ST Is the Force Awakens really a "safe" film?

I've seen several people characterize the Force Awakens as a "safe" film and after giving it some thought I don't think that's really true.

Now, I would certainly agree that some of the story beats are "safe" in that they are similar to the OT.

However, if we look at the characters I don't think the film played it safe at all.

Playing it safe would have Luke training new Jedi with Han and Leia happily married. Instead we have Luke in exile, and Han and Leia's relationship torn apart by a son turned to the dark side.

I think Kylo Ren is a villain like we've never seen in Star Wars before and I'd hardly call that a safe choice either (A safe choice would be another 1-dimensional baddie like Darth Maul)

I don't think a turncoat stormtrooper is a particularly safe choice either.

Rey is the first major "female force user" character in the series... that could also be thought of as something other than a safe choice.

Finally, I also don't think StarKiller Base was a very safe choice either (granted this is the one thing I did not like about the film). They had to know people were going to roll their eyes at a 3rd Death Star.

All in all, I think calling The Force Awakens a "safe" film is inaccurate... honestly Return of the Jedi is IMO more of a safe film than TFA... the only really off kilter thing they did in ROTJ is have Vader turn at the end..

 

A safe film also wouldn't have left many questions for the next episodes to answer.

 

It's far, far less safe than its detractors give it credit for.

 

Playing safe IMO would not be killing off Han/Luke OR Leia!

 

I would say it's safe in the sense that if you wanted to watch it as a family film with kids you could do that no problem because there's nothing in it that would be overly scary or gory or other things.

It's not safe in that the story is rather dark and complicated. We don't have answers on everything, it's not in a neat tiddy bow and it shouldn't be. It's a serial, the story must go on.

 

Darkspellmaster By that first definition, I hope Star Wars is always safe

 

Safe= SW Rebels

 

Considering all the balls Abrams had to juggle to get the movie out, catering to old, nitpicky fans like us, and attracting new ones, introducing new characters and plots as well as showcasing old characters with long back stories, and setting up a first story in a trilogy, this was an excellent effort. It's not the most daring movie by far, but it's a good, fun ride, which I think is more important than avante-guard or risky.

 

People assume that the lack of answers means that Abrams took a risk?

No. That's exactly how Abrams played it safe. No answers, no back story, little dialogue of any depth, little setting of the scene - "a story for another time". All to make room for all the nostalgic sign-posts and (almost) non-stop action. That's why we have the prolonged frantic pace.

Having a female lead is not a risk in 2015. In fact, to omit female characters (and minorities) is a risk - it would cause a load of backlash and raise gender/race debates and attract a smaller audience.

Starkiller base was lazy writing not a risk. It was a tried and tested formulae that had worked in the past. Perhaps they knew some fans would role their eyes, but they knew this formula would work for the general public. They chose success over originality. £££ over the story.

We've seen Kylo Ren before - Anakin.

Also, how was the film dark? there was comedic relief throughout (and a happy ending so-to-speak).

ROTJ was safe too, but that doesn't reflect on the merits of TFA itself - TFA was so safe I couldn't enjoy the film as much.

 

Safe would have been having Luke be in the entire movie or show up at Starkiller

Safe would have been keeping Han around

Safe would have been avoiding another Death Star like the plague

Safe would have been giving Finn force powers

Safe would have been making Kylo Ren one of the PT villians

Safe would have been not making Rey female

Safe would have been having R2 take BB8's place

Safe would have been having 10 different ship designs because toys


Safe would have been "all the OT characters are happy!!"

 

I completely agree. I think the "safe" comments come from the fact that there are so many ANH parallels. But you're right... many new things that were definitely NOT safe. Add the death of one of the franchise's most beloved characters to the list.

 

It is and it isn't a safe movie. The chances they took was with the characters. Having a female lead is still a risk, having the second lead be black is pretty bold, although not unprecedented. Still, the safeness was in the plot and in the other lead being Harrison Ford. But to not use Harrison would be pretty stupid. I think they did what they needed to do to establish the new heroes; now hopefully they can get more creative. People know and care about Rey, Finn, Kylo and Poe now.

 

It was safe, but so is pretty much every blockbuster movie released anymore. In today's culture Star Wars type of movies (action/adventure/fantasy) are the most popular movies. The issue is the originality of it, and not in the same sense that ANH was just a copy of some Japanese films set in space. It is unoriginal in that it copies so much from the other movies in the same franchise.


P.S. Killing off Han is an extremely safe move. If there was anyone you could kill off in this movie it was Han. He is the character that has been trying to get himself killed off since 1978.

 

It wasn't the "plot" that was safe, it was the bare bones of the plot, the most basic skeleton of it. I.e. The least important aspect of the film.

 

Killing Han was safe??? It upset every H/L shipper out there. I realize we're not the majority of viewers, but it was excruciating for us. I woke up the next morning feeling like there'd been a death in the family. One of my cousins (who is closer to 50 than 40) cried all the way home and vowed she'd never watch a SW movie again. The entire community over at HanLeiaFanficWriters.blog is in agony.

This death, coming on the heels of the revelation that H/L's relationship was a disaster and their son turned dark killed off any hope for a reconciliation or even salvation from their story, which, IMO, was one of the major pieces of emotional resonance in the OT.

While I will admit there was good drama in killing Han, safe is not the word I would use to describe his death.

 

Yes, I would define it as the safest thing in the whole movie.

 

It's only safe because it's Star Wars and features Harrison Ford with a Lawrence Kasdan script (Raiders, ESB, ROTJ). It took underrated risks from nearly every other angle like social progress (black and female leads especially for emerging markets where SW isn't as established), filmmaking (film vs digital), behind the scenes (delaying and rewriting), plus the plot points (new planets, killing Harrison Ford, Luke cliffhanger, unmasking the villain who is like a school shooter, no real young romance, etc).

Imagine if there was Jabba Jr., Boba Fett, and force ghosts of Yoda and Obi-Wan; Star Wars can fill the frame with fan service but making it feel like classic Lucasfilm while expanding both the universe and new audience demographics is what makes TFA's movie magic that much more impressive.

 

Only if you never really cared about the fate of Han Solo.

 

Exactly. Good post Darth_Lobot

Also, re Lack of answers - which of the previous trilogy starters (or even middle chapters) gave up all the answers for the rest of their trilogies?

ANH by default was more self-contained, but didn't reveal where the great twists were - it just couldn't afford to leave threads hanging in the way that every SW since (bar Jedi) could afford to do. Unresolved threads only become weak storytelling if they are abandoned or fumbled later on (looking at you Sifo-Dyas and arguably "the other").

 

I think he was playing it safe by having both Han and Leia revert to roles similar to the OT and having Luke entirely absent.

In a lot of ways I think introducing new characters is actually a much easier route to take than working with the existing characters. Granted Abrams did that with Trek BUT he managed to contrive a situation where by he was able to both reset to earlier versions of those characters and give himself pretty much a blank slate for them being only beholden to some basic aspects of the Trek universe.

The problem really is that the characters in the OT where designed for that story, to take such characters and then try and plug them into new situations presents a difficult challenge that I think for the most part Abrams avoided.

A lot of the reason we get such limited buildup to Kylo/Ben is for me that this means that Han would need to act less like OT Han and more like a new updated character. Abrams wanted wisecracking smuggler Han to be like ANH but that Han couldn't really help buildup Kylo or indeed Rey and Finn very much either.

I don't think Abrams was really very brave in terms of introducing female and black leads either, this is 2015 not 1955 and its not like simply making such castings is very revolutionary anymore. What might me would be looking to play off of the shift but for me Rey has very little about her that is obviously "female", she's no T2 Sarah Connor for example.

 

The Force Awakens is safe, safe, safe.

But! Many of its safe choices were also good choices. It's not like, "I wanted to like the new Star Wars, but all the safe stuff was awful."

Black and female lead characters with all white villains* is the absolute definition of safe. I'm not someone who chooses what movies to like based on what race the actors are, but c'mon, what JJ did there is like free money, reputation-wise. No, it wouldn't have been in 1977, but in 2015, it mobilizes a screaming army of PC idiots to explain how great you are. coughGuardiancough But I thought Ridley and Boyega did great and will be excellent assets for the franchise. Driver... I think the next movie will make a big difference as far as whether his character is good or bad in TFA, but even if it's a bad thing, I don't think it's going to be the actor's fault. He did fine.

JJ also handed off the storyline with some good freedom available as far as where it can go from here. Luke, Snoke, Kylo, and Rey are all big "accounts payable" in terms of someone else needing to some along and give the explanations; so is the fall of the Luke Jedi Order. But those were always going to be big areas of story focus anyway, so it's not a big constraint. In particular, the vague handling of the Luke-Kylo conflict gives excellent creative freedom to the new guys. The military/political stuff is super up in the air as well, basically giving Johnson almost as much freedom as JJ had in deciding who is going to be fighting in the next war. Making a movie with such a strong interest in the past leaves the future open for someone with hopefully more interest in it.

So some of the safe decisions turned out to be I think pretty healthy ones for the overall direction of the trilogy. The next guy gets good new actors and has a lot of creative freedom in deciding what to do with them. Excellent.

The worst decisions in the movie were actually the most risky ones, like the lack of any Jedi with a lick of training. Even Rey clearly wants to be far stronger than she has any right to be. It was wrong to lock a big part of the ST Jedi order into the same place the OT Jedi were: living alone after failure and slaughter, waiting for the plot to come to them. Yeah, maybe Luke will be revealed to have accomplished some amazing Force feat in his solitude. I hope so. But it was still a mistake, long-term. Now we can all look forward to years of writers squirming and cheating to get even off-brand Force users in their post-ROTJ stories. So exciting — 30 more years of timeline full of Ezras and Kanans and Ahsokas and noobs in general. Yay.

And the biggest risk of all — no Luke — was also the biggest mistake.

*Except maybe some of those guys on Han's big freighter, for a second?

 

But Han and Leia, while going back to what they did best, are not just the same characters they were in ANH. They behave in some of the same ways because Kasdan knows these characters as well as anyone so there is a consistency there, but equally, there is a melancholy there and a softness between Han and Leia that befits what they've been through. And again, their characterisation fits the themes of the film - one of which is a failure to escape the past.

Ugh and leave the "screaming army of pc idiots" chat out.

 

The ironic thing is that I think actually trying to remake ANH more directly would IMHO have been much riskier than what we got with TFA. Abrams film takes some elements of ANH and the OT generally but his style is still IMHO pretty similar to his Trek films often looking to mine that older material for references and drama rather than actually recreate it.

 

Are those characters worse than the Ki-Adi-Mundi's, or the Mace Windu's? What, exactly, is so thrilling about Jedi in their prime?

 

The basic vibe I get from many (though not all) of the detractors (or those who are firm PT fans - and there is a fair amount of overlap) is that echoing the OT is unoriginal hackery purely deployed to appeal to OT fans but echoing PT elements (which in irl terms are the aspects we've seen most recently) would have been fine if not preferable.