Sadistic and regressive

Rating: 3/10 (25 January 2017)

Star Wars fans are by definition sexually immature. I sat next to one in the cinema. He teared up when Jyn's father died. I judged him. My first criticism of Rogue One is that there is no sex in it. Adults like sex. Children fear sex. Instead of sex we get violence. I like violence in film when it serves a purpose: hypostasizing Radical Evil. Here its principal purpose is to excite boys and man-boys who cannot stomach sex because they are stuck in an archaic stage of psychic development in which lasers, swords, and phallic corvettes stand in for the terrifying organ of generation and its even more terrifying counterpart. Despite its superficial feminism (more on that further on), the form of the film is deeply anti-woman. Events succeed each other in an airtight masculine logic of cause and effect in which first principles inexorably lead to a predictable conclusion. All the writers have done is swap a biological male out for a biological female. This go-girl Hillary pseudo-feminism abolishes true femininity, which is the domain of ambiguity, desire, and intelligence. Women introduce cuts and gaps into stories. They get bored with the war play. This decentering power is their Jedi skill. Women don't like swords and guns. The phallic woman that is trotted out here (and everywhere else these days) is a little boy's fantasy. Women, don't fall for it.
More generally, ROGUE ONE is anti-adult. The fact that everyone dies in the end makes it look adult, but it remains a child's fantasy of adulthood. Why? Because by dying, the main characters preserve the ontological closure of the Star Wars universe. Their sacrifice means something. An adult is someone who realizes that deep down, nothing means anything. Parents hide this from their children.
I get the feeling watching this that if these characters could simply learn to have sex with each other, the whole overblown cycle of revolution, war, saber slashing, blaster fire, and death might end. Han Solo was a man and Princess Lea was a woman. Here there are only preteens.
The chump who wrote this movie directed American PIE in 2002. It makes sense. That film too concerns the impasses of juvenile sexuality.
The battle scene at the end is particularly repulsive from an ideological standpoint. The director chose to give the grunt soldiers (all very masculine-looking men, here symbolically demoted to cannon fodder) uniforms and helmets reminiscent of World War Two and the D-Day assault on Normandy. As if Mr. American Pie knows anything about battle or sacrifice. Once again we are dealing with a child's idealized fantasy of reality. Will we ever stop cynically using the iconography of World War Two as an excuse not to do the work of understanding each conflict in its singularity?
I was disturbed by the way the storm troopers were slaughtered here. We are encouraged to cheer on the main characters as they murder dozens of faceless humans (probably teenagers drafted into service) with all sorts of aesthetic flourishes. Killing is fun!
But sex? It has no place in Star Wars.