The Watch - Ep. 10: 'The Watch'

Episode Date: January 5, 2016

On today's episode Andy and Chris dive into a galaxy far, far away with a full breakdown of 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens.' Topics include: old characters (5:00 mark), and new (11:00), Kylo Ren's fragility (13:00), J.J. Abrams' sensibilities (22:00), what to expect from Rian Johnson's sequel (28:00), the Skywalker family (39:00), 'Rogue One' rumors (46:00), and saying goodbye (50:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Seat Geek is giving $20 back off your first purchase with the code BSPN. To get $20 back on your first Seekkekeek purchase, just download the Seeky app today and enter code BSPN. I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to the watch on the Channel 33 podcast feed. My name is Chris Ryan and joining me on the other line. Eating half rations in the hollowed out shell of an ad ad on Jack who, it's Andy Greenwald.

Get that space bread in you. Yeah. Was that a bread? Was that a compound carbohydrate? What was that? Yeah, man. That was like the space equivalent of those, those crescent rolls. And she was just like kind of getting a like a maybe walking up some vegetables.

Sure. Yeah, just maybe a light stir fry. Yeah, right? Maybe low sodium tamari. A vinegar based sauce, you think, or maybe a hoisin. Yeah. This is what people want it. This is this is America's leading Star Wars Food podcast.

Andy, of course we're talking about Star Wars Awakens. Happy 2016. Happy New Year. Andy and I are back. We are here on the old Bill Simmons podcast network. Channel 33. You can subscribe to us on iTunes Stitcher SoundCloud. Just look for Channel 33.

And you can also find the Andy Greenwald podcast, which is my single favorite interview show of all time. Thank you. We're going to do a special, not even that special. It's like, what else would we talk about? We're going to talk about Force Awakens today. We did a preview podcast a couple weeks ago. You can also find a year-end podcast, The Wall,

from last week or two weeks ago. And then later in the week, probably Thursday, Andy and I are going to get caught up on TV. We'll be talking about Transparent, the Nick, try to do some man in the high castle, et cetera. But today, the force got woke. We had to. The force was woke.

I saw this movie. Yeah, I mean, you were among many. This is pretty easily going to become the most popular film of all time, I think, correct? Yeah, I think it's already well on its way to be in the highest. I mean, let's be clear, the highest grossing film of all time. But I do think that you're on to something when you say popular because the sentiment around this movie is almost entirely positive. And I don't think we're necessarily going to reign on that. But this is a phenomenon worthy of some dissection, right?

Yeah. And can I just set the stage for you a little bit? There's nothing I like more than a long, drawn out, very vivid Andy Greenwald goes to the movie's story. So set the scene. They're so rare, you know. You going to the movies is like, I think I'd like to see a movie. it's Saturday afternoon. Then you go to the arc light and you see a movie and you're in a comfortable seat

and you have a rich Dolby theater surrounds that experience. And then you text me and you're like, boy, Mascanada really gets some burn in act too. I, on the other hand, I struggled a little bit because, you know, I was unable to see the movie right when it opened with the rest of America. And then so I went on vacation with the family and was unable to get away for a few days to see it. And so during this time, I made a ill-advised trip to a little-advised trip to a little- local big box bookseller.

Were you introduced to a young Sith lord? I just walked down to the basement with my kid and we were buying a present for someone and there was just a young, exactly right, a young Sith lord standing in the middle of the

board books. Just like basically the way L.L. Cool J shouted in the Philip Rivers commercial. Philip Rivers! He's just like Star Wars, the Force Awakens is really good with a lot of secrets.

And his mother was like, no, no, no, no. And she basically started to jump on him the way like a true hero would jump on a bomb in a weapon movie. Yeah, yeah. And he's like, for example, and I was like, oh, no, I was too far away. And I had my child with me. And the kid goes, for example, Kylo Ren, he's Han Solo's son. And I didn't know what to do because in that moment it's a child as a child, you know. And maybe Logic would have told me that that was the case.

And maybe the spoiler blogs had already reported this is fact. I don't know. And so I'm taking you didn't stab him in the stomach with a lightsaber and throw him off a skybridge. I will say that I did not do that. However, the pit of Sarlake ate well that guy, my friend. No, what I'm saying is, it's a tight. And Noble on Tatooine, too, by the way. Just as such a, they have all these remaindered music books.

You can get all these old Lester bangs and stuff. Also, there are a lot of like soft chairs. Yeah. Kill a few hours, you know. They don't care. Just read. Just read. Just read.

He, um, So what I did is what all cool 38-year-olds do when deeply offended by a child. I turned and I looked and I said, thanks a lot. No, you didn't. That's what came out of my body. Like, there was no win there. So I was a little angry. But, you know, little did I know that that isn't really the big tell about the movie.

Now, small detour, I know people are going to love this. The big surprise at the end of the movie, that, by the way, if you didn't realize already, we're going to talk about this. that your man Hans Solo gets got. Yeah. He's no longer woke. No. I knew that too. Did you?

That was spoiled to me over the summer. I just want to give people a heads up to fully just let our, let our hair down here. Andy and I are not only going to talk about the spoilers that are in Force Awakens. I also want to just sort of, I will probably casually mention things that were rumored to have been part of Force Awakens that were not. You're going to spoil the spoilers. The fake spoilers. Yeah, totally. I mean, if Ryan Johnson wants to, let's just keep moving, but we're going to speak freely, is what I'm saying.

All I'm just going to say is a friend of ours. So I went to see a screening of Inside Out the summer when it was, before it came out. And afterwards, an old friend of ours, who may or may not currently be the culture editor of New York Magazine was with me. And he was just, just shooting the S. And he was like, boy, you know, crazy things are going to happen in the Star Wars movie. Do you care? And I was like, I don't know how to answer that question. Like, do I sleep in a hollowed out ad at?

No. But am I curious about the correct spelling of Jacou? Yeah. But, you know, how do you articulate that on a hot summer sidewalk? That's not true. There were sides people took. You either wanted to go into it as clean as possible because you wanted to have the experience and replicate the experience you had when you were a child.

Or you participated in the rumor Hollywood comic superhero industrial complex. And you were like, tell me all about Max von Siedow. All I wanted to know was, I saw. the first trailer and then I was good. I liked like the big vistas. I was excited by the romance of it and I kind of didn't want to know anything more. But I also wanted to be the kind of person that doesn't care too much about spoilers because I wanted the movie to stand on its own. Still, he did tell me that Han Solo died. So it was a little salty about that. Oh, so you knew that since the summer. Now, the one, the big thing that was kind of rumored towards the end of, uh, as the script was sort of

going through rewrites and as production began, there was a lot of rumors about that Luke was going to be the big bad. Oh, right. They did. And that is actually what I thought was going to happen. You know, as they delay and delay and delay with Luke showing up, and he's gone in that basically that Luke would be the new Darth, more or less. Can I throw something in here? There is still a looming threat that Mark Hamill will be both big and bad. What, you think he's just going to toss her off the island? No, not Luke Skywalker, that the actor himself.

Oh, right. Right. I honestly, he exhibited more emotion in those last 30 seconds than. any of the other original characters. I mean, Harrison Ford is very enjoyable, but in terms of, like, being able to emote, he seemed pretty, pretty good at it. He exhibited more honey-baked ham in those 30 seconds

than what was on offer at the Honey-Baked Ham store. He's been doing Batman voice work for like 30 years. Yeah, so we're not used to seeing his face when he's emoting, and he was emoting. Yeah. Last point I'm made. Well, you saw this movie. Now you've seen the movie twice.

Yes, I saw it once with my mom in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and once yesterday. So you've seen it in, other than the Cherry Hill, New Jersey of it all, you've seen it in relative normal movie-going comfortable scenarios. Sure. One time I got away to see it was that our good friend, Max, and I saw it right after Christmas, in the movie theater in St. Helena, in the heart of the Napa Valley, on a Sunday night at 8.30 p.m.

Now, I just want you to know this theater, just so you understand my experience. Do you remember the theater where they put on the Germanic ballet in Moonrise Kingdom, the Wes Anderson film. It is essentially like a toy high school theater. With like Francis McDormand doing all the parts. Yeah. That's the theater I saw it in. Okay.

At this theater in 3D, which I don't like in which the theater was definitely not prepared to handle. The dude who sold me the tickets and also was working the concession stand in a previous life was selling people dels. He definitely was like, he was like, dude, do you want a dell? Or would you like some of this earthy Pino Noir were pouring here tonight? or an IPA we have on tap, it's super skunky. Super skunky. So this was the non-American, Americana version of the world that I saw this movie in. So I feel like it may have affected some of my feelings.

Okay. So one thing that you can probably tell from the way me and Andy are talking about this movie is that we enjoyed it. Often we get very, I think we over the course of the last few years of doing this podcast together, there have been plenty of times where something that we loved from our childhood has been butcher. or something that we've been anticipating a lot didn't quite live up to the hype or somebody truly mishandled something and I think that I can safely say for both of us

that we enjoyed it. You know, it was fun. The first hour is an absolute joy. That's where you really feel the most like you're watching something new and you are introduced to new people and you are dealing with new conflicts. And it's, you don't yet get into issues

of explain to me the relationship between the Republic and the resistance. And how is the first order already built a new star killer base after losing two death stars? Like, where's their tax? What's their tax base? What are they drawing from? When you say we don't get into that, no one gets into that. And that's probably a good thing.

But it does make you wonder. And this is the beginning of pulling at the thread that we really shouldn't, we will on this podcast, but in general, to enjoy the movie, you shouldn't pull it too much. Sure. But here's the thing, is that it is a testament to what they accomplished, that the experience of the film can be basically you walk out with a smile on your face. There are incredibly moving moments. There are great performances. There's so many great callbacks.

It feels it's an absolute thrill to watch. And then you walk out. And then you can have an equally exciting and fun conversation about Ray's parentage and, and, like, the like properties, the ownership of a lightsaber. You know what I mean? Let's start in the most, I think, consensus positive place. Sure. Which is those kids are dynamite.

Yeah. Like Daisy Ridley and John Boyega. Now, I want to talk about everyone else because Don LaGleason is great and Oscar Isaac is having the time of his life. But the movie does not work without those two. Well, I think you have to add driver in. Oh, my God, of course. I don't know why. Because those are the three people who, even if Daisy Ridley's character has, you know, echoes Luke.

And even if Driver's character echoes Darth, I do think that the genius of this film and the brilliance of it, if it has some, are the creation of those three people. And especially Driver, yeah. Totally agree. Let's start with him. Driver owns the movie. Yeah. Driver is amazing in the movie. driver's performance is so emotionally complex that his performance is extremely moving. And I don't know of many other actors who could have pulled that off, let alone pull it off behind a mask.

I mean, you know, I'm going to mention a lot about our buddy Max who I saw it with, couldn't stop talking about his physical performance. And how graceful it is in a sort of oddly surprising way. So one I think one of them, you know what's a really good example of what you're talking about with is the physicality is that that last. lightsaber battle that everybody is, I mean, I think was excellent. It's way better than the actual attack on the Star Killer Base. One of the most awesome things about that is when he hits his side where he had been shot on the Skybridge and he just keeps hitting himself. And then he's, when he is fighting, you know, he fights Daisy Ridley for a quick second and knocks her out. And he looks at Boyega and he screams traitor in this insane way. And it's like, this dude,

has completely bought into this. And it absolutely, there's all this bullshit with Snoke and what is this, what do they want? And do they, why are they so obsessed with the droid? And I understand that part, but he just sweeps all the crap off the office table. Something that you've, I think, really wisely harped on

during the course of our podcast is the lack of good villains. And lack of good villains in Marvel movies, for example, that have dominated our blockbuster culture. And one of the smartest decisions made here. And I think we're going to talk about how it's actually kind of damning in some sense is to talk about how this movie is the product of a lot of very smart choices. But I want to come back to that. What I mean is to make this movie as much about the birth of a villain as it is about the birth of a hero,

having this character be this frustrated, almost gamer-gaty adolescent kid who has this awkward, uncomfortable legacy, multiple legacies to sift through. The scene where he freaks out on the computer monitors and, you know, and smashes him to bits with his lightsaber is played for comedy in the moment, but actually does a great job setting up the fragility of this big bad and on the path that he's on that he's on. The fact that we feel for him and care for him despite doing, you know, if you consider the cultural impact,

and one of the most monstrous things in cinematic history is really wild. And the fact that he can do so while overcoming the first unveiling of his beautiful, beautiful feathery hair, you know, kudos. Kudos all around. It's a terrific performance and a real villain that, you know, I was really afraid that they were going to make the mistake of killing him in the first movie. I think one of them, no, go ahead. Sorry.

If you think about the Phantom Menace, which I really hope you don't and no one does, Darth Mall with that two-sided lightsaber was pretty dope. Like that was the one cool image. And they'd throw them into a pit in two pieces at the end of the first movie. It's like, well, now what do we care about? Right. Well, the thing with Driver, the thing with Kylo Ren, Finn, and Ray is that they form the sort of the sort of triangle that's going to drive this, whether it's a trilogy, whether it winds up being more films than just that. They're the sort of backbone of this thing. And what this movie is essentially about, Force Awakens at least, is about. And they're the avatars for this, is this is a movie that's just as much about loving Star Wars as anything else. Because these are three characters who have related. to the events that happened 30 years ago. You know, Anakin and or Darth is the major sort of cloud hanging over Kylo Red.

He is got his ashes, I think, in his office or whatever the hell it is, his chamber. And he's got his helmet there. And he is obsessed, obviously, with fulfilling what that guy started. And Daisy Ridley's Ray is very aware almost of the, she's interested in the Jedi and the rebellion and all that. stuff and she's like aware of that and so much of it is about younger people and in a way those people are just all of us and they're they're tapping into something where you used to play star wars and we talked about this in the preview pod where we would make up our own star war stories and we would almost project ourselves into these narratives and that's exactly what these people are doing

they're projecting themselves into narratives and this kid who used to be a stormtrooper is now going to be a good guy yeah I mean and and that led to you know a It's why the movie essentially is fan service because it's empowering fans of the narrative and rebooting narrative around them. It's why, and there are moments when that skews too far in that direction, I would say. And we can get more into it on a granular level. But like the assault on Star Killer Base essentially feels like a video game. It's just Star Wars and Jedi, like, smashed together. Yeah.

But it's a video game in the same way. Do you remember, like, this will date us, but like those first Star Wars video games existed, there was that one where you could, it was the Death Star Battle and you would sit in the little box. Yeah, and you would go down the trench run. It would fly down into the trench and it was so incredibly cool that you had the chance to do this. And, you know, that's there in the very first act of, not act, one of the very first scenes of the movie when when Po Damarin like jumps in the tie fighter and it's like, I've always wanted to fly one of these. Exactly. That's literally what JJ Abrams is saying when he sat down in the director's chair. And people have criticized the, you know, Jacku is the tattooing stand in.

You know, wherever the hell the rebel base is the indoor stand in. You know, it's green. There's indoor and there's hot. Yeah, exactly. And then he couldn't do it without Hoth. By the way, just now after Inception in this, we're done with having snowy backgrounds for the final battles, okay? Like, they just don't work. I would say that's also a video game thing.

Like, there's always the snow level, the video game where it's always sort of the quiet big ball. I love Hoth. And I, you know, but it's just like they just, they don't work as the final battlefield. It's just too confusing. There's no geography to it. You want a beach battle. You just basically want, like, volleyball going on in the background. The end of Ridley Scott's Robin Hood.

That's my idea of a perfect battle. Let's talk about briefly. Let's talk about just the unlikelyhood of Daisy Ridley as a human being and as this performance. Because everything that you need to hang a franchise on, she somehow does. We don't know her. We've never seen this actor or this character before. And yet she is somehow able to play both wide-eyed and vulnerable and completely tough, charismatic. and plausible as a warrior.

Maybe not plausible enough to some people's taste as a master Jedi after a couple of hangouts. But she's completely compelling and sells us on everything. And these are the decisions that make things good or bad ultimately, which is just finding the casting team, finding her, and then empowering her to do it. Similarly, you know, casting Boyega, he's terrific. Yeah.

He's totally enthusiastic. He's totally fun. You want to spend time with him in the movie. You buy their relationship, even though if you go back over it, It's, you know, it's whether it's romance or whatever else it isn't based on that much in the text, right? Yeah. No, it's friendship. It's this connection that they're having.

Yeah. And it's really, really, I found it really thrilling and really moving to see other people get a chance to hold the lightsaber. I know many people have said this, but to see, you know, to see a black actor get to swing the lightsaber, to see a young woman get to do it. Those aren't stories we've seen before, and it's ridiculous that we haven't. And it was really cool to see it happen. Yeah, I mean, both times in the times I've seen it, both times. that the lightsaber flies past Kylo and Ray grabs it

and lights it up, there's just been a huge cheer in the audience that I saw it with. Those images, separate and apart from the movie as a movie. The cultural power of those images. Leia never got to do anything.

No. Well, to be fair, she got to wear a metal bikini and be chained to a slug monster. So don't say she didn't get to do any. Right, but it's, it's, Ray is a great pilot. Ray is apparently a very powerful Jedi Knight.

I mean, all these things that I didn't, you know, you probably never thought you'd see. I like the fact that Boyega, Driver, and really all have energy. And I know that that seems like a weird thing to credit an actor with. And this isn't really shots against anything else, although it is. But when you watch even the previews for, say, Batman versus Superman or watch the previews for Captain America's Civil War, everybody's too cool you know what i mean it's very much like actors playing iron man actors playing batman and it's it it's not that there's i know that there's a level of which you just have to the suspension of disbelief you're always aware that you're watching robert danny junior ben affleck is

there and they have a real advantage by casting relative unknowns in star wars but their level of commitment and the way that they inhabit these characters is really impressive and it makes a huge difference, and I think we're going to come on to this now, when you're tripping over some of the hurdles that the production and plotting and writing of this movie obviously put up. Yes. Now, there are a couple directions we can go with here. One of which is, one of which is, this is essentially an impossible job. Yes, absolutely.

AJ Abrams was the right person to do it because no one, but I can't think of anyone else who can jump over these tripwires, basically, and do the best version of it the way that he did. I agree with you I agree with you I have a butt I have a lot of butts okay so my my butt with the JJ

thing is that he did a great job he has the right sensibility he clearly has a deep deep appreciation for the material and I don't think that we can I don't think it's possible to overrate how important it is to have somebody with an idea of scope

and depth of field in a narrative so that when she is scavening scavenging and then she rides her speeder past the sunken Star Destroyer or whatever and the X-wing fighters that are buried in the sand just how what an incredible amount of resonance that has of people who care about this franchise that's huge but here's the understanding just that scene alone I just wanted to we might not come back to it the beauty of those first scenes right it's like David

lean yeah in that's who we listed as his inspiration and the scope and the physicality of those scenes made me so happy. Those were so, those moments were so beautiful and they were so thrilling and enjoyable that that carried the positivity throughout the movie because I think that falls away. Here's my butt. So the main issue with the movie that I have is this, you have an incredible amount of information that needs to be conveyed. So it's information about what happened in their intervening 30 years since Jedi, right? And then what is happening now? And who are these people and what happened to the old people? So there's all this narrative of responsibility that you have to say nothing of the fact that you want to sometimes take a breath

and have a shot like the speeder going across the landscape and not constantly be pouring information into that. But you do have to be economical and you do have to be, you have to be right. You have to convey all this information. And when you throw that up against Abrams's, I think, natural inclination to obfuscate and misdirect, which a lot of that happens in the promotion of a film. I don't, you know, His films themselves are not overly mysterious sometimes. But in this case, when you're watching this movie, I think you can feel in certain places, and there's an incredible piece I want people to read

if they get a chance by this guy named Andrew Todd on Birth Movies Death, where he does a really good job of talking about places where you can see the stitches and you can see the seams in the plot. And you can see they obviously had it written one way, shot it one way, cut it one way, and had to mix and match it,

and had to change their minds about certain things that they did. And there's a lot of stuff out there about how the movie was supposed to begin and what Rolea was going to play and what Roe Ma's was going to play and whether or not who gave her the Sabre when and all this stuff that they've obviously had to patch together in different ways. But I think that if you're taking aside all the stuff that may or may not have happened in pre-post and regular production, JJ's sensibility is ultimately to to obsessively.

obscure things and to obfuscate things. And that's why you leave that movie being like, am I supposed to know who Ray's parents are or not? Am I supposed to... There's an essential thing that is essential to all the work that he's done. And to his TED Talk, which is he loves mystery boxes. He loves Macduffins. The MacGuffin of this movie is a map that's hidden inside of depressed R2D2.

Yeah. I mean, if you actually think about that, that they're just looking for a chip on a map that they had all along, that they can then just follow, that's absurd. That is not enough to fuel a movie, and that's disappointing. I would say, I think everything you're saying is right, and I think the more you think about it, the more the stitches are obvious.

And one of the things that I was kind of shocked by is how quickly and how off the cuff this actually was. The impression that I had in terms of a timeline, right? Was that Lucas was developing some stuff maybe. Right. He sold it to Disney. Disney immediately hired Michael Arndt, the well-aclaimed, well-liked,

well-liked screenwriter who did Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine. He toiled on a draft, wrote a draft, J.J. Abrams was hired, took Michael Arn's draft, decided to go in slightly different directions, brought in Larry Kasden as sort of like a connector because Kazan had written empire.

And I think to, I mean, sometimes I wonder whether he was also there to write Han. I mean, I think he's writing a lot of stuff. He's helping out with these movies, but you just feel him in those pre-then those moments. And if Lucas has gone to make some DNA connected to me and to make Harrison Ford feel comfortable, whatever. Although it's really dope.

Have you seen those things where it's like, they'll be doing these screenings or whatever in panel talks? And some winner from the crowd is like, is Snoke actually dark Plagueis? And he's just like, what are you talking about? Like, I have no idea what you're saying, dog. I wrote Grand Canyon, okay? Seriously.

I wrote the scene. Steve Martin pisses his pants. That was me. I like the idea of Kazin yelling at people. But as it's turned out, or as it's recently come out. As it's recently come out, Michael Arndt apparently never wrote a draft, which is insane to me and wasn't fired or let go acrimoniously from the project. He just had these sort of big picture beats, these ideas that it should be familial,

that there was a Ray presence, that there is a Kylo, type character. And so that when JJ got, when JJ was brought on, he brought Larry Kassan and being like, yo, we're shooting this in three months. We better make a movie here, which is truly insane, but very much in representative of how movies in general are made. To say nothing of the fact that. Before they have movies.

And so the fact that they even got any of this to come together is in and of itself an complex. Right. And to say nothing of the fact that they already knew there was going to be another two movies. they aren't then they knew Ryan Johnson was going to direct the second one yeah and that Ryan Johnson was writing the second one to say and and who knows what they're saving for the second one they could be saving you know Luke could be bad you I'll tell I'll tell you what they're saving for the second one and this is this is what

we left theater this is what Max said to me which was the greatest privilege that JJ took for himself wasn't directing the first movie of a new Star Wars trilogy it wasn't casting his old paled Greg Grunberg as a pilot it was taking Mark Hamill and being like, Ryan Johnson, you deal with it. Yeah. You deal with this. You take this. Why has he been gone for 30 years?

You were more of a Hamelhead than I am. I don't know anyone who is just like, New Star Wars, I can't wait to see Mark Hamill at do his stuff again. I think you're misreading this, dude. He is the most iconic character. I mean, he's Luke. On Solo is the most iconic character. Okay.

But Luke is what the whole thing hinges on. It's like it's his interest in becoming part of his world in Star Wars that spurs it on. It's his reticence to fight Darth that makes empire so interesting. It's not my favorite performance. I'll put it that way. And so counting on a guy who does great voiceover work but has not been acting in 25 years, not by choice probably, and then hinging a billion-dollar franchise on his performance in a movie, that's going to be an interesting thing. But putting that aside, here's what I saw at play in this movie for good or for ill. I saw a lot of television thinking.

Interesting. And I found this both, I found it fascinating, but also more than a little disappointing. And what I mean by television thinking, and this is the way most blockbusters are made, regardless of that small timeline that we were referring to, which is television writing is generally about solving problems and finding the best possible way through a minefield, right? This movie was, Force Awakens was above all else, it was extremely clever. And when you think about the decisions that they made, the majority of the decisions made, they were absolutely the most clever and correct decisions. So making the villain Han and Leia's son totally works. I understand it. It makes absolute sense.

Having one of your protagonists be a turned stormtrooper. That's very clever also, right? Lacing this potential mystery past with Ray, killing off Han, all of these things. basically making the movie about being a fan of the first movies and trying to live up to that tortured legacy. These are all the quote unquote right decisions. Right. As they play out,

a lot of those decisions, though they are technically correct, felt a little bloodless to me. Now, I realize I'm playing devil's advocate here, because when you empower filmmakers, even within blockbusters, to let their freak flags fly,

which is something I always wish, I say I want to happen. I say I wish I could have seen Edgar Wright's Antman instead of Payton Reed's like solid utilitarian yeoman version of it, which was totally fine and totally good. I have to be aware that what I'm saying I want more of is the dance sequence in the jazz club in Spider-Man 3.

Like, you know what I mean? Like that's damn rainy being like, I'm free now to do what I want with these iconic characters and this is what I want to do with it. Right. There was nothing particular, What's the opposite of bloodless? Passionate? Because it's not bloody. I don't mean to say that.

What I mean to say is everything about this machine, this movie, and I'd say machine, and that was a Freudian slip, clicks forward in a way that makes absolute logical sense in terms of a beaten-out story on a board. But there wasn't much room for weirdness or creativity within that. And there's no greater example of that. And after this, I'll cede the floor to you, than the fact that they didn't even make an effort to make this movie, Star Wars, The Force Awakens, feel like a movie that stands on its own. is absolutely just a to start everything.

And to know that I don't know whether it was, I can't remember if he was talking about Ryan Johnson's script or just probably the feeling of letting go because he's not. It was his scripts. It was his script.

Because JJ Abrams has said, you know, I'm really pretty salty that I'm not directing the next one. Yeah. It's interesting that you say that it's he kick started a universe and a franchise and a billion dollar development deal and then he stepped back, and this does not stand on its own as a movie.

Sure. I would argue that he has probably created more problems for Ryan Johnson than he intended to. Oh, tell me about that. Well, okay. I'm sure that they know who Ray's parents are. I am sure that they know how Mas Katana got the lightsaber that fell out of Bespin. I'm sure that somewhere there is a Google Doc that explains the relationship between the Republic, the resistance, the First Order, the end of the Empire,

why Darth Vader, who eventually betrayed the Empire, is still an iconic sort of figure for the First Order that's sitting in a box, like how Kylo Ren got the remains, was that something that Han Solo gave him? All this stuff, what happened at this Jedi training camp

that's sent Luke into exile, whether or not Ray was in that training camp, who put Ray on Jack Koo? and why all this stuff I think that they have the answers to. They're not going to give us all of them. But when you hear him talk about the fact that he's like, yeah, you know, we actually shot something where the Mascatana character went back to the resistance base with everybody from the bar.

And also in the original version, Oscar Isaac's character dies in the first act. That you could tell. Yeah. And there's also, I think, I think I've read that there's a lot more Leah's stuff that they didn't or couldn't. use. Right. I like Karen Fisher a lot in catastrophe, but I don't know if she can still pull this stuff off. This goes two ways. Because for example, and again, this is the clever thinking. The

governments, like, this made no sense, right? Because if the empire fell and the Republic has been restored, yet they're funding a resistance that calls itself the resistance to fight. Yeah. And there's been tons of like Vox explainers about this stuff that I've read. Yeah. But here, let me, let me, Vox explained it myself. Here's why none of that is in the movie. Because the Lucas taped. Because Lucas made the first three, the prequels about like, you know, the Senate. Yeah. Senatorial quorum procedures. Because of that, you can never mention that. You just cannot do it. It's certainly not in this movie. So they just yada yada it. And then they blew up five planets to kick to put us back at zero. Yeah. By the way, yo, I am super ready to stop destroying millions of people and lives and planets. And then like having a

little shorthand for that, just be two elderly people in robes hugging. Yeah. Like, I know what that means. I know what that means. It's also not for nothing. That's exactly what happens to Vulcan and JJ Abrams is a Star Trek movie. And it's like the same weapon too, pretty much. Yeah.

I don't know, just come up with, we're done with Star, we're Death Stars, right? Like, this is, we should be done with Death Stars. We, the other, okay, now if we're doing small things about this, the Supreme Leader essentially being Ghalm. And I don't just mean because it's anti-circass, but being a physicalized character that looked like it was from the wrong franchise was very, very odd to me.

That said, you know, our man, Dominole Gleason, I'm glad he lived for another day because he's a really good actor. What accent was Domil Gleason using? The Moth Tarkin. I mean, he was essentially... So he was sort of like... Because I wanted to talk about

the disproportionate representation of Scottish people in this universe. The guy who shows us... up on Han Solo's, you know, transport. He's like, you cannot be bringing the fucking rafters in the bimbog! I think that's a little bit Irish. That was Irish.

It's essentially Begby. Yeah, exactly. He begby essentially lands on the Millennium Falcon. Like, who the fuck wants to get glass? I mean, it's pretty clear. And then they got the guys from the raid there who don't even get to fight, who get eaten by those things. JJ, you got to chill with the beasts of whatever it is in your mind

that you keep putting in these movies. Beast of Space Nation. Yeah, it's like, peace out to these things. I know. And then finally, can we just come to the one, like the one serious problem? Sure. Yo, the second act of the movie, the whole Mazcanada stuff is essentially, it's the trash compactor from the first movie.

The best, you want to know why you can. None of that works. You can tell that they were like, oh, shit, because there is the one of the only, I think it's like kind of casual, I don't, I'm not even sure, but you can see a shot where it's Han, Chewy, and Ray. are walking towards this temple that's also a bar, and they're walking in, and there's just like a straight up ADR voiceover.

It's like, this is called Maz Kanata's place, and she's been here for a thousand years, and if anybody knows what to do with your droid, even though I could easily give her to Leah, it's you. It's just random little you. And it's like, and they're like, they're supposed to be keeping a low profile, and like immediately all of the attention is paid to them.

It's like, did they need to walk in as a trio and eat these lovely apples stuffed with grapes? We didn't need another canteen a scene. Like that was one homage too many, but two, you can, you know, there was an outcry when that first set photo was released, table read was released, right? That there was only one woman in the cast, basically, other than Carrie Fisher, and that was Daisy Ridley. And immediately after that, and they've been very public about that, they had been talking

to Benedict Cumberbash to play Captain Fasma, and instead they cast Wendell and Christie from Game of Thrones, which is great. more power to you. I love her. Yeah. She, you know, her voice is great. But now, do you think, was she even in the tin can? It doesn't even matter. I mean, I'm sure they shot more stuff with her, but I love how everybody freaked out about this, but I agree with them that she is not really, like, she's such a pushover. They're like, lower the shields.

She's like, yeah, all right, I'll lower the shields. Fine, but I'm not doing it happily. Yeah. And then secondly, this won't be easy for you, even though I've just lowered the shields. And they were like, let's get Oscar winner Lupido Nongo, one of the most beautiful human beings in the universe and a, fine actor who's just finished an acclaimed run on the Broadway stage and just make her a shrivel-faced Muppet? Why? Like that character, there's no point to that character and there's no point to cast in first that character. But we don't need a Yoda and we especially don't need a Yoda right after

we have like a magical dream sequence in the basement. Yeah, so what did you think of that dream sequence? I mean, I don't I don't know what one was to think of it. It just seemed like a pretty lazy data dump and there's some good Reddit stuff that really all of it that's trying to like actually break it down but I do wonder whether you're right I wonder whether it's let's throw out nine different possibilities of what could be going on here could she be thinking this could the lightsaber be telling her this is she remembering is it a vision whatever and and and we'll let Ryan Johnson and Carl Con Trevor worry about this I think um for me I just hope they don't get too clever which is the downside of being that clever in the first place what I mean by

that is, to me, having Ray be revealed to be Kylo's sister is still the best possibility. Because that, in and of itself, is... But it doesn't explain why Han and Leah are like, we haven't seen you in 25 years, but we're just going to pretend like you're some junker kid on a desert planet. I'm not saying it makes sense. They may have outsmarted themselves here, but I'm saying the brother's sister dynamic and the father's son dynamic dominated the first... She's definitely a Skywalker, because the Star Wars movies they've said over and over again

are about the Skywalker family. So there's no way that she is going to be the star of these movies and not be Luke's daughter or Han's daughter. I just don't know how you have a world where Luke is this like, you know, traveling sadness Ronin, but like at some point during his 30 years of travels, he was just like, I'm just going to go get some desert strange and then just like go about my business.

Oh, so you're talking about Luke? Yeah. So apparently there's like, I think he's with some in the novels. First of all, kill yourself. Like let's do make. and just Kylo Ren your own You know my favorite Star Wars novel is definitely Tarkin, which is

a look at it. No, but apparently there's a character named Mara Jade or something like that and that's his like kind of concubine. But she also maybe had the first Tate, look that up for me. Yeah.

Let's definitely use Tate's Manhours to Google Mara Jade expanded universe novel. That's probably like a porn star. I don't even know what I'm talking. You're right. Mara Jade. Yeah, there you go.

That you're right. All our listeners. She's the wife. Every listener. Nice. Every listener of the watch during that moment was crossing their fingers and saying porn star, porn star, be a porn star. I'm just speaking the truth here.

Look, I'm just saying I did the work. You did the, but this is one of those things, potentially. Yeah. Where a complicated revelation of who she is isn't worth. the fuss because she's a Skywalker or solo she's related to them we all know this and if they try to outsmart themselves by suggesting a third way in the next movie which i just hope they don't they will end up what if she's like julia palpatine she's julia palpatine who is sent away to dalton or whatever school she's like dad this was not what it looked like in the brochures dad

My father definitely paid for the full meal plan, not half ration. Yeah. Yeah. Is this like, do I get credit for these scavenging runs, or is that going to go towards an AP kind of thing? Because I'm really trying to get into Colgate. Colgate may be Brandeis. I can feel us drifting a little bit. Space Brandeis.

This is the second act of our own Force Awakens. But what I want to talk about, you know, you alluded to... The mushy middle was mushy. Yeah, the mushy middle was mushy. and we could talk all day about the outer rim and how the First Order rose out of the ashes of the empire. But what I do, we do want to talk about the future. And one of the things that you were saying is how,

you know, everything in this movie was in service of restarting this franchise and starting these new plot threads and that there was just no movie in the movie because it was just too much about the ride that it was, you know, it was too much about the franchise and not enough about quieter moments that would have worked. And that comes down to every little thing between and people have talked about this a lot,

the feeling like there is no physical distance between planets and having no idea what the geography of these solar systems are. I didn't want to jump in and say this. When I walked out of the theater, my first thought was how small it actually ended up feeling. From the 70-millimeter, like, Lawrence of Arabia grandeur of that opening to the fact that they go here,

they go there, and then they're done. And when I say go here and go there, hyperspace travel is actually kind of a bum-out, because all you have to do is flip a switch and then you're there. And now that they're like, where you can just jump from inside the spaceship to another spaceship or to another planet, it's just the yada yada at a lot of that. And there's so much stuff attached to this.

So I will say that after watching this movie, after seeing the aesthetic of the effects that they're going to go for in these movies and the vibe, I can't tell you how excited I am for Rogue One. Because it doesn't have to do any of this shit. It just has to be zero dark Star Wars. Let's say this right now. It's amazing this hasn't existed before,

although I'm sure it did in the literature that's lining the shelf of your home right now. There's never been a Norden anthology of Star Wars novelizations. There's never been a canon Star Wars story that is a mission. It is simply a job to do in that world. All of the movies have had way too many other things to do, such as, you know, basically guaranteed Disney's bottom line for the next decade.

Or in the first case, in the case of the first trilogy, make a case for this universe as a universe. Or in the case, the second one, like really, you know, articulate George Lucas's frustration with the IRS. Whatever the case may be, Rogue One, which, you know, you could talk a little bit more about. Already the cast photo is super dope. But this is a movie that is about a team of whatever, like warriors and spies, attempting to steal the plans for the Death Star, sometime between the first Star Wars movie and Empire Strikes Back. That is curtailed. No, it happens before Star Wars

because they're the people that they talk about in the sort of text role that happens at Star Wars where it's like rebel spies have stolen the plans for the Death Star and this is who it is. And there is all sorts of rumors about what relationship these people might have to the larger Star Wars universe

but Gareth Edwards who's directing it who directed Godzilla and Monster has said that there is no force in this movie, which is interesting, because this will be the first Star Wars movie. One of the things that kind of happens in Force Awakens that gets a little bit iffy. It's not, you know, in the first Star Wars trilogy,

Luke takes like a movie in three quarters to sort of kind of start to be able to lift an X-wing. But Daisy Ridley is like really good at the force pretty much by the end of the first movie. Now, I don't really care one way or the other. I'm just saying they didn't really take their time with that. So it also gets into sort of like, so he can just stop blasters.

Like, he can, you know, is he just God? You know, like, what can you do with the force? So the idea of having a Star Wars movie that is devoid of the Force is going to be fascinating. Gareth Edwards is awesome. He has basically said that this is going to be a war movie. They've talked about how the anthology films are going to basically be genre movies. And this is their war heist movie. And this plays to the greatest strengths that this intellectual property universe has, which is the physicality of it.

Like this is what was so great about those trailers. This is what's so great about the first third of Force Awakens. The blasters and the speeders and the wrecks, they look like things that you could touch. Yeah. They look like things that you could, you know, spalunk into or grab hold of or have to like shake to make work. There's something fallible.

The falcon. You have to kick the Millennium Falcon to get it to go to hybrid. That's always been the greatest thing about it. There's something fallible about all of it. And that makes it exciting and it makes it somehow relatable, even though it's a space story. And it's cool. They've got, it's a cast of,

you know, in relationship to, you know, it's not like Ocean's 11. It's Felicity Jones and Diego Luna and Ben Mendelsohn is in it as well. Yeah, it's a super diverse, super interesting cast, and that is exciting. I mean, but this goes back to something that I can I tell you one thing that I've, do you want to hear a rumor? I mean, yeah. Earmuffs. If so, if you don't want to hear this, skip ahead like 10 seconds, but apparently the way that

they are posed in the publicity picture that they've released from Rogue One, the way that all the people are posed is the same way that the people are posed behind Kylo Ren in the vision that she has. So there's like a moment where he shows like it's raining and it's dark. Yeah. But the knights of the order that are behind him. Oh. So.

Yeah. I like that you just told like we are recording a podcast that people listen to on headphones on purpose and you just told them to earmuffs. That's true. That's right. It's a little tricky. Come back everyone. I'm sorry.

Hey, listeners. No, but this, what we're speaking to here. is it's we're articulating our own sort of ambivalence about all of it which is to say this franchise is being very very well managed you know I think that the decisions they're making

are as I'm saying are they're clever they're considered the casting has been fresh and exciting like the people they've been giving jobs to you know Josh Trank aside have been the right people it appears to be pulled your head Josh and you know there's is that lowering the bar to say that that's a thing to root for in this cold and calculating capitalist universe?

I don't know. Here's where I ended up with all of it, and I'm curious your thoughts on this. I started to pull up those threads, you know, with that mushy middle, with the Mazkanata part, with, you know, Supreme Leader Gallum. And then I remembered something else, which is,

these are kids' movies. And, like, I'm sorry to every major company's bottom line, and I'm sorry to the people who, like, camped out and would give everything in their lives to have every, you know, novelization or toy, whatever the case may be. These are kids' movies, and you could do a lot worse. You know, the first movies were movies for us as kids, and that's why we love them so much,

and I don't mean that as an insult. And this movie, you know, not to be, you know, corny dad here, but I was like, I bet my daughter would be pretty hyped to see Daisy Ridley's performance in this movie. Friends of ours who have older kids who are completely in love with this already and obsessed with it and having an enormous amount of fun and excitement with it, that's great.

Sure. That alone makes me happy. And so it's weird that, I mean, this is more of a comment on the culture where we are in general is that this is what we talk about as our mainstream entertainment. But this is a lot more fun to talk about than Jonathan Franzen's purity. So I'm okay with it. I mean, look, there's a moment in the, when they first, when Ray and Finn steal a Millennium Falcon, and he goes into the sort of the targeting cone or whatever, and she's flying it.

And they cuts back and forth between the two of them and they both say, I can do this, I can do this, which is essentially the magic of Star Wars. It's this idea that these outsiders, these normal people are actually full of greatness and that, you know, if they get just a couple of different breaks and show like when history meets the individual that they can rise to this occasion and become these huge characters in a universe, which is, you know, a bedtime story you tell your kids that you can be anything you want to be, you know, and that that you're special, that you have the force, that you are, I totally get it. And I like the fact that they have maintained that connection. I mean, this is not unlike what you. George Lucas did where he made a movie for kids that played well with adults and now he's making a movie for adults that they want to bring their kids to. I mean, this is the amount of servicing that has to happen here. I wonder whether Rogue One will be a little darker and I wonder what the Han Solo movie will be like because that's a character that people are just like, that's my dude.

So if you're going to ruin this, you better do it the right way. That one is totally casting dependent and I don't envy that job. I mean, from everything that I've heard, both on and off the record, literally every male human between the ages of 20 and 35 is auditioning for that movie. And God knows if they're going to find the right person. But that in the of itself is less interesting to me. You know, I, by the way, speaking of that, we didn't touch on this. Like, were you moved, shocked, salty? I didn't know what was going to happen going into the movie.

I could tell it was going to happen once they basically set up the scene to look exactly like, you know, it's pretty much the same environment in which Obi-Wine gets killed. and where Luke loses his hand. Yeah, right. And I thought it was fine. I didn't know that Harrison Ford thought that that character should have been killed at some point during the trilogy. He always wanted that to happen. Yeah.

And I get what he means because I think his point was sort of like he's in essential. The movies are about the Skywalker's and he's sort of in the background. I guess, you know, I was more concentrating on Driver. It seems like that was, he sort of stole the scene because he's like, I have to do something and I don't know if I can do it and will you help me? I mean, all that's emotion that he goes through, there's no beat. And this, I've seen this written about before. There's really no beat. I think where you're like, let's mourn Han Solo.

No. They zip past it. And that's also one of those weird scenes where Leah's never seen Ray, but goes past everybody to hug her. Yeah, they don't. It's odd. I mean, if you think about it throughout, it does kind of feel like Han Solo. karaoke. Like, Harrison Ford seems to have some fun in some scenes.

Yeah, he does a really good job. In other scenes, I'm glad that he ended his involvement with a series in this movie because let's be real, like, he's an old dude. He's a 74-year-old dude, and he can't run around like that. He just simply can, and not just because he broke his foot. And so we kind of be careful what you wish for. Like, I was kind of okay, the last image of Han Solo, him being, like, in love and young, and he's fine.

Like, when we revisit these people, then we have to deal with them. that is, again, that's the burden that Abrams had to deal with to navigate this because we both want to know their stories and we kind of don't want to know their stories. So I agree with you that that whole scene was about Adam Driver's emotion, which is as it should be because that's the movie going forward. And if given the choice, this is, again, this comes down to those clever writer's room choices. I'm sure they had long discussions or maybe they only had three months and they had short discussions, but they were like, should we give him a Viking funeral here? Or do we have to move on. Because every decision

you make is ultimately pretty meaningful. Like the whole scene with the cast of train spotting on the ship, like that was the last Harrison Ford is a rogue scene that will ever be written. Until the prequel or whatever this other movie is. And so they had to choose that scene carefully, consider it and debate it. And then ultimately they said to shoot it and then move on. And I,

you know, do I think that was the best use of him? Do I think that was the best dispatch of him? No, but, you know, they made their choices. And now we're in the realm of this movie exists and they're using it as a template. Yeah. And we'll probably be watching these movies for the next 20 years. That said, you saw it again. I'm not, you know, I've come off a little more critically of the movie than I intended,

but I would absolutely watch it again, and I absolutely was filled with excitement and wonder and was going down Google Ravalsals. It plays well the second time. People loved it. You know, it's fun to see it with people and kind of just be like that was cool. It wants in this kind of crowded you so badly. Those first 30 minutes, I can't remember a movie that's so eager to entertain you. Oh, yeah.

The way that's not off-putting. I mean, it's humping your leg, but you kind of don't mind. When she puts the helmet on and she's eating and then she hears the robot for the first time, it's just like you're like, oh, this was really meant to happen. They really did figure this out. And there's so much bullshit that happens after it that's sort of like, what the fuck is Dominal Gleason talking? Like, why are they all having these meetings in Snoke's chamber where he like interrupts them to be like, I told you we shouldn't do this? By the way, don't you think that at some point in the interviewing 30 years, the essential power structure of the empire being one military fascist and one spooky religion dude? That just doesn't work.

Might have changed the dynamic a little bit. Let's end the two-party system, my man. I'm just bringing a third heat. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like who, exactly. Like, who is the Bernie Sanders of the first quarter? Just like, I'm caucusing with you, Philo, but I'm an independent.

You know what I mean? Okay, man, I think we've summed it up pretty well. We'll be back later in the week to talk about Transparent, the Nick, and some other TV that wrapped up over the holidays. Yeah. We're really excited to be back. Anything you want to tease? No, I just want to say. you know the usual things. I want to say happy New Year to you. I'm excited we're back.

Great job, Beransky!