Star Wars: The Last Jedi (ninth-pass / 2D)
Cert: 12A / 152 mins / Dir. Rian Johnson / Trailer
Previous reviews: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
One of the neatest things about A New Star Wars Film is its ability to change your outlook on the previous entries. Whether it's set before or after other episodes in the saga, there are often props, snippets of dialogue and background aliens on a previously unvisited planet which can shed new light on old stories. It's the Galaxy Far, Far Away's ability to continue unfolding as the years go by which keeps bringing audiences back for more.
Now, I like language. I'm a fan of good writing in general and while I make no claims to be perfect, I have a general fascination with (and unduly harsh criticism of other people's) grammar and punctuation. Sure, I'll begin a sentence with the words 'and' or 'but', as well as using the semicolon and Oxford comma like they're going out of fashion, but the grocer's apostrophe and erroneous use of there/their/they're can get right out. There's no excuse for those. Even more troublesome (from a certain point of view) are the 'grey areas', the more informal ticks which people use, but which aren't routinely reinforced during school-years.
As regular readers of this blog will know, I'm a big fan of the ellipsis. That's the '…' or three full stops used to imply that while the sentence itself has finished, the ideas or suggestions within have not. That there's still more to be said on the subject, often eliciting the response from the reader. A punctuational shorthand for 'to be continued'. I love an ellipsis almost as much as I love a footnote*1.
The standard, generally accepted, form of the ellipsis is, as noted above, three dots. If you use two, it just looks like you've accidentally hit the full stop key twice. Four feels needlessly long, and five or more is generally reserved for informal memos on the noticeboard in the office, organising leaving drinks and the like, typed by people who also use multiple exclamation marks without a single ounce of shame.
For the record, the four-dot-ellipsis is a thing. It's just not applicable in the context of the Star Wars opening. If your word-processing application of choice automatically converts three typed dots into an ellipsis character, you can easily end up with what appears to be four dots by having the ellipsis plus a full stop afterward. It still looks awful and wrong.
So anyway, I'm sitting the other week happily watching The Last Jedi, concentrating on the opening-crawl now that I'm familiar with the events of the movie, when I notice that it ends with a four-dot-ellipsis. Star Wars, my thing, my Star Wars, has used non-standard punctuation in the famous yellow-on-starfield introductory text. Then the next time I watch the movie, I notice that it uses a four-dot-ellipsis in the 'A Long Time Ago' text as well. WHAT KIND OF FRESH HELL IS THIS? Now, for obvious reasons, I am unable to share screenshots of this unexpected anomaly*2. I thought I was just going to have to ramble about this with you on-trust until March/April when the DVD lands.
As it goes, I'm able to illustrate the issue more easily than I'd feared. Like any sensible audit enthusiast, I though it would be a good idea to look at the precedent set by other entries in the series. To gauge the level of the bar set by the other Star Wars movies, at least one of which I've been lucky enough to love since I was four years old and still grappling with the very basics of literacy. My first port of call was to look at the last-available versions of the films (so the 2011 blu-ray cuts in with Episodes I to VI, and the standard domestic releases for The Force Awakens and Rogue One).
This is what I found...
SERIOUSLY THOUGH, WHY HAVE I NEVER NOTICED THIS BEFORE? I mean fine, it's not like the logo comes on and says "STAR WAR'S", but still. And it's not even used consistently; Return of the Jedi goes for the standard (CORRECT) three-dot-ellipsis at the end of its crawl. What the actual shit is all this about? And the 'Long time ago' card has always been like that, too.
But then I figured maybe that's to do with the films (at least the Original Trilogy) being remastered and tidied-up over the years. So without wading into the territory of screen-capping my VHS collection, here are stills from the 1995 'THX' laserdisc versions of the Original Trilogy, the set with minimal touch-ups.
Nope, it's always been wrong.
Insane.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that Star Wars was a huge formative influence in my early life and reading progression. My fascination with typography can be traced back to sitting in my bedroom as a six year-old, looking at the classic logo on a poster adorning my wall and drawing it freehand on a pad in front of me; learning the shapes not so much of the letters, but of that particular logotype; the inside and outside lines of each, their interaction with crossbars, baselines etc. And when I took a reading-test in school for children two years older than me at around the age of eight, my teacher visibly raised an eyebrow in surprise when I skimmed through the word "fatigue". How did I know that? Because of Luke Skywalker® (Bespin™ Fatigues)", that's how.
Star Wars didn't exactly teach me to read, but it's been a constant sounding-board and reference point as I grew up. Culturally, morally and creatively, it continues to be so. Then I find out that the cack-handed intern has been doing the typesetting all these years. I'm not so much astounded at my favourite, life-defining, film series using sloppy punctuation, more that it's slipped by me on every single occasion before January 2018. I'm not angry, just really disappointed*3.
So it's not like I'm going to start using the four-dot-epilsis now with the justification that 'hey, it's good enough for Lucasfilm'. I'm going to take away the lesson that sometimes we just have to be better than the examples presented to us...
"We are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters."
~Yoda, Ahch-to, 2017.
The Star Wars's.
It is.
For me, it's a buyer (already pre-ordered, obvs).
It's high.
It's very high.
Over some points, possibly.
There is.
Level 0: It is Star Wars.
*1 See? In fact, there are few things I enjoy more than using both... [ BACK ]
*2 Not least because I hate bootleg movies even more than I hate erratic punctuation. [ BACK ]
*3 With myself, as much as with Lucasfilm. I can't state that emphatically enough. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
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