Tag Archives: nostalgia

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

It is a good thing that Disney did not try to stick a Frozen short in front of Episode XIII, which weighs in at a hefty 2 hour and 33 minutes not including ads and previews. It doesn’t help that much of that time is spent watching Poe Dameron try really, really hard to learn a fairly simple lesson. Poe got it on what by my count was the fourth try, during a battle that took me by surprise because I expected the movie to have ended before that fight even started!

So this was not the ideal movie to have dragged Jay to, with it being an unusually long entry in a nerdy franchise she has less than no interest in. At least trying to spot the rumoured William & Harry cameo kept her busy for a while. I hope.

For those of us invested in this behemoth franchise, this is a solid Star Wars film that changes things up a bit more than did The Force Awakens, though this one sometimes feels like it’s spinning in place. Still, being the Star Wars fanboy I am, I was more than willing to forgive a few extra scenes and a few too many contrivances because what this movie gets right, it REALLY gets right.

At the top of the “gets right” list are the Last Jedi. And since Jedi is plural, that makes for multiple entries on the list.

First, Luke is actually in this movie for more than one scene and it’s the Luke we know from all three original films, for worse and then for better, and then for so much better. Bear with Luke as in the course of this movie he manages to transition (again) from whiny back-planet farmboy to ass-kicking robed avenger. It’s truly fantastic.

Second, Daisy Ridley’s Rey is really, really great for the second movie in a row. She is the heart of this third trilogy and for my money she’s the best Jedi we’ve ever had (because unlike Luke, Anakin and Ben Kenobi, Rey never had a whiny phase).

Third, we get a Jedi ghost appearance that was an unexpected bit of closure I didn’t even know I needed, as it’s one last advice-giving opportunity from master to student. It will make you wish that Han Solo was a Jedi so he had a chance to pop up in ghost form during Episode IX to rehash the good old days.

Speaking of the good old days, it is bittersweet to see Carrie Fisher get a prominent role here. Great as it is to have Leia be the true leader of the resistance, her importance means Fisher’s death will leave a massive hole in Episode IX that can’t (/shouldn’t) be filled (CG stand-ins creep me out and should creep you out too). RIP Carrie.

It occurs to me that a two hour version of this movie might have been my favourite Star Wars of all, if they had cut out much of the Poe and Finn stuff (which are the scenes that inspired my earlier reference to spinning in place). As it stands, this is still a good film that did not disappoint, and it might edge out Return of the Jedi for third place on my list, which is pretty damn respectable.

El Camino Christmas

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I count Die Hards 1 and 2 as two of my favourite Christmas movies, so I’ve seen a hostage situation or two play out on-screen during the holiday season. But El Camino Christmas proves that not all hostage situations are created equal, mainly because not all cops are Bruce Willis. Some cops are Dax Shepard or worse, drunken Vincent D’Onofrio (who is either a very good actor or has a serious alcohol problem, or maybe both). El Camino Christmas is the opposite of a how-to hostage negotiation video, as things start bad El-Camino-Christmas-feature and somehow get worse.

With Dax Shepard involved with the film, I expected some dumb comedy but El Camino Christmas seems to not even be trying to be funny. And if it was trying, well, it failed miserably.

On the “plus” side, if you have been suffering from Tim Allen or Jessica Alba withdrawal, El Camino Christmas will give you a shot of both. Neither needed to be here but they both showed up anyway for a little Christmas green. Really, why not say yes, when Netflix is throwing money at everyone else?

Some of those other Netflix originals have been pretty good but El Camino Christmas is not even middling. It’s a totally predictable, cliched, and boring film. It’s not the least bit entertaining, not even unintentionally. There is really nothing to recommend about El Camino Christmas. It is bleaker than a stocking full of coal, so just watch those Die Hards again instead. Especially if you can catch the dubbed for TV versions for the true holiday experience. Yippie-ki-yay, Mister Falcon!

Spider-Man: Homecoming

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spidey11 Spider-Man: Homecoming may not be the best movie in the franchise (since my favourite Spidey villain is Doc Ock, I have a soft spot for Spider-Man 2) and may not even be the best superhero movie of the summer (Wonder Woman is undeniably great). But the fact that those were the conversations the assholes were having after we saw Spider-Man: Homecoming last night shows that Homecoming is a great movie in its own right.

Most importantly, Homecoming GETS Spider-Man. This is a movie that is fan service from start to finish. The Marvel Cinematic Universe features prominently in the story as the events in the Avengers and Civil War are built on (and Iron Man plays a pretty big role). There are also a ton of familiar names for fans to find, from Ned Leeds to Flash Thompson to Mac Gargan, and one or two more that I’ll let you discover for yourself.

Even better, the story calls back to several classic comic moments, including this one from Amazing Spider-Man #33 (1966), which is a defining moment for Spidey:

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Spider-Man finds a way to succeed even when it seems there’s no chance, and the final battle in Homecoming is a great display of what I love about Spidey, from start to finish. The conclusion of that battle especially reminded me of the first Spidey comic I ever read, and really, every Spidey comic since. Spider-Man’s desire to do the right thing is what makes him my favourite and I was extremely happy to see that made a focus of the film (“with great power comes great responsibility” is never actually said, but it’s the movie’s underlying theme and that’s a far better approach than giving us another depiction of Uncle Ben’s death).

Fittingly for Spider-Man, the hero who can’t stop saying corny one-liners as he fights the bad guys, this may also be the funniest superhero movie ever made. It captures the light-hearted, good-natured awkwardness of Peter Parker and the awkwardness of high school in general. There are a lot of laughs from start to finish, and like Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy before it, Homecoming always finds a way to entertain the audience in between the action (often at our hero’s expense, as it should be with Spidey).

(SPOILER: sometimes the humour even comes at the audience’s expense, as you will find out if you stick around to the very end.)

Spider-Man: Homecoming met my high expectations, and then some. This is how you make a great superhero movie, by staying true to the character, and when that character is your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, you’re in for a treat.

Blade Runner

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Jay provides an excellent litmus test anytime I’m unable to separate nostalgia from quality. It happened with Star Wars, it happened with Indiana Jones, and it has now happened with Blade Runner. As I write this, it occurs to me that Jay may just hate Harrison Ford, but let’s leave that aside for now.

Yes, because Blade Runner 2049 is on the horizon, I was able to convince Jay to watch Blade Runner with me earlier this week. Anytime I can get Jay to watch what I will call nerd-fi, a category that includes most movies I saw in the 80s and 90s, it feels like a major victory. But only until the movie starts, because so far, about 5 minutes into each movie I proudly show to Jay, she wonders why I bothered to beg her to watch this one, asking things like, “Do you remember it being this bad?” when the flying cars first come into view.

Maddeningly, I can’t even argue against her assessments. In 2017, Blade Runner is not a great movie. It’s not really even a good movie. It’s a movie with vision, it’s beautiful to look at (though the flying cars do look as horrible as Jay pointed out), it brought dystopian futures and particularly Philip K. Dick to mainstream cinema, and it has an ambiguous ending that becomes even more so with every new cut issued by Ridley Scott. But it’s also a movie with cornball acting, disposable characters that we are barely introduced to, and a ton of sequences that are beautiful but: (a) extremely repetitive (how many times do we need to see a car fly by a Coke billboard or the offworld blimp ad); (b) essentially silent (like Ford’s visit to a food cart/open air diner); and (c) do nothing to advance the plot (which, let’s be honest, is probably about 35 minutes worth of movie without being padded by all the beautiful shots of futuristic Los Angeles).

Still, there is something to be said about Blade Runner and something reassuring about its continued relevance. A big reason that the movie feels thin today is because it has been so influential. We’ve seen so many films build on what Blade Runner started, and in comparison, Blade Runner is like a wheel made out of stone. In that way, it’s important but if choosing between the original or the best that the genre has to offer today, the modern film is going to be the better one. But there is still room in my heart for the rickety original, the one that was ahead of its time (and ahead of ours, as Blade Runner is set in the “distant” future of 2019).

And in some distant future of our own, maybe I will find a movie that I feel nostalgic for that also stands up to Jay’s critical eye. Your suggestions are welcome!

Live in Concert

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Last week I reviewed the Netflix concert documentary, Justin Timberlake and the Tennessee Kids, directed by Jonathan Demme. It was all right, but was pretty much just high-quality concert footage with almost no bells or whistles. It put me in a nostalgic kind of mood, reminding me of a time many moons ago when I was an avid consumer of concert videos myself.

When I was a very little girl, the inside cover of my unicorn diary was plastered with NKOTB stickers. That’s New Kids On The Block, for the uninitiated. I loved Joey McIntyre in particular, and practiced writing my future married name over and over as only a 7 year old could (as an old married lady, I have never signed myself as Mrs anything). My mother called me “boy crazy” but she fueled the fires of my pre-lusty desires with posters and t-shirts and perfume (I have no idea how to distill an entire boy band into one scent, but they did, and I wore it). I also had not 1 but 2 Joey McIntyre Barbie dolls. I still remember the jeans and the red jacket that he wore, and the backwards baseball cap like the baby-faced faux-bad-boy he was. My Barbies loooooved to date him, enjoyed extended closed-mouth kissing with him, and were serenaded on the reg. I never owned anyone besides Joey although the whole Barbie band was available for purchase – until a certain milestone birthday when my youngest sister paid I don’t want to know how much to assemble the boys for a reunion tour in my bedroom: she tracked down every last NKOTB Barbie and sent them to me, mint in their boxes. My childhood toys are now collector’s items. I am old.

When I was still young and fresh and musically ridiculous, I wanted nothing more than to listen to my New Kids tapes on my Walkman. Being quite small at the time, I never got to see them in concert, but I did have the next best thing: their concerts on VHS. I can’t recall how many of those I had, but it was new-kids-on-the-block-vhs-lot-of likely all of them. But they weren’t stingy like Justin Timberlake’s, they were full of priceless nuggets, like the sight of 14 year old Joey “shaving” before a gig, proper rat tail maintenance, and the guys discussing their astrological signs. You know, really important stuff. I ate it up. And I was starved for it because the New Kids cartoon played at noon on Saturdays and I almost always missed it because it clashed with my mother’s Nutri System weigh-ins. True story. I had a rough childhood, you know. I would wait in the Ford Aerostar, playing with my 2 Joes to console myself, waiting to see if my mother was any skinnier, and if missing my favourite show would be worth it (it pretty much wasn’t).

I must sound awfully wistful when I talk about the New Kids glory days, because not only did my sister assemble the whole band in 12 inch, non-anatomically-correct plastic form, my husband bought me tickets to their real, flesh and blood reunion tour (twinned with The Backstreet Boys, who I could live without). We had floor seats so my inner 7 year old really geeked out (how I managed not to bring a glitter poster with me, I’ll never know). It was wonderful.

That had to have been the hey day of concert documentaries, though. I haven’t seen any of the recent ones, though I know that both Beiber and Katy Perry had rather successful ones. But now that I’m thinking about it, The New Kids On The Block aren’t the only concert videos I’ve owned.

At home, somewhere in my DVD collection, is concert footage of Our Lady Peace, a band you probably haven’t heard of outside of Canada, but was the height of the alt-rock scene here in the late 90s, when I was in high school. By then I was old enough to go to concerts and boy did I. I probably saw those guys in concert dozens of times. In fact, I sang with them once. I was in the front row, singing along to every song, when the lead singer (Raine Maida), held my hand and gave me the mic. Jesus Murphy. Have all your dreams ever come true in one ecstatic moment? I remember stumbling in the door so late that night, a week night of course, and shaking my mother awake so she could listen to me recount my story in a still-trembling voice. It was golden. Our Lady Peace has stayed relatively active despite the fact that music these days seems to have shifted decisively toward a poppier sound. I saw Raine just a year or two ago at Osheaga doing some solo stuff. But this autumn they’ve banded together with another Canadian indie-alt band, I Mother Earth, to bring the 90s back. So of course someone bought me tickets. God I’m shameless. I can’t decide if I have the best life ever or … oh who am I kidding? It may be slightly embarrassing, but I’m having a damn good time.

What was YOUR concert doc obsession? I can’t be the only one!

Hey Everyone! I’m Sharing Some Spider-Man Memories

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“Hey everyone.” With those two simple words, the latest trailer for Captain America: Civil War reminded me that Spider-Man is my all-time favourite superhero, hands down, and made it clear that I have to drag Jay to yet another superhero movie.

My love of Spidey started as a six year old who could not stop watching the 1960s cartoon, the one where Spider-Man would swing across the same three weirdly coloured sky backgrounds wit 60s spidey.jpg h no real need for anything to swing from (he swung across the Everglades at one point, above all the trees)! I am humming the theme song right now and hopefully so are you. I truly can’t imagine a better intro to a cartoon or a better gateway drug into the world of comic book consumerism.

Then came the comic books themselves. I still remember getting my first Spider-Man comic like it was yesterday. My parents bought it for me and it was, of course, a battle between Spidey and Doctor Octopus, where Spider-Man ends up saving Doc Ock at the end, because that’s what Spidey does.

From there, I was hooked. As I got older and realized that comics cost money, I supported my habit with paper route earnings. I wasted a bit of time buying Superman comics but quickly wised up and returned to Spider-Man. Though not quickly enough, as by the time I started buying Todd McFarlane-era Spider-Man comics, it was the height of the comic book speculation boom and some of them cost $20 each (which was a lot to a paperboy).

Of course, the market crashed soon afterwards but by that time I had moved on to playing sports, though occasionally I still drew my own comics until I got suspended from high school for it (seriously).

As a side note, my inker on that ill-fated high school comic strip ended up both rappelling down Toronto’s city hall in a Spider-Man costume and writing Spider-Man into Marvel’s recent reboot of Howard the Duck. As for me, the closest I ever came to wearing a superhero costume was owning a pair of Superman underoos. Underoos! “Hey everyone.” And with that, the circle is closed.

The Abyss

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Rewatching the original Star Wars trilogy seems to have made me nostalgic for the 80s. And when the latest Star Wars instalment recently sailed past Avatar and Titanic to become the highest grossing movie ever in North America, I couldn’t help but think of James Cameron’s other work, the stuff that he made before appointing himself the king of the world.

Aliens, Terminator and Terminator 2 are all wonderful and all high on my list of movies to make Jay watch (a list that has shrunk considerably in the last few weeks), but the first James Cameron movie that comes to my mind is The Abyss. To me, that’s the true precursor to Avatar and Titanic, the movie that hinted at what James Cameron was capable of (both good and bad).

The Abyss is near and dear to me, mainly because it provided one of the first signs that I was destined to become an Asshole Watching Movies. In the early 90s I became really obsessed with letterboxed movies even though we had a 30 inch (at best) tube television. This was before DVDs so my options

LaserDisc on the left, DVD on the right. I have enough trouble finding shelf space for my DVDs, thank you very much.

were either letterboxed
VHS (few-and-far-between) or LaserDisc (too-expensive-for-an-unemployed-teenager). But my parents, seeing my interest, indulged me by renting a LaserDisc player on a few occasions, and The Abyss was the first movie I ever watched on that strange format (on two 12″ discs!).

As for the movie itself, The Abyss is an underwater odyssey that is a bit of a mess, both on screen and behind the scenes. Again, it seems obvious in hindsight given James Cameron’s later works, but at the time it seems to have been a surprise that The Abyss’s production went way over time and way over budget. Filming consisted of 15-18 hour days and lasted 140 days total. Total cost: a reported $70 million, which if accurate would make it the most expensive movie ever at the time (surpassed by Terminator 2, which was surpassed by True Lies, which was surpassed by Waterworld, which was surpassed by Titanic). It is not a coincidence that all but one of those movies was made by James Cameron. He clearly has a talent for spending money. abyss13

When you watch the Abyss, though, you can see where the money went. All the diving scenes are practical effects and the movie looks amazing for it. The underwater scenes were shot 30 feet deep for up to five hours at a time in 40 pound helmets. There were
other costs than money that resulted from this underwater mayhem. Complaints from cast and crew were rampant. Ed Harris refuses to ever talk about the film to this day. James Cameron almost died when he lost track of time and ran out of air at the bottom of the 7,000,000 gallon water tank, and then on his way to the surface was given a broken emergency regulator, so when he thought he would finally get a much needed breath of air, he got a lungful of water instead. Knowing all that makes me wonder whether the end product, as beautiful as it is, was worth the trouble. Watch it and tell me what you think. In my view, the climactic visit to the “aliens” is a bit of a letdown and the ending seems rushed (which is particularly problematic for a movie that’s this long).

The original theatrical cut (which I have never seen) was released in 1989 and was 145 minutes long. The Abyss is one of the first forays into CG but the technology was not quite there yet so a climactic scene had to be cut because Industrial Light & Magic just couldn’t get the world- The-Abyss-Water-Face destroying waves to look right. Technology had advanced significantly by 1993, and so a special edition was released with 25 minutes more footage, including the ending as it was originally conceived. The CG effects hint at what is to come from Cameron and ILM (or, by the time the special edition was released, what had already come). The tentacle water effects in particular are very close relatives of the T-1000’s liquid metal goodness in T2 and they seem to hold up a lot better than most early CG (maybe because CG is used so sparsely in The Abyss).

Interestingly, we’ve kind of come full circle, moving away from CG in favour of practical effects (Mad Max: Fury Road being a prime example). Kwame Opum of The Verge calls practical effects, “vinyl for cinema”, and as someone with a large record collection, that comparison feels right. It makes me wonder where James Cameron, formerly a practical effects adherent, stands on the issue today since Avatar was so CG-heavy. Perhaps we’ll get a sense of that if Avatar 2 ever gets made, but that’s a long way off as it’s been delayed again and will not come out until 2018 at the earliest.

In the meantime, dust off your LaserDisc copy of The Abyss and enjoy!

The Peanuts Movie

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Charles Schulz’ Peanuts is a comic strip that I grew up with. Charlie Brown and his trademark shirt, Lucy and her advice stand, Linus and his blanket, Schroeder and his piano, and Snoopy and his doghouse – these images are forever ingrained. I expect most of you had the same experience, as the Peanuts were everywhere, including lunchboxes, greeting cards, TV specials, pajamas and sheet sets, and everything else possible. Snoopy Sno-Cones, anyone?

Charlie Brown says, “I hope you like red flavour, because otherwise you’re just eating ice cubes!”

The heart of the Peanuts empire was the comic strip, and the love that went into that makes it impossible for me to be too cynical about all the rest of the merchandise that was churned out. Charles Schulz loved these characters and as a result, I loved reading about their little adventures from the day I was old enough to locate the comics in the newspaper index, to the day I moved out of my parents’ house. The Peanuts was a landmark comic strip from start to finish, as Jay wrote about in an excellent piece a few months back.

That was way back on The Peanuts Movie’s opening weekend. It has taken until now for me to get around to watching it, mainly because despite how good it looked visually, I kept hearing that The Peanuts Movie didn’t have the comic strip’s heart. The heart that made the Peanuts so special. And now, having seen The Peanuts Movie for myself, my takeaway was that the Peanuts’ heart stopped beating when when Charles Schulz’s did (RIP).

The Peanuts Movie is not bad. It’s well animated and there’s a basic, tolerable story guiding us through the 80 minute-ish run time. And during those 80 minutes we see and hear lots of things we would expect to find here, like the adults’ trombone voices and the characters’ relationships, like Lucy loving Schroeder and pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. But those are the highlights and it quickly became clear that the best parts of this movie are good mainly because they remind you of the comic strip.

Seeing all these old standbys tied together by a basic plot felt strangely similar to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and my complaint here is the same. Making me nostalgic is neither enough to make me enjoy your movie, nor enough of a reason to have made the movie in the first place. I would have been better off thumbing through a trade paperback of old strips than watching The Peanuts Movie.

So that’s what I would suggest to you: skip The Peanuts Movie and go straight to the source, Schulz’s old comic strips. Because those strips are pure magic while The Peanuts Movie only scores six zig-zag striped shirts out of ten.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (An Extremely Non-Spoilerrific Review)

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Sean’s from the 70s. Jay is an 80s chick. Sean is kind of a nerd. Jay, not so much. Sean saw Star Wars: A New Hope (though he still just calls it, “Star Wars”) at least 20 times before his eighth birthday. Jay had never seen any Star Wars movie until this past weekend. So what did they think of Star Wars: The Force Awakens?

Sean: As a kid, I always loved Star Wars. I’m at the younger end of the Star Wars generation since I never knew a world without it. Too young to see the first two in theatres, I caught up by Return of the Jedi thanks to the miracle of VCRs and HBO showing Star Wars around the clock in 1983 (and I kept watching it over and over every chance I got). Star Wars felt like it belonged to me since it was happening just as I was growing up and learning what movies were. And because of my age I was still young enough to not be at all cynical about product placement or Ewoks by the time Return of the Jedi rolled around. To my seven year old self, it was all positive that Return of the Jedi served firstly as a mechanism to manufacture more toys and second as a conclusion to my favourite movie series.

My two favourites: Luke in his Jedi robe (though I kept losing the lightsaber)…

…and Leia as a bounty hunter (though I always was looking for that goddamn helmet too)!

The only negative was that I had to convince my parents to buy all those action figures and vehicles, but fortunately I was a very spoiled kid so I got more than my share (but sadly, not the amazing Imperial Shuttle, though I’m over the disappointment, I swear). It helped that I was willing to do pretty much anything to “earn” more toys, whether it was mowing the lawn or painting the deck or saving my proofs of purchase from other toys so I could send away for the Emperor!

The prequels were a whole other matter. I was so disappointed to see how boring Darth Vader’s backstory was on screen, as opposed to how awesome it had been in my head, having patched it together through whatever references were offered by the original trilogy. And I don’t think it was the 16 year gap in between, since even in university I was perfectly happy to watch the original trilogy over and over (and I wasn’t alone, my roommates and I would often spend Saturday afternoons watching all three back-to-back-to-back). Anyway, even though I ~~was~~ still am mad about the prequels’ wasted potential, I watched all three, even seeing the last one in theatres.

Which leads us to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Having really enjoyed J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, and since chronologically we could sort of forget the prequels ever happened, I have had high hopes for The Force Awakens ever since it was announced. And Jay was nice enough to track down tickets even though she could not have been less excited to see it.

Jay: The only exposure I’ve had to Star Wars was a set of sheets I inherited from my cousin Tim, who’s a decade or more older than I am.

The infamous Star Wars sheets. I also had a flannel blanket but we buried my dead dog in it.

I guess he grew out of his single bed so I got his sheets, and spent a good deal of my youth sleeping with Harrison Ford. Plus, I exist in the world. I haven’t seen the movies, but I’ve seen plenty of stuff that references them, so I almost didn’t have to. I can never remember if C-3PO is the big gold robot or the little blue and white one, but I know it’s a robot. It’s just that the Star Wars universe never appealed to me. Science fiction will always have to work harder to convince me, and so will movies with talking animals, green aliens, and make-believe weapons.

So no, I hadn’t seen Star Wars, and I really didn’t care to. My life felt perfectly complete without it, and to be honest, I think 2015 is already way too inundated with movies that are meant for young boys but consumed by grown men (I’m looking at you, Marvel). But I could see that this movie meant something to Sean. It was a revival of his childhood, a tribute to his youthful imagination, and a chance for the franchise’s redemption after the last trilogy sullied things up. Kevin Smith said he cried when he visited the set of the Millennium Falcon because it reminded him of that feeling he’d had for it as a child. And how many times do we really get to recapture those magical feelings once we’re grown up? Not too damn many. It did nothing for me, I wasn’t even curious about it, but I resolved to be by Sean’s side when the portal to his boyhood opened up on the big screen before him.

And you know what? I didn’t hate it. I was enchanted by John Boyega’s Finn and the arc of his character. I had fun slotting together the puzzle pieces of Star Wars trivia I’ve picked up over the years (mostly from The Simpsons, I think) and seeing how they translated 30 years later. I was charmed by Harrison Ford’s rapport with the furry beast Chewbacca. And I felt the momentum of the piece really drove me forward and kept me interested despite the fact that I was jumping in blind for movie #7. So I was feeling pretty juiced about it, squeezed Sean’s hand during all the parts I thought he must be loving, and had plenty of follow up questions for our car ride home. But you know what? When the credits rolled and I looked over at Sean expecting to see rapture, he shrugged his shoulders. It was okay, he thought, but not great. Not even as good as Creed – not even as good as “The Avengers” he said – “Wait- there was an Avengers movie this year, right?” He couldn’t even remember if there was an Avengers movie this year, but if there was, it was better than this.

Ladies and gentlemen: Sean’s lacklustre response FUCKING BROKE MY HEART. Here I had drummed it up as this Big Fucking Deal and it’s not even going to crack his top ten this year.

Sean: I had no idea Jay was so invested in this, for my sake. And she’s invested in everything I’m interested in, she’s amazing like that. I liked Star Wars: The Force Awakens. My complaints about it are minor and spoilery so I won’t get into them here, but it’s a solid movie and objectively I would rank it third out of the Star Wars movies, behind A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back (yes, ahead of Return of the Jedi as a standalone movie). That seemed like a ringing endorsement but Jay was expecting more and after reading her thoughts above, I understand why.

“You’re all clear, kid. Now let’s blow this thing and go home.” BEST. SCENE. EVER.

This should have been my thing, it should have taken me back to my childhood, it should have sucked me in and made me talk about it for days, and it didn’t. As a gateway/jumping on point for the next generation of fans/consumers, The Force Awakens works really well. As fan service, it ticks all the boxes and I don’t think that anyone who anticipated like I did will leave the theatre disappointed, exactly. But you know what? This all felt like something I’ve seen before (twice) and I’ve seen it BETTER before (twice). I’m not trying to be a contrarian asshole (just a regular asshole) when I say that if J.J. Abrams was shooting for greatness, he missed the mark here. Paying tribute to the feelings I had as a kid is not enough to give me those feelings all over again. And if you pay tribute by imitating something beloved, the fact the script includes ironic acknowledgements of the imitation does not help make the imitation great. It only tells me that the imitation was a conscious decision and you went this way rather than coming up with something new. That’s not reassuring to me in any way and it didn’t invoke nostalgia within your movie. It just made me wish I was watching the original trilogy and that took me completely out of what was happening on-screen in yours.

Not quite as epic but still awesome, and the afterparty made it a classic (original footage of the afterparty not found and there will be no Hayden Christensen cameo here).

Maybe it wouldn’t have been enough for The Force Awakens to take a new path. Maybe my expectations were too high. Because again, The Force Awakens is a good movie and I enjoyed the ride, but I couldn’t truly love it when it felt so much like a remake. To quote Jimmy Johnson for the first (and hopefully last) time in my life, “Do you want to be safe and good, or do you want to take a chance and be great?” The Force Awakens is safe and good, but it’s not the great movie I was hoping for, and that’s why I can’t put it in my top ten for the year.

I give Star Wars: The Force Awakens a score of seven Kessel Runs out of ten. Seeing that score is as painful for me, Jay, as it is for you.

Jay: What the fuck’s a Kessel Run?

Sean: Oh Jay, we absolutely have to watch the original trilogy. Something tells me I still hold all those magical feelings from my youth, but the path to them is through the greatness of Episodes IV, V and VI rather than trying to recapture those feelings through something “new”. There will always be room for new Star Wars stories, but for me I don’t think the originals will ever be topped.

Jay: I think you of all people should be a little more open-minded about sequels. You are, after all, husband #2, and you’d better hope I don’t court warm fuzzy feelings toward “the husband of my youth.”

Flashback Friday – Rocky Edition

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One of the things I loved most about Creed (as mentioned in my review) was how nostalgic and referential (even reverential) it was about the previous Rocky movies. I’m still thinking about the references I caught and wanted to spend a little more time with them here.

Lots of spoilers follow, so with that said, once you’ve seen the movie come inside and let me know what you thought!

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