A Nightmare on Elm Street

The History:
Nine, Ten… Never sleep again.
In 1984 director Wes Craven (Scream Trilogy, The Hills have Eyes, The Last House on the Left) unleashed Freddy Krueger onto the silver screen, a killer who would haunt the children of the title inspiring Elm Street in their dreams. And if you died in your dreams, you died in the real world.
Similar to Friday the 13th the horror movie spawned a load of sequels until the series ran it’s course with it’s sixth movie “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare”.
Surprisingly Wes Craven returned to direct a seventh part set in the real world where Freddy is just a horror icon. A narrative technique he would further expand in his later Scream movies. From a creative standpoint the seventh part is surprisingly bold and innovative and there would have been no better way to end the legacy of Freddy Krueger.
Did it end? Of course not!

We got a Friday the 13th / Nightmare on Elm Street crossover in the form of Freddy vs. Jason which was entertaining in terms of how ridiculous it was. Artistically there was no point in making a sequel and because Robert Englund (the original Freddy actor) didn’t want to return to the role it was just a matter of time until the remake wave (already manifested in movies like Friday the 13th or The Hills have Eyes) would reach Elm Street.
The Potential:
Remaking movies doesn’t automatically imply bad results (see The Departed, A fistful of dollars). And with the original Nightmare on Elm Street looking a tad dated and the near limitless possibilities for surreal dream sequences make Elm Street the only candidate that can profit from a remake. In the hands of a creative team the dreams are reflections of the inner struggles of our characters while still being connected to the master of nightmares: Freddy.
Also the concept of a dreamkiller is not something that gets dated over time, we all have nightmares so this concept will always be scary. Furthermore Academy Award nominee Jackie Earle Haley was cast as Freddy who recently was the exceptional standout in the overall lukewarm Watchmen adaption. And with Freddy it’s not like in the Friday the 13th series that it doesn’t matter who is playing the killer – Krueger has to be a charismatic actor which is the reason why until this movie Robert Englund played the role in every instalment. But with Haley there seemed to be the potential to live up to Englund’s performance.
Also Wes Craven toyed with the thought of making Freddy a paedophile in the original but the concept was deemed too uncomforting for it’s time, so the remake also had the opportunity to explore an unrealized idea of the original.

Moviequation:

What went wrong?
When watching the teaser and trailers for the movie the studio decided to put a public warning message into the trailer so that no one in their right minds would want to see this movie: From Producer Michael Bay.
Since we all know how about Michael Bay’s masterpieces (Transformers 2) or his artistically innovative and bold productions (Friday on 13th – booby town murderer returns) Nightmare being a disappointment is as unexpected as Shocklabyrinth 3D being a bad movie.
Still this movie underwhelms on so many levels it’s not even funny. Like with all our 80s horror remakes we have subpar acting while simultaneously being forced to watch same actors awkwardly re-quoting the original movies (oh I have nightmares…. There is a man… with knifes on his hand… never heard that before). Jackie Earle Haley isn’t bringing anything new to Freddy except repeating quotes from previous movies in a voice that’s somewhere between Rorschach and Robert Englund’s original killer.

So what about the story – or about the few things that survived the bay-saster…
Being a remake this movie apparently has not the advantage of being a new idea. And counting on an uninitiated audience who has never seen the original is a business choice for a quick buck but of course as artistically interesting as Alice in Wonderland. The story is basically the same and while the original had the advantage of being in the prime of slasher movies nowadays those stereotypes are even more uninteresting than back in its days. Yet Heather Langenkamp and Johnny Depp were both charismatic actors – something the main character Nancy (named of course like Langenkamp’s role) is lacking.
Furthermore the aforementioned paedophile storyline is doing the movie more harm than good because it is not used as a clever psychological threat but just as a cheap shock gimmick. The ultimate shortcoming of this remake yet lies in it’s most interesting premise: the dreams. Instead of telling us about the characters and their fears (but to be honest the characters are so bland that they probably don’t provide many interesting dreams) they are just dirty variations of stuff we see in everyday life like a dirty school room.

Imitation – devoid of any emotions

Freddy’s infamous boiler room makes an appearance but without it’s backstory from the original it just becomes another set piece as cold and emotionless as the rest of this production.
Every time the movie tries to “pay homage (or rip off)” the original movie it seems as if the producers never understood the original in the first place. As an example, there’s a scene where Nancy is falling asleep in her bed and we see the shape of Freddy descending down to her.
In the original we had a large section of dark space above Nancy when suddenly the shape of a man is seen slowly reaching down to her… yet he disappears as soon as Nancy wakes up. The scene is not overdone or anything, it’s just a short appearance to hint at a this menace that might strike at any time – and it’s all in one shot.
The remake takes similar elements but decides that it is way creepier to show Freddy from about 3 different angles in bright light. Also it is much more menacing if we see Freddy like a bad special effect that is forming “menacing” expressions.

So what about the new elements?
When it’s not failing in stealing elements from the original what does the movie do with the new ideas? Truth be told… not very much. When I watched the aforementioned paedophile angle being realized on screen it made me appreciate why it wasn’t done in the first place. Not only are Freddy’s motives shrouded in something that pretends to be a mystery, but he works better when we are not sure where his evil comes from – similar to Silence of the Lambs not knowing the exact reasons for why the antagonist is the way he is makes him 1) scarier and 2) more interesting.
Since this movie is not keen on doing anything new there is only one other addition: micro-naps. This concept is another attempt at sacrificing suspension for the cheap scares the producers think we want. Micro-naps occur when someone hasn’t slept in a long time and now he is experiencing seconds of wake-dreams. Now this could have been a nice addition, but like I said before it is just there to “shock” us – oh no, Freddy is standing on the street!
Why would we want to see characters desperately trying not to fall asleep, knowing that no matter what they do, eventually they will fall asleep – isn’t it much more interesting if we get constant Freddyflashes everywhere we go?

So what do we have?

• horrendous acting
• uninspired and rehashed story
• elements from the original sloppily “reimagined”
• additions that further reduce the quality instead of enhancing it
• 32 million dollar opening weekend
• Sequel in 3d

This movie has been critic-proof from the beginning and everyone knew it. Financially it is currently the second highest grossing Nightmare on Elm Street movie because of nostalgia and brand-power and just to give a very motivating comparison: Domestically it has grossed 13 million dollar more than Kick-Ass just because it preyed on our nostalgia and the never dry running “slash ‘em up” genre that we will watch no matter how dumb and uninspired it is.
If you haven’t seen this movie, don’t watch it, if you are a hardcore Elm Street fan rent it on DVD or anything, it is not a worthy remake and I’d even go as far as saying that “Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge” and “Freddy’s dead: The final nightmare” are better movie than this disaster.

Rating
Category: 1
Score: 15%

Shock Labyrinth 3D

3D…. check
bad acting…. check
floating 3D rabbit with a vagina that spills out black haired girl …. check

Can you tell a movie is bad by the trailer? Should we be prejudiced snobs and condemn a movie based on its advertising?

In the case of Shock Labyrinth 3D I can safely say: If you watch this movie thinking that this will be a good horror movie or at least 2 entertaining hours then you are in for a horrific surprise. Let alone that the movie has 3D in the title and is desperately advertising the 3D gimmick as “the new dimension of horror” or something along that lines, this is probably everything that’s wrong when you are complaining about soulless just for the quick bucks movie making.

The movie starts with your typical horror images we are used after the loads of “the ring” – copies and sequels. The so-called horror is solely based on the belief that people will get automatically scarred by images resembling the ring. So we get a load of “black haired girl” shots to make us shiver… because it’s like totally scary and stuff.
The pace of the movie is atrocious because the producers actually try to create some mystery and it made me miss the silliness of “My Bloody Valentine 3D Digital Cinema Experience” where the makers didn’t even try to put some plot into the movie and let the train wreck happen from the get-go.

But for fans of trashy horror movies this is a goldmine since the last half an hour feels like they wrote four different screenplays accidentally mixed them and forgot to number the pages so they cut it together like they found it. Seriously this movie shifts from Donnie Darko to Fight Club in mere seconds while flavouring every scene with atrocious acting that sets the new standard for bad horror movie acting (previously held by the Saw series).
It also shows that the horror genre is better left untouched by the current 3D craze (something I will probably analyse in near future) since it is more of a distraction from what is going onscreen but in this case it helped hold our attention because it just look so over the top silly. It felt like a little kid with a new toy pointing stuff at us to reassure “Hey this is 3D!!!”

To end the review with the most poignant quote from a friend of mine:
I am not sure if I want this thing a second time or never again in my life.

Trashometer: 85%
The bar for the Speedracer award has been set very high with this entry

Avengers: The good, the bad and the ugly

With Iron Man 2 there was one sideeffect that couldn’t be ignored anymore: The upcoming Avengers movie (a team-up movie featureing various marvel heroes set to hit the screen in 2012 directed by Joss Whedon).
While fanboys around the globe geek out about said movie I am a bit concerned about this whole thing, but first let us analyse the three stages of Avengers annoyance:

1. The easter-egg that gets nerds crazy but thankfully leaves the rest alone : There have been side references in comic book movies early on, often just some winks to the source material (Bob Kane drawing a phantom-picture of Batman in Tim Burton’s 89’s version) those things are nice if you know what you are looking for but don’t confuse people who are not into the comic lore. Iron Man 2 has one of these easter eggs when Stark needs Captain America’s Shield to abuse it for his particle accelerator. If you know what this Shield represents you find it funny that Stark is so careless, if you don’t know the Shield the situation itself is funny.
2. The scene that has nothing to do with the movie and is there to get fanboys crazy : This scenes are there at the end of the film to remind us that there will be an Avengers movie. Mostly they have nothing to do with the plot except featuring a character from the main movie talking about something that has nothing to do with the main movie. The worst offender here is definately The Incredible Hulk where Tony Stark appears at the end to talk about how they are putting a team together. The scene doesn’t advance the plot, ends with Stark glancing awkwardly at General Ross and that’s it.
3. If we have moved past pleasing hardcorefans for a few moments we get storylines shoven into the main movie that take up a significant amount of screentime in order to further promote a movie you might have heard of… this avengers movie.

After listing those 3 points I think it is superfluous to say that I am not a big fan of the Avengers concept even though I was pretty thrilled about this undertaking before watching The Incredible Hulk. So this argument will be heavily biased, nonetheless I am going to start listing the good things before getting dirty:

Respecting the Source:
A lot of problems that turn comic book movie adaptions into failures lie in producer not respecting the source material or screwing around with the basic story in order to make it “acceptable” for mainstream audiences. With Marvel building up the Avengers we can rest assured that this studio won’t make drastic changes to appeal to the masses but instead they have to focus on the individual characters. They know that without Thor and Captain America the Avengers will fail so they have to do their best to make both heroes appealing.

The feeling of an ongoing story:
Looking back at the first comic book movies they were mostly self contained stories and usually when a sequel was announced they just threw in a new villain and hoped to cash in on the previous success. With an Avengers concept there is an ongoing backstory and the sequel is now a new chapter in a big continuing story with many layers that is intertwined with all other movies.

Tackle big issues:
With the separate heroes already established the Avenger concept is a great idea to play with conflicting heromoralities. Now I admit that I am more of a DC guy than a Marvel guy so I am not aware how far the morality conflicts can go but I guess there is a great deal of conflict between Captain America and Iron Man that can be explored. Also Iron Man’s technological background standing against Thor’s mythological backstory can provide a huge storyline about one very fundamental human conflicts : Spirituality against Rationalism.

Offer shades of grey :
One of my favorite DC storyline is « Identity Crisis » in which a murder is taking place that shocks the entire superhero community. Through the course of the story we not only learn about the nature of secret identities and the dark deeds of our heroes but also about the conflicting moralities.
In a standalone movie we are used to our main hero eventually doing the right thing. He will suffer and make mistakes he might not even be the best role model (i.e. Batman’s actions in The Dark Knight) but at the end he will redeem himself and evolve in some way.
With a teamup movie this absolute is gone. Now we have superheroes representing different virtues of mankind and showing the conflicts when they face tough situations. Sure Superman’s ideals are noble and worth striving for, but Batman will stand next to Superman and keep reminding him that his worldview is a tad too naive… while Superman is at the end everything we should be, Batman is the rational voice, the one that tries to bridge those almost god-like ideals with our everyday life.

In the hands of a talented writer and director a Superhero teamup can be one of the most thoughtful and ambitious superhero movies we have ever seen.

Yet there is still the but… where all my fears arise:

Restricting creativity:
It’s already a tough job for anyone to try and bring a superhero on screen let alone deliver an outstanding movie. The source though very rich can often be restricting, the fanbase downright bitchy about every little change (Oh no Heath Ledger will never be a good Joker! We want Venom in Spiderman 3!) and you might not be able to do what you want with the characters because of sequels and continuity (i.e. Gordon can only be fake-dead). If you can still manage to pull of a Spider-Man 2 or an Iron Man then congrats, but with an ongoing Avengers movie there is even more stuff to watch out and while the saying that restrictions can be more usefull for creativity than unlimited possibilities might be true to some extend I still don’t think that a director who tries to put a decent Superman adaption on screen should care about what Green Lantern is doing right now – leave that kind of thinking to the fans and deliver a solid Superman movie that stands on it’s own two feet.
It is also very sad to notice that in an interview after Iron Man John Faverau stated that he would like to have a 3 years gap between the two movies so he can have enough time to get a good movie going. Sadly Marvel forced him to get it down to 2 years and instead of a great movie that rivals the first one we got just an o.k. summerblockbuster.

Turning movies into commercials:
With Iron Man 2 the Avengers have gone from slightly irritating post credits scenes to something that shoves the Avengers story down our throats when everything we wanted to see was a good Iron Man story. When the movie could have time to develop relations between the people we care about (Stark, Pepper, maybe Rhodey or the villain) we are forced to watch Scarlett Johansson  and Samuel L. Jackson pop up and hint at the Avengers and constantly remind us that everything around us is somehow connected to a bigger movie.

Let’s just take apart those two characters and find their purpose for the film:

Nick Fury (the director of Shield played by Sam Jackson) appears and talks to Stark about his project. Now if you have no idea about the Marvel universe and not seen the postcredits scene you have no idea who this guy is. If you have seen the sequence after Iron Man and still have no idea about Marvel comics you are probably as confused unless you have a hardcore nerd by yourside who’s squirming his pants and explaining to you that the Avengers will happen in 2012. So apart from irritating us Jackson is here to give Stark a temporary plotdevice for his illness and handing him a second plotdevice to get rid of his illness over the course of the movie.
The second scene with Jackson is another talk about the Avengers which again has nothing to do with the main plot or the theme of Iron Man 2, therefore the scene becomes a waste of time that is only there as a commercial. And while this scene might be irritating and disconnected to the main plot the post-credits scene tops everything that has gone before it by showing us Thor’s hammer. While Incredible Hulk and Iron Man were at least featuring some elements from the same movie this scene is so randomly inserted and has absolutely no other purpose than to further exploit the anticipation of comic book fans.

Black Widow’s appearance is even more baffling since she does absolutely nothing and has no character whatsoever. It was funny that I read an interview with Scarlett Johansson where she talked about Black Widow as a character whose allegiance wasn’t clear, because in the movie everything she does is: provide eyecandy and being an agent for Nick Fury – not much conflict or uncertainty about her motives.
But we could argue that she was there to deactivate Rhodey while not deactivating the Drones so we can have the specialeffect fight at the end – wow so Black Widow is a conveniant eyecandy. It’s good we have screentime with her instead of developing an interesting relation between Stark and Pepper or show more of Mickey Rourke who is criminally underused in this movie already.

If all upcoming superheromovies will feature characters that are only there as advertisements for a future teamup movie then I sincerely hope that the Avengers will crash and we can return to separate thought out movies.

Going Phantom Menace instead of going Empire:
A special effect without a Story is a pretty boring things… were the words of George Lucas before he turned Yoda into a gummibear. This is exactly what can happen with the Avengers.
What is the reason the first Iron Man is so beloved : Yes special effects and building your own suit, but all this would be meaningless if it weren’t for Tony Stark’s transformation from an arrogant jerk to a guy who wants to make up for his past mistakes. The armor wouldn’t be as interesting if it weren’t for Downey’s phenomenal performance that makes time fly by while we are watching him perfecting his suit.

With Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hulk and Jacob knows what other superheroes you are inclined to think that the Avengers can only be good, but not only is overcrowding (translate:  going Spiderman 3) a tricky stepstone but also a meaningful story has to be found. If the Avengers are just there to fight a biggerer and betterer villain than what’s the point ? After The Dark Knight and Iron Man I think we should know that comic book movies are not about villains of the week (or year). The sequel should not be about a villain that either randomly appears or was the result of a random accident in the previous movie (like they obviously set up in the Incredible Hulk). Good superhero stories deal with a theme that is underlined or manifested by the villain. Iron Man is not about Shellhead against Iron Monger but about Tony Stark dealing with responsibility. Spider-Man 2 is not about Doctor Octopus against Spider-Man but about how much a hero has to sacrifice to be selfless.

So going up against a random invasion will be as interesting as watching another Transformers movie. I have mentioned Identity Crisis before as my favourite Superhero teamup but I doubt that the Avengers film will go that direction. Identity Crisis isn’t even a holy grail for comic book nerds, it is a very love it or hate it relation, but at least it has ambition and a clever storyline. But adapting it onto the big screen would mean to adapt a movie without a final battle and one tiny action sequence in the first half… with a big budget and looking for a great way to cash in I seriously doubt the Avengers will go in a direction that radical, I doubt that even Christopher Nolan could get away with a purely existential Batman 3, there is just too much at stakes which again hinders creativity.
And if Marvel studios force the guy who turned a B-List superhero into 585,133,287 dollars to churn out a sequel as fast as possible hopes are getting low that they will take many creative risks when it comes to the Avengers.

The Power of Nothing

This analysis will contain spoilers about: Star Wars (1977), Avatar (2009), Trainspotting (1995), Das Leben der Anderen (2006)
Before the Spoiler and after it there will be a warning so you can savely skip the information and watch the specific movie unspoiled (which in 75% of the mentioned movies will be a better experience than this essay)

Less is more

Going into movies is no disconnected experience, when we decide if we liked a movie after the credits start rolling we won’t be able to look at the movie as something that has nothing to do with ourselves – quite the contrary, the reason a movie stays with us after it has ended depends on our emotional investment. If the movie triggers the emotion the director intended he can make us cry like little children while watching UP or make us cheer for the Ghostbusters.

Resonating with the audience demands a high set of skills which obviously means that a million things can go wrong if the filmmaker doesn’t use his tools correctly, the sentimental music in the background can suddenly reach a peak where the audience is no longer “in” the movie because of the things that should bring them into the story in the first place.

When discussing tragic scenes with a friend of mine we came to a strange conclusion: that the scenes which moved us most were the scenes that were not presented as such (or at least didn’t fit the cliché of “sad movie scene”).

Our two examples were:

Trainspotting

[SPOILER]
At the end of Trainspotting Mark decides that he will no longer live the life of an addict – he changes and leaves the apartment, but changing your lifestyle is not without sacrifice. When Mark prepares to leave the room his friend Spud wakes up. For a short moment they look at each other in silent understanding – they will no longer see each other because Spud will remain an addict.
[END OF SPOILER]

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)

[SPOILER]
Gerd Wiesler is spying for the governmant on an author named Georg Dreyman in East-Berlin (1984). During the course of the movie he develops sympathy for Dreyman and decides to fake his transcripts, not mentioning Dreyman’s activities against the government. After the fall of the wall in Berlin the author finds out about the fact that Wiesler saved him from persecution, so he decides to write a book dedicated to Wiesler. The final scene shows Wiesler going into the bookstore, reading Dreyman’s thanks. He goes to the cashier, who politely asks him if he wants him to gift-wrap it, to which Wiesler answers: “No it’s for me.”
[END OF SPOILER]

In both movies the emotion is presented in a very normal context, be it a simple look or a dialog we hear almost every time we go shopping. There is some music in the background, but it is not that loud or important. The actors themselves are not bursting into tears or tearing up, they either look or say their lines, yet we notice that there is more going on in this scene than what is on screen. This is the movie power, the scene is stripped down to contain barely enough information for us to reflect the movie and ponder about what this means. Of course there is more than just McGregor’s look or those three throwaway lines.

Discussing those scenes made us come to the conclusion that it seems like the movie refuses to work for us, but instead orders us to work for him. My friend poignantly formulated it this way: “If a movie is already sad, there is sad music, the actor is crying, the camera is focusing on the tears – well then what do I have to do? There is no reason being sad, the movie is already doing the job for me.”

The beauty of both sequences is that it connects to us and asks us what we’re thinking about this situation: Do we want to feel redemption? Is it a relief? Or a bittersweet ending to a story that could have gone way into the wrong direction?

There is no definitive interpretation, which means we have to get our own set of morals and let the movie take a place in the back – it is no longer about the movie it is about how I feel about a scene, how I would react – thus the moviejourney gets more intimate than simply telling the audience what to feel.

Having now discovered a very exciting and multilayered angle in a short sequence, this of course leads to the question:

Why don’t movies do this all the time?

The answer is of course simple: it’s one of the toughest jobs to do. Million things can go wrong, from shooting to acting. Just because McGregor and the late Ulrich Mühe don’t do a lot of oscarworthy courtroomcrying it doesn’t mean that it is a simple job – conveying this massive subtext in some simple lines is a tough job for the actor and if you don’t have actors like Mühe at hand your final scene might as well come around as a pretentious uninspired monolog.

Another advantage of not forcing onto the audience is that if the audience doesn’t connect, people won’t be as annoyed as they are when watching the dramatic death of a character that has cancer while the protagonists weep and the lights go out dramatically as the music swells to a melancholic climax. If this dramatic scene doesn’t work we will be angry, because if we are not connected to the movie and the movie insists on the fact that this is really really sad, than we won’t be able to look at it with a straight face.

So how do the big guys deal with this?

Warning! The rest of the review is detailing plotpoints of Avatar (2009) and Star Wars (1977) so it won’t be spoilerfree at all:

When making a multimillion dollar movie about the epic quest of a farmboy against a universe controlled by darkness or about a boy going on a lifetimes journey to destroy the most powerful weapon while wrestling with temptation and power, you will be well advised to sell your story as epic as it is. The language movie epics like Lord of the Rings use is by definition a different one based on the fact that the scale of the story and the stakes are of epic proportions. Choices in movies like Trainspotting deal with our own demons and mortality while choices in epics will eventually affect not only the person but the whole country, planet, universe, multiverse, batcave.

When watching James Cameron’s fantasy epic Avatar there was one very tragic scene

Avatar

When the evil Colonel Quaritch decides to destroy the hometree of the Na’vi we witness military aircrafts aligning and firing their rockets into the tree. Burning the tree collapses and leaves a horde of crying and shattered Na’vi. After the massacre Neytiri finds her father lying dead on the earth. She sinks down, crying over his dead body.

When watching this scene the first time I involuntarily had to chuckle – not because I’m a deranged madman who takes joy in killing treehuggers, but because of the fact that this scene fell exactly under the category “The movie is doing all the work”. Everything in this moment screamed “SAD!”, the music, how the characters acted, how around them everything was burning down – the movie was well aware of its importance, yet it was overdone to a point where it wasn’t even funny anymore. It didn’t help that the characters who lost their life in this scene hadn’t been real 3dimensional characters in the first place so their death is not even felt as an emotional loss – to paraphrase: it’s not like Gandalf is suddenly gone.

So to me this sequence in Avatar was the textbook example of a movie trying to be sad, but because I was not connected I was annoyed by the fact that the movie dramatized everything in a way that made Pocahontas look like a subtle movie.

But what are examples of the right mixture between epic and subtle emotion?

Star Wars

After telling Obi Wan that he couldn’t join him to fight the Empire he heads home, being afraid that the Empire might have found out that Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru have bought the sought after droids. When Luke arrives at the farm the Empire has already been here: the homestead is burning, we see the skeletons of Luke’s relatives, Luke is looking at them while John Williams’s score is swelling and we cut to three tie fighters heading towards the Deathstar.

Now I won’t argue that Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru are characters with a Shakespearean depth, they are very much like the sidecharacters in Avatar just people with not much to do except die. Yet we had some interaction between Owen and Luke before that showed us their family relation and their mundane problems, we have a little profile in the back of our head “Owen: strict, concerned, Beru: understanding” and that’s it.

Before shooting this scene Mark Hamill proposed that Luke should fall down to his knees in front of the homestead and cry, but George Lucas refused to shoot it like this. Now Luke just stands there, looks down and then the music swells and we cut to the Empire. It helps that we have Williams’s magnificent score in the background which would automatically win us over any time, but very similar to the examples I picked in the beginning George Lucas knew that you don’t necessarily need to force us to be sad, Luke not crying means playing the ball to the audience, asking an emotional response from them, the figure standing immobile staring at the burning remnants of his relatives followed by a cut to the sheer infinite resources of the Empire is colossal in scope, yet the core emotion which makes this scene work has to be put into the movie by us – the audience.