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sophia_sol) wrote2016-01-03 11:18 am
sophia_sol) wrote2016-01-03 11:18 am
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Star Wars original trilogy!
OKAY THERE I have now watched the original trilogy of star wars as well! I had a deadline for myself: I'm seeing The Force Awakens again on Monday (my dad wants to see it, and I was totally amenable to seeing it twice) so I wanted to see the originals before then, to be able to understand the new movie with the depth of context.
This meant I have watched a lot of movies in one week! Which is PRETTY WEIRD for me.
At any rate, I really did enjoy the original trilogy, and more than I expected to? There were some tedious bits (eg the entire opening sequence of Episode VI with Jabba the Hutt, and all the extended fighting sequences in the movies) but overall they were really enjoyable.
I came into these movies with a lot of pop culture informing me what to expect. But pop culture didn't tell me everything! The five things that surprised me most about the original trilogy:
1. Darth Vader is not in fact the person in charge of his side of the conflict; he's working for an emperor! This feels weird and wrong; he's the big bad our heroes have to face and destroy, and the emperor is almost an afterthought, but Vader is doing nothing but following the emperor's instructions. Okay then.
2. Relatedly, Vader gets turned to the side of the light at the end! He's not actually an embodiment of pure evil, but is tempted by the light!
3. The "I love you" / "I know" dialogue happens in both directions between Han and Leia! I like this a lot better than what I thought their whole romance would be like.
4. The whole business with the Death Star happens twice in three movies! Seems a little silly to me.
5. Apparently droids - despite their clear sentience - all belong to people and don't get to have independent existence. This....is really uncomfortable. Basically droids are slaves then? Our heroes keep sentient beings as possessions? ugh.
My most important thoughts/feels about these movies, though, are how much I now care about the characters??? I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. Even Luke, who definitely took a while to grow on me. As I told twitter, "2 movies in, apparently Luke Skywalker's growing on me. He's still too much a generic everyman mc of a bildungsroman but I like him anyway?" Which pretty much sums up my feels. I don't know why I'm fond of him! But I am. What an earnest impulsive naive dorkface.
I was also surprised by how much I liked Han! I went in expecting to like him, but then in the first couple movies I kept being annoyed by how strong he was coming on to Leia, and not really respecting her. But he came around to being a reasonable person on the subject of Leia, and continued being his amazingly ridiculous self in all other ways (THIS GIFSET OMG), and now I'm fully on board with him.
Leia I also went in expecting to like, and expectations were correct there! She's so great. (and she has so many great hairstyles over the course of the movies! WHAT, HAIR IS IMPORTANT.) It was interesting, though, seeing how the movies treated her: there was the expected sexism, but also unexpected allowances of strength and agency from her. The movies couldn't decide how sexist to be, I guess!
I wasn't expecting the droids to be such a major presence in the movies, and I found them kind of annoying? But this might be in part because C3PO was the character I most identify with....... constantly worried about what's going on, not particularly brave, and clever but hardly ever saying the right thing.
Yoda is REALLY annoying.
Lando was a completely unexpected character - he's got a fairly major role in the second and third movies, and yet I never heard of him? But I was super fond of him! He's great.
Chewbacca was everything I'd hoped for, based on that one Chewbacca/Jack Harkness fic (you know the one. shut up.). I love HOW OFTEN he's making loud commentary that's clearly unimpressed that nobody but Han can understand! Probably he feels free to say as much as he does because he's got the security of knowing no one else will understand. And yet despite how unimpressed with Han's everything he is, the two of them really genuinely care about each other.
I really liked that brief humanizing moment (iirc in Empire Strikes Back) where a captain of the empire tells his co-officer something like, "I will apologize to Vader and accept responsibility" after they fail to do something Vader had commanded. And you can tell that both he and the dude he's talking to know that this means the captain's death and both of them are too stoic to say anything about it. I like that this person on the side of evil gets to have this brief moment of honour and self-sacrifice on behalf of his men. (also it's a great indication of HOW MUCH it must suck to work under Vader. Vader's such a bad leader!)
In thoughts that aren't related to characters, I really enjoyed that there was a theme in the soundtrack that I could reliably recognise (the imperial march) because it was super fun playing attention to all the different ways it shows up, and how different it can sound. There's even a brief bit of a remarkably sad/quiet version at Vader's death scene! It makes me wish I were better at recognising recurring themes in soundtracks in general.
In conclusion: practically everyone has told me firmly to avoid the prequels so....I'm definitely going to watch the prequels. Probably not with nearly as much speed as I watched the original trilogy, though, since I don't have a deadline! Stay tuned for my opinions there.
This meant I have watched a lot of movies in one week! Which is PRETTY WEIRD for me.
At any rate, I really did enjoy the original trilogy, and more than I expected to? There were some tedious bits (eg the entire opening sequence of Episode VI with Jabba the Hutt, and all the extended fighting sequences in the movies) but overall they were really enjoyable.
I came into these movies with a lot of pop culture informing me what to expect. But pop culture didn't tell me everything! The five things that surprised me most about the original trilogy:
1. Darth Vader is not in fact the person in charge of his side of the conflict; he's working for an emperor! This feels weird and wrong; he's the big bad our heroes have to face and destroy, and the emperor is almost an afterthought, but Vader is doing nothing but following the emperor's instructions. Okay then.
2. Relatedly, Vader gets turned to the side of the light at the end! He's not actually an embodiment of pure evil, but is tempted by the light!
3. The "I love you" / "I know" dialogue happens in both directions between Han and Leia! I like this a lot better than what I thought their whole romance would be like.
4. The whole business with the Death Star happens twice in three movies! Seems a little silly to me.
5. Apparently droids - despite their clear sentience - all belong to people and don't get to have independent existence. This....is really uncomfortable. Basically droids are slaves then? Our heroes keep sentient beings as possessions? ugh.
My most important thoughts/feels about these movies, though, are how much I now care about the characters??? I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. Even Luke, who definitely took a while to grow on me. As I told twitter, "2 movies in, apparently Luke Skywalker's growing on me. He's still too much a generic everyman mc of a bildungsroman but I like him anyway?" Which pretty much sums up my feels. I don't know why I'm fond of him! But I am. What an earnest impulsive naive dorkface.
I was also surprised by how much I liked Han! I went in expecting to like him, but then in the first couple movies I kept being annoyed by how strong he was coming on to Leia, and not really respecting her. But he came around to being a reasonable person on the subject of Leia, and continued being his amazingly ridiculous self in all other ways (THIS GIFSET OMG), and now I'm fully on board with him.
Leia I also went in expecting to like, and expectations were correct there! She's so great. (and she has so many great hairstyles over the course of the movies! WHAT, HAIR IS IMPORTANT.) It was interesting, though, seeing how the movies treated her: there was the expected sexism, but also unexpected allowances of strength and agency from her. The movies couldn't decide how sexist to be, I guess!
I wasn't expecting the droids to be such a major presence in the movies, and I found them kind of annoying? But this might be in part because C3PO was the character I most identify with....... constantly worried about what's going on, not particularly brave, and clever but hardly ever saying the right thing.
Yoda is REALLY annoying.
Lando was a completely unexpected character - he's got a fairly major role in the second and third movies, and yet I never heard of him? But I was super fond of him! He's great.
Chewbacca was everything I'd hoped for, based on that one Chewbacca/Jack Harkness fic (you know the one. shut up.). I love HOW OFTEN he's making loud commentary that's clearly unimpressed that nobody but Han can understand! Probably he feels free to say as much as he does because he's got the security of knowing no one else will understand. And yet despite how unimpressed with Han's everything he is, the two of them really genuinely care about each other.
I really liked that brief humanizing moment (iirc in Empire Strikes Back) where a captain of the empire tells his co-officer something like, "I will apologize to Vader and accept responsibility" after they fail to do something Vader had commanded. And you can tell that both he and the dude he's talking to know that this means the captain's death and both of them are too stoic to say anything about it. I like that this person on the side of evil gets to have this brief moment of honour and self-sacrifice on behalf of his men. (also it's a great indication of HOW MUCH it must suck to work under Vader. Vader's such a bad leader!)
In thoughts that aren't related to characters, I really enjoyed that there was a theme in the soundtrack that I could reliably recognise (the imperial march) because it was super fun playing attention to all the different ways it shows up, and how different it can sound. There's even a brief bit of a remarkably sad/quiet version at Vader's death scene! It makes me wish I were better at recognising recurring themes in soundtracks in general.
In conclusion: practically everyone has told me firmly to avoid the prequels so....I'm definitely going to watch the prequels. Probably not with nearly as much speed as I watched the original trilogy, though, since I don't have a deadline! Stay tuned for my opinions there.