LoathedVermin72 wrote:stip wrote:No individual reaction is more valid than the other, but if we're going to ask whether or not the film succeeded in establishing that feeling then the reactions of everyone do matter. And the two hundred million dollars this movie will make and the overwhelmingly positive reviews (from reviewers falling over themselves to not get prequel sucker punched) does mean that it has struck a chord. The only way to measure the widespread reach of a subjective experience is by seeing how wide spread it is, and trying to understand what helped it reach the people it did.
Here's the thing, stip: I don't care how other people react. I don't care how much money it makes. The emotions of fans and the box office returns don't say anything about the film itself and whether it's any good. I have my own feelings about what helped it reach the people it did, and you have yours. We're not going to reconcile that.
Yes, and I'm not telling you that your feeling are wrong, per se. What you ARE doing which is wrong is that the film has had nothing to do with the way people react to it, and that the overwhelming majority of people have had an experience that is very different from yours. The intellectually honest thing to do is try to understand where that experience is coming from. As opposed to simply saying that the objective cataloging of where people's subjective experience is coming from should be dismissed on the basis that it does not gel with your own subjective experience. As you do in the comment below. [/quote]
LoathedVermin72 wrote:stip wrote:And there are a lot of things we've been talking about. The iconic sounds and images are obviously powerful, as is the way that the story managed to utilize existing attachments to established characters in ways that felt earned and authentic (witness almost every reaction to Han Solo, and compare this to the groaning way OT stuff was shoehorned into the prequels--simply seeing the characters is not enough--it has to feel organic). It creates the direct pipeline to the wellspring of good will and attachment that we have to the OT, and the innocent escapism and the way it fired our imaginations.
All of these are subjective points, and I don't agree with any of them. Banking on nostalgic connections and the power of established iconography is lazy and uncreative at best, and backwards-looking and retarding at worst.
You just dismissed vast swaths of the entire history of art, including every piece of art inspired by religion. The sistine chapel is many things, but it's probably not lazy or uncreative.
And as far as the backwards looking/retarding stuff goes, I would agree with you if not for the fact that the principle point of the Force Awakens was to set up a journey of entirely new characters taking place in what is now unrecorded star wars history.
This critique would also draw more water if you were not looking forward to a Star Wars movie that takes place entirely in the past, telling a story we don't really need to know, featuring an outcome we are already aware of. Directed by a guy whose claim to fame was making another god damned Godzilla movie.
That's my problem LV. These critiques are entirely hollow coming from you, since you embrace plenty of films guilty of everything you just criticized. Which is fine, you happen to like those movies. But then don't dress up your critique of this stuff in this high handed nonsense when the only distinction is subjectivity. If you happen to like the nostalgic connection and power of established iconography (fucking Godzilla) then it is high art, and if you don't it is backwards looking and retarding.
LoathedVermin72 wrote:
I think it's important to note that all of the previous SW films were forwards-looking. "Frontier filmmaking," if you will. Yes, even the prequels; they may have dealt with familiar characters, but technologically, aesthetically, and ideologically, Lucas was not content to merely coddle nostalgia and repeat past successes.
Are you describing Avatar or the prequels?
LoathedVermin72 wrote:
He tried something new. He took a risk. Did it pay off? Most people would say "no." But I will take Lucas's awkward innovation over Abrams's hollow nostalgia any day. Shooting on film and using a lot of practical effects don't mean the same thing today that they did back in 1977. Those things were utilized because that was the cutting edge at the time. Now they are being utilized to replicate a look and feel. I don't think that's worthwhile. And I don't think it's conducive to firing imaginations. Although, I suppose it may be conducive to "innocent escapism," since the very concept of that is something I don't believe in and don't think movies are for.
I refer you again to Batman V Superman, Godzilla, ID4 II, Rogue One, and I'm sure a host of other films. You can read deeper themes into these films. I won't argue that they're there. But they are also innocent escapism that contains just enough substance so that you don't have to feel silly watching it. As is Force Awakens (or the Marvel movies). That you like one and not the other is not due to a qualitatively more substantive approach to ideas and themes. They just happen to strike an aesthetic chord that speaks to you that you are high highhandedly confusing with superiority.
LoathedVermin72 wrote:stip wrote:
But this is more than just seeing these things again. The movie expertly captured the tone and the values of the original trilogy.
Here's a thought: Why is this good? Why do I want a new movie to merely recapture? Again, that is nostalgia. Replication. Which is, essentially, meaningless.
So is fetishizing the new. There is room in a balanced diet for all of these things. One is neither inherently superior nor inferior to the other. Even if one is, both are necessary.
And again, I refer you to Batman V Superman, Godzilla, ID4 II, Rogue One
LoathedVermin72 wrote:
Armond White hit on an important point in his review:
"The great renaissance of American filmmaking during the 1970s and its regeneration of film culture (when movies were seen as a vital means of approaching and understanding contemporary experience) were doomed by Star Wars’ pseudo-imaginative, non-campy rehash of escapist junk. Now, the rebooted, politically empty The Force Awakens suggests a boot stuck in the rear of film culture’s flabby remains."
This is exactly why TFA, and all of the other nostalgia-fetishizing movies and TV coming out lately, feel so weightless and worthless to me. Film - art - is, as White said, "a means of approaching and understanding contemporary experience." It's modern mythmaking. When we begin to look at film as trivial escapism, merely a means to coddle our feelings and infantilize ourselves, a vital part of our culture, our voice, is lost. TFA is not about human experience. It is about recreating some warm feelings from our youth in the most non-confrontational way possible. It's goal is to be innocuous. And when that (backed by a ruthless corporate blitzkrieg) becomes the single most popular piece of art on the planet? That's catastrophic.
"With Star Wars, product has not only taken the place of art; it has replaced myth."
To think that the prominence of blockbuster filmmaking has somehow prevented films from dealing with contemporary experience is ludicrous. Those films are out there. And it's not that existing films suck all the oxygen out of the air so no one notices those films. The existence of the Force Awakens does not mean that a billion dollars worth of people were going to go see the Revenant. And likewise the idea that blockbuster films can't say intelligent things is also moronic (see Hunger Games--at least the first one or Kingsmen for recent examples of films with lots of smart things to say about class). Force Awakens is not trying to. But something does not need to have social commentary to have social value, especially for a film that, in deeply cynical times, has a message focused on the experience of renewal.
That last comment that you have italicized is nonsense. Star Wars is myth. What people miss is that the story drives the product, and not the other way around. Even if elements are put into a story and added to the myth with the hope of selling something, it is the story connection, and not its commercial intent, that ensures its success. The idea that art has to be stripped of any sort of commercial implications to maintain some kind of bullshit purity ignores, amongst other things, the entire history of art, which has always required sponsorship.
