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Or, Why Episode VII Doesn’t Suck and It’s Still Not Good Enough

After Star Wars Episode VII The Force Awakens reached official success in terms of box office and fan/critical review seemed to be vaguely positive, the internet turned (as it always does) and began to drop hipster-esque disdain all over the film.

Yes, the film is derivative, but that’s not the problem, young padawans, it’s not actually derivative enough.

I watched the film like any devotee on opening night with a full house who were “ready to get Star Wars back from the botched abortion that was the prequels.” I (like many, but not nearly like all fanboys) remember the anticipation and then disappointment that was The Phantom Menace. I stood in in line for six hours that summer in 1999 and watched a movie that started at midnight. Even though I was a young man at the time, starting a movie at midnight was not a regular endeavor and certainly one fraught with difficulty.

I did not hate it at at 2:17 in the morning when I finally walked out of that rural Oklahoma cinema. There were people there in costumes, and we were all there to see our childhood rekindled. After all, it had been nearly twenty years, and Star Wars had sent everyone in the theater’s imagination on fire since before we even knew what a theater was. Taco Bell had even made these strange drink toppers (of which I had the privilege of receiving a Darth Maul, rather than the eventually to be dreaded Jar-Jar Binks), yet the Sith apprentice was not enough to soothe the nagging itch that The Phantom Menace failed to scratch.

Later on I conceded with the rest of a galaxy quite close by that movie sucked. It was badly acted, directed and overly obsessed with technological tool of the new digital age. The rest of the trilogy only confirmed the disappointment of thousands of Generation X’ers who were getting far too used to being let down by those we had trusted. Episodes II and III followed and despite a fantastic viewing experience for Episode II (of which I have spoken many times on the Goodtrash Genrecast), I was left more that empty. I was left longing. I wanted my Star Wars back. I wanted it to at least not suck.

With Episode VII, I almost got my wish.

Almost… What I got was a screen crawl I had not yet memorized and afterward characters of varying degrees of familiarity doing what they have always done. I got the last episode of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

I loved Johnny Carson and I remember well the transition from his to the mostly lackluster Jay Leno. I owned (on VHS, mind you internet fetuses) the greatest hits of said Johnny Carson which included the last episode of The Tonight Show.

I still love it. It’s a great way to end things. Not so much on the the starting of new things.

The entire appeal of The Force Awakens is the same sort of fan service that was the last episode of The Tonight Show. Topping my spectacular viewing experience of Episode II (despite being a terrible movie), my experience of opening night for Episode VII couldn’t have been better. For the love of all things, we cheered the lobby girl when she said the movie was sold out, and we all needed to move to the center of our rows! What followed could not have made a lifelong fan more happy. It did NOT suck.

Yes indeedy, I was with my people. and we were all primed and ready for a Star Wars that did not suck. For crying out loud there was a cheer for the trapezoid crawl! We cheered the new actors. We cheered the old vehicles, and we doubly cheered the old actors… and then I remembered Johnny.

You see, what made that episode of The Tonight Show great was not the genius that was Johnny Carson. It was not the creativity of the writers, nor even the power of Johnny’s phenomenal guests. The last episode was great because everyone loved it so much, not at all because it was good in itself. The entire last week of the show brought on a list of a favorite guests (made up of both new and old faces) and skits that did what they always did with a healthy dose of schmaltz and nostalgia. It made every viewer feel good and most importantly, it made us all miss Johnny and remember why we loved him so much. However its gaze as a program is not forward, but backward.

This is precisely what The Force Awakens does. It does nothing new and has its eyes firmly fixed in the rear-view mirror. It functions as an archeological expedition into what Star Wars fans love about Star Wars and then re-hashes it. It’s not good on its own merits. It’s good because it makes us miss Star Wars. Upon my second watch in far less packed theater, lacking all the cheering at fan service, I realized that the only power the film had was in its nostalgia and schmaltz. It wasn’t good for what it was, it was good because of what Star Wars used to be. It was good because it made me miss Star Wars from 1977 not because of what it was doing in 2015. It was good because it did not suck.

Much has already be written about how the narrative is a retread of Episode IV and to a lesser extent Episode VI. I will avoid spoilers here and simply agree. Suffice it to say we have new and old faces doing the skits we love from the original trilogy. Sure there are some new wrinkles here and there in the narrative and on the faces of our beloved original trio, but that is used only to keep playing at the schmaltz and nostalgia that make final episodes of late night TV so satisfying.

Except this is not late night TV. This is supposed to be more stories of a galaxy far, far away and its not more stories, its just the same ones slightly tweaked. Star Wars has never been a fountain of originality, I get that. What made it so original was the way in which it repackaged Akira Kurosawa films, westerns, and King Arthur legends with a healthy dose of Joseph Campbell. In Episode VII however, we see a story that only borrows from the best of itself in order to avoid saying something new that might suck.

I even get why that had to happen. J.J. Abrams was given the worst job ever: he must not allow us to be disappointed again as we were in 1999. In that task, he clearly succeeded. What would have been much more interesting would have been nearly the same character beats for our new trio and cameos from the old cast in a reimagining of nearly any genre film through the filter of the Star Wars universe. It could have been a heist film, or a secret agent film (alá The Departed), or to keep it in Lucas-Land, it could have been an Indiana Jones story searching for Luke’s lost lightsaber. All of these ideas would have been a little risky. Not brave (I think we all know better than to expect brave, though I still hope for it), but at least there would be a modicum of courage to the filmmaking. Instead Abrams did the the safest, most conservative thing possible and plagiarized Star Wars itself instead of daring to steal in the brilliant way Lucas did over thirty years ago. Frankly, the prequels, for all their faults, were trying to do something new at least.

I have seen some new words lately in movie criticism and the best one for The Force Awakens is the Legacy-quel. The same could be said of Jurassic World. At this point the best, bravest and most interesting move so far in major franchise blockbuster filmmaking is Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. It made a lot of fans angry and certainly has its flaws, but it’s something new and interesting. Sure there’s fan service which I would expect in any Star Wars film as well, but at least its brave.

This really aids identifying the current cycle of blockbuster filmmaking we find ourselves in now. We now live in the age of the corporate auteur. Disney is the author of this film and like their animated oeuvre, its paint-by-numbers and formulaic. Instead of princesses and orphans finding family and romance through magic its science fiction princesses and orphans family and romance through the Force. It rehashes stories we’ve already heard in a veneer that seems new but it’s really not at all. Sure its derivative, I just wish it was derivative of something other than itself. Its a disappointment because it was trying so hard not to be a disappointment. You never will get far with your film if your only goal is not to suck. That’s not success; its just suck-less.

The only real success of the film also connects to Johnny Carson’s last episode. We wanted to see what the next guy could do. Abrams didn’t do anything wrong or right with Episode VII but at least he didn’t make us all want to pass on Episode VIII. The corporate auteur Disney realized its vision, it sold a bunch of tickets and has us all pre-sold to buy more for the next installment. If The Force Awakens is Johnny’s last show, maybe finally Episode VIII will be Jay’s first show. My only hope is that a real-life flesh and blood auteur will have the courage to look to the future instead of the past and tell us something new about people who lived a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.