Star Wars: Episode VII -- The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015) revisited

When I blogged about seeing Star Wars: Episode VII -- The Force Awakens, to give it its full and exhausting title, 10 months ago, I was more involved in the novelty of seeing it in a theater and in 3-D than in commenting on the film itself. "I look forward to seeing the movie again, but this time in the comfort of my home and on a smaller 2-D screen," I said then, predicting that it would "play just as well there." So the time has come, and Starz is running it almost every day on one of its many channels, so I availed myself of the opportunity, and I think I was mostly correct. The flat version is less awe-inspiring than the three-dimensional one, but I've long since got beyond the excitement of having lightsaber beams waved in my face, and to my mind the added depth of the images is counteracted by a sense of their insubstantiality: Is it only the force of long habit and familiarity that makes two-dimensional films seem more like documented reality? The 2-D Episode VII stands up because J.J. Abrams knows the grammar of film: the cutting and pacing that has brought excitement to movies ever since Griffith and Eisenstein and other first learned to use them. In 3-D there's always going to be something a little disorienting about the shift from a close-up to a long shot, for example. Perhaps a grammar of 3-D will be developed that lets filmmakers use it as effectively as they do in two dimensions, but that time has yet to come. As for the film itself, it had to do two things: It had to tie the new material to the core trilogy -- I mean Episodes IV-VI, of course -- and it had to whet our appetites for more new stuff. It succeeds on both counts, partly by bringing back Han (Harrison Ford), Leia (Carrie Fisher), and, albeit briefly, Luke (Mark Hamill), and the leitmotifs of John Williams's score, but also by pretty much shamelessly borrowing from what's now called Star Wars: Episode IV -- A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977). (I will always call it just Star Wars.) As I said in my first post, VII is pretty much a remake of IV: Both have "the young hero on a desert planet, the messenger droid found in the junkyard, the gathering of a team to fight the black-clad villain, and the ultimate destruction of a giant weaponized space station." VII also echoes the Oedipal conflict of the subsequent episodes of the core trilogy, with the conflict of father Han and son Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) echoing that of Darth Vader and Luke. What we have to look forward to is some account of Ren's (or Ben's) fall to the Dark Side and some resolution of that character's patricidal act. We also have to find out who or what Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) is. Is there a little old man lurking behind what seems to be a hulking hologram, like the Wizard of Oz? And what are the backstories of Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Finn (John Boyega), and Rey (Daisy Ridley)? And what accounts for the luxury casting of the ubiquitous Domhnall Gleeson as the relatively secondary figure General Hux? And why waste a beautiful Oscar winner like Lupita Nyong'o in voicing Maz Kanata -- another character whose backstory needs to be told? So our appetites are whetted, and not just for further adventures of Luke Skywalker.  

Star Wars: Episode VII -- The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015)

I don't see movies in theaters anymore: Before yesterday I think the last one I went to was The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012) which was kind of a family outing. And I hadn't seen one in 3-D since the last time the process was in vogue, back in the 1950s. But I had to see this one not to be culturally retrograde, and I'm glad I did. To sidetrack to 3-D, I'm not sold on its necessity, partly because the process itself is distracting: I'm always conscious of the screen itself as a kind of frame that cuts things off as they are whizzing into and out of it. In regular old 2-D the frame works to contain the action so you can concentrate on it. I found myself distracted whenever anyone walked into the frame because I was momentarily unsure whether they were part of the film or just someone entering the theater after getting some more popcorn. I think that's why it's a process particularly suited for fast-paced action but not much else. But the movie gave me everything else I wanted, including the warm fuzzy feeling of being reunited with Han (Harrison Ford) and Leia (Carrie Fisher), whose grizzled maturity gave a gravitas to the film. It recaptured the feeling I had back in 1977 at the NorthPark theater in Dallas when John Williams's music struck up and the introductory crawl stretched away into space. Episode VII is essentially a remake of Episode IV, if we must call them that, with the young hero on a desert planet, the droid found in the junkyard, the gathering of a team to fight the black-clad villain, and the ultimate destruction of a giant weaponized space station. It's nice that the hero this time is a woman (Daisy Ridley) and that her cohort includes a black man (John Boyega), both of whom are great in their roles. Oscar Isaac shows once again that he's something of a shapeshifter as an actor: I knew he was in the movie, but I almost didn't recognize him at his first entrance, after having seen him recently as the thwarted Yonkers mayor on HBO's Show Me a Hero (Paul Haggis, 2015). He has the ability to play callow and boyish as well as bitter and brooding, as in Inside Llewyn Davis (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, 2013). I look forward to seeing the movie again, but this time in the comfort of my home and on a smaller 2-D screen. I think it will play just as well there, thanks more to the smart screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan, J.J. Abrams, and Michael Arndt, and to the well-directed actors, including Adam Driver's Kylo Ren, than to the technological whiz-bang.

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)

Rick Deckard: Harrison Ford
Roy Batty: Rutger Hauer
Rachael: Sean Young
Gaff: Edward James Olmos
Bryant: M. Emmet Walsh
Pris: Daryl Hannah
J.F. Sebastian: William Sanderson
Zhora: Joanna Cassidy

Director: Ridley Scott
Screenplay: Hampton Fancher, David Webb Peoples
Based on a novel by Philip K. Dick
Cinematography: Jordan Cronenweth
Production design: Laurence G. Paull
Film editing: Marsha Nakashima, Terry Rawlings
Music: Vangelis

I had forgotten that Blade Runner, with its flying cars, ads for Atari and Pan Am, and rainy Los Angeles, was set in the year 2019, which unless things change radically in the next four years puts it on a par with 1984 (Michael Anderson, 1956) and 2001 (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) for missed prognostications. Yet despite this, and even more despite the great advances in special effects technology, this 33-year-old movie hardly feels dated. That's because it isn't over-infatuated with the technological whiz-bang of so many sci-fi films, especially since the advances in CGI. Its effects, supervised by the great Douglas Trumbull, have the solidity and tactility so often missing in CGI work, because they're very much  in service of the vision of production designer Laurence G. Paull, art director David L. Snyder, and especially "visual futurist" Syd Mead. But more especially because they're in service of the humanity whose very questionable nature is the point of Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples's adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It also helps that the film has a terrific cast. Harrison Ford can't help bringing a bit of Han Solo and Indiana Jones to every movie, but it's entirely appropriate here -- one time when a star image doesn't fight the script. Rutger Hauer makes Roy Batty's death scene memorable, and even Sean Young, a problematic actress at best, comes off well. (I think it's because when we first see her, she's dressed and coiffed like a drag-queen Joan Crawford, so that when she literally lets her hair down she takes on a softness we're not accustomed to from her.) And then there's Edward James Olmos as the enigmatic origamist Gaff, Daryl Hannah, William Sanderson, and especially Joanna Cassidy, who manages to achieve poignancy even wearing a transparent plastic raincoat. I only wish that HBO would scrap its print of the "voice-over" version of the film, with Ford's sporadic narrative and the happy ending demanded by Warner Bros., and show director Scott's 2007 "Final Cut" version instead.