TRUDGE MATCH

In theaters this weekend:

The Long Walk--In the late '70s and early '80s, the young and already prolific Stephen King, not wishing to glut the market with his name, published five pungently entertaining novels under the pseudonym "Richard Bachman." Only one of them, Thinner (1984), was a supernatural horror story; two of them were dystopian tales which seem disturbingly prescient in their anticipation of competitive "reality TV." One of these, The Running Man (1982), was filmed in 1987, and a remake is scheduled for release this November. The other, The Long Walk (1979), opens this weekend.

This harsh, bitter film looks like a period piece, set the '70s (it was filmed in Manitoba). But it's an alternative version of the '70s, in a shabby, impoverished America under the rule of "The Major" (Mark Hamill) a gravel-voiced and rather seedy-looking military dictator. It's unclear whether The Major is the ultimate power or just a regional tinpot, but he's the lord of the title competition, an odious annual death sport.

The event is simple: a cross-country walk down a rural road for young men--boys, really--accompanied by soldiers in vehicles. Participants must maintain a speed of three miles per hour; if they fall below this pace, they are given a series of warnings, and if they fail to keep moving after the third and final warning, they are shot dead. If they step off the course, they are shot without warning. Last man still walking wins a huge monetary prize, and the granting of an extravagant wish.

Our focus is on Ray (a fine everyman turn by Cooper Hoffman), a local favorite who gets dropped off by his anguished Mom (Judy Greer) like he's going to play high school football. Director Francis Lawrence, working from a generally faithful adaptation by JT Mollner, then keeps the movie on the literal straight and narrow; except for a very quick flashback or two, it's just Ray and his competitors, walking and talking, and occasionally getting their brains graphically blown out (we're also, in case you're wondering, shown how they manage their other bodily needs on the hoof).

Along the way, Ray bonds with Peter (David Jonsson, terrific here as he was as the guileless robot in Alien: Romulus) and they realize that they're true friends, not just allies of convenience. This is the emotional core of the film, and the intractable, ambiguous heart of its drama. The book, written in the shadow of the Vietnam war and its hideous squandering of young men, packed a punch; but it's possible the movie, despite its inevitable monotony and the morbid self-pity common to "young adult" fiction, is even more unsettling and troubling. The excellence and value of this ensemble cast adds to the weight of seeing the walkers senselessly slaughtered.

Most of the boys are supportive and encouraging of each other, despite the ultimate disadvantage of such behavior in the vile, survival-of-the-fittest nature of the competition. And even after years of Big Brother and Survivor providing non-lethal examples to the contrary, somehow I found this weird and generous-hearted esprit de corps believable, and touching. It's what makes The Long Walk not just horrific but genuinely tragic.

JEDI HARD

Opening this week:

Star Wars: The Last Jedi--After a lively space battle at the opening to get us warmed up, the latest from the franchise picks up right where The Force Awakens left off. Scavenger-turned-warrior Rey (Daisy Ridley) has caught up with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), now a recluse on a windswept island on some distant planet. She's been sent by his sister Leia (Carrie Fisher) to fetch him back into the struggle between The Resistance and the brutal "First Order."

While she pleads with Luke to get back in the game, Rey is also in psychic touch with Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), Leia and Han Solo's wayward son who is still in the service of the dreadful First Order overlord Snoke (Andy Serkis). Elsewhere in that galaxy far, far away, the last ragged remnant of the Resistance is trying to elude the First Order's ships, with the help of a desperate plan by former stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega), his new friend Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), hotheaded space ace Poe (Oscar Isaac) and others. This involves a detour to a Monte-Carlo-like casino planet, and then sneaking aboard the First Order's warship, none of which goes smoothly.

As with The Force Awakens, much of the pleasure in The Last Jedi comes from the attractively non-generic actors, saddled with cringe-inducing dialogue but at least allowed some welcome freedom to be funny at times. Through the character of the commoner heroine Rey, the story also takes a mild stab at acknowledging the dynastic bias that has been such a persistent part of the Star Wars series, and the attitudes on class that it would seem to imply. These movies are more fixated on the inherent importance of bloodlines than a documentary on the Royal Family, and the treatment of the revelations about Rey's lineage would have seemed quaint in the '30s.

But much amusement also comes, as with all Star Wars movies, from the marginal verisimilitude--such casually observed fauna as the elephant-seal/dinosaur-like creatures which provide Luke with sustenance, and the toad-like maintenance workers that keep up his domicile. The obligatory adorable creatures this time, by the way, are the porgs, beakless, wide-eyed seabirds with nesting-doll-shaped bodies.

I liked all of this, and I thoroughly enjoyed The Last Jedi. But as so often with big blockbuster movies it seemed too long to me. Since this is such a perennial cranky complaint from me, I was relieved to hear others saying the same as I left the screening. It isn't just a question of a tired backside; director Rian Johnson, to whom the script is solely credited, puts together one of those big climatic finales typical of the series, crosscutting between several strands of action and building to a noble act of self-sacrifice, and then...it turns out it's not the end at all. There's another whole act still to go, and another big climactic confrontation. And a very good confrontation it is, but by then we've had our emotional release. And also, our backsides are tired.

Despite the Gotterdammerung title, The Last Jedi is not slated to be the last of this Star Wars trilogy. It was, alas, the final film of Carrie Fisher, who has an imperturbably majestic mien here, and whose absence will be sorely felt in the series.

Even so, the best thing about the movie is Hamill. As Luke in the original films, he was sweet and likable but callow to the point of insubstantial; it was like Richie Cunningham at the center of a space opera. In The Last Jedi, with his scraggly hair and graying beard, his raspy voice and haunted, haggard eyes, he has a bearing that can fairly be called Shakespearean.

Ferdinand--Fox Animation and Blue Sky Studios are bravely opening this animated feature for kids the same weekend as The Last Jedi. Maybe the theory is that they'll get the spillover audiences if the Star Wars flick sells out.

In any case, it's a sweet film. It's an adaptation of Munro Leaf's 1936 children's book, with superb illustrations by Robert Lawson, about the gentle-souled bull in Spain who doesn't want to fight, he just wants to sit under his favorite cork tree and smell the flowers. Leaf and Lawson's tiny, beautiful classic (sometimes condemned for its hero's nonviolent nature) was already turned into a very faithful, Oscar-winning 8-minute cartoon short by Disney, Ferdinand the Bull, in 1938.

Turning it into a feature is another matter, of course. The story had to be embellished, and to some extent vulgarized. It's spun out into an escape thriller, as Ferdinand (voiced by John Cena) and his "calming goat" Lupe (Kate McKinnon) try to help the other bulls crash out of their corral, having figured out what will happen to them wether they win or lose in the ring.

It took me a while to warm up to this over-plotting, but happily the movie is willing to go silly. About the time that Ferdinand and his pals were engaging in a dance-off with the uppity German horses in the next stable over, I started to crack up. Said bulls are voiced, by the way, by the likes of Anthony Anderson, Bobby Cannavale, David Tennant and, of all people, Peyton Manning.

By the end, Ferdinand had won me over with its generous heart. Which, I must confess, did not stop me from having a hamburger the following day.

BEST SPACE SCENARIO

Opening this Thursday:

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens—The three Star Wars “prequels,” from 1999, 2002 and 2005, all started in the standard manner for the series, with the preface “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” followed by the blasting John Williams fanfare and the title. But then that crawl of yellow text would start, and it was a bunch of gobbledygook about trade alliances and congressional debates that would have seemed dry, complicated and confusing on C-SPAN.

The expository crawl for the new entry, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, starts with the line…

Well, wait a minute. As we were leaving the press screening, the PR folks asked us for our reactions. One of the ushers, headed in to clean the theater, was holding his hands over his ears as he passed us, terrified that he’d overhear some “spoiler.” So if you’re of this guy’s mindset, maybe you’d better stop reading until after you’ve seen the flick. I’ll do my best not give away any specific plot points, but perhaps you’d rather go in completely uncontaminated.

OK, now: The opening crawl for The Force Awakens begins with the line “Luke Skywalker has disappeared.” It goes on to explain that Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) has dispatched “her most daring pilot” to track down a clue to her brother’s whereabouts.

Now we’re talking. Much like in the original 1977 Star Wars, a hero has disappeared, and the good guys have to find him. It’s the sort of simple, fairy-tale set-up that’s implied by that “Once upon a time” opening line.

And it’s this approach that makes The Force Awakens so much more fun than the “prequel trilogy.” In those films, there would be shootouts and spaceship dogfights and light saber duels, but it was hard to know what was at stake at any given point—at times I almost wasn’t sure who I was supposed to root for. The spectacle was great, but the storytelling was muddled. It certainly didn’t seem like the feeling a Star Wars movie should give you.

With The Force Awakens, however, director J. J. Abrams, working from a script he co-wrote with Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt, gets about as close, probably, as it’s possible to get to bringing us the feeling that the originals gave us back in the ‘70s and ‘80s—that sense of a new mythology, and a set of shiny new toys. The cinematography and set designs and props have a subtly retro look—one robot has a head that looks a lot like an old-school drive-in movie speaker—that links them convincingly to the original trilogy’s universe.

The actors have a retro look, too. The story, set decades after the end of 1983’s Return of the Jedi during a period in which the Empire is trying to re-assert itself as the “First Order,” allows for the presence of original cast members like Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford and, buried under Wookie fur not noticeably gone gray, Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca.

But even the youngsters in the cast, like Daisy Ridley as a scavenger girl on a desert planet, John Boyega as a stormtrooper gone rogue with conscience, or Oscar Isaac as the aforementioned most daring pilot, seem to echo the gee-whiz young characters of the early films. There’s even a spherical, chirping-and-whistling robot, and a villain with a rumbling voice behind a dark helmet and mask.

All of the actors are proficient, but the standout—a little surprisingly, considering his supposed great indifference to these films—is Ford, who brings lightness and warmth to the middle-aged Han Solo that I don’t think he had back in the ‘70s. When he and Fisher’s Leia exchange their crooked, ruefully nostalgic smiles, it’s very charming.

There are innovative new characters, like a tiny, wizened, thousand-year-old barkeep (wonderfully performed, behind motion capture, by Lupita Nyong’o) who looks like a talking kumquat with coke-bottle glasses, but even she serves as a somewhat Obi-Wan-like mentor presence for Scavenger Girl. There are new creatures, too—a hornbill-like bird pecking at a helmet, an enormous boar-like beast at a water trough, tentacled horrors running amok on a cargo ship. But they, too, recall the barely-glimpsed fauna in the early movies.

This applies to the whole of Force Awakens. It starts on a desert planet, follows the search for a cute robot entrusted with vital information, involves mentors and pupils and family connections and a super-weapon and Jedi mind tricks and cringing underlings bringing bad news to scary bad guys and crosscutting between space battles and personal confrontations. It’s almost less a sequel than a series of variations on the original trilogy’s themes. That’s the shrewd and sensible method that Abrams, Kasdan and Arndt have used: Everything’s new, but everything’s old as well.

On the way to the screening, I saw, no kidding, an electric traffic sign on a Phoenix highway that read “AGGRESSIVE DRIVING IS THE PATH TO THE DARK SIDE.” For better or for worse, that’s how ingrained in mainstream culture this once-nerdy mythos has become. Oddly, the movie uses a variation on this metaphysic: The previous Star Wars films were heavily concerned with the allure of the Dark Side, but this film is about the seductions of the Light, the risks and perils of giving in to one’s better impulses. This, I think, it’s what gives the movie its vitality. It might be called A Franchise Awakens.