TV Coggan

Almost unwatchable. Not sure who forgot to attend filmmaking 101, but the lines get more crossed than any film I have seen in a long time. Doesn’t hold a candle to the classic British filmmaking of the series. It was painful seeing the actors struggle not to look down the barrels of poorly placed cameras in scene after scene. Choppy cutaways to cover the bobbles added to the compositional chaos. I’m a huge fan of the series, the cast, and British cinema in general. This film is just not up to any of those standards. And it’s painfully boring.

It’s so bad it doesn’t even have that, “This is stupid and hilarious” factor. Showing a boulder on the sea bed off of a rocky cliff in the Channel Islands, “Must have been put there by someone or something!” Might be more compelling if it wasn’t in one of the most militarily active areas of the world. It is flat out logical fallacy after logical fallacy to the point of being really annoying. Just bad, not entertainingly stupid; best to go back to X-Files re-runs.

So, we have an Imperial Fleet to give Darth a run for his money. And yet they are reliant on voluntarily bronze age colonies for the wheat to feed their soldiers. Wheat harvested by hand with a cycle. That they have to travel between star systems to collect. But, the peasant rebels will rise up with their skills and previously shunned technology to defeat their oppressors… Pretty fracking stupid. Keltic peasant story or Sci-fi. This movie makes the Ewok Endor Moon victory look totally plausible.

Hard to watch this film as a continuation of one of the greatest film franchises of all time. Not as bad a Han Solo getting killed by Adam Driver… But close. Spielberg, Lucas, Kennedy and Marshall are better than this.