What I remember thinking as I watched the new Star Wars movie

this review contains only spoilers

Map in the village

Initial fanfare and scroller: Yay, it’s Star Wars!

Reading the scroller: Leia won, but she’s still in the resistance ? Against the “erste Ordnung” apparently, which has overtaken the Republic ? Leia must have been a poor politician ? Slow down scroller! Can I read this again ?

The resistance plans to send their best pilot to get a map to Luke Skywalker’s hideaway. OK, best pilot really looks like a space jockey and is a loudmouth. He is probably 1.50m tall and looks like a B-movie lead (like the lead from “The Mummy” for instance). Definitive red-shirt material, a clear hint that this mission is doomed to fail.

Red-shirt lands on desert planet and obtains map. Stormtroopers land, and eradicate the settlement. New masked bad guy appears to be pretty bad ass, being able to stop shots in mid-air. Slaughtering the village doesn’t really make sense, but you know: more evil. Fine by me. Red-shirt does not get killed (?) but abducted, cute droid escapes with plan (hmm, that is somehow familiar).

One single Stormtrooper sees a friend die and notices, that this is war and he wants no part in this. First time blood is shown in a Star Wars movie ever ?

Scene has something of a studio setting, but nevermind, we’re off to a good start.

Escape from bad guys

Masked bad guy tortures and “breaks” red-shirt, which in turn is not killed (?) but gets rescued by the Stormtrooper with a conscience.

Stormtrooper with a conscience turns out to be a black guy, slightly on the chubby side. They seem to live on fastfood there. Guys enter a Tie-Fighter, which is apparently - in the hands of a resistance pilot - not the usual piece of crap.

So it seems this could be a buddy movie or so. The red-shirt guy is annoying as hell, but Chubby is likable. Guys crash on desert planet, Chubby survives and red-shirt dies. YES! Good call by the director.

Desert planet

Burkaed figured descends into huge star cruiser remnants to extract some scrap metal. If you can’t immediately see the face of a character doing something cool, you know it’s got to be a girl. Figure takes off the wraps, shock: “It’s a girl !”. Not much of a sandstorm happening though, why the burka ? Nice slide down the dune, which makes me wanna ski. Background music turns to “hey I am a lovable girl character”. Has John Williams composed this ? This is sappy (irk).

Noone helps poor Girl drag the scrap metal to the counter ? Is she alone on the planet ? Girl sells scraps for 3/4 ration, will she have to go out again ?

Next, Girl sees a small alien riding an elephant alien, who has captured cute droid. No problem for Girl as she just says “no no” to alien and takes cute droid for herself. Alien just trudges on ? This makes no sense whatsoever, especially as I later learn, the droid is worth 60 rations.

Two guys try to rob cute droid from Girl, which has no problem defeating them as she is a martial arts expert, OK. Chubby witnesses this, but now the stormtroopers attack. Whereas the attack on the village made some sense, here we have a Tie fighter and some stormtroopers blowing up various stuff, seemingly at random.

Chubby tries to exploit the situation, by holding hands with Girl during escape, but unfortunately Girl turns out to be a lesbian activist, because even in a life and death situation, it’s critical for Girl to assert her non-dependance on men. No luck for you, Chubby.

I also start to notice that Girl’s legs are fairly muscular: Miss Thundercalves. Everything else about her seems normal, but maybe something is off in the projection aspect ratio at the bottom of the screen ?

Enter the “Millenium Falcon”. Yay, the Millenium Falcon. Pseudo-dramatic escape from the desert planet, as Miss T. is also a better Falcon driver than Chewie ever was.

I am starting to get bummed out, problem - solution, problem - solution, deus ex machina, where is the tension ?

Han Solo

Immediately after the escape, the Falcon gets captured by a huge ship, almost Star Cruiser size. Apparently it’s Han Solos and Chewies new ship. Han was looking for the Falcon, read Craigslist and wanted to retrieve the Falcon from desert planet, so that’s why he’s there.

Chewie looks good, but Han has really aged and looks more like Harrison Ford now than Han Solo. Han doesn’t look disproportioned at all, so I guess Chubby and Ms. Thundercalves aren’t distorted either. Unexpected.

Han: I am carrying some extremely dangerous “Sorlocs” (or whatever) to a king. Oh here come some medium bad guys out of nowhere.
Han: Hey, there is another group of medium bad guys out of nowhere.
Chubby: Lemme push some buttons to…
Miss T.: Don’t suppress me, I do it.
Miss T.: I will push buttons to… oh no I released the extremely dangerous Sorlocs!

Shitty GFX follow. Is this an hommage to the graphic effects of the first three movies ?

Medium bad guys die, good guys survive. Terrible acting in the last shot, as a medium bad guy phones someone, and talks while lowering phone for dramatic effect.

Bad guy planet

The new emperor is called General Snokes (Snokes ? isn’t that a Dr. Seuss character ?) and is a holographic projection sitting in a huge dark cavern. Apparently he has two underlings, the bad guy with the mask and a fairly young military leader. I can’t help but think that the military leader looks German and his uniform has this black and red thing going. Hmm, the name of the director “J.J. Abrams” does sound jewish, so am I getting Nazis in Space here ? The ultimate evil…

In old Hollywood the guy under the mask would be an albino. Apparently the guy in the mask is Han’s son. OK.

The bad guy planet looks like a death star in winter time. Still waiting for a new idea in this movie.

E.T. Planet

It’s green. Nice graphics as the Falcon lands, shitty graphics as the camera pans up a building. I wonder if this is because, it was filmed in 3D and when converted back to 2D, some things went wonky ? No other spaceships or people are outside the building, it’s probably a monastery.

Enter the building, it’s a pub and it’s packed. A choir of Ewoks sings “Smoking is bad for you”. A female and wise E.T. appears, dispensing a lot of talk but no actual wisdom. Miss T. gets called by voices to enter cellar and touch some scrap metal. It’s Saurons ring! (Turns out it’s a laser sword later on, but I didn’t get it). Miss T. runs away. Whoa! A simple and direct resolution (see laser sword, obtain laser sword) was avoided by the director. This is art!

Stormtroopers land and advance in the usual ineffective manner. Droid escapes, Miss T. gets brain searched by masked bad guy and then captured. Why captured ? I don’t know. Maybe it’s bad guys’ Donkey Kong syndrome, see a girl: “Capture it”.

Then the resistance cavalry saves the day. The bad guys have the map now ?

On the bad guys ship

Miss T. gets tortured by masked bad guy, but it doesn’t work. Miss T. feigns interest in masked bad guy, and masked bad guy sees the possibility of a consensual fuck, so is tricked to take off the mask. What ? The masked bad guy takes it off already ?

What’s it gonna be, a woman, an albino (my bet) or - outside chance - an asian, coz Star Wars has a shortage there ??? Best would be Jar Jar Binks. :)

Nope, it’s an Emo.

With this cast of characters, Star Wars has become a highschool movie mixed with the “Tribute von Panem”. Regardless, the Emo is now shamed, never to wear the mask again in the movie. It was just a gimmick. He is probably still speculating on a fling with Miss T. later on, not sensing that she is a lesbian activist.

Miss T. escapes using the Force. Han Solo + rest enter. I forgot, why they are on the same ship. All of them escape to… Leia.

Leia planet

Leia is still somewhat recognizable as Leia - clever use of coiffure - but menopause has not been kind. IMO Han is too old and Leia even more so. Han and Leia together in extremely bad closeup picture quality. What is wrong with the camera ? Seriously annoying.

C3PO appears with a repaired arm in red. R2D2 is in sleep mode, but noone can find his wake button. Red-shirt is still alive! (Major, major bummer)

Resistance scrum meeting: The problem is, there is a death star. It must have a weakness. Who knows one ? Chubby does, because he cleans toilets on the death planet at night, when he is not supposed to be killing people at daytime.

I get the impression that the “erste Ordnung” is severly understaffed.

OK, weakness is there and there. Shields are no problem, because there is a physics loophole in that space quadrant. Let’s do it.

The director apparently doesn’t care anymore about the movie either, and just wants to get over with it as quickly as possible now. Fine with me!

Bad guy planet again

Reveal! It’s the Space Nazis. Military leader holds Goebbels-like speech.

I am pretty sure, Snokes will turn out to be a familiar Austrian in the next sequel. If the Stormtroopers are all clones, are they all black like Chubby ? Hitler and an all black army, that would be hilarious.

Then the Space Nazis slurp up a sun, and take down six planets including the Republic. What for ? Politics I guess. Apparently the “erste Ordnung” wasn’t really in charge to begin with, but now is. So who was Leia resisting ? It’s a movie!

The resistance admires the fireworks in the sky and is now more determined than ever. I am determined, to avoid thinking about the physics, but the Force isn’t with me.

Finale

Good guys blow up the death planet. Chubby, who was otherwise pretty much useless throughout the entire movie, is revealed to be an offspring of Lando and Leia, because he can wield a laser sword and he can’t be killed. But it’s Miss T. who saves the day again, because a) the Force and b) XX chromosomes.

The Emo fulfills his subplot by killing daddy, which apparently satisfies Hitler. So everybody is happy, except Chubby, who’s knocked out. I lost track of red-shirt.

R2D2 awakes and gives good guys the rest of the map since cute droid only had a partial map. Ironic use of the “ex machina” device by the director: oscar material.

Miss T. uses map and Falcon and Chewie to fly to the place, where Luke lives. Turns out, it’s either Scotland or Ireland. Chewie must remain with ship, because he’s only a walking carpet and for dramatic effect as this is all about Miss T. Miss T. offers laser sword (turned off) to Luke (daddy ?). Luke says: “Fed Ex girl, this isn’t the whiskey I ordered !?”

Curtains.

Come back George Lucas, all is forgiven.

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Since I wrote this a week after watching the movie, I have probably already mixed up some things, misremembered major parts and put stuff in the wrong order.

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