by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright December 2015, July 2016
Star Wars: The Force Awakens feels like a straightforward repeat of the first Star Wars movies. There is a lot of imagination in the settings being portrayed, but the story being told is pretty much the same one with a new generation of young heroes, heroines and villains mixing in with the old generation stars. And with all this warm and fuzzy familiarity comes a whole lot of internal inconsistency in the story telling.
Very similar in its style of mixing great settings and serious story inconsistency is Star Trek Beyond. I really enjoyed the sets and settings in this movie. They showed a lot of innovation and imagination. But how the space ships move around is straight out of 1950's low budget science fiction movies. And the story is likewise very, very familiar.
The story is very familiar. Sadly, when producers are telling a familiar story they allow themselves a lot of what they call poetic licence -- what I call internal inconsistencies -- in how the story is told. These bother me, they don't help. Here are some examples of the internal inconsistencies.
o Even though the rebels have won as of Episode VI, this new dark side feels just as powerful as The Emperor did in the IV-VI Episodes, and in the same ways. These bad guys aren't recovering, they are still just as much on top. One of the indicators of this is that the Death Star has been replaced by... an even bigger Death Star! that operates in just the same way, as in, blowing up helpless planets with a single blast. And it is killed in just the same way, by finding an internal weakness to exploit and blowing it up.
o This is taking place, what, forty years later, and the technologies haven't changed. The grubby trading posts are grubby in the same ways as they were in IV. The Tie Fighters and X-wings are the same as they were in IV. And the Millennium Falcon plays the same role. What has changed is the settings that the people and equipment are moving through are portrayed more elaborately -- that's it. By comparison, think of the difference between WWI aircraft and WWII aircraft. That's a forty year difference as well.
o The new Death Star is particularly annoying because this is... what... the third try at making Death Star technology work. The internals are the same, the ship design is the same, the crew is the same, the gun installations are the same... these bad guys haven't learned a thing! And because of that the rebels don't have to learn a thing, either -- just send in a mix of X-wings to distract while heroes and heroines take advantage of a vulnerability. It's all so much the same. [sigh] The biggest difference is: Now being a Death Star crew member is like being a Red Shirt in Star Trek.
These are some examples of the inconsistencies that are rife all through this movie. The producers get away with this because they are telling such a familiar story. But I notice these (as you can tell) and they detract from the story. The reason I care is that the less internally consistent a story is, the less reason I find to pay attention to it because it is not revealing anything new to me. The less internally consistent it is the more its strength rests on familiarity. Using script story writing terminology: This is a case of story arc turning into story circle -- it's not going anywhere.
Another thing that strengthens the circle aspect is trend-following. In addition to familiarity this movie is deep into the 2010's trend of making everything a family issue. (This trend is so hot this year that even the James Bond series succumbed in this summer's Spectre movie.) This means that this galaxy far, far away is transforming into a place as worldly and cosmopolitan as backwoods Arkansas.
In Star Trek the Yorktown Star Base settings were a wonder to watch. I loved the convolutedness and the juxtaposition of many different environments. A lot of loving creativity and imagination was allowed to flow in creating these sets. Congrats on that.
The sets worked well but here are some inconsistency problems.
o These starships fly down to planet surfaces (and crash on them) like they were as tough as tanks. This is a problem because aircraft and space craft are designed to be as lightweight as possible so they can fly as fast as possible. Designing them to be tough enough to fly through cliffs is inconsistent. Designing them to even fly through atmospheres is inconsistent. This is why these ships are equipped with landing shuttles and transporters.
o It seems that the Enterprise prop creating people have an on-going contest: for each movie they try to see how many more holes they can put into the ship when it gets attacked and looses. Back in the original TV show days, one volley of shots was fired and the enemy ship was totally disintegrated in the next scene -- short, sweet, and internally consistent with having powerful weapons. In these newer incarnations the weapons seem to have about as much damaging power as pieces of bubblegum twanged away with rubber bands. And what happened to the defensive power of shields? In this movie there is some talk of them, but no sign of them doing anything.
o How many times has the Enterprise been trashed now? How many times does it come back as just the same ship -- a ship with no changes or improvements? I guess rebooting the series can offer some explanation for this, but the Enterprise has now been trashed more times than the Death Star.
o The Yorktown's defenses seem scanty and ill-prepared for dealing with the unknown.
o The scenes of going in and out of the rock-filled nebula seem to be there mostly to show starships dodging rocks, kind of. Again, this is starships being too tough, and it also not using warp drive or transporters in clever ways.
These movies are warm and fuzzy experiences if you are an enthusiast of the mythologies. Yes, they will take you back. In Star Wars the old stars are back, and mixing in nicely with a new generation of heroes, heroines and villains in a very familiar story track. In Star Trek the old characters are back in a very familiar story track.
But for me this is a problem: there is nothing new in these stories. In Star Wars is the IV-VI episodes all over again. In Star Trek it is trashing the Enterprise on a lonely planet's surface all over again. In both cases because the story is a familiar and loved one, the producers have let a lot of internal inconsistency and trendiness slip in as they have retold it.
So for me these are not much of an addition to either series because no new ground is being covered. I remember the first Star Wars movies and the early Star Treks just fine, thank you.
All of the above said, I am impressed with the deeply enthusiastic responses of the viewers. This is Lesson Learned time for me. The magnitude of this enthusiasm has surprised me.
So I give a hearty applause to Lucas, Roddenberry, Disney and Paramount for first creating and then sustaining what have become the strongest mythologies of the 2010's. The magnitude of the sales and the magnitude of the interest I see on social media and in other settings are both surprising to me.
These creators have discovered and impressively exploited fantastic veins of mythology. Again, congratulations to all of the above and those who have worked with them for some impressively inspiring work.
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