Reflections on Star Wars VII Part 2

Ok so to continue on from the last blog, we now come to some of the more geeky and technical issues I had with this movie. But First be warned:

I think that this movie relaxed the constraints of making Hyperdrive not look like just a form of teleportation. We know the Star Wars galaxy is similar in size and shape to our own, now comparatively when the Starship Voyager got caught in a wormhole and shot to the delta quadrant I think it was of our galaxy they were saying that at warp 10 (10 times the speed of light) that it would take over a hundred some years to get home. Now in the original Star Wars trilogy when they flew in the Falcon and other things they seemed to have some sort of time between entering hyperspace and exiting. They played board games, they trained in the use of the force, they did a lot of things that you got only little glimpses of but it gave a sense of travel. In this movie it just kinda happened within moments it seemed even though the long trips cross galaxy could last upwards of a week or so they made it out in this movie as though nothing took longer than about 10 minutes. Also let’s not forget the sudden slamming into hyperspace from the docking port the Falcon was in with no planning whatsoever..just flip a few switches and boom off they go! Problem is Hyperdrives have to be programmed, they show that in the original trilogy when Obi-Wan asks how long before he can make the jump to lightspeed and Han says “It will take a few moments to get the coordinates from the navicomputer” and if you follow this link or if it shows up here you can also see that Han explains why it takes a moment for the coordinates because if they don’t wait they can end up in an asteroid field or slam into a planet or fly into a sun blah blah blah. What you want to see comes in at the 2:16 mark in this video.

So why is it in Force Awakens that Han is just like “hey we have a monster on the front of our ship and have no clue which way we’re pointing let’s just hit the hyperdrive!” which brings me to the next instance of the magical hyperdrive that couldn’t be! Any Star Wars fan worth his salt knows that a Navicomputer lays out its coordinates to stay away from planets because they make a gravity well in fact the Imperials made ships known as Interdictors that could pull ships out of Hyperspace by projecting gravity bubbles into known space lanes. So here comes the new case of the magic Hyperdrive! In the force awakens the Starkiller base is a PLANET bigger than the Death Star. The Death Star had a gravity well which was why the Falcon couldn’t get to hyperdrive until after the fight with the sentry ships yet Han uses the Hyperdrive in this new movie to get inside a planetary defense shield. So somehow they use the Hyperspace to go through a shield when truly they should just be smashing up against it in faster than light speeds. Then somehow this hyperdrive gets the falcon not only within the planet’s gravity well without shutting off on it’s own, but somehow becomes a magical gateway through a shield that is only about atmosphere length away from the planet. Not to mention that the speeds they just exited from there is no way in hell they could slow themselves down in time to not crash into the planet. Lets also add in here that if you read anything about the tech of Star Wars you cannot talk over coms while in Hyperspace but need to wait until you have dropped out of hyperspace due to the physics involved in hyperspace yet somehow in this movie they are using coms in hyperspace to relay when the fighters should drop out of hyperspace.

Now a bit about some other technical things. This is where I start growling at people quite legitimately, so if you’re reading this I know you will know this is directed at you. I went into this movie with a mainly open mind, I knew this was a movie for a new generation. I am not pissed at this movie because lets see how was it put “You’re one of very few star wars fans who were upset about everything… you all have one thing in common… that’s comparison to the originals.” Well let me tell you something m’dear and this will go for everyone that’s reading this don’t ever compare me to others because I can assure you what I have problems with isn’t what they have problems with. I’m not a fanboy that goes off the ledge because R2’s dome is scraped in the wrong place or that Boba Fett seems to be an inch taller in this picture compared to the movies blah blah. What I am is a person who could at this minute be working on movies due to going through film school. I am a person who could be writing movies if I wished because I am a writer that has taken scripting classes. I’m not doing that though because I decided not to but that doesn’t mean I don’t know my shit when it comes to movies. So here’s the thing people keep saying that this is Soooooooo Star Wars…the space battles are just Star Wars to a tee…the fight scenes are sooooo Star Wars…everything was just gushing Star Wars in this movie!!!! So I have one thing to say to that BULLSHIT!!!!

This movie is to Star Wars what Michael Bays Transformers is to the Original G1 Transformers cartoon. Looks wise it is nothing like it, the thing that keeps pissing me off is that JJ is being praised for this while Bay gets treated like fricken Satan. OK so they have the Falcon and they have lightsabers and they have tie-fighters and x-wings and storm troopers and some old characters have come back…but that’s it. I could use some toys and make some piece of crap home movie that has all of that and when people tell me what crap it is I can be like “But it’s Sooooooo Star Wars! it has all of this stuff” and people would crucify me for it. But put a huge name to direct like JJ Abrams and suddenly it doesn’t matter that the pictures are too crisp, it doesn’t matter that everything feels hollow, it doesn’t matter that there wasn’t a single soft fade in the whole movie that I can remember. Why doesn’t it matter though..oh wait let me quote again “it’s NEW. The point of it being new is that it’s still Star Wars but it’s neeeew” Here’s my thing though… I’m not an idiot I know it’s new, but I also realize that it is part of a larger Saga, something that has 6 main movies already, 2 spin off ewok movies, several spin off cartoons and so far up until now EVERYTHING has felt like Star Wars. So far everything has that bit of je ne sais quoi that just screams Star Wars. Yet here we have fights that don’t look or feel like Star Wars, we have space battles that look and feel like nothing before, we have hard stark scene cuts in a saga that is known for soft wipes and dissolves and even the humor and one liners feel fake and forced where the originals felt natural and believable.

I don’t mind if they want to go off the feel some but there are certain things you need to keep it feeling like what it is. Even the Brand New Battlestar Galactica felt like BSG when you watched it even though it was updated and almost 30 years newer than the original but it still kept that feel and yet it was a reboot. This isn’t a reboot this is a continuation of an epic saga. If someone had taken over the Hobbit and changed things midway through the way things have been changed for Star Wars there would have been rioting. However because there is a 10 year gap since the last Star Wars movie suddenly it’s ok because it’s NEW. Now here’s the thing next year we get a new Star Wars movie called Rogue One and it’s supposed to be in the form of like a World War II, Saving Private Ryan or Dirty Dozen type of movie and ya know what I’m perfectly fine with that. I mean the thing is it is Star Wars BUT it’s not the main branch of Star Wars so why should that be held to the same style? In this case it shouldn’t as it’s not part of the main Saga BUT Force Awakens is directly a part of the main saga and should stay consistent. A lack of consistency can kill a series George Lucas knew this and that’s why when he did the prequels even though he had new digital toys he never had for the originals he still made the prequels feel true to the story he started almost 30 years ago. Sure he may have made some wrong turns for the prequels but he did a lot of things right as well and one of the things he did best was to keep the look and feel of the original trilogy intact. That is something I really wish had carried over into this newest movie.

TO BE CONTINUED IN THE NEXT BLOG…… https://draxisweb.com/dwp/?p=2400