This review is so stupid. First of all, it’s almost two hours! Are you serious! I might as well watch the movie again. You know, I read a comment from somewhere before the film came out that said “Why even bother reviewing the film at all? What will any critic have to say about the film that will mean anything to anyone other than themselves?”. Well my opinion on TFA isn’t really going to change based on a two hour Youtube video. I’ve read other reviews, I’ve heard the usual complaints ad naseum. It’s nothing new. I know exactly how I feel about the movie. I haven’t seen or read an interesting critical take on it since the week it came out. It’s just been the same bullshit. This Plinkett douche is 9 months late to the party and not fashionably. There is value in good film criticism that analyzes a film beyond surface opinions but this doesn’t seem to be that.
So I didn’t watch the whole thing because I don’t hate myself but I did skim it. First of all the guy seems to be mostly riffing on his greatest hits (from what I’ve heard) shitting on the PT rather than actually getting to the topic at hand. Yeah the PT is nice to shit on, but it’s low hanging fruit. And yeah, the PT apologizers are annoying as fuck but I’ll never not be tired of generational bashing. Finally he gets to TFA and it’s the shame old shit. His comments on diversity seem nice at first because he isn’t criticizing the fact that the cast is diverse (you have to be a truly fucked up individual to think there’s anything wrong with a diverse cast), but then he starts to sound stupid. Saying kids don’t care about diversity isn’t really true. Yes, kids don’t care about seeing characters that aren’t their race or gender (unlike some deplorable adults) but if a kid sees someone who is their race or gender they are most certainly going to care. Don’t think for a second little girls aren’t loving TFA because of Rey, for example. And then he starts talking about the film being devoid of sex and I just have to stop. This is one of the most absurd criticisms of the film I’ve heard that I don’t think it’s even worth responding to.
Beyond that, dude’s got a super annoying voice and I just didn’t find any of it funny. Shrug.
I’m guessing you haven’t seen any of the other ones? Plinkett is a character (which I don’t generally enjoy, but the review content has always been good for me and at least in this one most of the goofy Plinkett stuff was way toned down).
What I took away from the diversity section was not that he had problem with the diverse cast (he says as much) and more that he felt that it was a bit disingenuous because it was more of a focus-group manufactured diversity motivated more by “the soulless evil force that is the Hollywood machine and their manipulative string-pulling” than it was a genuine diversity, because diversity is the popular trend thing to do these days.
As far as the sex thing goes, he doesn’t mean it needed more hardcore banging, but that the characters were mostly passionless and there wasn’t any of that romantic tension that was in the OT from ANH.
You should go back and watch those bits in more detail because even though they’re presented in a goofy way, he makes some legitimate points about the manufactured, corporate, “safely made based on focus groups and marketing data in a sterile factory” quality of the film while it lacks the homespun, grassroots, low-budget, risk-taking feel of the OT.
I love TFA and I still do. Nothing’s gonna change that. But Mike makes good points.