The Force Awakens: Official Review Thread - ** SPOILERS ** — Page 39

Luke has buggered off, The galactic peace he helped to forge is at risk and he is hiding.
Now if its just because his nephew going bad I’d be a bit let down.
If it’s because something he unearthed in his exploration of Jedi history I’d be intrigued.
But it it would be understandable that a plot point left hanging since 1983 might pay off and Leia in her studies and frustrations over bureaucracy and uniting the two halves of the galaxy took inspiration from her dad.
Big Lincoln Memorial Zombie is a better disguise than Palpatine used.
Luke nearly killed Vader just at the mention of Leia going bad, imagine what Luke would feel if he accidentally lured her to the dark side and imagine too how reluctant he would be to train a young woman strong in the Force that’s just tracked him down.
It makes for a more interesting next two films.

PS. I hate typing on smart phones

John Doom said:

Ren, on the other hand, as a villain, takes off his mask too early,

I understand this complaint but I don’t agree with it. The scene between him and Rey works so much better with him taking his mask off (especially her reaction to seeing him for the first time), and there’s also a great scene with Ren and Hux later.

and we get to know he’s just a boy. He’s constantly mocked by our heroes, he’s afraid, can’t take control of the situation and, finally, gets defeated. Is he a true villain, is he actually a threat to the heroes? If you ask me, no 😄

For all the complaints about JJ recycling ANH, I think he does some really new stuff in this movie, and his depiction of Ren is one of those things. He’s a flawed villain, instead of a perfect villain. He clearly is strong in the Force but he can’t control it. His “temper tantrums” made perfect sense to me.

The guy has more advanced Force powers than any Sith or Jedi seen in the series yet (he can hold a laser bolt in mid air for many minutes), that and he still has the emotional range of a frustrated teen in his thirties makes for a potentially prickly and unpredictable villain.

That’s what I like about Kilgrave in Jessica Jones he has such power he could do anything and instead he just forces people to make him dinner and convince children it’s okay to piss in the closet.

Vader had a vision of a galaxy without the need for conflict. He would destroy all resistance, including his boss. He would rule the galaxy with his son and all the killing and pain would have been worth something.
Kylo is like someone trying not think about porn and failing in repeatedly embarrassing ways.

TROOPER ONE: I’ve got a message for Kylo Ren
TROOPER TWO: Don’t go in there, he has been trying not to think about porn for five hours, the place is going to need detergent and a squad of washbots

Snoke and mirrors. If he is just Palpatwo I would so miffed.

TV’s Frink said:

The “emo” thing bugs me. Luke was whiny as hell, and people seem to love it.

Yeah but Luke wasn’t a villain.

And also, Kylo’s arc wasn’t built as the film moved along. I could maybe see a place for complex villain wannabe (although it’s tiring by now), but by the end of the film he should be losing his mind and tipping over more and more to the dark side. Technically he kills Han, but it doesn’t really work one, that scene wasn’t all that emotional, and two, because of his gradual unmasking, and eventual emasculation by Rey. By the end of the film he’s just a putrid pretender, and can’t be considered a real threat to our heroes.

Hi guys, I don’t post here often, but wanted to give some thoughts:

Saw it on the 17th with friends and we all enjoyed it (more on that later), and then again with my parents and we all enjoyed it.

My final say about the movie is this: “It’s SO good that it’s such a shame that it wasn’t more original.”

I wouldn’t have cared about the DS3 if they did something new with it. I was completely under the assumption that it would stick around for the other movies. I would have loved it if the rebels failed and it blew up the planet their base was on (sparing Leia, 3PO and R2 who would have been off planet for some reason) and the only survivors were those who survived the DS3 assault. Man, that would have been a nice twist and got me really excited for the next one.

Otherwise, I wish they would have just removed the DS3 and just focused on rescuing Rey as the last act (and bring Poe on the mission so he can get more screen time). But I didn’t care all that much, as the DS3 stuff seemed to be background noise anyway. Not sure why the rebels needed to be given something to do, as I thought their fight as Maz’s castle was good enough. It’s not like Empire Strikes Back was filled with the Rebellion.

I don’t have any other problems that aren’t nitpicks. I wish Rey had some moments of weakness, and I really wish they would have held off igniting that lightsaber until she pulls it from the snow. That would have been such a better reveal than Finn fighting a stormtrooper (although I loved that he was called a traitor. I like these new stormtroopers!)

I’m not gonna whine about what they MIGHT do in a sequel I know nothing about. I’ll just wait and see. All I know is that you don’t hire Andy Serkis so he can sit in a damn chair, so I have my fingers crossed there’s something else going on.

I understand why people like it, and I understand why people dislike it. When I was speculating about the movie back when it was announced, I admit I didn’t think it would be Empire vs Rebels all over again, and I don’t think this story has proven itself as something that NEEDED to be told, but I’m along for the ride. Good fun. Hope they address the backstory a tad in the next movie.

Kylo Ren is a fantastic villain, and those who don’t think so are nuts (joking). He was my biggest surprise, because I thought he looked very uninteresting in the trailers. Again, I’m not gonna cry about what they MIGHT do with him in a sequel, I just thought he was great. A pretty unnerving villain for a Star Wars movie.

My six year old son (who’s never seen the prequels) lives in Japan with my ex-wife, and I begged her to take him to it (“I don’t know…Episode 1 was on TV the other day and-” “Trust me, he’ll have a great time.”) so she did. He liked it, said it was a little scary, and said his favorite character was BB8. Even my ex didn’t hate it, which is the nicest thing I’ve ever heard her say about a Star Wars movie.

I went with my friend, who waited in line with me for nine hours to see a midnight screening of Phantom Menace. We weren’t sure if we were gonna get seats, a big fellow told me he was going to “Kick my fucking ass if I got a ticket and he didn’t” and other stuff like that…and the movie turned out to be The Phantom Menace (I don’t know what you guys are talking about when you say this film will be derided like the Prequels in five years, my friends and I hated Menace within 30 minutes (and it wasn’t some snobby reaction, we were really really sad)). Anyway, here’s a little then and now (and no, we did not wear these shirts to the actual screening of Awakens. And no, we are not lovers, nor are we virgins, despite what the commentators on Reddit would have you believe, but I admit this picture is pretty damn dorky out of context):

I’m on the right:

TavorX said:

Something about…and its use of analogies is quite… charming.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, buddy-boy.

ZkinandBonez said:

Abrams and Kasdan have referred to Kylo as being a bad-guy parallel to Luke, or rather a reversal of his story-arc.
So I think the similarities are definitely intentional.

There is a line from Leia in the film when she’s speaking to Han, something like “there’s still good in him, we can bring him home.”

I don’t know if it was on this forum or somewhere else, but another user had a great response to that line. “Bring him home for what? To face war crimes trials, and pay for murdering an entire village of innocents? Punish him for murdering Han and untold numbers of other people? Bring him home to try and convict him and put him in jail and execute him by lethal injection?”

Count me out if this new trilogy is going to focus on some redemption plot for a mass murderer. Nobody wants to see that shit.

Bingowings said:

My only problem with Leia’s scenes is the editing and position of the resistance base in relation to the stakes of the film.

I don’t know why Carrie’s appearance received so much criticism. I think she looks just fine for 60. Anyone expecting her to look like she did when she was 27 and be a sex symbol is delusional. That said, her acting wasn’t great but the real problem with her scenes was the writing. The dialogue between her and Han was painfully on-the-nose. Where was the subtext? They just stood there doing nothing and saying exactly what they meant to each other for a couple of minutes. Those scenes just died on the screen. Considering Kasdan wrote the script, I just don’t get it.

Her character just didn’t seem believable or well utilized, outside of the fact that we all know her from the other films. If you had no other context, you would wonder why the film is slowing down and stopping for this woman who basically doesn’t do anything. Imagine if Admiral Ackbar or Mon Mothma had their own scenes in the OT, wouldn’t it feel out of place? Maybe she just wasn’t in the acting shape to contribute more to the film, I don’t know, but her character just didn’t work for me.

Alderaan said:

ZkinandBonez said:

Abrams and Kasdan have referred to Kylo as being a bad-guy parallel to Luke, or rather a reversal of his story-arc.
So I think the similarities are definitely intentional.

There is a line from Leia in the film when she’s speaking to Han, something like “there’s still good in him, we can bring him home.”

I don’t know if it was on this forum or somewhere else, but another user had a great response to that line. “Bring him home for what? To face war crimes trials, and pay for murdering an entire village of innocents? Punish him for murdering Han and untold numbers of other people? Bring him home to try and convict him and put him in jail and execute him by lethal injection?”

Count me out if this new trilogy is going to focus on some redemption plot for a mass murderer. Nobody wants to see that shit.

cough ROTJ cough

TV’s Frink said:

For all the complaints about JJ recycling ANH, I think he does some really new stuff in this movie, and his depiction of Ren is one of those things. He’s a flawed villain, instead of a perfect villain. He clearly is strong in the Force but he can’t control it. His “temper tantrums” made perfect sense to me.

They made sense to me also. I really liked that scene where you expect him to force choke or otherwise kill that officer, but instead he throws a tantrum. That scene helped show that he isn’t just a clone of Darth Vader.

What made him look pathetic was the fact that Rey and even Finn were able to hold their own against him. Considering he is supposed to have killed a number of trained Jedi, and he has had actual training whereas Rey hasn’t, that cheapened his character for me.

Bingowings said:
That way when the capital is destroyed there is a sense of connection to the place. I barely understood what the place was. In my after viewing report I thought it was Coruscant because it looked like the whole planet was one big city but I needed someone there to tell me.

Here’s another major issue with this film. There’s an adage: “Show, don’t tell.” It was seemingly ignored. Think about Luke’s piloting skills in the OT. The only exposition we receive about his ability is that he’s a pilot who wants to go to the academy. That’s it. As far as the audience is concerned, he’s nobody. Han calls him out in the Cantina, and Luke sticks up for himself.

“Yeah, but who’s gonna fly it, you?”
“You bet I will. (to Obi-Wan) C’mon, we don’t have to listen to this”.

Luke proves himself enough over the course of the film, that Han allows him to man the guns on the Falcon. Luke blows up one TIE Fighter, and Han’s line “don’t get cocky kid!” is so fantastic, because it shows such a transitional attitude towards the boy. Luke is gaining Han’s respect, and the audience’s, but there is still some skepticism there. When they finally escape to Yavin, Luke has fully earned Han’s respect, and you can see it between the two of them right before they go their separate ways.

By the end of the film, we, the audience, believe in Luke. We have never seen him pilot a ship before, but we already have confidence in his ability. We’re not surprised when other pilots complain it’s impossible to hit the exhaust port on the Death Star, only for Luke to respond it’s no big deal.

Beat by beat, the audience is taken from complete skepticism, to “great, but don’t get cocky kid!” to full acceptance. That is brilliant writing and filmmaking.

On the other hand, TFA has Poe Dameron. The guy is absent from most of the film. He’s really a cartoon. The filmmakers tell us he’s the best pilot in the Resistance. But how should we know? He just flies around in his X-wing blowing people up in the same boring way the prequel Jedi cut down battle droids like matchsticks. In case we didn’t believe enough when they told us the first time, the whole movie ****ing stops dead in its tracks during the battle at Maz’s castle, so Finn can look up in the sky at Poe and watch him blow up another meaningless ship and exclaim “wow that’s one awesome pilot!” Then if you’re still not convinced how awesome Poe is, just watch the final sequence. He blows up more meaningless ships and fires the last shot at the oscillator without ever being threatened himself.

Finn seems to be the audience’s reference point, the character who should be the skeptic in this film. But where is the skepticism? Where is the scene where Poe and Finn are together and Poe says he’s going to do something impossible and Finn says exactly what we are thinking. “What?! How can you do that?” And then Poe does it, and we’re convinced. Instead, Finn already expects Poe will be able to blast his way out of the Starship, to the point he busts him out of captivity and leads him to a ship. And that is a major, major storytelling flaw.

Similarly, you mentioned the scene where the Hosnian system gets blown up. There is no context for why that system matters. In the OT, Alderaan is Leia’s home planet. She is forced to watch it get destroyed. Obi-Wan reacts painfully when millions or billions of people instantly die. And most important of all, it’s the place where our heroes are trying to go. It’s their destination, and then it simply isn’t there anymore.

When the Hosnian system gets blown up, on the other hand, what does it matter? It has no relation to the rest of the film. None of the main characters are related to the Hosnian system. The plot doesn’t revolve around it like Alderaan did in the OT. It’s meaningless, it just comes out of nowhere. The filmmakers evidently realized there was a need to stop the film and mourn, so they came up with the idiotic idea for everyone at Maz’s place to be able to look up in the sky and watch planets get destroyed light-years away in real time. Just dumb stuff.

The only reason why the Hosnian system seems to matter is because we are told it’s an important place, but unlike Alderaan, we are not shown it’s an important place in relation to our characters and the plot.

There are several other instances of telling and not showing in this film, I have kind of rambled long enough and lost my train of thought, but you get my point.

RicOlie_2 said:

TV’s Frink said:

For all the complaints about JJ recycling ANH, I think he does some really new stuff in this movie, and his depiction of Ren is one of those things. He’s a flawed villain, instead of a perfect villain. He clearly is strong in the Force but he can’t control it. His “temper tantrums” made perfect sense to me.

They made sense to me also. I really liked that scene where you expect him to force choke or otherwise kill that officer, but instead he throws a tantrum. That scene helped show that he isn’t just a clone of Darth Vader.

What made him look pathetic was the fact that Rey and even Finn were able to hold their own against him. Considering he is supposed to have killed a number of trained Jedi, and he has had actual training whereas Rey hasn’t, that cheapened his character for me.

We don’t yet know if he killed any Jedi who had a lot of training. He could have been one of Luke’s eldest students. He also likely had help possibly from the Knights of Ren or Snoke, neither of whom we know much about at this point.

TV’s Frink said:

cough ROTJ cough

Agreed, and that’s the weakest part of ROTJ, but only if you really stop and think about it, which the film tricks you into not doing. Vader killed untold numbers of people and terrorized the entire galaxy. He can’t possibly redeem himself by saving his own son’s life, but the film never allows you to dwell on that.

Perhaps, but regardless, the fact that Rey was at least his equal in terms of both Force abilities and sabre skills makes him look pretty inept. It’s hard to see him as a threat when he’s so weak.

Copy and paste of something I posted RE: kylo’s lightsaber skills in the spoiler thread last night, because that thread seems to be fizzling out:

joefavs said:

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Kylo Ren was able to murder the rest of the Jedi students so effectively because he was the only one who had a lightsaber. I’m thinking Luke didn’t want to pass on that knowledge right away, but Snoke showed Ben/Kylo as a seduction tactic. The companion books refer to both Snoke and the design of the cross guard saber as “ancient”, so it wouldn’t be out of place for those instructions to come from him. I figure if Kylo learned from Luke, he’d have built a more conventional saber, and if Kylo didn’t learn from Luke, there’s no reason to think anyone else did. It would also justify his unimpressive performance against Rey, since in this scenario he wouldn’t need to have been a particularly skilled duelist to wipe out Luke’s academy or whatever he called it (Praxeum? 😉).

That’s an interesting thought, and it makes a lot of sense if it turns out to be accurate.

Mixed feelings for TFA. Like paying a visit to old elementary school classrooms, where you remembered things to be different than they actually are when you come back as an adult. There were more things I didn’t like, than the ones I liked; I think this film was a missed oportunity to actually having done something different. But in the end it’s star wars, and better this than nothing.

Quoting from another thread:

What I didn’t like, I didn’t for the exact reasons I’ve been posting in the previous months to its release.

It felt (and it was actually) like a movie whose script was talked about in “uncountable walkabouts”; and made by a professional director with the hard of an aficionado which holds in the highest regard the ability to create something “cool” instead of something sensible.

I have complaints on many levels about this lievity of thought which lead to a certain post-modern flatness of the film (as I said, all the elements there, but not the same feeling).

I recognized all the elements on it that made the movie be StarWars. However it didn’t sound like it (generic adventure/harrypotter soundtrack). It didn’t look like it as well; on many aspects:

• The camera movements and angles weren’t much like the rest of the saga, PT included. (with its own transgressions, PT has at least some visual continuity with the cinematography of the originals)

-The illumination of the Imperial base bothered me. It felt a little like a cabaret. It is hard to tell this in a foreign language to me, but the impression was that it had nothing to do with the uniform fluorescent-white lighting the Death Star had. I deem this important since it implies actually a conception of the Empire as machine-like, flat and non human related ideology (the main color was gray while in TFA, Empire’s color is black).

-The designs weren’t really eyecatching to me. As a designer myself I found them all kinda inconclussive. More like they took the stuff from the OT and they said “change just something and make it different”. Take the Star Destroyer, change the bridge and make it look like the pieces moved after they were glued. Take the Tie Fighter and change the colors. Take the Xwing and (my God, OT design was way more plausible) make it two engines.

-Some scenes were overly accented or overly iconic. Some people love this; I don’t find it truly appreciable. From the top of my head, Han’s death, in a black enviroment (Xmen’s Cerebro like) with a ray of light falling over Han’s head… I can’t help picturing Abrams saying “epic cool epic man”.
Next to it, Vader and ObiWan’s meeting in ANH happened in a random, fluorescent lighted corridor. And it was just as significant as this scene. Or it was meant to be. A good movie can represent hate between to of its characters by the script only without the needing of the enviroment to be a lava planet, or a poor reformulation of the bridge of Khazad Dum.
I generally don’t like it when new outcomes of movies tend to eclipse significant moments or characters of previous installments of the same franchise. I was actually enthusiastic about the symbolism of TFA happening in the “middle ages” of the star wars saga. Because that would have put the public away from the basic premise of “this time it will be bigger, better, cooler”, and make something new on the contrary field. Like Kylo being basically a rookie in the force, a shadow of Luke which was as well a shadow of Anakin, but in the timeframe of TFA Kylo’s rough abilities suffice to keep everyone scared. But no, it didn’t happen. Anakin was supposed to be the greatest Jedi we’ve met in the saga, but somehow Kylo manages to make things with the force Anakin Skywalker could not do himself. The First Order makes a bigger Death Star. The death of the mentor is way more theatrical in TFA than in ANH even if ObiWan and Anakin are the real driving forces of the saga (at least to me, one good, one evil). It’s like the stakes are always higher.

-Recycled planets with different names.

-Green Enviroments. This I can’t really justify nor do I hope to be understood, but somehow the Narnia Forests don’t feel enough exotic to me to be in a galaxy far far away. It happens to some degree in ROTJ, and definetely happens to me in TFA. It’s not just the fact that they’re forests but the type of forests as well. And Skellig Michael was just Skellig Michael; even more with that helicopter shot, which took me completely out of the movie.
On the plot side of things:

-I had trouble to actually care for the characters, much as in the beginning of TPM, only that this was the whole movie. I just didn’t feel comfortable at a Star Wars movie where Kenobi and Skywalker are third person names and R2 and 3PO are barely in it. Somehow it was as if the movie just happened outside the social sphere I have been invested in for the last six movies. Which is quite logic but somehow didn’t feel right to me. I expected this to feel like some fresh air but was quite wrong actually.

-I don’t have trouble generally with chance or fate as a given for Star Wars movies. It happens in the OT, in the PT and it will happen in the ST. Things that bothered were how flat, thin, it all felt. Like it wasn’t way too thought. At points I felt like a massive juvenile mentality was behind the plot; like they done half the job well, which was detecting what actually worked in the OT, and half very bad, which was reformulating it into something (if not new) at least justified; this is understanding not only that it worked but WHY it worked, so that you can take the essence of that reason and apply it in a different way without having to be repetitive. Examples of this:

  -Vader was a masked villain, with robot voice. Let’s have a masked villain with a voice modulator, because it’s cool. (In this case it is being omitted that Vader was so because he was badly damaged; his life support system and cyborg nature was inmediately linked to his affiliation with the dark side and ceasing to be a human being).

  -The Empire built weapons of mass destruction. Let’s have the First Order build one too. (In this case it is being omitted how and where from, did the first order get the resources to build it. Not because the answer was important per se, but because the lack of answer to that questions leaves the weakness of the symbolism exposed: while the Empire was a metaphor of a totalitarian government, with the whole power of a State turned against its own people and that is why they can and would build a Death Star; the First Order is more like a political faction, funded by no one, who hasn’t clear goals. As I said in another thread, they’re basically neonazis building a nuclear weapon in a garage. Flat.)

At risk of being more extense, I leave without development similar points on yellow yoda, the resistance, etc.

Other thing that bothered me was the feeling that external reality poured into fictional reality. Ren is a fanboy of vader as much as any fan is. (how cool!) Han Solo is a famous character in the Star wars galaxy as much as he is in our reality (how cool!) Luke Skywalker is a pop culture mith as much as he is in our reality (how cool!)

I dreamed of these topics to be adressed with Anakin in the PT, but somehow this bothers me in TFA, when the same logic is used with other characters.

 -The whole Hitler speech. I remember dreaming of a sequence like that decades ago, as a child; when I thought everything had to be explicit and that somehow symbols had an innate power. I immagined uncountable times that gigantic banner with the symbol of the Empire and a parade. Then I understood that evil doesn’t generally annunciate itself, and that symbols and speeches are an unnecesary underlining. A fetiche. I find the scene at the end of AOTC to be a thousand times more mature than this one.

This is the overall feeling I could sum up from the movie: it is a movie that showed everything I would’ve wanted to see back when I was ten. As if it was thought by someone that age who keeps thinking what’s “cool” and fun and not what is intelectually interesting, even within Star Wars borders. I deem this to be regrettable: the best installment of the saga was directed instead by someone who put A LOT of thought on every single line of dialogue and thing that happened in the film; just check the diaries of production for amusement. Kershner’s work in ESB was magistral.

TFA had all the elements of StarWars but it had a very different flavour to me. It’s not a search of its own but more of a movie that delivers what was expected of it; without too much freedom and without too much thinking. Even if it doesn’t right their own wrongs, it made me more appreciative of the prequels as well. (which doesn’t mean I enjoy them, but that next to TFA they somehow belong more to StarWars to me)

And I’m leaving outside stupid Disney stuff which could alter any mortal; like people realizing about stuff at the same time and saying it in chorus, someone taking time in the middle of a battle watch a pilot, etc

I feel like that planet’s importance should have been emphasized far more. It’s destruction was virtually meaningless the way it was done in the movie.