Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

Dustin: 4 of 5 stars Nick: 4 of 5 stars Average: 4 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: If you haven’t seen Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens yet, go do so now as there will be spoilers in this review. We’ll wait…

Welcome back!

The Force Awakens is the first Star Wars movie in 32 years, and is basically an amped up version of the original 1977 film.

Nick: Which was the film’s biggest problem. All it did was set new characters in the old shoes and the old characters in the shoes of the wise leaders. While The Force Awakens is a better film than any of the prequels, they at least had stories that had not been told before while expanding on the distant galaxy of the Star Wars universe. But this ends up being such a small problem because I was never bored or rolled my eyes at any of the dialogue, which was always a problem when George Lucas was writing the script.

Dustin: This was substantially better than the prequels and fit more easily into the series. It fixed a lot of the problems with the prequels, and in a way was sort of a reaction to them. The prequels were roundly criticised for the overreliance on CGI, wooden acting, tonal dissonance between scenes, boring/predictable shots, sensory overload in action scenes. This movie used more practical effects and only CGI where necessary, solid actors, was funny at times but also had emotional weight, and was exhilarating overall.

Nick: I’m sure Lucas will order that the films have upgraded CGI in ten years when they’re out on whatever we are watching movies on in that time!

The three main characters Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) are well sculpted and overall a more interesting trio of characters than the original three--Han, Luke and Leia. Rey is basically a version of Luke that is not annoying while being able to kick ass from the get-go. Though she was even forgotten by the merchandising crew! http://www.dailydot.com/geek/star-wars-force-awakens-wheres-rey-action-figure-set/

Sex sells, but apparently women don’t!

Dustin: They must not want the fanboys to think they’re playing with a doll rather than an action figure. #TriggerWarning

I immediately like Finn, I warmed up to Kylo Ren as the villain, but I still haven’t warmed up to Rey. But still, these movies had characters I would like to see again. They had personalities and are will carry on the series nicely.

Nick: I must say I don’t think Han Solo’s death was done to the potential a scene like that could generate. Harrison Ford was my first favorite movie star with roles like Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and Dr. Richard Kimble. I should have cried, but it didn’t even register with me emotionally. It felt more forced with Ford not being a fan of the character, but doing one last film for the fans (and a huge paycheck) to give the character an ending. I think it would have been better to build him up again and kill him during the second film. Wasted opportunity. Maybe he will somehow show up as a Force Ghost!

Dustin: I think the biggest problem was it felt a little too much like the first movie. Information is put into a droid that falls into the hands of a nobody on a desert planet, they have to take it to Princess Leia with the help of Han Solo. Then they end up having to blow up a new Death Star. There’s a scene where they show the new Death Star (forgot what it’s actually called), and Han Solo just says, “So it’s bigger? How do we blow it up this time?” Sort of acknowledging then dismissing the expected criticism. I don’t really think that makes it any better.

Nick: The film is basically a polished version of A New Hope. Adding layers that were missing from elements that lacked depth while keeping the details that worked the first go around. Which hopefully means Finn and Rey are brother and sister! (fingers crossed)

Dustin: Even though I thought many elements felt too familiar, I still enjoyed a lot of it. The new Death Star can blow up an entire solar system, using the energy sucked from a sun to blow up the planets in another system. The stakes felt real, and I was actually on the edge of my seat for most of the movie.

Nick: Well the stakes felt real in the original! Blowing up one planet just isn’t enough to scare good ol’ Dustin! It has to be a whole solar system!

Dustin: I was comparing it to the prequels, where there was literally nothing at stake, making it hard to care. See, for example, the robots-making-robots conveyor belt scene in Attack of the Clones. It looks like a cartoon, then, when the machine pounds down on Anakin’s hand, it somehow forms a space around his hand. At that moment you realize the characters can’t even get hurt and you don’t care as the tension has been removed. That’s why so many people described the prequels as “boring,” despite the overblown set pieces.

Nick: Sorry, thought we were still on comparing it to the originals! Darth Maul still might be my favorite villain in terms of badassery! I wonder if Supreme Leader Snoke is pulling a Great Wizard of Oz with his size? I bet he’s a small fry like Yoda, but with a Napoleon complex!

Dustin: I was happy with this film overall. It felt like a legit Star Wars sequel, and got the movies back on track after the mess that was Episodes I through III. I was embarrassed to admit I was a Star Wars fan for a long time. I’m a fan of the original original trilogy (not the special editions that progressively got worse). I liked what they did with The Force Awakens, and hope they can keep up the momentum.

Nick: As long as the next one’s not a beat for beat reboot of The Empire Strikes Back.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Dustin: 3.5 of 5 stars Nick: 3.5 of 5 stars Average: 3.5 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: The Lord of the Rings, Part 6: The Hobbit, Part 3: The Battle of the Five Armies is the last film in the Middle Earth series until Warner Bros figures out how to stretch a trilogy out of the appendices in LOTR. It rounds out the adventure of Bilbo Baggins while giving the character very little screen time.

Nick: Bilbo was rarely seen and even more rarely heard. Though it was funny whenever he was shown in battle he was just holding his sword around many enemies, but I don’t think he ever in a fight. Do you recall him swinging his sword?

Dustin: He threw some rocks and took out a bunch of orcs. It was hard to suspend disbelief whenever Bilbo was fighting. While he did become a stronger hobbit during his adventures, I don’t think him throwing rocks at monsters twice his size would accomplish anything more than pissing them off. It would be more believable if he just put on the ring and then went around slitting orcs’ throats.

Nick: Most of the film is one large battle. I never thought I’d say the fight scenes directed by Peter Jackson in a film placed in Middle Earth were not well done. I feel wrong just saying that, but so many times there would be shots of a character with some melancholic music playing as if that character had no shot while an impossible number of orcs are shown walking up, and yet 15 minutes later that character is still alive and all the orcs are dead. This happened frequently and left me very bemused.

Dustin: Yeah, the characters got out of impossible situations a little too easily. Remember in The Fellowship of the Ring how much it took to kill one troll? Here, they shoot down trolls with no difficulty. The special effects were also not quite as well done. The armies moved in a little too perfect formation, so it looked fake. I wouldn’t say it was Phantom Menace fake, but certainly not as good as The Two Towers.

Nick: Not only do the battle scenes wrap up with ease for our heroes, so do the mental battles for characters like Thorin. His turn around was out of nowhere. One minute he’s selfish, and the next he looks inside himself and is unselfish. What was his sickness? The Dragon’s ----?

Dustin: By far the most intriguing element of this movie was Thorin bogarting all the gold for himself. But I agree this psychological battle was resolved a little too easily. He does about one minute of soul searching, then does a 180 and becomes the hero again. I might have liked it better if he waited until he was finally pushed into a corner before he started fighting, and not having his turnaround until he was mortally wounded. Boromir’s character arc in FOTR was better done.

Nick: My favorite scene was the battle between Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and Christopher Lee against the ghostly kings while they are protecting Ian McKellen (Gandalf--I know this name!). It’s enjoyable because you see the differences in fighting between an Elf King, a Wizard and I’m not sure what exactly Blanchett is, but I’m going with Elf Goddess? It’s up there in the best fight scenes of the year for me.

Dustin: I actually thought that scene was kind of pointless. It felt shoehorned in to give Christopher Lee and Co an excuse to be in The Hobbit. I also have trouble with the suspension of disbelief when the old wizards are fighting. Yes, I know they have magical powers, but it seems to me their strength isn’t in physical combat.

Nick: You’re completely right, but since the whole series feels shoehorned then I don’t mind one fantastically done battle within the already pointless three-film version of a 300-page book.  

Dustin: The special effects in the scene were amazing, as they were throughout most of the movie. My complaints about the effects are really just nitpicky. All the films are spectacularly done from a technical standpoint. It’s just that they tried to take a simple story and make it as epic, if not more so, than LOTR. After I saw the first installment, I wasn’t very satisfied with the elements from outside the book, but I kept an open mind. I was willing to forgive the bloated nature of the scenes if they rounded them out well in the final installment. But I stand by my original criticism. This really should have been one movie directed by Guillermo del Toro.

Nick: Del Toro still stayed on as a writer/producer. But you’re correct. The first film is my least favorite, while the second one is slightly better than this last one. Though I think the first scene in Battle of Five Armies should’ve been the last scene of whatever the second movie was called… wait… Desolation of Smaug… it came to me.

Dustin: Peter Jackson initially said the reason he didn’t want to direct The Hobbit is because he didn’t want to compete with himself having already done LOTR. The argument didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I think it sort of informs one about what went wrong with these movies. He was trying to outdo himself with much lighter material. Del Toro might not have taken that approach. Jackson is a great director, but del Toro probably would’ve been able to show more restraint in this project. I think there is a five-star movie inside these three 3½-star movies. They just need to be trimmed down.

Nick: Actually, Jackson was frozen out of doing the movie because he was suing Miramax for funds he never received from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. So they originally hired Del Toro, but the process was taking too long, so Del Toro dropped out, and the lawsuit with Jackson was settled, and then they let him direct the film. This was like an on-going battle that lasted five years and was almost more intense than anything that happened in these films.

Dustin: Perhaps they should make a trilogy out of that.

Nick: The films are good, but they don’t even come into consciousness when compared to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. All of the events, whether mental or physical, are wrapped up with such ease it’s mind boggling why three films were needed to lead to that simplistic outcome. Sigh...

Guardians of the Galaxy

Dustin: 3.5 of 5 stars Nick: 4 of 5 stars Average: 3.75 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: Guardians of the Galaxy is the latest Marvel comics movie about a team of heroes out to save the galaxy (after The Avengers and X-Men). An earthling abducted by aliens as a boy and becomes an interstellar thief calling himself “Star-Lord” teams up with a bioengineered Racoon, a talking tree, a sexy green humanoid and a macho alien whose species takes everything literally to save the universe from a villain who has a MacGuffin that can wipe out all life form.

So what did you think of Guardians of the Galaxy, Nick?

Nick: The movie was enjoyable enough to the point that it didn’t bother me that almost every scene was determined by a MacGuffin. Sigh… very Transformers-esque. Almost every scene is about the Orb! There are even three different villains we see and how they also want the Orb. That’s a lot of villains who ultimately are useless towards anything that happens within the film. It felt as if the filmmakers were trying too hard to tie this film to other films in the Marvel Universe.

Dustin: I agree the plot itself wasn’t too strong. Too much focus on the MacGuffin, and I kinda zoned out during much of it, as well as the action scenes. I had trouble keeping the bad guys and their motivations straight in my head because I couldn’t really get invested in the story.

For me, the movie was strongest in the quieter moments. The five heroes were very enjoyable. I loved the dynamic between them, the entire “assembling of the team” sequence and their character arcs. The comic banter in the quieter scenes following the action set-pieces were my favorite parts. I would have liked this movie better if it was more of a comedy with some action than an action movie with some comedy.

Nick: It was basically a comedy with action! The sequence of four of the characters meeting for the first time was superb. They kept escaping each others’ traps and the camera did a good job of framing from each character’s point-of-view during that battle sequence. James Gunn was a good choice as director. Gunn loves infusing comedy into… um… let’s say serious situations with his films, such as Slither (which I love) and Super and then this awesome web series PG-Porn.

Dustin: I liked the set-pieces that weren’t related to the main plot. My favorite part of the movie was the prisonbreak sequence. Those were more clever and exciting than fighting Emperor Palpatine for the Orb. I took advantage of the latter moments to go to the bathroom.

The movie did have some great fantasy elements. There was the head of the giant “celestial being” that was being mined for elements I found fascinating. That was some fantastic world building. I liked the characters and the world of the movie so much I would gladly go back for the inevitable sequel.

Nick: The movie was so expletive fun! Though I found it strange that the cities best defense was for them to use thousands of soldiers in planes that combine and create a shield. They lost a shit ton of soldiers that day.

Dustin: The movie also had emotional variety along with variety in scenery. A movie that can make you laugh and cry without feeling manipulative or mushy is a minor triumph in itself.

Nick: When did you cry?

Dustin: I didn’t literally cry, but there were emotional scenes like Star-Lord’s mother dying and Groot’s line toward the end that slightly melted my icy heart.

My favorite of the characters was Drax (played by pro-wrestler Dave Bautista), the alien who takes everything literally, which leads to a lot of comedic moments. While being totally straight, Bautista delivers laughs with impeccable comedic timing.

Nick: It’s also nice to see Vin Diesel back to doing voicework. First he made me cry as the voice of the Iron Giant and, like you said, he came that close doing the voice for Groot. Amusing how they both don’t say too much.

Dustin: Anything else to add?

Nick: Oh, and it was fun!

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Part 3: There and Whack Again LOL!)

Nick: Gandalf tells the dwarves he has to leave them and goes to meet Radagast, which culminates in him saying that there is war brewing, something I feel like Gandalf knew in the forest when he left the dwarves. He then tells Radagast he needs to leave and go back to the dwarves while not having any more information than he did before, but Radagast says it’s more important to face this head on, which is why I thought he left the dwarves in the first place. Gandalf seemed really unimportant in this film and his character was being forced away from the dwarves because he makes thing too easy for them.

Did you feel his character was forced in this film, and the only reason he’s there is because of how popular the character is?

Dustin: No. In the book, Gandalf left at the same point, and we don’t see him again until he turns up at the final battle. But it makes sense what he does here, because it is in line with what Tolkien mentioned in the book, that he was leaving to deal with the Necromancer, who we find out in The Lord of the Rings is Sauron. So if they needed to shoehorn Gandalf into this section, it made sense. Just like how they shoehorned in Legolas, who wasn’t in The Hobbit, in a logical place, i.e., when the dwarfs are captured by Legolas’s father.

Nick: I meant more of the logic of Gandalf’s decisions. He is with the dwarves and then chooses to leave (makes sense), but when he says the same thing in reverse with Radagast, I don’t think he finds out any more information, yet he feels he needs to go back to the dwarves, and all Radagast says is, “No, it’s more important that you go see if the Necromancer is back,” which I feel Gandalf knew from the image on the tree in the forrest. So his decision making was all for drama rather than logical conclusions. So when Radagast says, “Leave the dwarves up to fate,” we get a close up shot of Gandalf’s lovely “older” face saying “Leave my friends behind?”

Dustin: I think Gandalf wanted to confront the Necromancer.

Nick: I know he wanted to confront the Necromancer, but his scene with Radagast in the forest was 10 to 15 minutes long, gathering no new information, and yet he now felt he had to go back to the dwarves, and it felt like it was all leading up to the emotional line of, “I have to leave my friends behind,” considering it was the last line of the scene. I’m just saying that it was a long pointless scene besides allowing Radagast to return.

Dustin: Would you recommend The Lord of the Rings, Part -2: The Hobbit, Part 2: The Desolation of Smaug?

Nick: Hell yeah! When films can be attractive to kids and adults while not be a fully animated film it’s quite an achievement.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Part 2: The Desolation of the Middle Chapter)

Nick: The CGI in this film when in the dragon’s lair is remarkable. The dragon, Lonely Mountain and the vast amounts of gold make the scene where Bilbo meets Smaug all the more frightening. The castle is such an open space that it fits a dragon and more gold than any man has ever acquired.

Dustin: I agree the CGI was a huge step forward. The dragon looked awesome (voiced by Benedict Cumbersome [12 Years a Slave]). Peter Jackson does a terrific job imagining Tolkien’s Middle Earth. I remember in The Fellowship of the Ring thinking the Balrog looked exactly how I pictured it in the book, even though Tolkien gave a very sparse description. When I read books, I tend to cast the characters in my head to help me picture them, and I had actually cast Elijah Wood as Frodo a good five years before the movies were made. He just had a very hobbit-like look to me.

Nick: The films are casted superbly. The things that were concerning are throwaway lines like when we find out that one of the dwarves is Gimley’s father and the way we find out is Legolas being insulting while at the same time actually misconstruing the sexes of dwarves he sees in the picture. There are one too many gags about how the world sees the dwarves.

Dustin: I didn’t mind that too much. I would say for a movie called The Hobbit, though, the hobbit didn’t get much screen time, while the entire book was from Bilbo’s point-of-view. He was in maybe 15 minutes of the 4.5 hour movie. It should have been called The Wood Elf, since Legolas got more screen time.

Nick: I can guarantee that Legolas didn’t even have half the screentime of Bilbo, but if you said Kili, the she-elf, Gandalf or Thorin, I’d be more inclined to agree with you. Richard Armitage, who plays Thorin, is quite a good actor, and I’m a little shocked I have never heard his name before these films.

Dustin: I liked how his character developed in this installment. He is beginning to go mad with greed, where he started out courageous and generous, like Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It starts when he won’t promise the Wood Elves one treasure from Lonely Mountain in exchange for their release, and culminating in him going psycho on Bilbo when he thinks (probably correctly) Bilbo has the sought-after Arkenstone.

Nick: I’m pretty sure Bilbo does have it. He was reaching for something in his pocket, but then retreated his arm when he saw how mad Thorin looked.

The film does have another triangle where we have three characters who are obsessed with objects. Bilbo with the Ring, Thorin with the Arkenstone and Smaug with every last bit of gold. It’s an interesting addition to have multiple characters dealing with greed which is like most Western films, as you correctly compared it to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Dustin: They never actually showed Bilbo take the Arkenstone. It was left ambiguous so when Thorin confronts him, you don’t know whether he’s right to be angry. But that’s actually what I liked, it didn’t matter if he was right, he was still wrong in his reaction, and it showed his greed. I think the movie was very graceful how it portrayed that ambiguity.

Nick: I know they were playing the ambiguity of the situation, but i think it’s fact that he does have it, unless you are going to tell me that in the book he for sure doesn’t.

Dustin: Bilbo eventually finds the Arkenstone in the book, but I don’t remember at exactly what point. So even I wasn’t entirely sure he had it when Thorin confronted him.

Nick: I’m probably being over confident in saying that I’m 99 percent sure that he does, just because of what Smaug had said of Thorin’s greed right before the scene when Bilbo sees Thorin and right when Thorin asks (demands) that the Arkenstone be presented to him Bilbo immediately pulls away his hand, which was enthusiastically in his pocket and his smile fades realizing that Smaug was correct in his depiction of Thorin. But I digress that I’m not certain and no matter what the scene was done phenomenally well because as you said his reaction was not very kingly. Well not a good king.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Part 1: An Unexpectedly Long Review)

Dustin: 4 of 5 stars Nick: 4 of 5 stars Average: 4 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is the second installment in the film trilogy based on a 300-page book. It picks up in the middle of the hobbit and the dwarves’ journey to the Lonely Mountain to reclaim their treasure from the dragon Smaug.

What did you think of The Hobbit, Nick?

Nick: A rare sequel that is better in every aspect when compared to the first.

Dustin: I didn’t feel like it dragged as much as the first. I remember about an hour into the first film, I got up to use the restroom, and when I came back 45 minutes later they were still standing around Bilbo’s hole in the ground and the story hadn’t advanced at all. This time the story moved more briskly, and it held my attention, even though it got overlong.

Nick: Going into the first Hobbit film, I had just finished half of the book for the first time wanting to get an idea of what the movie would be like. The book was more geared towards children’s fantasy than adult fantasy, which made the whole series a little less interesting to me. While the Harry Potter films gradually grew in darkness, we are treated to a new trilogy from Middle Earth that doesn’t seem as complexed or as dangerous. It’s hard to find their quest interesting when its not as interesting as the trilogy that came before. Where I stopped in the book was actually right where the first film stopped. While I’m not sure what was added in this adaptation, I assume it was most of the scenes I enjoyed and the film needed in order to be more than a straightforward adaptation would have allowed.

Dustin: I think I would have preferred a straightforward adaptation. My main complaint about the first film was that the things that were added didn’t add anything that wasn’t already in the original story (see my review of the first installment). Same complaint here as well. There is a love triangle subplot between Legolas, Kili and some girl elf who wasn’t in the book. This was given too much screen time. I realize Peter Jackson and co. wanted to have this to appeal to females dragged into the audience by their boyfriends, and to give a more human touch to the fairy tale world, but I think I could do without Peter Jackson’s fan fiction.

Nick: Although it was a love triangle, it wasn’t as melodramatic as recent triangles we’ve been forced to sit through. The she-elf is forced to look away from Legolas, which helps her romantic glances towards the dwarf Kili. She is also not considered special in the elf world while Kili makes her feel like one-of-a-kind. The film does a good job not laboring on this for too long considering that the screentime is around three hours.

Dustin: There was too much going on toward the conclusion. You had Kili suffering from a poisoned arrow shot to the leg while another dwarf searched for some herb that could save him, Bard the guardsman in jail, Legolas and the girl elf fighting orcs in Lake Town, all while the dwarves tried to force Smaug out of the Lonely Mountain in an overlong scene that reminded me of the Griswolds trying to force the squirrel out of their house in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

Nick: It’s like the end of a book chapter when all of these things are not summed up so it makes you anticipate reading the next chapter as soon as possible. Though the film should have summed up more and left some things till the next film. The first film did this, with one climax and one anticipating Smaug. This climax reminded me more of The Matrix Reloaded where it builds up so much then ends with basically saying to be continued. Both franchises were made the same way, with the two sequels being shot at the same time. When the film ended (for both movies) the audience groaned being annoyed with how much was still yet to be summed up.  The first Lord of the Rings franchise was better at having a large conclusion at the end of each film while leaving enough still yet to be done for our adventurers.

Dustin: For me, none of this stuff was in the book, and I knew what would eventually happen, so I was thinking, Can we just fast-forward through all this?

Nick: I’m happy I didn’t continue reading the book. Maybe the book would be more endearing to me if I’d read it as a child.

Dustin: I think so. I was 10 or so when I first read it. Seems like most people I know who’ve read it as adults didn’t much care for it. I felt that way reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as an adult. L. Frank Baum didn’t know what he was doing. The movie was much better.