The Empire Strikes Back vs The Last Jedi
Continuing the comparison of Luke’s and Rey’s respective journeys, I should preface that I’m not a fan of the new trilogy (or any of the existing new movies). They’re endemic of today’s blockbuster: lots of action, and the protagonist is usually brilliant just because the story needs them to be. There’s no character development. There’s no relatability. There’s no journey. People might point at other characters to suggest they can be the same, e.g. Superman is perfect. He’s not. In Superman (1978), Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) outsmarts him and puts a big kryptonite necklace on him. Does Superman (Christopher Reeve) just shrug it off? No. Miss Teschmacher (Valerie Perrine) has…
Star Trekking: Part 2 of 3
While promoting Star Trek into Darkness during a 2013 interview with Stewart joked that Abrams’s lost him following his initial admission (he didn’t like Star Trek). Abrams responded: ‘You … and your kind … were much smarter than I was. I couldn’t get it. So we tried to make it work for people like me … and people like you. The goal [with Star Trek into Darkness] was to make a movie for moviegoers, not just for Star Trek fans. So if you’ve never seen Star Trek before, you can still see it.’ Some of this response I will return to later, but for now I want to focus on…