Star Wars: The Last Jedi Review

Original review here. 

Let me say it right off the bat that Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a great movie and a worthy follow up toThe Force Awakens. If you've been following any news about the movie, you'll know that there is a split between some Star Wars fans and film critics.

Some of the fans feel that the movie is not a Star Wars movie at all and lacks the franchise’s essence. Many film critics praised the movie for its strong storyline and for the manner in which it subverts the viewers’ expectation. Director Rian Johnson (The Brothers Bloom) delivers a solid Star Wars movie with many unexpected twists and turns. The Last Jedi captures the magic of Star Wars but is brave enough to turn a lot of the lore on its head and steer the franchise towards a new direction. It does take some missteps as it changes course, though.

A New Hope

In 2015, JJ Abrams wrote the most beautiful love letter to Star Wars in the form of The Force Awakens. As fans, we loved it because it was ‘Star Wars’. We looked past the fact that it was a rehash of A New Hope and that it did not really move our favourite franchise forward much. Sure, we got new villains in the form of the First Order, but we must admit that they were introduced as carbon copies of the Empire’s villains. We got a new weapon in the form of Starkiller base (we see what you did with the name there, JJ) and that was pretty much the third Death Star. Snoke was pretty much the Emperor, Kylo Ren wanted to be Darth Vader and General Hux (with his amazing coat) an up-and-coming Grand Moff Tarkin. The good guys followed a similar mould, with maybe the exception of Finn. Don’t get me wrong, The Force Awakens is a great movie but it served as a soft introduction to the new trilogy and did that well. Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi has the difficult task of being a Star Wars sequel and moving the story forward in an unexpected direction. It does that well.

JJ Abrams' love letter to Star Wars

Okay, by now we all know that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is good. It is frighteningly good.

BY CHARLES SIBOTO 19 JAN 2016

Luke’s words from the trailer are pretty much what The Last Jedi does: “This is not going to go the way you think”. Johnson gives the Star Wars universe some much needed fresh air by moving away from the beats we expect from a Star Wars movie. The good guys learn that they cannot fight the Dark Side using the same tactics they have been and the Dark Side goes to a place we’ve not seen before. Everything is not so Dark Side and Light Side, The Last Jedi dares to give us a grey area. We are given a new perspective on the Force and how it works and moves through the galaxy. Mark Hamill steals the show as a disillusioned Luke Skywalker. The story pays respect to the older Star Wars characters but it is more the story of solidifying the new characters’ place in the story. Every time you see Carrie Fisher as Leia onscreen you can’t help but feel emotional and her last performance as the character is beautiful. Daisy Ridley’s Rey learns to pick up the mantle as a Jedi, Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron learns to be a better leader and John Boyega’s Finn learns to value what he is fighting for. Adam Driver is brilliant as Kylo Ren and both his and Rey’s struggle with the Light and Dark sides of the Force is portrayed expertly. Domhall Gleeson as General Hux (his coat is so cool!) continues to vie with Kylo for the Supreme Leader Snoke’s favour. Snoke (Andy Serkis) is as menacing and mysterious as ever.

The Empire Strikes Back

The movie opens with the rebel scum doing their rebel thing and the First Order doing their chasing and threatening thing. Nothing new here. The Last Jedi opens on the same beat we expect from a Star Wars movie: a Star Destroyer looks cool in space, there is a cinematic battle, the good guys fly their X-wings against impossible odds whilst keeping up their humorous banter, a cute droid beeps, a villain loses his cool and a John Williams soundtrack is pushing all the right emotional buttons. It’s great. Then, all of a sudden our expectations start getting subverted at every turn. All of our YouTube prophets’ fan theories are trampled into the dust and we are in new territory. It’s great! Johnson questions things we believe about the Star Wars universe and opens new avenues of exploration.

The Last Jedi/The Return of the Jedi (They really need to make up their minds)

It’s not all lightsabers and BB8, though. The Last Jedi makes mistakes and they do take away from the vision that Johnson has. My biggest gripe is that the movie is too long. I love long movies but only when it does not feel like padding. The Last Jedi gets to a point where there is a lot of padding and what feels like unnecessary storylines. They introduce places and characters you can’t bring yourself to care about and that takes away from the brilliance of the core plot. At the end of the movie you are tired, happy, confused, possibly angry and then you go home and give it more thought and smile because this is a great middle act. The Last Jedi answers some of the questions we had offhandedly, not at all or asks us questions. The threads are left dangling and both groups of people who liked it and did not like it are left hoping that Episode IX answers all of our questions. YouTube fan theorists get to keep their jobs for the next two years as The Last Jedi leaves a lot of mysteries that need solving.

My Magical Place: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Review

My original review on: http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/482/155629.html

23 Dec 2016

Last year Disney gave us JJ Abrams' love letter to the original Star Wars trilogy in the form of Episode VII: The Force Awakens for Christmas. It was frighteningly good. This Christmas they gave us the first stand-alone story in the Star Wars anthology in the form of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

It is frighteningly good. Rogue One is a proper Star Wars movie - it is a space opera and, mainly, it is a gritty war drama. It is a look at more everyday sort of people on the ground living under the imperial shadow, it is a look at normal soldiers fighting in the resistance. Rogue One is the story of people making good choices and bad choices at a time when things aren’t as black and white as they seem in the main movies. The Rebellion we see in Rogue One is not the one that we see in A New Hope and the means they use to get things done are questionable at times. This movie is the story of how hope is made possible for the story in A New Hope.

A different perspective

Rogue One is the story of how the Rebellion acquired the plans for the Death Star and you could watch it and almost seamlessly transition into A New Hope. We have always seen Star Wars from the perspective of the Skywalker family and the characters surrounding them and one forgets that both the Rebellion and the Empire are made up of more than just those characters and that both entities came about as a result of the intelligence, industry, courage and sacrifice of many people. The Erso family is at the heart of Rogue One’s story and it opens with Galen Erso, a brilliant scientist who once worked for the Empire, in hiding with his family. They are tracked down and he is forced back into working on the Death Star project as he is critical to its success. Our protagonist, Jyn Erso’s character is forged against this backdrop. She has grown up without her family and never really sure where she stands in the conflict between the Rebellion and the Empire. The rest of the characters are also quite amazing, even though you will not really remember anyone’s name the first time around, except for the droid, K-2SO. The other thing Rogue One does is a lot more exploring of a galaxy far, far away than any of the other movies. You visit more planets in the first few minutes of this movie than all of Force Awakens. It’s nice to be introduced to more parts of the galaxy.

Straightforward plot

The plot is quite straightforward in that this is the story of how the rebels acquire the plans to the Death Star. Our rag-tag team of heroes consists of conflicted Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), equally conflicted rebel intelligence officer, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna); the badass blind warrior Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen) and his friend Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen), former imperial pilot Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed) and the lovably snarky droid, K-2SO (Alan Tudyk). Mads Mikkelsen and Forest Whitaker brilliantly portray Galen Erso and Saw Garrera respectively. Expect to see some other familiar faces as well. The immediate villain is Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), an ambitious officer in the Empire who heads up the Death Star project but working under immense pressure from his superiors to get the project complete on time. In the background you have the menace of the emperor being hinted at and Darth Vader making very memorable appearances.

Perfect tie-in with Star Wars universe

Even though this is a stand-alone story, it ties in perfectly with the Star Wars universe and if you are a fan, you will find Easter eggs for the prequels, the original trilogy and the expanded universe. I went to see Rogue One with a friend of mine who’s not seen the other Star Wars movies and he liked it but at the end he’s like, “Will they destroy the Death Star in the next movie?” I had to explain to him that they did that in 1977 already. So all-in-all, Rogue One is a brilliant addition to the Star Wars universe and director, Gareth Edwards and his crew delivered the goods in terms of story, visuals, pacing and the score. At times they try and force the connection to A New Hope too much but in a manner you can forgive. I will go as far as to say that Rogue One is right up there with Empire Strikes Back and that it is even slightly better than The Force Awakens.

The movies in review: A look back at 2015

The movies in review: A look back at 2015

Hi Blogger buddies,

I am closing my year in style by taking a look back at 2015 at the movies over at my other goodbuddies' house, Bizcommunity.com. Check out my article there.

All I can say is merry Star Wars! Christmas can take a backseat this year ;).

Comic-Con 2015 Geekgasms

So Comic-Con 2015 has come and gone and as per usual we were teased with comicy goodness that had us salivating for more and now we have to wait for all that good stuff to come out. But being the industrious geeks we are we will spend the next few months speculating about every little detail in all the trailers we saw.

Here are some of the stuff I thought was cool and look forward to:

Well, Star Wars is obviously going to be the biggest deal for me because that's how my geekiness was born. I have a love/hate relationship with the old movies but I constantly returned to them and I always wanted more of the stories and often read up on all the non-canon lore to get my fix. The Phantom Menace is rather silly but I still watched the nonsense out of it and collected the posters and figurines. Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith were okay for me but the old movies were still the most fun, especially The Empire Strikes Back, I love that movie. Looking at this reel from Comic-Con it looks like The Force Awakens is really a labour of love for everyone working on the film. It also looks like J.J. Abrams and his team are making Star Wars fun again, which is great because that's what Star Wars should be. Nobody cared for Anakin's pained facial expressions, what when we had cool shit like Boba Fett, R2-D2 and Chewie dammit!

Marvel have become so big with their Marvel Cinematic Universe that they don't even need to bother showing up at Comic-Con anymore. This gave DC a great chance to show off some things they have planned and although it was not the best showing (they really should have gone bigger with Marvel not being there to hog all the attention) this trailer for Batman V Superman has me a little excited. Man of Steel was more of a miss than a hit and lots of people don't have much faith in the whole Batfleck situation but this trailer gives me some hope. Zack Snyder is good with the darker and more serious stuff, which is why Man of Steel didn't go down so well but add a Frank Miller, The Dark Knight Returns sort of Batman to the mix and maybe that dark tone can work. I love what Snyder did with Watchmen and the political stuff happening with Super Man in this trailer is very reminiscent of that. Then we also have Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and we know Snyder is not the greatest with how he represents female characters so that could really go any way. I'm really hoping this one is good though, we deserve a good movie with Superman in it. Do good for us, Mr Snyder and crew.

Then there is Suicide Squad and from what I can see in the trailer I'm sold. I can roll with all this silliness. People seem not to be reacting so well to Jared Leto's Joker but I think it can work. Really, this whole thing looks so ridiculous that I can't wait to see it. I'm also pretty much cool with how the members of the squad turned out. Margot Robbie looks fun and sexy as Harley Quinn. Will Smith makes for a decent Deadshot and we have the wonderful Viola Davis as Amanda Waller. I have always thought that in a world of ridiculous villains Captain Boomerang is still quite silly but it works for him and Jai Courtney looks quite cool as the character. The way Adewale Arkinnuoye-Agbaje's Killer Croc looks reminds me of the character in Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo's Joker graphic novel. So, yeah, I'm pretty hyped about this one.

The official trailer may not be released yet but from the leaked versions floating around the interwebs Deadpool was probably the coolest thing at Comic-Con this year. I'll dare say that it was even cooler than Star Wars in some regards. The Merc With a Mouth has always been a fan favourite and it's good to see that it looks like 20th Century Fox will be doing right by him.

Those are my Comic-Con highlights and there were loads of other stuff to see and love that will be all over the interwebs by now. All I can say is cheers to the next few years of geeky goodness :).