Change Your Image
Laimbrane
Reviews
Star Trek: Discovery: Choose Your Pain (2017)
This might be the most amateur editing/storytelling work I've seen in a mainstream TV production
I worked at a movie theater for a summer twenty years ago, and a friend of mine was working projection. One of the duties of his job was to reassemble the reels of celluloid that had been disassembled for shipping purposes. He screwed up one week and forgot to include one of the reels of a nearly three-hour movie called the Horse Whisperer, and the movie ran for a week without anyone noticing that it was missing about 15 minutes. This story popped into my head as I was thinking about how to explain my reaction after watching this episode, because it feels like what I watched was missing a whole bunch of reels.
The story should have been an exciting one - Lorca gets captured by the Klingons and held prisoner on a Klingon ship while his crew searches for a way to come rescue him. The backbone of a great episode is there - a critical mission, conflict between the crew, a daring escape and a last-minute rescue. It has the hallmarks of great entertainment - heroism, betrayal, sacrifice, and character growth - and yet falls completely flat.
There is no tension, no suspense. Amusingly paralleling the Discovery's method of travel, the episode jumps from moment to moment with no transition, no build. It's a masterclass in sloppy pacing. One moment Lorca is on a starship arguing about the warp drive and in the next scene he's on a shuttle without any explanation as to why that is. Okay, Saru is made captain. Cool. Nobody says anything about him finally achieving his dream? Then Lorca's in jail, and bearded Rainn Wilson goes through a long-winded expository speech laying out who he is, where they are, why they're there, and what they should be afraid of. There's no attempt at, you know, SHOWING any of this stuff - simply say it and move on with the story.
Back on the Discovery, Saru is making bad decision after bad decision, putting the entire Spore Drive at risk because, well, I guess to build tension. Surprise, surprise: they jump partway and it causes the navigator - a formerly microscopic animal-turned intergalactic mushroom - to curl up into a rock. The Trek movie about the singing alien whales made more logical sense than this.
But at least they're close to rescuing the captain, right? Thankfully, Lorca is already escaping. And oh, boy, was the escape ever comically bad! First a fisftight in the jail cell where Lorca and a sex slave beat up Klingons - who are just standing there taking punches like mannequins - followed by a short gunfight in a single small hallway where enemies walk down the middle of the hall. The other prisoner trying to escape sort of falls and says he can't go on with a lack of authenticity that would put soccer players to shame. Lorca tells him to hide - in the middle of the hall - and leaves to find a way out. The prisoner's sex captor shows up and starts beating him up, but Lorca comes back and saves him...
...and in the next scene they're flying away on a commandeered ship being chased by some other Klingon shuttles. How did they steal the ship? Were there guards around that Lorca battled through? We're not supposed to question it, I guess. Back on the ship Burnham tells Saru that he acted perfectly, I guess by ignoring his crew's advice and lucking into an engineer that nearly sacrfices himself to jump.
The events in this episode were so rushed that it became impossible to connect with the motivations of the characters or to dig into the conflict. Of course the boring and overly-expository dialog, terrible pacing, and uninspired direction didn't help. If it weren't for the passable work of the actors, makeup people, and set designer, I would have assumed this was some cut-rate Sci-Fy show. But for a tentpole show in a major franchise, it was utter garbage. The producers should be flat-out embarrassed of this one.
The Babysitter (2017)
Close, with a glaring, obnoxious flaw
The Babysitter is an above-average self-aware horror comedy that is nearly rescued by some good performances from young actors but ultimately maimed by some shockingly bad choices on the part of the producers.
Cole (Judah Lewis) is a 12-year-old boy with overprotective parents that is routinely bullied by others at his school for being awkward and shy. We find out that his parents (Ken Marino and Leslie Bibb) have a regular babysitter named Bee (Samantha Weaving) that takes care of him. They leave because... well, basically so the events in this movie can happen without them around. Once they do, Cole sneaks out of bed to find the sitter and her friends downstairs initiating a satanic ritual that requires Cole's innocent blood. He's discovered trying to escape, and the rest of the movie devolves into him defending himself.
The movie definitely has a campy 1980's feel to it mixed with a late-90's ironic detachment that insecurely reminds the viewer of how aware it is that the story is ridiculous. I put the blame for this solely on McG - a cotton candy director with flashy visual style that is completely wrong for this film. McG still seems a little stuck in the music video mode that made him famous back in the 90's, with pop-up subtitles on the screen that is kind of a modern take of that old Batman "Pow" and "Crack" - only these are to explain feelings and actions, not to visualize sound effects. They're quirky but distracting, defusing any tension that would otherwise exist from the plot. A more confident director would have slowed things down a bit, dragged out the more tense moments, and spent more time on the characters.
And it's unfortunate that the actors are overshadowed because they actually do a good job playing passably good renditions of those 80's horror movie tropes. Lewis effortlessly portrays sweet and vulnerable, and his ease in front of the camera and his clear affection for Weaving is what makes the movie work. For her part, Weaving was pretty good as the blonde girl villain. She and Lewis shared an unusual chemistry for an older teenager and a younger one, seeming like actual friends that was only slightly forced. As written (and mostly as it was played), their relationship was actually kind of touching, and its sugar- coated complexity was the highlight of the movie.
Unfortunately, those positives were completely overshadowed by one nagging little complaint that kept rearing its head through the film. And that is the strange fact that the movie is kinda racist.
And I don't just mean that the black guy dies first (though he does) - there are two black characters in this film, and both are one-dimensional "bad guys." The first is a slapstick clown that gets gratuitously squirted with blood (the horror movie equivalent of a pie in the face) to the joy of other characters, overreacts to the police, baby-whines about his role in the group, makes several comments about his blackness, is the first person Cole kills and has the most gratuitously violent death. The other is the main, unsympathetic bully who's fat, wears headband, has two white toadies that somewhat turn on him, and squeals in melodramatic horror when his bike gets run over at the end. I tried to ignore it but it was so glaring to me that those two might as well have been painted in black-face.
That feeling of uncomfortable embarrassment I had watching parts of this film is hard to rectify with the rest of the film, which is more of an 8. So I figure a movie that has some very good and some very bad aspects should average to about a 5, and there we go.
Star Trek: Discovery (2017)
Boldly taking Star Trek to a new quadrant
Star Trek is one of those pieces of entertainment that inspires a very enthusiastic and dedicated fan base - this is both one of its strengths and one of its greatest challenges. In Star Trek:Discovery we have a series clearly attempting to take the show in a much darker direction - thus far (through three episodes) exchanging the universe's utopian philosophy for more "modern" moral relativism.
This show unquestionably does not feel like Star Trek. That is not the same thing as saying that it's bad.
In previous Trek installments, the main character was the captain. In this series, the main character is a former first mate turned mutineer. Green does a passable job as a human raised as a Vulcan, a role that limits her emotional range (though fans that watched her on Walking Dead probably know her emotional range wasn't that extensive) but still letting it show through in subtle ways. She's a marginal actress but does command the screen and is a capable enough lead.
The rest of the cast wasn't really set up until episode three, strangely enough - the first two episodes deal with Green's mutiny and the start of the war with the Klingons. There are two characters that show up from the first two episodes - Saru and Keyla, the latter of which only appears very briefly. In Saru, we have a new alien race (Kelpian, apparently) whose backstory is that they were prey on their home planet. Never mind how they evolved technology with that mentality, it is what it is. Saru is interesting enough as a character who's aware of his meekness but uses it to his advantage. He has a lot of potential.
It's still early to cast judgment on the other characters, but Isaacs' (Malfoy's dad, for HP fans) Captain Lorca makes for another in a long line of interesting captains, albeit a far seedier one than previous iterations. Isaacs is the series' best actor, and there's a great deal of potential for his character that an actor of his caliber can milk. Secondarily, Wiseman's Sylvia Tilly is there as the show's comic relief - a bit one-note so far but with the set up for a potentially interesting character arc.
Unlike series past, this Trek has not presented us with heroes. There are no virtuous knights on this ship, no explorers of strange new life and new civilizations meaning to bring nobility and justice to the universe. Captain Lorca is a shadowy man of secrets, the main character is a pariah. For many fans, there is too much here that feels uncomfortable that will cause them to reject it out of hand (hence all of the ludicrously bad reviews). This is a show looking at the formula that has shackled previous Treks and instead attempting, for better or worse, to break free of that formula.
Discovery is not something Roddenberry would have produced. It's not your daddy's Star Trek, and if you can't get past that, you'll hate it. On its own terms, however, it is thus far a well-made piece of television that's worth the watch if removed from the context of its predecessors. As Lorca says, "Context is for Kings," and I doubt this show can be judged appropriately until it establishes itself and we see its plot tracks play out. Thus far, however, it's done everything it's seemed to want to do, and it's done them well.
Arrival (2016)
Amazing science fiction that trades science for emotion
Arrival is a methodical, lyrical, and personal science-fiction film about one woman's experience with an alien arrival. Like all great sci-fi, the film is intellectually challenging and potentially perspective-altering, and I was actually shocked by how hard the ending hit me. Unlike most other emotionally powerful films, my reaction was less about an attachment to the growth and arcs of its characters and more about the deep resonance of the film's ideas and central theme.
Arrival has been compared to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and to a point that holds as both films are about humankind being changed by extra- terrestrial encounters. However, artistically they couldn't be much farther apart. 2001 was technically and scientifically exacting in its attempt to tell its cold and impersonal story, while Arrival simplifies things and skimps on the details of the science in order to better service the humanity of the tale. While 2001 is without a doubt a masterpiece, Arrival may have actually meant MORE to me, even through its flaws, because Arrival - as good as it is - isn't perfect. The characters are somewhat one-note and viewers that have seen Close Encounters of the First Kind may be turned off by some of the curious choices various entities in this film make.
The story goes like this - Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is a foreign languages expert sleepwalking through her daily life due to grief over the death of her daughter to a rare disease. At the start of the film, 12 alien ships arrive, hovering silently in apparently random places around the globe. Louise is recruited by the Colonel Weber (Forrest Whittaker) for the U.S. military to help translate the alien language in order to find out their purpose for coming to Earth. She's assigned to head a team being run by Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) that is set up at the base of the ship hovering within U.S. borders.
She arrives, meets the aliens, and starts to attempt to understand a creature that is wholly different from humans. Here is where Arrival starts to stand out from many other films about first contact, in that it treats the aliens as aliens. They think differently, so they are going to try to communicate differently. The rest of the movie is about how Banks learns to communicate with the aliens on the clock set by Russia and China, who get suspicious about the aliens' motives and make questionable decisions and unnecessary leaps of logic that serve the story in a McGuffinesque way.
Of course, the Chinese aren't the only ones that make curious decisions and questionable leaps of logic. I'm pretty sure the U.S. government already has a team of linguistic, biology, psychology, and astronomy experts ready to go in the event of an arrival like this, so the fate of the world doesn't rest on one egghead. Their study of the language happens on occasion with those movie leaps of logic where the realizes what the answer to some question has to be even though there are probably three or four other very plausible explanations. Banks is a bit of a Mary Sue character in this regard - she's the hero that is fighting against everyone else but is never actually wrong, and has no real flaws other than the trauma that turns out to be important to the story.
Artistically, the Arrival is mesmerizing. The score and cinematography are dreamy and disarming, and the the actors slow down to allow the film to breathe. It's actually rather amazing that both this and the far more intense film Serpico were made by the same director, and demonstrates that Villeneuve has an absolute mastery of his craft. There is nothing showy at all, no moments of true beautiful visual awe as in Close Encounters or 2001 and no signature camera angles or movements. Other than Banks, none of the the characters are not particularly fleshed out, and none of the actors has any Oscar-worthy moments of bombast. The only thing important here is the story, and Villeneuve subdues everything else to allow the ideas behind this to take center stage. It takes its time sink its teeth in us and force us to follow us to where it's leading, pacing itself and its discoveries in a way that can occasionally feel frustrating but are worth it in the end.
And oh, boy, is it ever worth it. The opinion of this movie that the viewer walks away with will largely depend on two things: how they handle the subtly flippant attitude toward actual science, and how they respond emotionally to the final act. Arrival gets at a couple pretty deep questions that I don't recall having seen in a film before - and certainly not in this way - but accepting the power of this movie requires buy-in. I sat in my seat crying - literally crying - over one of Louise's lines of voice-over near the end of the movie, and I can't imagine that line having as much power without any of the hard work - and, yes, questionable plot decisions - being a part of this film up until that point.
Would every viewer watch this movie if they knew what was going to happen in it? Maybe, maybe not. Arrival is a movie that may not be for everyone, but like all great science-fiction, it may just make you rethink how you experience the world around you.
The Walking Dead: Swear (2016)
A clinic on how to create a filler episode, but some stupid decisions
There are several possible routes that showrunners can take when filling in the gaps in a season between major plot events. TWD tends to go through a handful of one-ofs at a time that go heavy on character development of secondary characters, putting them alone in the woods on non-plot related missions. Most of them tend to feel as if the show is spinning its wheels in between the larger moments, but "Swear" is an exception.
At the start of the episode, Tara finds herself washed up onshore and we're left wondering what happened. After the break we find ourselves watching Heath and Tara engage in one of those "I've seen how things have changed and now I've changed" character exposition conversations. This time, it's meant to frame the episode's (and the season's) central theme - that of unity vs. individualism. Nothing we haven't seen before, but necessary to prime our expectations.
Back in the present, a girl named Cindy gives Tara food and inadvertently leads her back to her home - a camp in the woods occupied entirely by women. They capture Tara instead of killing her, and after discussion offer to let her live there. They inform her that all of the men in the group were murdered by another group, and that the surviving women left their home to retreat to that camp. Tara is coerced into telling them about her community (going light on the details), and is allowed to head back to Alexandria accompanied by several of the camp's survivors in order to (they think) facilitate a bridge between the communities.
Walking back to the bridge to find Heath, Tara seizes an opportunity to make a break for it and does so, but is recaptured and confronted by one of her escorts, who informs Tara that it was the Saviors that attacked their group and killed all of the men and boys older than 10. Cindy shows up as that woman is about to kill Tara, and helps Tara escape because she wants a world where people aren't killing anyone that isn't a trusted ally. Cindy forces Tara to swear not to tell anyone about their camp (hence the title of the show), and Tara agrees, though we don't believe it.
With Cindy's help, Tara finds her way back to the bridge and across it. Tara leaves Cindy, seeing Cindy being forcefully pulled away from the bridge by the other two women that were supposed to go with Tara (probably to some sort of punishment). Heath is gone, so Tara returns to Alexandria, where she is (mostly offscreen) filled in about the events since her departure. The final scene sees Rosita pushing Tara to see if they have any weapons that could help the group, and Tara answers no, that she didn't.
In previous seasons, episodes like this one would have been nothing more than filler material - interesting little side stories with low budgets that allowed the creators to fill time slots. But now, Negan has provided the show with a singular enemy that it has lacked since the Governor, and that enemy provided relevance and weight to the story by making the other colony victims of Negan as well. Thus, instead of having an hour-long, mostly irrelevant character-building short story, we have this little piece of world building that provides importance to the events in this episode - Tara getting lost and forging this tenuous bond creates another potential ally in what is surely an oncoming war with the Saviors. It expands the world to include another unique and interesting group of survivors, deepens the theme of the season and show, and makes the Saviors look like a more potent adversary than they had so far.
My only complaint with the episode is Tara's behavior - this is a character that appears to believe that cooperation is a positive goal and who had absolutely nothing to lose in leading those other characters to (what she still thought was) a defended settlement. Her running away seemed forced for thematic purposes, which trivializes all of the discussion beforehand.
But it's a minor quibble - this is the best middle episode this season and probably the best in years. I may hate Negan, but his existence is making the show better.
The Walking Dead: The Day Will Come When You Won't Be (2016)
Gratuitous without little redeeming artistic sensibility
Potential spoilers: I'll try to be as obtuse as possible about this episode's events, but I'm going to warn about spoilers anyway.
The Walking Dead has always been about horror, but up until now the horror in the show has not truly seeped into the bones the way that Negan's introduction has. He has very quickly established himself as one of the most brutal, cold-hearted sociopaths in television history, and tonight he expanded upon his minor role at the end of last season to create what will surely be an iconic villain. Those of us that are show- only Walking Dead consumers already have a pretty good idea of why fans of the comic book have been warning the rest of fandom about Negan for years - the character is truly awful, and awful in a way that feels real, and feels scary. It's a complex character, one that has been foretold for a long time, so the hype was high.
And Jeffrey Dean Morgan does not disappoint. He OWNS the character in a way that makes the rest of the cast look like amateur hour. Morgan creates a terrible, fascinating monster that provides an enormous obstacle for the characters on the show. He dominates the screen, filling the moments between the dialog with subtlety and nuance and imbuing Negan with *just enough* likability to create an ever-present juxtaposition with just how horrible his actions are.
And yet... the episode mostly fails for me, and I think the big reason is that the show creators make a terrible miscalculation in creating tension - one, admittedly, that I may have made myself had I been in their shoes. The most satisfying tension, I realized tonight, is the drawing out of what might happen, rather than delaying the shining of a light on what already did happen. The episode begins with Rick clearly upset after the events that have already transpired. Rather than wondering "what happened," however, I found myself getting impatient with the show, knowing that they weren't holding off on the reveal for narrative purposes, but rather to exploit our own frustrated curiosity about what they've already done.
So rather than creating emotional resonance from what should have been an an iconic, tragic, horrifying episode, the producers instead chose to turn it into a gimmick - a "what's behind the box" type of episode where the tension isn't from character behavior, but from the overarching question of who was actually kissed by Lucille. The issue dominates the entire episode, to the point that any potentially shocking events after that feel less a natural part of the narrative and more as if they're stitched in as a way to create Youtube reaction videos.
And then they blew it at the end. There was no eulogizing, no grief or mourning - simply the survivors walking away. It was pretty to watch - the technical crew did their jobs - but it felt hollow and empty. Maybe that's the point - maybe in this universe there's not *supposed* to be any humanity. But I do know that I sit here writing this, knowing what happened, and yet feeling like the show creators really didn't make the episode give me a reason to care. It could have been amazing, but it was just... violent and empty.
I'm hoping for better in the future.
Game of Thrones: Home (2016)
Game of Thrones continues to amaze
So we now know the fate of John Snow, and the result should surprise absolutely no one. The only flaw in this hour of television was the complete lack of surprise value - Game of Thrones is massively successful because of its ability to shock by usurping expectations. So when the Everyone Gives Up But Wait There's More! suspense routine and the Awakening Gasp trope combined to dilute what could have been a powerful and emotional moment, I was slightly disappointed with the resolution of five years of waiting.
But that was basically the only complaint I could possibly muster with what is otherwise an outstanding episode. In taking the lives of his father, (step) mother, and baby brother, Ramsey has finally ascended the ladder and positioned himself to be the primary antagonist for whatever war happens in the North. Tyrion released the dragons in a surprisingly touching and intense scene in the Mereen dungeon, and once again Peter Dinklage is worth celebrating for his nuance and depth he brings to one of television and literature's great characters. Balon Greyjoy was dethroned in another intense scene on a rickety rope bridge in the middle of a torrential downpour, setting up the coming Kingsmoot - the last vestige of foreknowledge that book readers can still lord over the non-readers. Sansa is now going to Castle Black to reunite with John, though I could see her getting detoured if she gets (late) word of John's death.
Cersei's giant crushes a braggard, and the Wildling's more-giant Giant also crushes a Crow, both in swift, brutal fashion. Thorne's interrupted siege is another one of a half-dozen suspenseful conflicts, ending with the Ed's predictable return. Great exchange between him and Thorne: "No commander in a thousand years has let wildlings through into this Castle..." "Then you'll be the first."
Bran Stark finally returns and does a little dreamwalking with tree- bound Max Von Sydow, and along with a brief surprising reveal about Hodor, creates a very circle-of-life undercurrent to the show. And even though we don't have any incredible battle scenes here, this episode may be one of the most important ones in the series. It was tonight that I felt the theme of the show has finally come into its own - Balon, Ned, Tywin, the Dornish Prince whats-his-name, Bolton... all are now gone, leaving their conflicts to a new generation. Circle of Life. Interestingly enough, the men are the ones dying, and the women are rising in power and influence in their wake (Cersei, Yara Greyjoy, Sansa, the Sand Snakes, Daenerys, maybe Arya); one might start to suspect a subtle feminist slant to the story.
But that's neither here nor there. To borrow from another cultural juggernaut, "the last remnants of the old republic have been swept away." With season 6, episode 2, we finally have the table set for the remaining human conflicts. Ramsey plans to march on Castle Black. Tyrion has released the dragons, setting up Daenerys' inevitable (breathtaking, I'm sure) escape from her new prison. Arya is back in the House of Black and White, possibly recovering from her blindness. John has returned, and will likely be reinstated as Commander of the Night Watch and crux of the War against the White Walkers. Sansa is heading toward Castle Black, where she will help unite the North against Ramsey and turn their attentions toward the real enemy. The Lannisters will surely be fighting a Dornish army soon, Bran is training to be the Eye of the North.
A new generation is rising in Westeros, and one of this era's most spectacular visions is beginning to ready itself for its inevitably spectacular conclusion. Tonight it stretched its wings, and I sat back in excitement, ready for it to soar.
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
Good but not great
The Force Awakens is a much better movie than any of the prequels, but lacks the imagination, pacing, and sense of wonder of any of the other six Star Wars films, and suffers for it. I had high hopes, and they mostly weren't quashed, but I think it could have been so much more.
It's impossible to see this movie outside of its ancestors, so I'm not going to even try. It may be unfair to compare it to several of the greatest movies ever made, but if you're going to put the name "Star Wars" on there for the money it's going to bring you, and if you're going to include characters and events that were in those other films, then you're inviting the comparison. Reviewers will complain about it being unfair to compare this film to those other ones, but bury that complain in between discussions of how Han Solo fits right back into his role and calling Boyega/Ridley "newcomers." If you're going to acknowledge the film as part of a series, I can review it like one.
And where does this fit? Definitively above the prequels, but solidly below IV and V. What made those movies great was their expertly crafted pacing, their sense of tension and balance between the conflict of good and evil, and their ability to give us a limitless universe full of interesting characters and personalities. This movie lacks all of that. Again, it's good, but needs a director more creative and original than JJ Adams to take it to the same level of ANH or ESB.
First the good. The two young stars (Boyega and Ridley) and Harrison Ford all give three of the best performances in the series (it will be hard to beat the work of Guinness and McDiarmid). There are several moments of true, original humor (love BB-8's reaction to Boyega's thumbs-up) and the cast seemed to really enjoy working with each other. We actually feel some burgeoning and unforced affection between Ridley and Boyega, and this is due to Abrams, who knows how to get human performances out of his actors in a way Lucas always struggled with.
The effects were outstanding - nothing intentionally showy or flashy, but very detailed and highly technically competent. I saw the film in IMAX (one opened in my city a week ago) and it was gorgeous. The 3-d was well done and smooth, which was a new experience for me, though that could easily be a function of the IMAX format.
And there were a lot of good, not great aspects. First off, Ren felt like a solid bad guy - human and flawed, interesting and dangerous, and certainly better than Darth Maul, but he lacked Vader's (and the Empire's) presence and seemingly insurmountable control over everything. The result leaves less of a sense of scale to the battle between the dark side and the light side, and the ending doesn't have as emotional weight because of it.
While the action sequences themselves are staged very well technically, there's no escalation of each conflict. Battle sequences begin and continue at the same pace throughout, without ever having any momentum swings that makes the audience feel like it's on any sort of roller coaster ride. If it's all one long, straight drop, eventually you get used to that falling and it ceases to have that emotional impact on the viewer. Some people may prefer that non-stop excitement, but to paraphrase The Incredibles, if every moment is special, then none is.
The first Star Wars is a perfect example of its opposite - they spend time building up to the attack on the Death Star, so that when it comes, you're prepared for it and the sequence feels like the true emotional culmination of everything the movie's been working for. The Force Awakens never has that - minimal time is spent emotionally preparing the audience for any of the conflicts, so there's no sense of dread. The Force Awakens starts with an invasion, for example, but there's no sense of normalcy before the invasion to create that emotionally resonant juxtaposition with the chaos and excitement of the action. Compare this with how A New Hope starts - that movie lurks on the anxious faces of soldiers preparing for their ship to be boarded, and there's actually a calm before the storm that allows the viewer to wait with anticipation, to build up to the conflict.
The original trilogy was willing to linger in the quiet moments before the action, to draw audiences to the edge of their seats - the loading of ships for the Battle of Yavin, the characters staring over the pit in Jedi, Vader and Luke preparing to fight each other. This, sadly, is a tendency that is completely absent from The Force Awakens, and the movie, while exciting, suffers for it.
I think where the creators ultimately failed the most, though, was in their universe-building. Even in the prequels, the other Star Wars films gave us a sense that we were seeing a wide variety of things happening everywhere else outside of just what our characters are doing. I didn't get that sense in this movie. There was never a Boba Fett or Greedo character that hints at other events occurring outside of the storyline. There's no Lando Calrissian struggling with his own unrelated problems, no Jabba's Palace with its own isolated subculture that begins before and ends after the movie's events. These characters exist entirely in their own storyline and all of the secondary characters are there to move the plot along. That's so much of what Star Wars was and should be about - the entire franchise began with that "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away." It's supposed to transport the viewer to a cohesive universe ready to be fully explored. And that's what this movie, good as it was, failed to do.