Star Wars: The Force Awakens; A Response to the Haters

Dear Readers,

So, in keeping with my New Year’s resolutions, I am going to try to produce two blog entries a month this year, one on pop culture, and one on politics.  This entry is devoted to the biggest movie in pop culture over the last month, Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  Most of the reviews that I have seen of the movie have been pretty positive, but there have also been some criticisms, mainly that the movie is too nostalgic and derivative, and a couple of concerns with the characters.  Right off the bat, I will admit that I loved the movie, and the second viewing did nothing to temper my enthusiasm.  As a student of literature, a Star Wars enthusiast, and a lover of movies, I thought The Force Awakens got a lot of things right.  Most of the areas where I had concerns were actually areas that were not addressed in most of the criticisms I heard and read.  So, without further ado, my thoughts on The Force Awakens, and my response to the film’s critics.

What They Did Right

I love Star Wars.  My dad got the box set of the 1995 special edition releases, and we watched it together as a family when I was young.  Darth Vader was the first movie character to really scare me, and when I went out to play, I pretended to be Han Solo, flying the Millenium Falcon.  The reason I bring this up is that The Force Awakens is oriented toward two audiences.  The first, is people like me now: people who grew up with the original trilogy (whether you saw it in theaters or not), and were disappointed by the prequels.  Director J.J. Abrams himself falls into this particular category, and as a nostalgia flick, the movie shines.  There are small tastes of the original; a glimpse of the game board on the Falcon harkens back to episode four, Rey’s dismissing of the ship as “garbage” references Luke’s initial “what a piece of junk.”  The lighting is similar, the opening shots deliberately parallel, and the texture, from the ships to the costuming, is much closer to the feel of the original trilogy than the prequels.  The other main audience is me from 20 years ago… the child who is being introduced to the world for the first time, who is going to the movie with her family, and to whom this world is new.  For such a child, the story had everything one could desire; great fights, a scary looking and sounding villain, amazing effects that do not look like the slipshod product of a a video game designer (yes, I am looking at you, Revenge of the Sith).  The use of puppets, animatronics, and sets, with the tasteful application of CG gave the film a texture and vibrancy cannot be equaled by films that take advantage of “all that CGI has to offer.”

I also loved the way the characters developed.  One of the major deficiencies in the Star Wars franchise has been in the development of the characters.  This is especially noticeable in episodes 1,2, and 3, where terrible acting performances from the leads resulted in flat and unlikable characters, and in episode 4, where the emphasis on visual effects, the introduction of the massive universe, and relative lack of experience in both the crew and directorial aspects resulted in a film where character was largely sidelined.  In contrast, The Force Awakens introduced the viewers to a number of really interesting characters who developed over the course of the film.  The characters that we see at the end of the film have changed because of their experiences; Finn has begun to overcome his cowardice and to figure out the reason he is fighting in this battle.  Kylo Ren has (presumably) overcome his instinctive pull toward the light side, and taken his place as a Dark Force user on par with Darth Vader (even Vader succumbed to the pull of the light when family was at stake), and Rey has transitioned from a girl waiting for her family to return, to a powerful woman who is willing to build her own life and family.  Even minor characters like General Hux, Po Dameron, and Princess Leia are given the chances to show their attributes, and develop according to the events of the story.

Critical Complaints

Most of the critical complaints about the film focus on two areas.  The first is that the film is too derivative, too “exactly like episode 4.”  The similarities between the two films are striking.  We have a main character raised on a desert planet, who discovers they have force abilities and destroys the super weapon of an evil regime with the help of an established rebellion leader and a roguish sidekick.  That main character is is forced to watch as the person they considered a mentor/ father figure is brutally murdered, and must confront the murderer in order to win the day.  The critics make a fair point.  Many of the locations are very similar to those we see in the original trilogy: a desert planet, an ice world, a battle on a vaguely forest-y moon (planet?).  Starkiller base is another, bigger and badder Death Star; and as soon as we saw what the base was and could do, we knew that the story would end with the Resistance blowing the place up.

I want to address the two parts of the derivative criticism.  First, that the locations are very similar to those of the original trilogy, showing a lack of vision and originality.  While valid, the criticism lacks vision about episode 7, and the franchise as a whole.  Of course Jakku looks like Tattooine, the other desert planet of the Star War’s universe.  Deserts have played an enormous role in the series; Tattooine was the beginning of Anakin’s, Luke’s, and (to a lesser extent) Obi Wan’s adventures.  The desert is symbolic for George Lucas, who grew up in Modesto, and experienced the ennui associated with living in a wasteland area.  It is symbolic for the viewers, who are looking forward to the experience of leaving the vast, boring real world for the vibrant, verdant world of the screen.  It is also symbolic of the characters, who begin each story at a dead end, in the desert, with no prospects, no future, only to discover that there is a vast world beyond the desert that seemed endless.  Of course the story starts on another desert world, because that is how Star Wars stories start.  Criticism of further locational choices are also limited in their scope.  The “ice world” of Starkiller base is very different from Hoth.  One is a tundra, with little to know wildlife, and conditions so brutal that prolonged exposure will almost certainly result in death.  The other is reminiscent of vast mountain ranges, richly forested; a planet where a commander can make extended speeches to his troupes outside in the elements without fear of them dying of hypothermia.  Just because both places happen to have snow does not make them the same.  Those who focus on the similarity between the two films visually will of course find it; the film is an homage.  At the same time, to say the film lacks vision because of those similarities is to miss the point entirely, and to overlook the fascinating and ultimately unique aspects of the film.  Each location is separate from the ones we have seen before; we are not back on Tattoine, Naboo, Coruscant, Endor.  Instead, we get new locations that are similar to the old ones, but majestic and beautiful in their own right.

Now that I am done talking about scenery, I have a quick note about Starkiller base.  Yes, it can be viewed as another Death Star (although such a view is reductive).  Why is that a bad thing?  Think about it… no one gets angry when Tom Cruise has to defuse ANOTHER nuclear bomb planted by Russian spies in the middle of New York.  Why not?  Because a nuclear bomb is a super weapon, and as many times as the good guys cut the blue wire in time to stop it, the bad buys will still try to blow up the place because the payoff if they do succeed is worth the risk if they don’t.  The same can be said of Death Stars, and Starkiller Base.  The first Death Star blew up a planet… A PLANET!  The second Death Star blew up half of the rebellion fleet before the shield generator was destroyed and the thing could be blown up.  Starkiller Base destroyed FIVE republic planets, including a city planet that was likely a seat of government.  The government behind the resistance was shattered IN ONE FIRING!  The defenses of the base were strong enough that they destroyed half of the resistance’s fleet when they attempted an attack.  How many of the First Order commanders did the resistance effectively neutralize?  NONE!  Kylo Ren escapes, as does General Hux.  Supreme Leader Snoke isn’t anywhere near the base when it is destroyed.  Commander Fazma may have died in the explosion, but it is highly unlikely (given the lack of a body, and the character’s decision not to kill her outright).  All the resistance accomplished was denying the First Order the ability to use the weapon a second time, while taking heavy losses.  A pure cost benefit analysis shows that building a Death Star/Starkiller Base is still a great plan, even if it is not totally successful.

Rant done.  Sorry about that, I get a little carried away sometimes.

The second part of the criticism says that the story line of episode seven is too similar to episode 4.  Again, the critics have a point, but they miss the greater Star Wars vision.  When George Lucas created Star Wars, he  structured the story around Joseph Campbell’s theory of Hero With a Thousand Faces, which outlines the idea of the hero’s journey, a cyclical story pattern that exists in all the great, classic stories, and most of the great new ones.  This pattern is as old as human story telling, and resonates deeply across history; it has a mythic impact.  What J.J. Abrams has done in Force Awakens is return to that structure, that pattern, replaying the same drama over again as history repeats itself, but this time, because the world and characters have been developed so much deeper, the “same old story” begins to spin in a different direction.  A hero receives a call to adventure, but this time, instead of leaping head first into the adventure, the hero is reluctant, tied to a home she doesn’t have, and a family that may not return.  The hero sees their mentor/father figure killed in front of him, but this time it is not the crazy old man from the edge of the desert, it is Han Solo, the first person who treated her with respect and gave her a family, a character that the audience knows and loves on a deeper level, whose death is emotionally jarring, and even more so that it comes at the hands, not of his former apprentice, but of his son.  The good guys defeat the bad guys, but at the cost of five republic planets, half of the resistance fleet, and the death of one of the greatest heroes of the franchise.  The impact of the story becomes greater because the cost is greater… there is more meaning in the events this time around than there was in the original, and that deeper emotional impact provides a foundation for the next movies to build a new and even greater story upon.

Yes, but… a movie must be judged on its own merit, not on the merit of its potentially awesome sequels.  Whether or not episode 8 is as fantastic as I think it can/will be, is episode seven a justifiably good movie in its own right.  I believe that it is, but I also think that in the Star Wars universe, movies do not stand or fall on their own.  If there had never been an Empire Strikes Back, would New Hope still be remembered and watched today?  Would it still have been one of the most influential movies in film history?  I think not.  One of the major impacts the ring cycle structure of the original trilogy has had upon the films is that they stand, not as individual movies, but as a group, on the merits of all three, not upon the merits of any single film.  I believe that episode 7 will do that for a new trilogy of movies; provide the foundation for the next series of adventures with these characters, and draw all three films together into a singular Star Wars experience.

Before I finish up, I just want to address one more criticism; “Rey is too perfect!”  This is another criticism that I have heard a lot, that the new female Jedi lead for episode seven is too competent, too good to be true, and unlikable for that reason.  I have a couple of responses to this issue, which address it from a critical perspective, a gendered perspective, and a “what movie did you watch” perspective.

To the simplest of these responses, if you think Rey is too perfect, what movie did you watch?  She made mistakes just like all the other characters.  She accidentally opens the wrong door on Han Solo’s freighter and lets out the monsters to rampage around the ship (yes, I know those monsters are called Rathtar, but that is not useful at this moment).  She runs away from her force abilities, is easily captured by Kylo Ren, and has to try three times to force brainwash a stormtrooper (who are notoriously weakminded).  Rey is not perfect; she has faults she must overcome, and makes mistakes in the film.

What Rey is, and it is here that the gendered perspective becomes useful, is highly competent.  She has survived ten years, on her own, on a desert planet; no guardian, no assistance, just her ability to fend for herself.  In that time, she has learned to speak a variety of alien languages, fight with a staff, fly a variety of vehicles, and generally operate on her own.  Add to that the fact that she is obviously a very gifted force user, and suddenly Rey’s competency begins to make sense.  The skills that she has are not unreasonable for someone in her position.  The skills that Rey possesses would not be considered unusual or inappropriate in a male character.  Just looking at the Star Wars universe, no one is hugely shocked that Anakin Skywalker is able to build a protocol droid, pilot a racing pod, speak the alien languages of Tattooine, and out-fly the air force of Naboo at the age of 10.  It is assumed that his background has given him the requisite skill sets to accomplish those feats.  Similarly, no one questions that Luke Skywalker, with hardly any knowledge of the force is able to out-fly Darth Vader, one of the most powerful force users ever, and “the best star pilot in the galaxy” having never been off Tattooine before in his life, or how, with barely any lightsaber training (remember, Yoda never trained Luke with a lightsaber, only in how to use the force) he was able to duel with Darth Vader and win.  The competency that we expect in the male characters of the Star Wars universe seems extraordinary when given to a female character.

Yes, but what about Rey’s duel with Kylo Ren?  How was she, with no training, able to take on a powerful dark side user and trained duelist like Ren?  There are a couple answers to this question.  First, Kylo Ren was not physically at his best in that duel.  He had just been shot with Chewie’s bowcaster; he was wounded and losing blood for the entirety of the fight.  Such a wound would significantly slow and hinder even a powerful force user.  Second, he had just killed his own father.  The Force Awakens goes out of its way to emphasize Kylo Ren’s uncertainty about the dark side, his emotional volatility, and his pull toward the light.  He had just committed the single most evil act in the Star Wars films; the deliberate and fully rationalized murder of a relative.  Anakin at his darkest never killed a member of his own family, and neither (on screen) have any of the other Sith we have encountered.  Of course he was not at his best in his battle with Rey; he was still dealing with the emotional repercussions of killing his father.

The final reason I think the fight between Kylo Ren and Rey is not unrealistic in its outcome has to do with the story rational I mentioned earlier.  Many people make the mistake of thinking of Rey as “female Luke Skywalker.”  As such, they expect her to come into the story with a similar set of competencies and faults.  But Rey is NOT Luke.  She is not even the Luke Skywalker figure of the story.  Luke was the audience stand in for the original trilogy; the blank, but surprisingly important character that has to be fed information along the way because he doesn’t know anything.  Rey is not that character.  Finn is that character; the audience stand in who has to be told how things work in the universe as a way of expediting world-building.  Rey is Obi Wan Kenobi or Han Solo; she is a character with an enormous amount of history already built into her character.  Her mysterious background and unknown parentage seem to indicate that there is more to her as a character than we have already been given.  It is entirely possible (and I think future movies will bear this out) that Rey has had some training with the force before being left on Jakku, and has been made to forget what she has previously learned.  If, instead of viewing Rey as a tabula rossa who’s competency must be established in the film, she is viewed as an established force with inherent competencies from an (as yet) unrevealed background, her force ability and generally high acumen is perfectly legitimate.

Well, dear readers, I am running out of time.  I think I have probably bored you enough with four pages of my rantings, so I will delay a discussion of my speculations for episode 8 and the future of the characters for another month.  I hope you enjoyed most of what I had to say, and if not, that at least it made you reconsider the initial response to The Force Awakens.  I should be back in two weeks with a political post; I am leaning toward an examination of the role/purpose of government, so come back for that.

Anyway, back to reality.

The Gun Control Debate

Dear Readers,

One of my resolutions this year is to be writing more, so hopefully I will be posting two blog entries a month instead of just the one.  For January, I want to write both a pop culture blog, probably looking at the new Star Wars film, and a politically focused entry on gun control in America.  In light of the President’s executive order on the subject of gun control, I decided that this would be a good time to address the subject.

The question of gun control in the United States is a very complicated one, with a lot of different factors influencing both advocates and opponents.  I will try to address as many of these factors as I can to explain why I believe that harsher gun restrictions are not the ideal solution for the problem of gun violence in the US.

There are two potential solutions for gun violence, which have statistical evidence to back them up, and they are opposite extremes.  Gun violence decreases due to the absence or prevalence of firearms; either more guns or no guns will cause a drop in gun crimes.  The reasons for this are obvious.  A criminal is less likely to use a gun to hold up a gas station either if he cannot obtain a gun, or if he is afraid that the station owner will shoot him if he tries.  It is important to acknowledge that both solutions work.  In Australia, for example, where there was a massive move for public disarmament, mass shootings are almost non existent, and gun crimes have (obviously) plummeted.  However, if you look at statistics for Switzerland, where there is mandatory military service and gun ownership in the population, crime is also practically non existent.  Both extremes provide a solution to the problem, thus, the question becomes, which strategy should be employed to successfully decrease gun violence in the US.  I believe that greater rates of gun ownership are the more practical solution for America.  The reasons are diverse, ranging from historical to geographical, practical to philosophical.

Historically, gun ownership has always been a major part of the American tradition.  We are a country born out of Revolution, from the violent overthrow of an oppressing power.  In order to assure that future governments could not oppress the people, the Second Amendment of the Constitution was added, guaranteeing the people the right to keep and bear arms for their protection, particularly against a tyrannical government infringing upon their rights.  American gun ownership was designed to serve as a further check against the power of the federal government; providing a potential consequence for the government’s usurpation of the power of the people.

The American tradition of gun ownership is not limited to questions of the Revolution and the Second Amendment, however.  America is also a country carved out of wilderness, a country of vast expanses and harsh terrain.  Americans built our nation with firearms.  Settlers living several days journey from the nearest town or settlement provided food for their families by hunting.  Mountain men exploring the vast continent protected themselves from grizzlie bears and mountain lions with guns, blazing trails through the wilderness that would later be followed by pioneers who would build farms and ranches, towns, and cities.  It is here that reasons of history unite with reasons of geography.  The US is still relatively untamed.  There are vast mountains and wide forests that still hold the dangers that threatened the early settlers.  I live in the country, in Northern California.  I have had a bear come up on my front porch looking for food, I have seen a mountain lion in the back acreage of our land, and there was a rattlesnake living under our back deck.  If a woman wants to feel safe when she goes for a jog around my house, she will likely be packing.  The same can be said for the threat of gators and cotton mouths in the south, and grizzlie bears and wolves in the north.  A country that holds nothing more dangerous than the badger can feel justified in banning guns, but in a country that is still as young and wild as the US, banning firearms introduces new dangers, particularly to those who live in rural areas.

From a practical perspective, there are other difficulties in pursuing a solution that outlaws guns.  Currently, there are over 300 million guns in the US. The vast, vast majority of those are owned by law abiding citizens who keep them for protection or hunting.  Their right to keep those guns is guaranteed by the constitution, and cannot be changed without a constitutional amendment.  Such an amendment is not going to pass given the current climate in the US (more on this in a bit).  Any attempt by the government to confiscate those guns will be met with resistance from those gun owners.  Disarmament needs to be a voluntary choice by the people of the nation (as it was in Australia), and given the historical and geographical reasons already discussed, the odds of the majority of Americans choosing to disarm are miniscule. 

Finally, from a philosophical perspective, it would be untenable for the US to disarm its citizens.  The American government was founded upon the concept of inalienable rights, rights that are so basic that they are self evident.  Those rights are granted, not by the government, or any man made organization, but by “the Creator.”  These rights cannot be taken away by the government because they have not been endowed by the government.  While the right to bear arms is not an inalienable right, it is a right designed for the protection of its more fundamental counterparts.  The government supersedes its authority and becomes tyrannical when (as is the case with president Obama’s executive order) it infringes upon the people’s rights without their consent.

Such a political move also fails to recognize the role of the government and the president therein.  According to John Locke, the role of government is to provide a better state of living for the people than that which they would have achieved in nature; it is the role of the government to provide protection from external threats, and to create and enforce the laws of the nation to protect the citizens from each other.  The the US, the roles of the government are further limited and divided.  The role of the congress is the make laws, the role of the executive (the president) is to enforce laws, and the role of the courts is to interpret the laws.  President Obama violates is role as president in two ways with this executive action.  First, the role of government in general is to protect the citizens from external threats.  The president’s weak response to both the attacks in Paris and San Bernadino has demonstrated to Americans his inability to act as an effective protective agent in the interests of this country.  Instead of responding with vigor and energy to these attacks, the president played politics, choosing to defend his previous positions and asserting that his (obviously failed) strategy was working.  In doing so, he violated his role as protector of the United States.  The result?  Over the last few months, upon demonstration of president Obama’s massive ineptitude with regard to foreign policy and national security, gun purchases have skyrocketed, as citizens, convinced of the governments ineffectiveness, take the defense of their lives, liberty, and property into their own hands.  Secondly, the role of the president is to enforce laws.  There are already restrictions on gun ownership in many of the states and cities in this country, laws that are not being effectively enforced.  In the instance of the San Bernadino shootings, the weapons used had been altered as automatics, illegal to own in the state of California.  The rifles had been purchased, furthermore, by the neighbor of the terrorists, a straw purchase that is also against California law.  Further regulation would not have prevented either of those incidence, but better cases of enforcement would.  Instead of focusing on creating new legislation and laws, which is the job of congress, the president should be looking at his own inability to enforce the laws already on the books, and looking for potential solutions within his own authority.

The question of how to prevent gun crime in America is a complicated one, informed by centuries of history, culture, and politics.  At this point in time, I believe that further attempts to restrict gun ownership in the US are ill founded.  The lack of security recent attacks have demonstrated, the the government’s inability to enforce the laws already in place to protect the citizens calls into question the efficacy of further regulation.  In light of the government’s failure, the ability of the citizens to take their defense into their own hands should not be condemned.  Instead of restricting gun ownership, we should instead takes steps to inform gun owners.  I mentioned Switzerland’s mandatory military service and gun ownership earlier; the reason that such methods are effective in keeping the peace and reducing gun violence is because the citizens are informed about the nature of guns.  Mandatory gun safety classes for all public school students could go a long way toward building respect for guns as what they are, a potentially dangerous tool.  By learning what a gun can and cannot do, one also learns its proper uses; the good it can do, and the danger it presents.  

Well, back to reality!