Rey won the fight in TFA. I can’t believe this is even being disputed. Everything about the scene says she won the fight, especially the swelling victorious music.
Making Rey a nobody democratizes the Force. Making her a Kenobi keeps it aristocratic.
Careful, now. No political talk.
Not worked on the edit in a few months as I was totally burnt out on it. I’ll be back on it soon enough though 😃
It’s a bit concerning that all it takes (on the surface at least) to be banned without an opportunity to defend yourself is another member’s word. Even moreso now that it seems that any evidence to the contrary is being wilfully ignored.
What does this mean for other projects, high profile or not? What’s to stop someone getting a member banned and a thread locked by throwing around accusations? Is it really fair that if you have a personal beef with a member or their project, you can do this without additional testimony or evidence?
Surely there must be more for Jay to go on than has been disclosed here…as it just seems unreasonable.
One of the biggest complaints I consistently hear about TPM though (aside from its general crapness) is that Maul didn’t survive to be a recurring villain, so it’s another case of the screenwriter being damned either way…
Do it differently, and the fans complain it’s wrong, do it the same and they complain it’s a rehash.
brash_stryker said:
Because Rey is only now fully “awakened” and letting in the force. She had her vision which ended with a voice saying “these are your first steps”.So when she was “awakened” by the vision, how did Kylo freeze her in place and knock her unconscious with an effortless wave of his hand?
If she was “awakened” by the time of the final fight, how was Kylo able to throw her against a tree from 30 yards away?
I did say FULLY awakened. Did you ignore also how I pointed out the significance of the “first steps” line? Until she saw Finn dying, she was running from her force connection and the saber itself, which is symbolic of her abilities.
Seeing her friend in danger leads to that Excalibur moment, which symbolises that she is finally letting it all in and ready to embrace being a Jedi.
Edit: For clarity’s sake, so we can avoid further back and forths, the moment she force grabs the saber (accepting that to save her friend, she must embrace her destiny) THAT is when Rey is finally, truly “Awakened”, and gains a more thorough mastery of her abilities.
OK, let’s say I agree with you on that point. Even if that is the case, in the EXACT SAME SCENE Kylo flings Rey against a tree and knocks her out without any effort. If she were able to shield him off with her force powers, then why didn’t she do it then? Because we needed to see Kylo and Finn fight 1 on 1 first?
The film just does whatever it wants on a minute by minute basis.
It is just a poorly written.
Because Rey is only now fully “awakened” and letting in the force. She had her vision which ended with a voice saying “these are your first steps”. She then ran from it (rejecting the saber and running away from Maz’s castle) but now upon seeing her friend injured, soon to be killed, she embraces it. The saber, the very thing she was so scared of, and the embodiment of her growing connection to the force, literally leaping into her hand.
It’s symbolic. That is the moment when she finally opens up to the force fully and embraces what she truly is.
brash_stryker said:
Think about the OT. It was established early in ANH that Vader could choke people to death. And yet Vader never ONCE tried it against Luke. Would have ended the fight pretty quick wouldn’t it, if Vader had just choked him to the point of unconsciousness? Well it’s pretty obvious to me that Vader couldn’t because of how strong Luke was in the force. That’s what sets the Jedi apart from the normal people in this universe, otherwise the logic of it would all fall apart.Vader never wanted to kill Luke because he was Vader’s son.
Let’s ignore the fact i said nothing about killing for a moment. Are you saying then that any dark Jedi who WANTS to kill another Jedi, could just do it? Choke em right there? Doesn’t that render the Jedi’s stance of using the force only for “knowledge or defence, never for attack”, kind of stupid? Not to mention that your assertion would mean that the only way we could have a battle between a Jedi and darksider without the darksider just winning automatically is if the darksider…for some reason…just didn’t want to kill them.
I can feel the tension already.
TV’s Frink said:
I’m not sure if you stayed awake during the whole film, or you just willfully ignore things that don’t support your positions. Are you claiming that Ren’s interrogation of Rey showed his virtually unlimited power?His physical power ldo.
Not sure what “ldo” means, but he uses the Force. How is “physical power” relevant?
I’m honestly confused what you are trying to say.
Rey stood up to him mentally, and that’s fine. I actually liked that scene quite a bit in the film.
But physically, Kylo trashed her and everyone else he encountered despite whatever insecurities he might have been fostering. He froze Rey and knocked her out with an effortless wave of his hand. He telekinetically picked her up and flung her through the air into a tree. He froze Poe Dameron in place and had him arrested. He stopped blaster bolts in mid air. He was not physically threatened in the entire film.
But then, at the end, he suddenly forgets he has these powers and gets his ass beat. Insecurity is not the reason for his loss, because he was just as insecure when he flung Rey through the air and knocked her out 2 minutes earlier IN THE EXACT SAME SCENE. The only explanation for Rey nearly killing Kylo is that someone wrote the script with one thing in mind, and someone else with more power decided they wanted a different ending with something else in mind.
The rest of the script and the ending do not match.
I think the problem here is how you’re completely separating the mental and physical prowess of a Jedi/force user. There’s always been an element of mind/spirit over matter in the OT. Therefore it stands to reason that if you’re of strong mind/spirit (or have recently become so because the force has “awakened” in you) then you have some sort of defence against these force attacks.
Think about the OT. It was established early in ANH that Vader could choke people to death. And yet Vader never ONCE tried it against Luke. Would have ended the fight pretty quick wouldn’t it, if Vader had just choked him to the point of unconsciousness? Well it’s pretty obvious to me that Vader couldn’t because of how strong Luke was in the force. That’s what sets the Jedi apart from the normal people in this universe, otherwise the logic of it would all fall apart.
My wife brought up an interesting question tonight - why does Ren say to Rey about Luke’s lightsaber, “That belongs to me”?
He says it to Finn…and for some reason I think there’s more to it than typical bad guy arrogance (i.e. anything I want is automatically mine). Maybe Luke recovered it and had promised it to his nephew “when he was old enough”. But Ben got impatient, and now we have Kylo Ren.
If it wasn’t for Death Star 3, these reboot complaints would largely disappear I think. It’s the one extraneous plot element that spoils it for many (and takes the shine off it for me a bit too). As Lord Haseo said, many of the other similarities have been remixed enough that they feel sufficiently different, and others can be chalked down to it following the classic ‘Hero’s Journey’ formula.
It’s a bit showy, I’ll admit. I’m guessing that it was an Abrams decision rather than Kasdan’s. I can see why people criticise it, as actually freezing a blaster bolt in mid air isn’t something we’ve seen even Vader do. But if I wanted to justify it “in-universe”, I’d probably do so by pointing out that when Vader blocked blaster bolts, he caused them to dissipate/disappear. Maybe that requires a greater mastery of the force than just holding it in place temporarily.
Maybe? :p
Apparently George is criticizing the film for being a “retro movie”
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/dec/31/george-lucas-attacks-retro-star-wars-the-force-awakens
Well, you can’t really say he doesn’t have a point there.
Edit: and I only mean it being a somewhat “retro”, not all the crap he’s saying about SW being a soap opera etc.
Well let’s be fair, George didn’t even go ‘retro’ when he blatantly should have (in the films set before the OT) so I find it very hard to take the guy seriously. He just seems bitter.
Why exactly should he have gone retro in the PT though?
It’s set thirty-ish years earlier, so naturally it should look very different. He may not have made the best design-choices but at least he wasn’t just copying himself completely. The failure of those films were the horrible writing and contrived plots, not that it wasn’t OT enough.
I agree with you to an extent. Those films are broken in terms of writing right out of the gate. But even if they weren’t, it would still have a problem with the lack of connections. They should have had the same “used universe” feel, but they didn’t. But it’s not all about aesthetic. It’s to do with ensuring that your story, setting and key plot points have a direct connection to the ‘Retro’. For instance…
Alderaan should have featured more prominently (not just in a brief montage at the end of the 3rd film) so the audience would give a shit about its destruction in ANH. That would have allowed the story to flow organically from one trilogy into the next, rather than feeling entirely separate.
Speaking of planets though, Tatooine actually featured too prominently. How many times did we need to go back there exactly? It would have been enough to establish that Owen lived there and urged Anakin to “stay there” with him rather than go with Obi Wan on the “idealistic crusade”. It would have been up to the writer the circumstances of how Anakin and Owen found themselves on Tatooine. But no, let’s make it so that Anakin only met him once AFTER having gone away and there was no “crusade” at all, and it wasn’t even Obi Wan that took him. It was Qui Gon.
Likewise, let’s replace a “great starpilot” with a little kid who drives a ground-level chariot.
Yoda trained Obi Wan? Nah. Let’s just switch it so that Qui Gon did.
Anakin was a good friend? Let’s make him an asshole.
He was “seduced” by the dark side? Let’s make it a conscious decision to save his wife.
Leia remembers her mother, you say? Well we can’t have that. Let’s kill her during childbirth!
I’m not averse to there having been new stuff in the Prequels. Of course, there had to be. But the overall aesthetic as well as specific details ought to have connected with ANH. at least a bit. There was none of the ‘used universe’ in the Prequels, and as mentioned above, key details just didn’t align. The term ‘retro’ doesn’t just apply to the look of it.
Apparently George is criticizing the film for being a “retro movie”
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/dec/31/george-lucas-attacks-retro-star-wars-the-force-awakens
Well, you can’t really say he doesn’t have a point there.
Edit: and I only mean it being a somewhat “retro”, not all the crap he’s saying about SW being a soap opera etc.
Well let’s be fair, George didn’t even go ‘retro’ when he blatantly should have (in the films set before the OT) so I find it very hard to take the guy seriously. He just seems bitter.
I always thought the music in the Plagueis scene was diagetic, coming from whatever the hell that Cirque du Soleil thing Anakin and Palpatine are watching. I guess it could still be a reference, but I’ve never read that as being “Plagueis’s Theme” or anything like that.
As a former film student, thank you. I got a bit of a kick out of you using the term diegetic like it ain’t no thang.
Carrie was fine. There were a few looks (such as when Han says “I saw him”) where you can see her emoting just like she used to in the OT. It wasn’t an Oscar winning performance, fine, but it was still the Leia we know and I had absolutely no problem believing in her as a living, breathing character in this universe.
I don’t know how I can state it more clear. It was pretty evident to me that Kylo was breaking down and having an identity crisis, just about sobbing to his father. Unless you are arguing that he was faking in order to kill Han, I think it’s objective fact that Kylo was caught in a moment of emotional weakness.
No, not faking it. I think it was obvious that the audience was meant to initially think that he was close to abandoning the dark side, and going back home with his daddy, but afterwards it becomes evident that what he wanted was the strength to kill Han and therefore abandon the light entirely. He is conflicted, certainly. He confides this to Vader’s mask earlier in the film, saying he feels the pull to the light. He also tells Han he is being “torn apart”, and that he wants to “be free of this pain”. And “I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it”.
Well he does do it. He overcomes the light in him. His dark ambitions win over the love he has for his family. The guy is clearly in turmoil over what he feels he has to do, and even says “thank you”. Han’s offer of help is twisted into being his blessing to kill him. No doubt internally, his self-loathing for killing his father is going to fuel his anger from now on.
It’s been said before that Kylo is the anti-Luke. Luke rejected the dark by refusing to kill his father. Kylo rejected the light by killing Han. Just as we were seeing Luke’s journey to becoming a Jedi, we’re seeing Kylo as an only partially formed villain.
TFA has many issues, but a lot of your criticisms seem to be a bit of a reach.
Ironic that the master of sarcasm doesn’t understand sarcasm.
Luke, Leia, and Han didn’t share a scene. Luke didn’t speak. WORST MOVIE EVER.
What.
Well, I’ve heard those complaints from others, and I don’t know you from a hole in the forum, so there’s nothing that indicates sarcasm there.
Too subtle perhaps? My whole post was a riff on Jetrell Fo’s post (notice the similarities). He wrote: “My daughter and I had fun and finally got to see some of our favorite characters back on the big screen, together again, part of yet another adventure”. I don’t know what movie he saw, but if we assume that by favorite characters he meant Luke, Leia and Han, I did not see a movie where they were together again, part of an adventure. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like the movie because of that (though I did not like the movie, but for other reasons). Got it?
It’s clearly apparent that you were riffing on and subverting Jetrell Fo’s post. Frink isn’t disputing that. There was no hint that the criticisms highlighted in your post (via your substituted words) weren’t genuinely your stance though.
I’m hoping to see it a 4th time sometime in the new year. Repeat viewings have made the film better in my eyes, though it might have had something to do with the disastrous first viewing I had. The projector broke literally JUST as Rey put her hands around the saber and had her vision, so for a good 30 seconds, the whole audience was wondering “is this darkness meant to be symbolic or has someone fucked up?” As time went on, we realised it was the latter. The audio carried on for AGES after, while the staff took their damn time shutting the movie off. They eventually got the projector up and running again and turned it back on, but it was skipped further ahead to where Rey was running out of the castle, and ruined that part for us. Then they rewound the movie, and the picture was flickering, so we ended up being marched to another theatre to watch the second half of the film.
It didn’t help that the second half of the film is where its main flaws shine through (mainly the superweapon rehashing) so that, along with the technical hitch, put a huge damper on my first experience.
Also my first viewing was a standard 3D showing, because my inept friend didn’t book the IMAX in time. I found the 3D really highlighted the fakeness of the CGI more. It was a lot more seamless and enjoyable in 2D.
I agree. It had its flaws…some pretty major ones actually, but not feeling like Star Wars certainly wasn’t one of them.
I’ve seen some ridiculous statements online where people compare it with the Prequels. I even saw an actual movie screenwriter rank it beneath Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, which I’m sure anyone here will agree is patently absurd!
No wonder Hollywood churns out so much crap…
Nope! Forgot about that one. They seem to have cut a hell of a lot.
In the second teaser trailer, Luke says, “The Force is strong in my family. My father had it, I have it, my sister has it…you have that power, too.”
It didn’t appear in TFA, so maybe we’ll see it in VIII, and while it’s not definitive, it does imply a familial connection between Luke and Rey. (It’s clearly a new recording of Hamill’s voice, and my assumption is that it’s being spoken to Rey.)
It was kind of depressing to watch all the trailers again, because the trailers are excellent.
I thought it was confirmed in an interview with Abrams that the line was recorded solely for the purpose of the teaser. I possibly read it in Vanity Fair, I can’t remember. They recorded Hamill saying the dialogue again, then layered it over the original lines from ROTJ, giving it that echoey (I suppose, Force vision-like) quality.
Just going to add my own voice to the crowd here. I went into this extremely apprehensively and was pleasantly surprised. This felt like Star Wars in a way the Prequels never did.
Did it feel like it borrowed too much occasionally? Yes. But most elements were remixed enough that they still felt fresh and totally fitting. The callbacks and references got a bit much once or twice. On repeat viewing they bother me less though. As with most people, the main issue for me is Starkiller base and the reuse of the superweapon trope.
If they really had to have Starkiller base, I think the Resistance ought to have failed to destroy it (only disabled it). This would have subverted our expectations and made it less of a rehash of ANH/ROTJ. Also it would have made it much darker (Han died for nothing, and Luke is now the Last Hope for the galaxy, just as he was once the NEW Hope).
The other thing that bothers me is the map MacGuffin. How did R2 have the rest of the map in his memory the whole time with the exact jigsaw piece cut out of it? I hope this is adequately explained in the next movie, because that just seems too convenient. It suggests that Luke deleted that section of the map himself before leaving so no one could follow him. But if that’s the case, how did the missing piece come to be in Max Von Sydow’s hands? Furthermore, the First Order were looking for the piece too, so does that mean they had the same map as R2 had with the deleted section? If so, how?
Rey was maybe a tad too proficient in the force too quickly. But it bothers me less when I think that our preconceptions have been coloured by the PT for so long. Luke could use the force in a limited way by the time we got to Empire, and he’d had no training whatsoever. We’re going back to basics where a Jedi’s training is more of a rite of passage rather than younglings in gym class. The title after all indicates the force “awakening” in Rey. Whether it’s just her sensitivity to the force awakening, or if she’s had some prior training but had it suppressed/been mind-wiped remains to be seen. I’m excited to find out!
Everything else was handled perfectly. The humour wasn’t overly silly. Our new principal characters were likeable, Han Solo was Han Solo, not just Harrison Ford. Leia was great too. I don’t understand the criticisms of her acting. She just seemed older and more weary. She was still Leia all over.
Kylo Ren is great. He’s the anti-Luke. Luke rejected the Dark Side by refusing to kill his father, whereas Ren embraced it by choosing to kill Han. This makes me think this little shit is now totally beyond redemption - at least I really hope we don’t have that rehashed too.
I was delighted they used their restraint when it came to Luke. It would have been so tempting to have a “badass” introduction, and have him active earlier in the film, but he was handled PERFECTLY. It’s exactly the haunted and damaged Luke we should have had at the end of ROTJ.
I was also pleased to see Abrams rein in his usual signature visuals. There was minimal shaky cam, the camera wasn’t constantly rotating around the action, it was far more traditional than I expected. There were still quite a lot of lens flares though.
Abrams would never have been my choice to direct a Star Wars film, but he and Kasdan have done an admirable job. It’s not perfect, but it’s Star Wars. And a better film than ROTJ as our returning characters actually had stuff to do. I frequently went from grinning in my seat, to overcome with awe. It was just great!
Still working hard on this, just to let anyone who’s interested know. 😃
- Female protagonists Q. Haven’t we had enough of poor female characters in PT? A. Yes they added nothing!
I hope this is a joke. If not, please leave this site forever.
PT=Prequel trilogy (padme and the one that looked the same) and yes whilst they weren’t true protagonists they had a lot of wasted screen time, but on reflection the whole PT was wasted film never mind screen time. I wasn’t having a dig at Leia 😉
It’s sad that you think that the term “PT” was what needed addressing about your post. Not, y’know, the misogyny.
Are you for real? Wooden acting and shite character development doesn’t mean I’m a misogynist
It does when you specifically take issue with female main characters as if they deserve singling out as worse than male ones.
You didn’t just criticise wooden acting/characters. You attributed it specifically to a particular gender.