WARNING! SPOILERS DEAD AHEAD! I provide this post for those who have seen the new Star Wars movie and have been dying to discuss it with each other. If you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want details of the plot revealed, you should vacate the area immediately. Proceed any further, and you’ve no one to blame for ruining the movie but yourself.
With that formality out of the way, let’s talk about the flick.
I had considered giving an in-depth review of the film, but I have forgotten many of the finer points of the film. A bit of time has passed since I’ve seen it. Without having seen it since its opening weekend, it has still left me with some impressions. But I’ll get to that after I go over a topic that’s in the news right now regarding the movie.
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When I say “in the news,” I mean being covered by a multitude of publications such as USA Today, The Guardian, New York Daily News, New York Magazine, The Independent, Newsweek, Daily Mail, Cosmopolitan, Huffington Post, BBC News, RT, Comic Book Resources, io9, Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, The Verge, The Wrap, The Frisky, GQ Magazine, The Telegraph, Collider, NPR, Wired, A.V. Club, Mashable, Vanity Fair…and on and on and on and on and on and on.
And that’s just in the last couple of days. Social media’s been outraging about it since before Christmas.
So what’s the big deal about Star Wars: The Force Awakens that has gotten the attention from all these people?
Entertainment Weekly explained…
Star Wars: The Force Awakens may revolve around the disappearance of Luke Skywalker, but some fans of the space fantasy are up in arms over the absence of another character — Daisy Ridley’s Rey.
Although the plucky young space scavenger is the undisputed protagonist of The Force Awakens, she’s conspicuously missing from some tie-in merchandise, including a new Star Wars-themed Monopoly game.
According to a description on the Hasbro website, the game features four player tokens, all of whom are male characters: John Boyega’s Finn, Mark Hamill’s Luke, Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren, and Darth Vader (who doesn’t appear in The Force Awakens).
Since the movie’s release, fans of the female character have been using the hashtags #WheresRey and #WhereIsRey to complain about the absence of Rey merchandise. EW also noted there was a similar outcry when they perceived a lack of toys and so forth related to the Black Widow character from the latest Avengers film.
Reached for comment, a Hasbro spokesperson said in a statement to EW, “The Star Wars: Monopoly game was released in September, months before the movie’s release, and Rey was not included to avoid revealing a key plot line that she takes on Kylo Ren and joins the Rebel Alliance.”
The spokesperson added that Rey is featured in several Hasbro games, including Hands Down, Guess Who, and chess, and that “fans will see more Rey product hitting store shelves this month, including 6-inch and 12-inch Rey action figures. We are thrilled with the popularity of this compelling character and will continue to look for ways to showcase Rey across all of our product lines.”
Of course, people didn’t believe Hasbro’s explanation. But some people see sexism everywhere. It’s part of the grand conspiracy to repress the wimmenz from being equal to the menz.
Never mind that the Monopoly game taken to task here involves the entire Star Wars series, not just Episode VII.
Never mind that Rey appears in those other games or that her merchandise has been selling out in stores and online.
Never mind that merchandise for female characters in the sci-fi genre have historically not been that popular in the past.
Never mind that most of the people bellowing their wrath at the toy company probably have no interest in buying the game in the first place, regardless of the tokens it has or doesn’t have.
Never mind that Hasbro might actually be telling the truth that they were taking the spoiler aspect into consideration when they released the game.
Never mind that a big corporation like Hasbro, as well as the mega-company Disney that owns the character, are keenly aware of the perception it would leave to have a dearth of merchandise for its female character. This wasn’t some oversight on their part. They need time to engineer and produce their toys and games. They plan their product releases well in advance. Note in their statement that they’re releasing more Rey-related merchandise this month.
And as every serious Star Wars fan would admit, they are all about the collectability. I raise my hand as one of those fans. I’m now tempted to go out and spend 25 bucks on Star Wars Monopoly even though I already have a previous edition, which happens to have a Princess Leia token. (Apparently, Hasbro has become more sexist since that edition was released.)
Hasbro and Disney know what they’re doing. What they’re doing is increasing the buzz and attention for their Star Wars merchandise. All the free publicity they’re getting will benefit them once the Rey merchandise is released. This was a good way to gauge the demand for Rey merchandise. This hullaballoo will also increase the collectability of the current edition of the Monopoly game, which, as EW noted, has been out since September.
Well done, Hasbro and Disney.
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Okay. Some brief thoughts on the film.
I liked it a lot. It may not fully redeem the travesty of Parts I-III, but it was a worthy sequel to Parts IV-VI. It had your saber battles, your Death Star battles, your cantina, your desert planet. It had a lot of charm and good humor while also being effective with its darker moments. The new characters and the actors who played them were excellent. The effects were top-notch. The 3D was well worth the extra few dollars.
Basically, it was everything a fan would want in a new Star Wars movie. The concerns I might have had that JJ Abrams would try too hard and produce a dud diminished pretty quickly. I enjoyed the little touches that recall the original trilogy, like the transitional wipes from one scene to the next. The first words I spoke as the credits began to roll were, “Well, that was fun.”
And it had your shocking and dramatic twist that will leave a deep impact on the future sequels.
About that, I tried really hard to avoid any spoilers before seeing the movie the Monday after its release. I’m one of those who wants to know as little as possible about key plot points of movies so I can form an untarnished assessment of them. I also like twists and surprises from a storytelling viewpoint. But damn it all, I saw two simple words in reply to one tweet on the Twitters that insisted people not give away anything from the movie.
Last chance SPOILER…
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Those two words were “Han dies.”
My greatest fear came to pass. I just knew whoever it was wasn’t joking. It was one of those “of course” moments. I’d read an article some time earlier where actor Harrison Ford was tired of doing the character. so I already suspected Han might die. That’s all it took to spoil a great part of the movie for me. I wanted to throttle that raggle-fraggle so bad.
However, it could be a misdirection. Remember that Luke plunged thousands of feet after his father cut off his hand in The Empire Strikes Back, and he managed to survive. We don’t actually see Han Solo go splat when he fell in a similar fashion. The ways that this film pays tribute to the movies that preceded it, I’m not completely convinced that Han Solo is dead.
And though I do appreciate that this latest part of the series echoes a lot of the things that happened in the parts before it, it’s almost too close to being just more of the same. It doesn’t quite feel original that way. That would be about my own real criticism of the movie.
Because of it, I’d rate Star Wars: The Force Awakens at a nine out of ten bacon cheeseburgers. Otherwise, the movie was highly entertaining. Out of all the movies I could have seen at the theater in 2015, I’m glad I chose that one.
So those are my thoughts on the film, fellow Jedi. What are yours? Go ahead and discuss in the comment section below.
