Read it on Salon
Join HULU, SEINFELD and SALON to celebrate Festivus!
Sponsored Post
Tuesday, Dec 22, 2015 12:00 AM UTC
The “Star Wars” fandom menace: The glaring emotional blind spots that power “The Force Awakens”
Spoilers ahead — don't read any further if you don't want to know plot details of the new "Star Wars" episode
Topics: Star Wars the Force Awakens, Star Wars, Movies, aol_on, Entertainment News
Warning: Major spoilers ahead. Don’t read if you don’t want any details on the plot points of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
“Star Wars” is shallow and silly and campy and fun, and a dozen other synonyms that suggest we shouldn’t think about it too hard. I don’t usually—I watch “Star Wars” with an impressionist eye, the way I watch “Jessica Jones” or J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek” “reboot” or any of many films based on comic books. The gaping plot holes will ruin your fun if you let them, so you follow the camera’s invitation to insist on your pleasure and thread your way around them.
“The Force Awakens” is the franchise’s most appealing invitation to chase that narrative high, because there’s just so much to like: Daisy Ridley’s Rey is grounded, competent and intense—everything a hero should be. A feminist thrill, a refusal of teachers. John Boyega’s Finn is warm and hilarious, Oscar Isaac’s Poe is a charisma-generator. Even the much-maligned CGI worked for me: I’d happily watch a film series starring Lupita N’yongo’s Maz. As for BB-8, I started worrying about it the way you would a pet: Why don’t they hide it? Or at least paint it a different color? But they don’t, and that’s just the first of many irritating little nits one could pick with the latest “Star Wars” film. How, for instance, is it possible that the Resistance doesn’t have a map of the galaxy?
I chose, at first, to read BB-8’s partial and unreadable map as a kind of metaphor for the film as a whole: “The Force Awakens” is an island of relational information that’s pretty meaningless without the surrounding context. Context like: What sort of father was Han? What kind of mother was Leia, and how powerful is she? How—besides being clear knockoffs—do the Resistance and First Order relate to the Republic and the Empire? Where are the Jedi ghosts and what do they think of Vader’s skull? How did Kylo Ren pick his haircut and what even is his deal? How big is Snoke?
Our sense of scale is in constant flux, in other words—nothing can signify unless we understand what it’s next to. “The Force Awakens” half-promises to deliver that useful context in future movies, but that’s neither an answer nor a solution to some of the problems the film poses. It’s lazy storytelling, but it’s also asking your audience to be moved by a placeholder. It’s painting a sad face on cardboard. It’s asking for a loan. While some scenes are terrific, dynamic and beautifully paced–I’m thinking of the lightsaber duel and Poe and Finn’s first flight–the climax of the film asks the audience to project emotional resonance on a situation that has (and I cannot emphasize this enough) none. The Han-Ben relationship is among the emptiest I’ve ever been asked to mourn.
This is typical: “Star Wars” tends to leech off myth the way the latest, biggest Death Star Starkiller thing drains the sun. Rather than provide grounded, specific motivation, it names a relationship (usually “father” and “son”) and expects the audience to weep. The hope is that we’ll project some content onto a relationship that’s almost admirably featureless. And it works! These projections are already blossoming in fan discussions of the film: Can you imagine being raised by Leia and Han? Two emotionally distant legends? one person says. No wonder he’s messed up. You may be right, random Internet commenter, but the problem is that you shouldn’t have to imagine it. A scene showing their connection or history might have earned the effect the movie gropes at by informing us–in a lamentably expository scene between Leia and Han–that Kylo and Han are father and son and that their meeting will therefore constitute a weighty moment.
So why is that an issue? Can’t we overlook it? Well, sure. We can overlook anything, and fans routinely do. But this particular tendency worries me because “Star Wars” has become a strange self-justifying behemoth of its own fandom. People admit all its flaws and in the same breath forgive them, because the films offer something bigger that satisfies. We can forgive a lot in the name of fun, and “Star Wars” is something people look to for inspiration and meaning and philosophy, and we need that.
But the franchise–and this film in particular–is catastrophically confused about its own psychology in ways that should trouble us precisely because it satisfies. Take, for example, the annihilation of several planets, and the way we’re invited to regard them as so marginal to the story that no one even seems to remember it happened by the end. When you’ve actually invented a tragedy that’s hundreds of thousands of times bigger than the Holocaust (in a film that prominently references Nazis) only in order to threaten that they’re about to do it again, in a matter of seconds, YOU CANNOT ASK YOUR AUDIENCE TO CARE THAT SOME GUY AND HIS SON ARE WASTING THOSE ESSENTIAL SECONDS HAVING A MOMENT ON A BRIDGE.
No. You cannot. That is a fatal flaw. That is an inversion of stakes so monstrous that it makes the film actually despicable. It’s a case study in how not to use “kill the cat” in your script.
Most Read
