Apparently Deep Voice

Costume appreciation series: Padmé Amidala’s wardrobe in Star Wars (1999-2005) dir George Lucas

The Princesses from Ralph Breaks the Internet.

no idea

what you’re

talking about

apart form sebastian though he goes from this to this

As a new Star Wars is released, the excitement, intrigue and love for the franchise covers everyone’s eyes in a rose coloured tint. Except this guy. The thing about The Last Jedi is, is it isn’t very good. 

Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi is familiar yet too different, it is funny when it really shouldn’t be, it is over the top when it should be restrained. Writer/director Rian Johnson has clearly bitten off more than he can chew especially off the backs of his smaller films Brick (2005), The Brothers Bloom (2008) and Looper (2012). 

If the world of Star Wars came back in The Force Awakens it has left this universe and gone elsewhere. In a world where Trump is president and racism and social inequality is prevalent more than ever, people are naming this the darkest timeline. This film helps prove that theory. This is not the Star Wars you remember or wanted. 

The Force Awakens lived off the nostalgia of the original trilogy while introducing new characters and a not so new story, The Last Jedi seems to throw nostalgia and characterization out the window and launch into what can only be described as fan fiction, that is only legitimized as it is actually a canon film. 

It is surprising that after the grief The Force Awakens received for being a replica of A New Hope, that The Last Jedi copies the story beats from The Empire Strikes Back. We start with the rebels leaving a planet as the clutches of the Empire, sorry, First Order close in while our hero is on a distant and barely inhabited planet in search of an old Jedi master who just wants to be left alone. As our hero’s friends travel through space to escape the villains in black, they get to meet new characters and find themselves being betrayed before our hero reunites with them and with newfound power tries to save what is left of the day. 

Visually, there are moments that are the most gorgeous in the entire series: Supreme Leader Snoke’s red on black throne room and Vice Admiral Holdo’s Hyperspace sacrifice, but without a strong story and likeable characters to follow, relying on visuals alone is not enough. 

The storyline involving Rey, Luke and Kylo Ren is the most interesting and captivating but when it deviates to the other superfluous storylines, it sags and you realize how much the new and newest characters don’t fit into this universe. 

Focusing on the original characters, Johnson has altered the way in which they will forever be seen. Leia is now more force trained than ever, even though her power came through emotion and empathy. It could be argued that as she was near death, her unconscious mind took over and saved her, but considering she didn’t do anything for the rest of the film and that Carrie Fisher has passed after filming, it would have been a very effective death for the character. 

Luke is now Yoda: crazy, alone and wants to die. His reason for leaving everything is that he felt the darkness in Ben Solo and got caught in the brief moment of attempting to murder him that he left everything he believed in and everything that the original trilogy set the character up as. Here we have a very different man to the one that was willing to sacrifice his life just to prove that there was still good in his father who was the biggest mass murderer in their universe. In Empire Strikes Back Luke leaves his training early to save his friends, here Luke won’t leave his isolation to even be with his family. This turn for the character doesn’t hold true to what was previously built but works within the context of the film, except for Ben Solo’s reason to destroy everything that Luke had built. 

Kylo Ren is one of the strongest characters in this film, changing from a petulant child to a soldier that is torn between what he knows is right and his orders. Adam Driver works hard to show the turmoil inside of Ren but when push comes to shove at the end of the film, this turmoil seems to be gone, rendering the power play between light and dark within him moot. It is not explained why he choose to massacre the other padawan’s in Luke’s temple before burning it to the ground after Luke’s attempt at confronting Ben. 

Finn and Poe have the most superfluous storylines, so off the mark in fact that they don’t do anything heroic and end up getting more than half of the Resistance fleet killed. Their misadventures introduce us to the newest characters of the Star Wars universe. Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose, Benicio Del Toro’s creatively named DJ and Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo. Both Rose and DJ are tied for the worst character, while Holdo should have been replaced with a character that we cared about, Admiral Ackbar anyone? 

Rose seems shoehorned in as Poe can’t journey with Finn to the casino planet (with it’s heavy use of CGI characters, exploration of the world and scenes aimed at children – this felt like it belonged in the prequel trilogy). Here they need to find a hacker and then hack the First Order ship tracking the Resistance convoy. What we’re given is this paper thin character that explains to Finn how war profiteering is bad, gambling is bad and that slave kids are bad. She also delivers the most groan inducing line of this series so far, ‘We’ll beat them by protecting the ones we love’, before kissing a non-reciprocating Finn and passing out or dying. I’m hoping for the latter. This is also after she knocked out both her and Finn’s fighter so Finn doesn’t kamikaze himself into a giant laser beam that would have blown open the base shielding the remaining Resistance fighters. 

DJ is a stuttering hacker that is only in this film so that there can be a betrayal. That’s it. We don’t care too much about the character nor his relationship to Finn and Rose, so the shock-horror of his duplicity barely registers as anything too important. Holdo has the most to do here, but the audience has no connection to her, even though she was doing the right thing all along and Poe is actually the traitorous scum that nearly got them all killed. 

This film delves deeper into Poe’s character and by that we are shown a shallow rapscallion with a death wish that will do whatever he wants because he believes himself to be a hero. In the end he doesn’t gain the audience’s trust back but doesn’t seem to have any guilt over his terrible decisions. Holdo’s sacrifice should have been swapped out with Poe, resulting in a more emotive moment over a loss of a mainstay character. 

After two films, I still don’t get who Finn is. What I know about him is that he was kidnapped as a child, brainwashed by space Nazi’s, became their janitor, worked his way up to a soldier, then during his first mission out his indoctrination didn’t work, decided it wasn’t for him and ran away. This film adds little else to the character. He likes to make light of most situations but most importantly he has no idea what he is doing and doesn’t really seem like someone who was groomed to be a soldier. 

John Williams is back again as composer but here the music doesn’t seem to be iconic or special and that really sums up this film, there is nothing special about it. 

The Force Awakens opened up so many questions and possibilities that aren’t actually answered here but swept under the rug to not be explored again. Supreme Leader Snoke, who we only saw via giant hologram last time, makes his full appearance where we see that he is actually a powerful Sith Lord and …. That’s all. We don’t know who he is, where he came from or why he cares about Rey and Ren nor will we find out. The possible love story between Rey and Finn is now gone, replaced by Rose’s affections for Finn and the complicated feelings between Rey and Ren as they try to convince each other that their side is the best. 

The film tries to create a serious tone around the theme of failure. Everyone fails in this film or reflects on their failures; Luke failing Ben Solo, Leia failing the galaxy, Kylo Ren failing Supreme Leader Snoke. This theme fits with the second movie of trilogies being the lowest point for all the characters. It is the turn before the heroic ending, except this film is so light hearted and filled with jokes that the weight of characters failures fail to land. The film starts on a joke, rendering earnest and serious characters into baffled and bumbling idiots that were only reserved for droids in the original. There are also ridiculous moments that leave the audience unable to suspend their disbelief any more because these moments don’t belong; BB-8 controlling an AT-ST or the one lone ship among wreckage and flame that is unarmed on the horizon and in Finn and Rose’s line of sight. 

The use of the force in this film is overused and everyone is over-powered. If you reflect on the original trilogy Luke had a tenuous grasp of his telekinetic powers after two years of training. Here Rey, and even a little slave boy, can use these powers on a whim. Anakin Skywalker, who was apparently the most powerful Jedi and the Chosen One, didn’t even have this power without training. It’s moments like these that lack credibility in the already well-constructed franchise. Even though these things aren’t real and don’t exist they still need to conform to their own rules and sense of believability, it’s why Superman flying backwards to change time doesn’t make sense. 

Episode IX needs to hurry up and be released so that this entire trilogy can be ignored like that fourth Indiana Jones film that never came out. 

As a new Star Wars is released, the excitement, intrigue and love for the franchise covers everyone’s eyes in a rose coloured tint. Except this guy.

I won’t tell you anything about the character, the plot or the twists but I will tell you this.

It isn’t very good.

Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi is familiar yet too different, it is funny when it really shouldn’t be, it is over the top when it should be restrained. Writer/director Rian Johnson has clearly bitten off more than he can chew especially off the backs of his smaller films Brick (2005), The Brothers Bloom(2008) and Looper (2012).

If the world of Star Wars came back in The Force Awakens it has left this universe and gone elsewhere. In a world where Trump is president and racism and social inequality is prevalent more than ever, people are naming this the darkest timeline. This film helps prove that theory. This is not the Star Wars you remember or wanted.

The Force Awakens lived off the nostalgia of the original trilogy while introducing new characters and a not so new story, The Last Jedi seems to throw nostalgia and characterization out the window and launch into what can only be described as fan fiction, that is only legitimized as it is actually a canon film.

Visually, there are moments that are the most gorgeous in the entire series but without a strong story and characters to follow, relying on visuals alone is not enough. John Williams is back again as composer but here the music doesn’t seem to be iconic or special and that really sums up this film, there is nothing special about it.

The storyline involving Rey, Luke and Kylo Ren is the most interesting and captivating but when it deviates to the other superfluous storylines, it sags and you realize how much the new and newest characters don’t fit into this universe. The Force Awakens opened up so many questions and possibilities that aren’t actually answered here but swept under the rug to not be explored again.

The film tries to create a serious tone around the theme of failure. This theme fits with the second movie of trilogies being the lowest point for all the characters. It is the turn before the heroic ending, except this film is so light hearted and filled with jokes that the weight of character’s failures fail to land.

Episode IX needs to hurry up and be released so that this entire trilogy can be ignored like that fourth Indiana Jones film that never came out.

Back in 2003 a little film was released that a decade later had achieved the highest cult status resulting in sold-out midnight screenings and infamy for its stars. 

The Room, a film produced, written, directed and starring the inimitable Tommy Wiseau. If you haven’t seen the film by now or at least the best scenes online you’re missing out on the best worst movie of all time. The Room is inexplicably poorly controlled by Wiseau and it is the creation of this wet hot mess that The Disaster Artist explores. 

While the true story of The Room is intriguing and bizarre, this isn’t the only focus of The Disaster Artist. James Franco as director focuses on the relationship between Tommy Wiseau played by Franco and his only friend Greg Sestero as they try to achieve the American dream as Wiseau’s almost sociopathic need for control gets in the way. 

Franco as Wiseau really shines, as he plays this hunched, mixed accented, alien-like human being that is just a ‘regular American guy’; who you find yourself empathising with even when he is screaming at his cast and crew or can’t get a simple take right after the seventieth time. Franco’s portrayal is not of a two-dimensional villain that knows he is deluded and takes his frustrations out on those around him but is of a character that allows audiences to comprehend how Wiseau could have created The Room. This is uniquely shown near the end of the film where Wiseau finally sees audience’s reactions to the film that he believes will make him achieve his American dream. 

Alongside Franco is his brother Dave playing Greg Sestero, Wiseau’s partner in achieving fame and fortune and his apparent reason for making The Room. Greg is the young handsome man who befriends Tommy as he is captivated by his ability to be free of restraints and express himself, something that is holding Greg back within his acting. 

To realise their dreams of stardom they move to L.A. from San Francisco and it is here that the film takes a sharp turn as Wiseau is constantly rejected by Hollywood and becomes jealous as Greg finds himself fitting in; leading to Wiseau’s creation of The Room to make him a star. 

As the film explores this complicated and fragile relationship between the two men, with an over-use of hand-held camera for realism allowing the audience into the performance space of the actors, it doesn’t leave much room for the truth. You can find more detailed and accurate accounts of the making of The Room online or even in Sestero’s book from which the film is based. But it’s just not as fun. With a litany of cameos and in-jokes from The Room, The Disaster Artist is a entertaining parable showing what can happen if you follow your dreams, even though you shouldn’t. 

Oh boy! Justice League. Is it good? Not really. Is it bad? Not really.

Zach Snyder’s Justice League sits smack bang in the middle between the better DCEU films and the bad. The fifth film in this universe brings together the mainstay heroes that we have come to know and love… oh wait, we haven’t had the chance to do that yet.

Over the course of the previous four films we have learnt that: Superman is dead, Batman is angry, Wonder Woman believes that love conquers all and that world wars can be stopped by bashing twiggy Englishmen – while the rest of the League have only been shown in minor cameos.

This film has a much lighter tone than the previous films, most likely due to the re-shoots helmed by Joss Whedon after Snyder had to leave over serious family issues. Batman is now a grump who quips, The Flash is the comedic relief, Aquaman is just… the cool one?, Cyborg is actually better than I thought he’d be – he has more of a personal struggle within the film while Wonder Woman is just the mother of the group. It’s because we don’t know the characters that we don’t care for them. 

 The film tries to tug at our heartstrings from Barry Allen’s wrongly incarcerated father for killing his mother to Cyborg’s Victor Frankenstein-like father… actually they all have some emotional issues connected to their parents. But it is the heart of the film that is missing, where the characters desperately hope that Superman can save them because he’s a really good guy. We are quickly thrust into the action, observing the heroes from the outside as they band together to stop the indescribable bad guy, Steppenwolf. 

 This CGI alien/God doesn’t do anything except fill the role of the villain archetype. He’s bad, he’s powerful, he just wants to take over the world. 

 The plot is so simple that it seems like it was put together following a paint-by-numbers kit. It spends far too much time explaining characters action through exposition rather than revealing who the characters are through proper characterisation, which in turn has an affect on the actors. Ben Affleck appears at odds with what he should be doing as Bruce Wayne, as it seems the studio won’t let him be dark and broody anymore, so instead Affleck stands around in a suit with his hands in his pockets. Gal Gadot is still a painful actress; the fact that other reviews are praising her is mindboggling. 

 The film reminds me of the Justice League animated television series from 2001. Where what you know and understand about the characters doesn’t actually come through the story but is associated with what audiences already know through the zeitgeist. 

Spoiler Warning. One of the biggest plot points is the return of Superman. The scenes and reasoning’s behind this are fairly ludicrous but the film acknowledges this, allowing characters to comment on how surreal digging up his grave actually is. 

 One of the most laughable moments comes from Supes return where he throws Batman to the ground off screen. We don’t see or even hear him land as our, and Superman’s focus is elsewhere but at the end of the scene we have Batman rolling around like an old man who fell over and cant get back up. 

I could go on with the negatives: Henry Cavill’s CGI mouth, his shiny and ultra blue suit, mixed editing that leads to a structure that makes the audience think WTF is going on? As well as the Danny Elfman and John Williams scores from 1989’s Batman and 1978’s Superman mixed in for what can only be assumed is for nostalgic effect as classic rock songs certainly weren’t cutting it in the trailers. 

 I should highlight some of the positives. Good chemistry between the cast, never did I think that they weren’t working well together but some of the quips needed to be removed. There’s also this awesome flashback sequence that made me really want to watch THAT film while overall the action sequences were unexpectedly pretty good. 

Process behind that last print I just posted! Preorders are still up in my shop and if you haven’t see the movie yet, I promise this image isn’t a spoiler.