It’s official: everybody who is going to spend real fiat money to watch the latest Star Whores abomination already has. There will be no further audiovisual spoiler warnings.
To my surprise, I liked the movie more than expected. Perhaps it reminded me of my childhood misspent on B-movies from the SciFi Channel back when it wasn’t spelled Sy-Stargate-Will-Never-Die-Fy Channel. Perhaps it was the warm feeling I got, knowing that even on the worst days I have a better job than the poor CGI monkeys trying to ward off the justified yet impotent death threats from nerds over the corruption of their childhood memories. But mostly, it was that even unchecked, peak feminism couldn’t hide its need for patriarchy. You will never find a more wretched hive of backhanded compliments!
The plot is a standard love triangle. Kylo Ren is the dark, brooding, billionaire sociopath who has the galaxy at his feet yet can’t get Mary Sue out of his mind. (Literally; the two have unwanted telepathic conversations. In one of them, Mary Sue begs him to cover his bodybuilder torso with a shirt.) Finn is Huckleberry Finn pre-fitted with a dog collar, promising Mary Sue endless freedom, new experiences and puppy-like love. Complete with puppy piddle. It was his introductory scene. Sigh.
Advancing the plot beyond the storyboard of Titanic is Mark Hamil’s performance as an older & wiser Luke Skywalker. This reviewer accepts Mr. Hamil’s apology: he didn’t have a choice in how to portray the character if he wanted to keep that bushel of cash. Anyway, Skywalker trained Kylo Ren in the Jedi arts and screwed up so badly that he exiled himself and refuses to train Mary Sue when she arrives, not wanting to unleash another Ren upon the galaxy. In the first backhanded compliment to masculinity, Mary Sue badgers Skywalker into training her anyway. After one lesson, she goes Kylo Ren on him for the sake of Kylo Ren exactly as he’d feared. Lesson to men: if she won’t take no for an answer then ghost yourself. You were right the first time. Don’t give Pussy a chance to break you.
The most significant character is Poe Dameron, X-Wing squadron leader and ambassador of potentially homosexual Arabs. Dubious origins notwithstanding, he does an amazing job of demonstrating how utterly dependent even purple-haired female admirals are upon the patient endurance of Men Who Don’t Listen to Women. At the movie’s start, the Resistance is cornered by an entire fleet of Star Destroyers. Poe has a daring Trojan horse/bombing run gambit that he executes in defiance of General Leia’s orders to not attack. He succeeds and is promptly demoted for saving the Resistance against heavy odds. Backhanded compliment to men #2: “Don’t save us if it makes female leadership look bad!”
So it’s “General” Leia now? Not Princess? Goodbye fresh, desirable white man’s bikini-clad sex toy whose being chained to an intelligent slug gave hope to millions of nonathletic computer experts. Hello, General “Botox” Organa who is now in charge of the… fleet? One of the most enjoyable scenes of the movie was watching her get sucked into space where nobody could hear her pout.
Later, when said fleet of Star Destroyers has the last four ships of the Resistance on the run in the middle of deep space, Poe discovers the purple-haired admiral succeeding General Botox has not only sacrificed her escorts for no gain but is fueling up unarmed transports to stave off inevitable defeat for just a couple more hours. Frustrated at the female admiral’s uselessness, he mutinies to give his own plan, recruiting and deploying a superhacker, enough time to work.
Turns out that the admiral did have a plan: an invisible planet in the middle of deep space nowhere that had a fully stocked yet unmanned Rebel base. I guess they don’t award the Purple Hair for keeping your subordinates informed. “Don’t worry, Barbie has a spare, secret planet in her purse! That’s why we don’t need men running the show!” Backhanded compliment to men #3.
The movie is, of course, very heavily politicized. In the Expanded Universe, there was a Rebellion because the galactic government was usurped by a politician so evil that he literally shot Evil out of his fingers as lightning. That explained why the Rebellion was funded & supplied well enough to be a credible threat to the Grand Army of the Republic.
In Mickey Mouse’s Universe, however, white men seem to run everything well–if unimaginatively–and there’s a Resistance whose purpose is defined by a refusal to, uh, act white & male, I suppose. This explains why the Resistance’s funding amounts to one cruiser with escorts and a week’s worth of fuel. This seems insufficient to conquer the galaxy but General Leia assures the audience, repeatedly, that if only they “get the signal out there” all the peoples of the galaxy will unite against the benign threat of the First Order. Backhanded compliment to men #4: If we only tell people they don’t have to be ruled by white men then they’ll volunteer to live as unpaid fugitive thugs like us!
Let me stop the humor for a paragraph to cover an openly Satanic message here. The people the Resistance is trying to contact and encourage to revolt are… children. That is not cool. A piece of advice from this Christian to all Social Justice slimeballs: you want to fight me, that’s business. You want to whisper lies to my children behind my back so they fight me, that’s personal and you are fuckwitted parasitic cowards that cannot go to Eternal Hell fast enough. Leave our children alone. This means you, you media Elites that spew out so much feminazi trash that we Christians have to raise our kids off the grid.
Resuming our cheerful assault upon bad taste, the climax of the movie has the most poignant, soul-touching scene of Female Backseat Driver ever offered by cinema. Holed up inside the underground base, the transports’ survivors of the cruiser’s survivors of the fleet’s survivors of the Resistance base’s survivors (are we winning yet?) are protected by a massive blast shield. The First Order deploys a ‘battering ram blaster’ to open the can. The survivors deploy speeders to take it out.
The outnumbered & outgunned frontal assault fails at Internet speed. Finn correctly assesses that the last option for victory is a suicide run into the Doomsday Machine a la Commodore Decker. He lines up for it, gooses his speeder’s throttle and is knocked away at the last second by sidekick Fat Asian Chick’s speeder. They crash, the Doomsday Machine fires, the shield is breached, the base falls and the base’s survivors of the transports’ survivors are able to escape in the Millennium Falcon–at this point, it has enough space for everybody–only because Skywalker jacks into the Matrix at the last second to fight a delaying action.
Fat Asian Chick dies in her self-inflicted wreckage telling Finn “this is how we’ll win”. No, you stupid fat Asian Chick, thanks to you we are still not winning. Backhanded compliment to men #5: saving the one you care about by damning 1,000 is not how men do business.
My favorite scene in the movie was in the hacker subplot. (Sorry I’ve forgotten names; it’s been three days since I’ve seen the movie and most of the characters were not very memorable. What was the protagonist’s name again? Jane?) Hacker has a conversation with Finn:
“These guys get rich off selling weapons to the First Order…”
*Hacker displays various TIE fighter models. Finn looks angry. Then Hacker displays an X-Wing fighter.*
“…and selling weapons to the Resistance.”
Oops. An entire subplot describing Meanie One Percenter Arms Dealers, poof. How dare they sell us weapons! We should have to get them from… uh, from… from the Arms Dealers, but how dare they profit from helping us out! They should sell us bombers out of the goodness in their hearts! I tell ya, there’s a black knight embedded at the highest levels of DisneyCorp. We are not alone. Our signal will be heard!