (though some) running-time bloat and (thank god) minimal crossover exposition -- no distracting Superman or Batman cameos here

That first item is the most important and is what sets this film apart from all the others in the recent DC Universe franchise.* I am sick to death of dark, tortured protagonists in action-adventure blockbusters so when I heard that Wonder Woman was not going that route, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Wonder Woman's Diana is not quite so upbeat and booster-ish as Christopher Reeve's Superman or Melissa Benoist's Supergirl, but she abides in that general area -- grimly determined but not grim, and generally optimistic about human potential and the human spirit. I like superheroes like that.

Teamed up with Gadot as Diana is Chris Pine (a personal favorite) as Steve Trevor. He is a delight and his chemistry with Gadot is spot-on. I agree with AV Club's A.A. Dowd that

Pine, with his square-jawed deadpan, bounces nicely off of Gadot’s tourist curiosity; the two actors have a chemistry of innuendo and hesitant camaraderie—the makings of a screwball romantic comedy, simmering around the edges of the story.

Indeed, I wouldn't have minded if the Diana-Steve duo spent a little more time in London exchanging banter and having fun with Etta (a hilarious Lucy Davis) before slogging into the whole combat mission. But this is a blockbuster, there are action beats to get to, I get it. As Dowd puts it, "One just wishes [director Patty Jenkins] were working outside of a house style not already etched in stone." Hear, hear.

At least Wonder Woman avoids annoying franchise hyperlinks that distract from the story at hand. Recall the marred ending of Winter Soldier, about which I have written:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier was okay but should have ended right when Cap comes ashore at the lakeside after the film's climactic battle. Everything else after that is franchise-connection filler and is superfluous to this movie. 

Sure, Wonder Woman has a brief frame story in which Diana (in the present day) receives a note and photograph from "Wayne Enterprises" and subsequently sends an email message back to "Bruce Wayne." But there is no pointless cameo by any other DC franchise character or some out-of-context teaser for the upcoming Justice League movie, in which Diana will also appear.** So hearty kudos to Wonder Woman for simply being its own movie, an increasing rarity in today's franchise-dominated blockbuster world.

To characterize it in the terms fleshed out in this post, Wonder Woman is a simple, generic blockbuster.

Wonder Woman hangs out on the top left with blockbusters like The Avengers (2012). 

Simple blockbusters, indicating the simplicity of their plots, "make pretty clear from the get-go what is at stake" and "do not depend upon mystery or surprise." There is only one major "surprise reveal" of a character's true identity near the end of Wonder Woman, and if you don't see that coming from leagues away, then god help you. No, Diana sets off from Themyscira to do a certain thing, and by the end of the movie she does exactly that.

Generic blockbusters, referring to genre and style, are "films that adhere more closely to the established parameters of their genre, with less evident authorial flourishes or deviations in tone or visual aesthetics." In this context we have to see genre in terms of franchise and branding as well. I would describe Wonder Woman as a generic superhero blockbuster in the Warner Brothers / DC post-Nolan, Zack Snyder-ish style.  There's slo-mo combat, there's a big boss villain, there are super-weapons, there are parent / child things being worked out, etc.

If Wonder Woman has noticeable flaws, they are:

• a too-long running time and a pointless and boring final battle -- the film is emotionally over about twenty minutes before it concludes, around the time Diana confronts Ludendorff and then Steve Trevor on the elevated tower near the airstrip. 
• some incomprehensible, sloppily choreographed and/or shot action sequences, especially during Diana's early training. This is not unique to Wonder Woman -- pretty much all superhero films and blockbusters follow "Chaos cinema" aesthetics in their action sequences these days -- but it is still unfortunate.

That said, some of the slow motion in the action sequences, used more judiciously by Jenkins than it is in the Zack Snyder-directed movies I've seen, works really well, creating a kind of comic book panel or splash page type effect. Combined with this, Gadot, for me, possesses the physicality, prowess, and aura to really pull off this role. For me, her Diana in Wonder Woman is as visually iconic as Christopher Reeve in Superman (1978) -- I mean that as a supremely positive comment.  

In his review, Entertainment Weekly's Chris Nashawaty compliments Gadot's "undeniable star power" and accurately describes Wonder Woman as "assured and sly." He writes that Gadot's Diana "is both awesomely fierce and surprisingly funny" and "her chemistry with Pine is just as unexpected and electric." I agree with these points and with the overall conclusions of that review.

And importantly, as Dowd and others have noted, despite the shortness of her skirt-thingy and a few gratuitous bare-leg shots, the film mostly resists sexually objectifying Diana, thank christ. It's sad that the bar is so low that we are relieved simply when a mainstream film doesn't objectify or ogle its female characters, but there you have it.

She usually looks more like this. 

In short, definitely see Wonder Woman if you like enjoyable blockbuster action movies. This one won't condescend to you. It will provide "sly and assured" entertainment and action thrills, Diana's assault on the village of Veld being my favorite instance of the latter. I also really enjoyed the brief alley fight that happens in London. Diana's whip, weapons, and style are cool, and the film's climactic message, while entirely corny, is the sort of popcornish thing I want to hear at this time of year and in these troubled times. That Wonder Woman's message of love comes from the lips of Hollywood blockbuster cinema's first bona fide female stand-alone superhero franchise protagonist is, I think, cause for celebration. Long live Diana, Princess of the Amazons.


UPDATE 6/5/2017: Please read this feminist critique of the film by Nerds of Color's N'jaila Rhee and consider also this more deprecatory feminist analysis by Slate.com's Christina Cauterucci.

UPDATE 6/9/2017: For even more nuanced discussion of the feminist implications of Wonder Woman, read Noah Berlatsky's incisive rundown of how the film fails to acknowledge -- and even works against -- the "sisterhood" elements of the original comics, and also this smart dialogue between Carolyn Petit and Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency.

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* Note that I have not seen Man of Steel (2013) nor Batman v. Superman (2016) and don't plan to see either one. I have no truck with a brooding, "dark" interpretation of Superman and I was tired of the "dark" version of Batman by the time The Dark Knight (2008) rolled its end credits.
** To be fair, I did not stick around to see if Wonder Woman has a clunky, Marvel-esque post-credits sequence pointing toward future franchise entries.

Review: Kong Skull Island (2017)

Bearing in mind that I am the guy who re-watches The Lost World more often than I do the original Jurassic Park, I saw Kong Skull Island over the weekend and got exactly what I expected: a brainless, action-packed good time.

Is the film thin on the ground plot-wise and character development-wise? Yes, quite.

Are the only characters who can be said to have any personality or character arc Samuel L. Jackson's Packard and John C. Reilly's Marlow? Yes.

Indeed, Entertainment Weekly's Chris Nashawaty is correct to note that "there are about a half dozen too many characters to keep track of once the film gets underway." True -- I remember almost none of them except the two already mentioned plus John Goodman's Randa. Most egregiously, superb actors Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson are especially underused here -- they get barely any lines and are mainly around to pose attractively in the foreground of tableaux shots.

As David Palmer writes in his negative review,

If ever there was a blockbuster that was the definition of "studio picture" it’s this. Everything feels been there/done that, and even the scenes where Kong is Gronk-spiking helicopters manage to feel lifeless and almost completely devoid of joy. Slow-mo is overused to the point of eye-rolling and [director Jordan] Vogt-Roberts doesn’t seem to give any character direction to his actors.

I agree with all this and yet, unlike Palmer, I thoroughly enjoyed Kong Skull Island. I knew what I was in for and had no expectation that the film would be anything more than what it is: a big, dumb, action movie in which a giant gorilla beats hell out of a bunch of stuff. Nashawaty calls Skull Island "a big, loud, and kinda silly monster mash that feels like a throwback to the late-‘90s Bruckheimer era of gung-ho, budgets-be-damned macho adventure" and I agree.

Skull Island's soundtrack is riddled with hackneyed, over-used Vietnam-era classic rock tracks: The Chambers Brothers' "Time Has Come Today," Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit," and of course CCR's "Run Through the Jungle." As Nashawaty remarks, the film's song choices evince "lack of care" and "have as much imagination as a Time-Life Songs of the ‘70s set." I found these choices annoying.

Yet the movie's weirdest musical choice -- which constitutes my single biggest complaint about Kong: Skull Island overall -- is its use of Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again" right near the end. That song forever belongs to the apocalyptic montage at the end of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964). To use it in any other movie -- especially as used here, as a straight-faced piece of WWII nostalgia -- ends up feeling macabre and off-putting due to that unavoidable intertextual reference. These filmmakers should have known better.*

My other big problem with Skull Island is its bald-faced Orientalism in portraying the native tribe with whom Reilly's Marlow coexists. Between Marlow's Heart of Darkness-evoking surname and the decision to have the natives never speak -- they just silently nod and gesture throughout -- the filmmakers obviously mean to signal that they are "in on the joke," that they are re-hashing these racist, imperialist tropes knowingly, with a nudge and a wink. Yet the tropes are still damaging, and the film's racist, one-dimensional depiction of the 1970s Skull Islanders is distractingly offensive. They could have been done so differently.

In conclusion, I do not know if I will ever watch Kong Skull Island again, but there is a vastly greater chance of that happening than me ever watching Peter Jackson's overlong, draggy, bombastic, and boring King Kong remake again (believe me, I've tried). The difference lies in aspiration, not execution. Both 2005's Kong and 2017's Skull Island are well-executed blockbusters. But the 2005 film is trying too hard to be an "epic," serious homage to the 1933 original, so despite its great casting and better script, it is, for the most part, slow-paced and mind-numbingly boring.

Skull Island, in contrast, wastes no time getting to the island and the Kong fight scenes, so is a much more worthwhile investment of my time and entertainment dollar. I recommend it for what it is: blockbuster thrills held together with a stupid plot and flat characters -- but with the common decency not to pretend to be otherwise. Its honesty in this regard, which reminds me of Pacific Rim (2013), is refreshing.  

King Kong sez: "Eat my shorts, Peter Jackson."

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* Unless, of course, they were misguidedly trying to "steal the song back" from Kubrick on purpose, a hubristic and futile attempt which utterly backfires. How can anyone who has ever seen Strangelove forget that sequence and song?

Film Reviews Are Subjective

FUCK THE TOMATOMETER!

Assigning numbers to creative works, even factory assembled ones like movies, is stupid. Reviews of cultural products like movies should be subjective and qualitative. They should tell you stuff ABOUT the movie, not try to force a meaningless number on it.

This is the main reason why I despise and refuse to use or endorse the Rotten Tomatoes website or its ridiculous Tomatometer.* The Tomatometer is a big-picture aggregator of reviews, which is not the same as an individual review assigning a numerical score. But it still attaches numbers (and its too-broad "Fresh" and "Rotten" labels) to something that (in my view) cannot be quantified -- not without losing its nuance and hence its utility.

Numerical ratings have no place in reviews of individual movies. As Gamasutra's video game reviewer Katherine Cross writes:

What may be an 8.5 to me is very different from what merits an 8.5 to another critic. And what’s worth marking down three tenths of a point? Is my site’s 6.75 different from another’s? What is the difference between a 9.0 soundtrack and a 9.5? Critics give scores on the basis of rubrics provided by their publications, often as not, but even there the score is still the product of a gut reaction; it is a melange of values, emphasis, and personal judgement. It can never be objective.

Yes, exactly that. We might as well embrace our fandoms and biases and just admit that film criticism is a subjective art. There is no point in pretend-quantifying the process.

I've been recently pondering an illustrative case. Reading fellow film blogger Sal Alonci's review of Captain America: Civil War, I noticed the superlatives he uses to describe what is, for him, a genre-pushing, evolutionary superhero movie:

"with Captain America: Civil War, Marvel Studios has once again redefined the superhero genre"

"Putting it simply, Captain America: Civil War is one of the smartest and best superhero films ever made"

I totally get where he is coming from -- this sounds like fandom and I definitely have my fandoms.** I love the excitement of Alonci's review. Furthermore, there are legitimate interpretive angles that a true fan with background knowledge of the comics can bring to bear on a genre film like this, as Alonci does in his sharp overview of the Marvel Universe films so far.

Darth Vader sez: "I am your father!" NOBODY fuckin' knew if THAT was true 
ahead of seeing Return of the Jedi in 1983.

Similarly, The Mary Sue's Christy Admiraal points out that foreknowledge often enhances a fan's viewing experience: "Knowing the identity of a previously unseen character can make it much more exciting when they finally make an entrance, and knowing what’s coming next before it happens can feel like keeping a secret; the informed viewer and the creators are in on it, while the general public will have to wait and see what happens." Alonci clearly possesses this kind of knowledge so his experience of the MCU movies is heightened relative to mine.

There is a lot of subjective fandom in Alonci's Civil War review, especially in passages like: "It's my favorite movie of the year so far, and will probably be my favorite movie of the whole summer." I mean, Alonci isn't hiding anything here. He is admirably up-front about his status as a fan: "I've already seen it three times and I'm going to see it again soon."

What this exemplifies is that ALL of us who write film criticism do so subjectively, at least in part because we are fans of the medium (and of specific genres, films, directors, stars, periods, etc.). This is as it should be. For while there are technical and numerical things we can learn about a movie -- its all-time grosses, for example, or its average shot length -- holistic film criticism is always colored by the history, tastes, predilections, hatreds, and fandoms of the individual reviewer.

For example, I have no interest in, and no intention of seeing, Captain America: Civil War. I never even really considered seeing it, but if I had, that consideration would've ended once I saw this review, in which Mike -- Mike! -- finally says (around the 26:28 mark) that "I got tired of all the punching. I think I'm done with superhero movies. It's no longer exciting to me. It's just punching."

Mike sez: "I think I'm done with superhero movies. It's no longer exciting to me. It's just punching." This is an example of a reviewer's film tastes changing over time. 

I felt like Mike does now a whole MCU Phase ago -- I quit after the first Avengers (2012). So for me, the whole MCU phenomenon is a thing happening to other people -- albeit LOTS of other people, if worldwide grosses are any indicator.

I keep my finger vaguely on the MCU's pulse, reading review articles and the like, and based on what I've read and heard, I may yet watch Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) one of these days. But as I have written before, I am not all that "on board" with the Marvel films in general. I am a superhero movie burnout case.

What, then, do we make of my recent defense of Escape from New York (1981)? Escape is a dystopian, science-fiction-y action film whose dark tone and "all-time icy badass" protagonist, Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), make it an obvious cinematic precursor to the post-2000 superhero film. So why do I defend Snake Plissken yet show such callous lack of interest in Steve Rodgers and Bucky Barnes as they enjoy their moment of massive worldwide fame?

Part of it is the passage of time and the transmogrification of my film tastes. In the 1980s, I was a big action-movie fan. Action films (including James Bond) and Star Wars-esque science-fantasy were my go-to genres in those early years. That and comedy.

Nowadays I can hardly be bothered to write seriously about a superhero film or a Transformers film because I just don't care all that much about them. My tastes have grown up and changed, and if I pen anything as gushy as Alonci's Civil War review, it's going to be about something a bit less mainstream like Belle or Snowpiercer or Mad Max: Fury Road.

It is now the superhero fans' moment in the sun, and I do not begrudge them it, even if I have reservations about the dangerous cultural messages geek-centered power-fantasy films typically convey to their target audience. I am not alone in this concern. But hey, there is a time and a place for fantasy, and I grew up on Snake Plissken and James Bond movies and I turned out okay.

In any case I better get used to it. Disney has Marvel movies planned out until 2020. Those super-profitable motherfuckers aren't going anywhere.

Meanwhile, in my own musty corner of the blogosphere, I pen defenses of science-fiction movies nobody else likes, low-budget 1970s horror films, and offbeat directors of whom most people have never heard. Long live fandom.

Werner Herzog sez: "Go for the ecstatic truth, man."

UPDATE 8/5/2016: Slate.com's Matthew Dessem agrees with my view, opening his smart piece saying that "If your opinion about a work of art can be expressed as a number, it’s not a very interesting opinion." He contends that "there’s little value in assigning a number to how much we liked [movies]. The interesting questions are 'Why?' and 'How?,' not 'How much?'"

There’s nothing wrong with the question “Should I see this movie?,” and criticism can definitely help answer it. But the right way to find an answer is to consult one or two critics whose taste you trust, not a thousand critics you don’t know.

My sentiments exactly -- well said Mr. Dessem.

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* As Kevin P. Sullivan reminds us, the Tomatometer "doesn’t measure film’s quality in the eyes of critics" but is rather "a record of critical agreement." Possibly so, though the value of even that aspect of the Rotten Tomatoes site has been called into question by Film School Rejects' Landon Palmer: "the numbers featured on Rotten Tomatoes provide some notion of a critical response ('critical consensus,' by comparison, is something that can only be argued, not tabulated) conveniently devoid of substance and content. Thus, Rotten Tomatoes can serve a purpose as an initial point of access, but never as a substitute for criticism itself." 

** Even beyond my love of Bond, rekindled embers of my ancient Star Wars fandom surely account for some of my warmth toward The Force Awakens.

Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

One of my favorite bits from The Force Awakens.

I have written before about Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams' "requel"-style sequel to the original Star Wars trilogy. I claim the new movie

is better (by far) than any Star Wars prequel and better (by less far) than Jurassic World. The dialogue is decent, the characterization (especially of the new characters, Rey, Finn, Kylo Ren and BB-8) is good, and the action sequences and overall narrative flow work really well. I agree with A.A. Dowd when he says that the film does not slow down and develop its characters and worlds quite enough and that it fails to land a couple moments (like the revelation of Kylo Ren's parentage) that could have been far more emotionally impactful than they are.

I stand by that statement, yet having recently re-watched The Force Awakens, I aver its dialogue is better than "decent." As these kinds of basically superficial movies go, the latest Star Wars entry is actually quite well scripted.

Take. for example, the two lines exchanged between Han and Leia as they sum up why they have drifted apart from one another over the years:

HAN: I went back to the only thing I was ever any good at.

LEIA: We both did.

Simple stuff but it implies so much. Perceiving themselves to be failures as lovers and parents, Han and Leia have fallen back on their respective jobs as smuggler and military commander to sustain them through their trauma. This makes sense. It's human. People in the real world throw themselves into work and old habits to avoid pain and discomfort all the time. Succinctly put, not revolutionary, but believable and resonant.

The film's high entertainment value also stems from Abrams' considerable ability as a "show don't tell" filmmaker. In this, thank God he is more a disciple of Spielberg than of Lucas. He moves the camera dynamically, he focuses on action and gesture over expository dialogue, and he -- unlike his contemporaries Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder -- seems to comprehend human emotions.

This moment, like many similar moments between Furiosa and Max in Fury Road, subtly illustrates how heroic men depend upon smarter, more capable women.

However, one can easily tell that Abrams' hands were tightly tied while making this franchise-rebooting component of the highly synergized Star Wars product line.* As the L.A. Times' Michael Hiltzik writes,

Whether out of his own instincts or via directives from the suits at Disney, J.J. Abrams, the co-writer and director of The Force Awakens, plainly labored under a mandate to not get the thing wrong. It's a mark of Disney's own caretaker mentality that not only is a Jar Jar Binks-level blunder absent from The Force Awakens, but so is surprise or even much suspense.

That's hard to argue with. The film is fun but generally unsurprising, in large part because it is a barely-disguised remake of Star Wars (1977). (Though I am pleasantly surprised by Kylo Ren's sudden tantrums -- show don't tell!)

Hiltzik allows that "Abrams' big advance is said to be supplanting the whiter-than-white protagonists of the original Star Wars with a young woman and a black male." Agreed.

Finn (John Boyega) rocks. He also signals imminent major SPOILERS in this review.

What's more, The Force Awakens makes good on two key unfulfilled promises: to give Han Solo a meaningful death, and to give us a frikkin' female Jedi protagonist.

As Harrison Ford has been saying for decades, Han Solo should have croaked at the end of The Return of the Jedi. It makes sense in terms of the character's arc (greedy bastard in Star Wars, learns his lesson in Empire, sacrifices himself for his friends in Jedi) and would have given the conclusion of the original trilogy some much-needed gravitas. Tony Zhou writes that

J.J. Abrams must spend half of The Force Awakens re-building the same emotional ground under Han Solo [as existed in the original trilogy]. That’s why Han is back to his factory default setting of “smuggler,” why he’s escaping again from people to whom he owes money, why he and Leia are separated then reunited, and why he quickly agrees to storm a planet and disable the shield so that fighters can attack the Death Star. 

Han Solo is literally, moment by moment, reliving Return of the Jedi. Because in story terms, he should’ve died then.**

Don't get me wrong, Jedi is an aesthetic triumph. Its action sequences, particularly the Endor speeder bike chase and the destruction of the second Death Star, are among the best you will ever see. Luke's final confrontation with Vader and the Emperor in Jedi is one of the best dramatic scenes in any Star Wars movie and is probably the most emotionally resonant scene George Lucas has ever had any hand in creating.

But on a basic story-structure level, and as far as including the Ewoks goes, Return of the Jedi is a lazy, stupid, watered-down piece of shit. It stupidly keeps Han Solo alive, denying the character a meaningful death and reducing him to comic relief. Worse, Jedi gives Solo screen time that rightfully belongs to Leia at this point. Why the fuck isn't Leia, a longtime military leader, commanding the attack on the Endor shield generator? For that matter, why the fuck is this blaster-wielding leader of the rebellion being chained up in a slave bikini in the opening act of this puppet-fest?

Whatever happened to this Leia?

Did she follow this Marion Ravenwood down into the pit of 1980s sexism?

In any case, The Force Awakens' Rey (Daisy Ridley) appears to be Star Wars' attempt to reverse course on its usual sexism.† The attempt may never fully succeed -- that slave bikini is going to haunt the franchise forever. But our new series protagonist (for at least the next two numbered episodes I presume) and her black comrade-in-arms both provide a compelling and much-needed antidote to the series' usual white-male-centeredness. 

On the basis of its diverse cast and camera work alone I'm inclined to rate The Force Awakens up there pretty close to Return of the Jedi in terms of overall viewing pleasure. We'll see how it withstands the test of time. 

However, much as I complain about Disney taking over the goddamn universe, I sure look forward to seeing the next couple episodes of Rey's ongoing adventures. She is the single most compelling element of this latest Star Wars viewing product. 

Rey tells Kylo Ren to go fuck himself.

Bonus Afterthought: Make sure to check out this interesting piece about a possible unforeseen after-effect of The Force Awakens' enormous success: a critical reevaluation of George Lucas. Bryan Curtis explains that "in the era of reboots, Lucas' pastiches have a kind of integrity." A thought-provoking read.

UPDATE 7/1/2016: See also Film Crit Hulk's detailed explanation of why The Force Awakens doesn't quite work for him -- including accurate insights about why most of J.J. Abrams' films are big hits but lack staying power. According to Hulk, Abrams' films "DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW TO BE HUMAN SO THEY EFFECTIVELY IMITATE IT. [IN THE FORCE AWAKENS, ABRAMS AND COMPANY] LOOKED AT EVERY MOMENT AND WORKED BACKWARDS FROM THE INTENDED RESULT. J.J. KNOWS WHERE YOU WANT TO BE, BUT HE'S GOING TO RUSH YOU THERE AS SOON AS HE CAN, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OR NOT IT'S CATHARTIC."

UPDATE 9/10/2016: I recently came across this piece by Brian Merchant and feel it to be the best overall assessment of the place of The Force Awakens in the larger Star Wars film series. As Merchant writes, Episode VII "is more a product of the same market logic that gave rise to the Marvel Universe films—a logic that rewards emulation and nostalgia above all; reusing ideas, characters, and narrative arcs that have already proven lucrative—than it is of the imagination that launched the series nearly four decades ago." Though he has high hopes for 2017's Episode VIII, he concludes that "Science fiction is supposed to be all about exploring the unexplored, not rehashing the well-trod. As its key franchises become increasingly more important to the bottom line of huge studios that are fending off streaming and view-on-demand, expect them to become more formulaic, and less interesting."

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* Eileen Meehan calls the web of cross-references created by the product lines surrounding a blockbuster film its "commercial intertext." She argues that each consumer interacts with the web of meanings created by a film text and its surrounding commercial intertext differently, each of us "positioning ourselves to construct different readings of the film and positioning the film and its intertext to suit our particular purposes" (pp. 47-9). If you are interested in the rise of the blockbuster and/or corporate synergy in Hollywood, you simply must read Meehan's "Holy Commodity Fetish, Batman!" in The Many Lives of the Batman (Ed. Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio, Routledge 1991) pp. 47-65.
** Zhou compellingly argues that The Force Awakens wastes too much time fixing the original trilogy's Han Solo problem: "the real film that Episode VII is fixing is Episode VI. Half of the runtime of this new movie is spent correcting one problem, the mere fact that Han Solo should have died then and didn’t." Along similar lines, Gary Kurtz, who produced Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, says in this interview that

one of the reasons I was really unhappy [about Jedi] was the fact that all of the carefully constructed story structure of characters and things that we did in Empire was going to carry over into Jedi. The resolution of that film was going to be quite bittersweet, with Han Solo being killed, and the princess having to take over as queen of what remained of her people, leaving everybody else. In effect, Luke was left on his own. None of that happened, of course.

Kurtz parted ways with George Lucas over these issues and instead of producing Return of the Jedi, he collaborated with Jim Henson and Frank Oz on the utterly badass The Dark Crystal (1982).
† The prequels are absolutely terrible on the gender front as well, so it's a good thing they don't exist.