So thinking about it more, I realize that part of the reason that I really want to love this film but can't quite get myself to that point is because it's kinda trying, but failing, to be one of my favorite action/adventure subgenres, which is the 'ship genre'. I may have posted this here on CP about how Fury Road is the greatest 'ship genre' of recent years. Star Trek films often fit it (certainly the first two of the reboots), BSG, even, occasionally, literal ships like Master and Commander.
The part that happens onboard the Raddus definitely constitutes this genre. It's got a lot of the classic themes:
the ship represents life surrounded by almost certain death
the actual physical act of keeping running of the ship is vital, and we're let into the details of this.
leadership, loyalty, command, trust, mutiny, chain of command are the primary character and relationship themes.
There's an inverted relationship to movement and tension: unlike typical chase sequences where tension seems to rise as speed increases, in a ship movie, tension is highest when the ship is slow or stopped (Fury Road does this masterfully, and any time the Enterprise is disabled and dead-in-the-water also fits).
Abandoning the ship, and/or sacrificing the ship are both important plot points.
There's also some bonus-point things like the ship vs. a natural storm, again, see FR or M&C, but these are less important and not always practical in a space version.
Done right, the ship movie is an absolute pressure-cooker of action and character-driven tension. And there's a bunch of things TLJ does right. Certainly it uses some of those themes of loyalty/mutiny, there's more attention to the actual running of the ship (dwindling fuel) then we're often used to in the Star Wars universe, and there's a tension of keeping the ship going.
But I think it fails on a few key elements that could have improved the movie:
1. The literal movement is very flat, resulting in no ups and downs of tension, at least as far as the Raddus is concerned. There's just this 18 hours of running at the same speed with dwindling fuel. But since we know that at the beginning of the chase, tension doesn't actually increase. In a good ship movie, there's more of a 'tug-o-war' between ships. In BSG, there was this sense of relief after every jump, but then the tension immediately starts rising again. Mad Max had the chasers constantly getting closer, and then the War Rig pulling away, and there was a constant up and down in tension. We could have done with a lot more fires to put out (ah! problem with the shield generator! surprise tie-fighter attack! etc.) Instead, we were relying on Finn and Rose's story to provide ups and downs in tension.
2. The ease with which Finn and Rose are able to leave acts as a relief valve on the pressure cooker and entirely deflates the tension. Keep all of those characters in close proximity to the ship (and/or the chasing ship), and everything is tighter, more tense. Certainly, almost every plot point that their story hits could have been done within the ships, they didn't need to go off to a totally different world.
3. Those loyalty/leadership/mutiny themes were explored, but only through Poe. I think it would have been better to get into Holdo more, maybe a bit of self-doubt on her side, and her learning to trust Poe and find a use for him. I would have liked to appreciate her self-sacrifice more; it was a really cool moment but not emotionally deep, but if we got to know her more, it could have been both.
|