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S01E21: Refresh with a Sequel Rookie!
42 Plays1 year ago
What's it like to watch The Force Awakens for the umpteenth time... with someone who has never seen it before? Join Bob and his coworkers Ben and Phil for a fresh look at Episode 7!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
We're auditioned on Star Wars Episode 7 with somebody who has just seen it for the first time. Grab your droids and broods, it's the Star Wars Cleaning Crew. Welcome back to the Star Wars Cleaning Crew.
Phil's Star Wars Viewing History
00:00:11
Speaker
You know, this last weekend I was together with my co-workers Ben, who you already met when we had our episode about the Galactic Star Cruiser. And Phil, who you haven't met, but he is part of our team and he is a big movie guy. He and I are always talking about movies. so Well, through the course of the weekend, we realized that Phil had never seen episode seven or eight or nine for that matter.
Plans for Rewatching Episode 7
00:00:35
Speaker
He has seen Star Wars episodes one through six and he has seen Rogue One, but he hadn't seen anything else. So we thought it would be fun to do a rewatch of episode seven for Phil. It was the first time and then talk about it and get his reaction and hear what Ben thought about it with his background in philosophy and me being a big Star Wars nerd. so
00:00:57
Speaker
That is what we are going to share with you here today.
Spoiler Alert for Episode 7
00:01:01
Speaker
just yeah I can't imagine that anybody who pays attention to this podcast has not seen episode seven. But if you haven't, you don't want to listen to this. Spoilers all over the place. And the biggest spoiler is where we're going to start. So let's turn over to our conversation with Phil and Ben right now.
Phil's Reaction to Han Solo's Death
00:01:21
Speaker
Phil, what did you think? RIP Han Solo.
00:01:27
Speaker
i saw it and i went I looked at you both and obviously you had both seen it. I'm sure multiple times I was like, the pain is still fresh. Yeah. It's it's tragic.
Kylo Ren's Inner Conflict Debate
00:01:39
Speaker
So you had no idea that was coming. You you hadn't heard that that was part of the story. No. Okay. No. Yeah. Cause I was looking at your reaction and I thought that was a surprise for you. Yeah. And also like by his own son. Yeah. That was just, there's a lot of layers to that. I didn't know, you know, when you sort of feel like something bad's going to happen in a movie.
00:01:59
Speaker
And I'm like, I don't know what's going to happen, but like when they were sort of, you know, when they sort of both holding the lightsaber and I was like, Hmm, I don't know. It is. This feels a little too neat. Like in the storm, she were going to come or something, you know, and he does that. And that's so much more, I think the stakes of that now, like the repercussions of that are so much deeper than it was just some random kill. Yeah, absolutely.
00:02:21
Speaker
I was watching it again tonight and, you know, whenever I rewatch that and I get to that scene, I always am wondering, was Kylo Ren kind of on the verge of turning back to the light and it was just like at the last second? Because there's that very clear visual image where the Starkiller base, you know, is done charging and the sun goes away so it goes black.
00:02:46
Speaker
And it's kind of like you see at that moment that he gets his resolve to actually do it. But I wonder, you know, was it that the whole time he was planning on killing him and he just did it or was he really, really waffling in that moment? ah You know, I still don't know. What what do you think from watching it?
00:03:04
Speaker
It feels like, I think from when I was watching in sort of the way I think it's framed in the editing, it felt like he was waffling back and forth. But then I feel like that was how I felt maybe when I was thinking about it afterwards. But then I think the ending when he's kind of, when he just very simple, like, thank you, I believe is what he says. yeah it feels It feels like he was going to do it all along, I think, from that. That's just my kind of my thought on it. I think from the beginning of the interaction when he saw him, I think that's what he intended to do, even though I think it's framed and edited to make the audience think that he's waffling. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
00:03:40
Speaker
So, Ben, when we were talking about doing this tonight, you already like other parts of that that I don't like. but I was like, what's what? You know, there's so much because it's been so many years, you know, the diatribe and all that kind of stuff. But then you said it's, you know, the bridge scene. So like, what is your reaction to that scene?
Legacy of Star Wars Heroes
00:03:58
Speaker
I just I think the bridge scene is how to put it. How do we want to retire our heroes? That's the question I want people to be thinking about when they look at this.
00:04:10
Speaker
when they look at, frankly, the next two movies, what is it that you expect when we come to revisit our heroes these many years later? What kinds of things do you want to see? And the things I want to see are I want to see character growth. I want to see that in the time we've been away from them, they've continued to grow and change. I don't think it has to be all positive. It can't be like it's all wins. That wouldn't be honest. But at the same time, I don't expect them to kind of lose all the ground they gained in the in the original stories we met them in. And that was one of the things I really felt was going on in in a lot of this movie. You know, and like, oh, I guess we're back to the Empire again under a different name. And I guess we're back to, um you know, a big round
00:04:54
Speaker
uh, you know, death ball that's gonna be shooting people, right? Right. And so here we are. We're gonna bring this down to this bridge scene. This is where we're gonna decide what the ultimate legacy of Han Solo is. Is he going to do something amazing as a father figure and kind of get it right? Or is he gonna do, unfortunately, what we saw? Which, frankly, I don't know if there was some combination of things he could have said or done differently.
00:05:23
Speaker
I think the performance by Harrison Ford, of course, is amazing. And there's real moments where I really feel that character in the movie of Han Solo. And I was like, it's him. It's that guy. At the same time, here we are on the bridge. And I think that we're supposed to think at the beginning of the scene that there's still a chance.
00:05:44
Speaker
Well, they've set that up, right? Lee is saying, you know, if you see our boy, bring him home. Right. So they are kind of hinting that that there's still some light in him. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think it's in a certain sense, what we're left with is, all right, is Han Solo going to find a way to kindle that, to support that, to use that to bring his son into a better place? And ultimately he fails. He gets light sabered, falls into an abyss, and Han Solo is done.
00:06:15
Speaker
And I suppose the thing that kind of goes, is Oh, so essentially what we got in this movie is Han Solo fails as a father. He failed as a husband because he didn't figure out a way to.
00:06:26
Speaker
make his relationship with the way it worked. And then he kind of just goes out and that's it. And I just didn't want that for this great character who, when we meet him in for the very first time in episode four, he's a selfish, self-seeking scoundrel. He has all this character growth and these great moments. And by the time we're done, he's a hero of the rebellion. And what's he going to be after that? I don't know, but I didn't expect this.
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, I think if you think that the but about the moment when Return of the Jedi ends, and he and Leia are together, that's a bad couple. And they obviously, if you think about in Han's mind, in Han's time, because he spent so much time frozen in carbonite, right? He's certain with her during Empire Strikes Back, you know, they finally have this kiss, I love you, I know.
00:07:17
Speaker
then he goes to sleep and then he wakes up in the middle of a crisis. Gotta get Luke, second death star, we've got this mission, all this kind of stuff. And then he gets to play, it's like, okay, wow, this is great. If you go out and read one of the follow-up books, they get married like two weeks later on Endor and there's Ewoks all around and and all that kind of stuff. Like marriage made to fail. And so I felt in watching this that it felt more real and it felt more human. Like this is what probably would have happened. yeah And I could see that, I could see it going that way. As far as Han goes, you know, I think in this movie, we are starting to see his path back to redemption. Starting off with him finding the Falcon again, the chewy we're home moment, like, okay, he's coming back. And Maz even says, you know, you've been turning your back on this fight for too long. It's time for you to come back into this fight. You can even see him kind of,
00:08:14
Speaker
rekindling that relationship with Leia like maybe they're gonna have a healthy relationship from here on in and maybe he's gonna get his kid back and then yeah it gets cut short and that does suck but it also does seem real to me and it also seems like you said it raises the stakes tremendously and so from the storytelling point of view I can appreciate it the one thing that's weird though is Star Wars is a fairy tale. I mean, it's basically yeah you know a long time to go in a galaxy far, far away. This type of thing doesn't happen in a fairy tale. right So that kind of broke the pattern that we were used to.
00:08:53
Speaker
um which you know I think it's interesting. it's a I mean, I think I said this at the beginning. I think I said tragic. It feels more like a tragedy absolutely than it does like a fairy tale. And I agree that Star Wars is typically set up for those types of stories. I think your point about it being realistic is kind of what I was thinking about when Ben was talking. I was like, I think it feels too clean. And um you know you can sort of operate in ifs, right? But if they were to do something really clean where Kylo Ren comes back,
00:09:22
Speaker
and he rekindles his relationship with Leia. It doesn't necessarily feel realistic. I don't know. Maybe it doesn't feel earned even. I don't know. I agree that it's tragic and that his redemption arc gets cut short, but you clearly see that he's not the same Han from New Hope. I agree. I think what I kept thinking as I was watching this again and like you, Bob, I watched it a bunch of times when it first came out, sat there, thought about it, chewed over it with my Star Wars buddies, yeah you know. And what I came away with on this viewing was I thought, this is actually the second movie. There should have been an earlier movie setting up a lot of stuff like, who's this guy, Snoke? Why is there first order? What the hell is going on? There was an awful lot that happened in that opening crawl yeah that we didn't get to see. And then stuff that wasn't even mentioned in the crawl like Snoke and all that.
00:10:11
Speaker
I do agree with that. It feels in media arrests. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. So Phil, what were some of your other reactions to the movie aside from the Han Solo death? I really liked how they set up the sort of I said, and I assume sort of our two kind of leads rather than three, I suppose, three leads kind of going into the next two movies.
Character Development of Rey, Finn, and Poe
00:10:32
Speaker
So Ray and Finn. Yeah.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah. Ray and Finn and Poe. And i I think, you know, clearly with Ray, you can see a lot of similarities between her and Han, and you can sort of feel like there's that relation to the starting to build between them, you know, some kind of like father-daughter, and clearly she has her own family, which hasn't really been talked about, but clearly a family that she's waiting for and is not reunited with. I think with Finn, he does feel a little bit underdeveloped to a degree. I think the focus in terms of like character development in this one is, Ray, mostly Poe is just a cool guy.
00:11:02
Speaker
He was just that he was badass. He is. yeah And Oscar Isaac's performance is great. He's great. Yeah. I didn't know he was in this one. Oh, you didn't? and And sometimes when I see big stars at the beginning of movies, I sometimes think they're going to do a scream and they're going to kill them off in the first 10 minutes. Yeah. And that's what I thought. was I was like, oh, OK, cool. And then they're going to set up the stakes that nobody is safe in this movie, which works really well. But I think he's i i think he's great. I'm excited to see where they take it with Bray.
00:11:32
Speaker
yeah Yeah, you know in the original draft of this Poe actually does die in the TIE fighter crash and Oscar Isaac didn't want to do it because he was like I've just been in two meetings two movies where I got knocked off at the very beginning of it I don't want to do it and then JJ Abrams was like Wait, no, we're we're changing it. We're going to keep you alive through the whole thing.
Critique of Rehashed Themes in Episode 7
00:11:51
Speaker
yeah so and Which I thought was the right decision, because he's a really fun character. Yeah. i do I do understand your point. I think you made it a little earlier, which is it does feel a little bit like a rehashing of original Death Star. yeah um I think callbacks are fun. And I'm sure for for fans of it, right you know of the legacy of it, who have seen it over multiple viewings, over multiple years, it's great. But i even for someone, I would consider myself a casual fan. right i've seen
00:12:17
Speaker
you know the first six and I've seen Rogue One, it feels a little bit like a lazy is the wrong word, but sort of a rehashing and not necessarily entirely original.
00:12:28
Speaker
I think that's my biggest complaint about this movie. You know, after thinking about that for a number of years, George Lucas says, you know, one one of the things about Star Wars is it rhymes things that happened in one movie. You kind of see it again in another movie. And it's this epic storytelling sense of rhyming and like, okay, I can kind of buy that. That's what JJ was trying to do here.
00:12:52
Speaker
But it's just too much. It's just a little, you know, you've got the the McGuffin is the plans in the droid. You've got a Cantina scene. You've got a big depth ball with X-wings taking it out. it It really is just kind of too much of hitting those same beats over and over again.
00:13:12
Speaker
And that makes me a little bit sad. I do think that one of the things that JJ was trying to do, because remember when this movie first came out, everybody was still hating the prequels. So he was trying to say like, okay, we're going back to the original Star Wars. And I remember the very first moment when Poe is captured and in front of Kylo Ren, and he says, okay, who talks now? Do I talk first? Do you talk first? At that moment, I remember watching it the first time and getting the biggest grin on my face.
00:13:42
Speaker
Cause I was like, we've got the banter back. That's what I loved in the first three movies was the banter back and forth and that funny, like snappy dialogue. And there was none of that in the pre- I mean, when they tried to do it in the prequels, it was bad. And I was just so happy to bring it back.
00:14:00
Speaker
But now in reflection, now we're at a point where everybody loves the prequels and now everybody's hating on the sequels. And, you know, that's kind of interesting. I still think the prequels have their problems, but I think that point you're making about Abrams trying to restore people's faith in the franchise yeah is a really significant point. I think that's why you see so much rhyming in this. And I think even if you say, oh, hey, you know, there was too much of that, you know,
00:14:26
Speaker
Maybe they should have dialed it back about 20% or whatever. I still think he had to do something like that because people didn't believe that the next Star Wars was going to be what they were hoping for. And so he had to essentially say to the fans, I too am a fan. This is going to be great.
Future Plans for Watching Subsequent Episodes
00:14:43
Speaker
Let me give you the comfort food that you're here for. Although, as we're saying, like there's still lots of things about this movie that were controversial and certainly in the way that the series developed that also became controversial. so I think there's a lot to to talk about. There's a lot to keep unpacking. There you go. Thanks to Ben and Phil and we will keep doing this. So I think we will have Phil watch the last Jedi and then the rise of Skywalker and do a similar thing in the weeks to come. I should have told you at the beginning of that, you know, it was three guys sitting around a microphone. So the sound quality, not quite as good as it usually is, but hopefully you enjoyed that. That's it for this week's episode of the Star Wars Cleaning Crew. Please like, please subscribe, please tell your friends, please leave a review. Keep your kitchens clean. May the force be with you. We'll see you next week. Bye bye.