Lost internet this afternoon while I was trying to post the rest of my review, so I’ll pick up now where I left off here:
http://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1025415
Act II sees the action move to Jedha, and finally we start to get some semblance of a cohesive narrative. K2SO provides needed comic relief. I really liked the occupied city setting. Unfortunately, I feel like it was a mistake to introduce the Rebels on Yavin 4 before we get this sequence. Dramatically, I’m sure it would have worked better to flow from the bad things the bad guys are doing to the good things the good guys are doing, not the reverse. Oh well.
Meanwhile, we get introduced to yet more characters: the Chinese(?) guys. I like the blind guy in this movie but he was overused in many respects, while his strengths were diminished in other respects, thanks to the dialogue of other characters. The “I’m one with Force, and the Force is with me” mantra works well enough for me. He fights in battle, and that works well enough for me too. He does have some funny lines. But the filmmakers overuse him quite a bit, particularly in his fight scene on the streets of Jedha. The farcical tone of some of that action (along with quasi-slapstick comedy from K2SO) really misses the mark and does not match with what should be darker themes and moods going on in the rest of the movie. How can you go from a camera shot of a small child painfully crying in the street, and Jyn rescuing her with real concern on her face, to a guy doing martial arts comedy and a droid cracking jokes all in the same sequence? Just doesn’t make sense.
Perhaps more egregious, however, was that the other characters steal this guy’s thunder. Imagine, for a second, how much more this character would resonate if he were the ONLY person in the movie who actually believes in the Force. That last scene of his near the end of the film would have been so much more powerful and meaningful. The whole movie would have just worked better if you have this one guy constantly talking about the Force, while the other characters take turns either dismissing him or treating him with some apprehension. Instead, his buddy mocks him one time in the whole movie and that’s it. Jyn and others constantly say “may the Force be with you”, and it just diminishes this guy’s character so much.
From there, we move onto the part where Jyn and Saw are reunited. I don’t really have much more to say about Saw and how pointless he is in the film, except that we just don’t get anywhere near enough background to care about this guy. It’s hilarious and sad at the same time that such a useless character received such a melodramatic and drawn out death scene. The guy was in like two or three scenes ffs. Why does he just stand there and wait to die while the others escape? He screams “remember the dream!” or something at Jyn instead of running like everyone else and trying to survive. Unreal. Meanwhile, the Death Star death-lasers that area of the planet and I just rolled my eyes at how much time all of these people had to escape. This whole sequence is a severe blemish on the film.
Finally, that brings us to Tarkin and the Death Star. I really don’t like the idea of them being in the movie at all. I explained that. Krennic should be the only villain, he should have a star destroyer and a fleet at his disposal, the Death Star should be alluded to over and over again in the dialogue, and some people should fear its potential, while others dismiss its threat. Tarkin need not be mentioned at all.
Instead, the Death Star does not remain an intimidating off-screen threat left to be revealed in A New Hope. We get to see people easily escape when it attacks a planet. We get to see it commanded by a tasteless CGI character who looks like a video game cut-scene. We get new continuity errors with regard to the original Star Wars film. And we get the bonus effect of Alderaan’s destruction being just “another one bites the dust”.
I’ll continue on with the part where Cassian and Jyn go to her father in Part 3.
Preview:
That was the part where–from a filmmaking point of view–my mind got blown. I couldn’t see the movie the same again.