Yoda Is Your Father said:
Much anger I sense in you.
If you don’t like the ROTJ flaws I mentioned how about the fact that of all the planets in all the Galaxy, R2 and the Death Star plans ended up on Tattooine, a couple of blocks from where Luke Skywalker (who happens to be the long lost brother of the princess who gave R2 the plans) lives, and he just happens to be pretty much neighbours with Ben Kenobi (who, in his wisdom, decided NOT to change Luke’s surname - or his own for that matter - when he hid him from his evil Father… Or his own for that matter), and all because one Imperial gunner decided NOT to fire on an escape pod that launched from a rebel ship they had just captured. Sure it had no life signs on board, but I’m assuming a trained imperial gunner would be aware of the existence of droids and their ability to carry data (secret data being the reason they captured the rebel ship in the first place).
I’m just saying try to enjoy it for what it is. It’s common knowledge that the original Star Wars was based on cheesy 1940s space operas like Flash Gordon. It’s more about adventure than solid plot and military strategy. I agree with everybody on here about TFA’s flaws (and the fact that everybody is pointing out the same flaws shows that it does indeed have it’s problems) but, y’know, it was fun and I enjoyed it and it felt good in all the right places. I guess I love Star Wars for different reasons to some of you guys (and as I’ve said before, that’s cool, each to their own… but as Frink has pointed out, I’d rather be one of the guys who enjoyed it and just got a great Christmas gift from JJ and co).
Maybe you are confusing me with someone who hated TFA. I did not. It was a fun film with a lot of parts to like. Unfortunately, it was also a very uneven film with a lot to criticize. I genuinely feel sorry for anyone who thinks this movie approached anything close to the quality of Star Wars or Empire. Most people I’ve seen would rank it somewhere around Jedi, which is probably more fair. I like Jedi more just because of the Luke/Vader/Emperor scenes that bring a close to the previous two stories, but to each their own.
Also with regards to coincidence … stories can and usually do begin with coincidence. Out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, it was a coincidence that Elsa walked into Rick’s cafe in Casablanca. It was a coincidence that R2 happened to crash land on Luke’s planet and wind up in his hands. These things are what get stories started, but you can’t have the rest of the plot proceed forward by coincidence alone. There needs to be solid logic and motivation behind everything that happens in a story, and that’s one of the things that I love about the original Star Wars movies – everything seemed real. They were gritty. You could immerse yourself in the story and never feel like you were being patronized or lied to.
On the other hand, TFA would follow up great scenes with moments that came straight out of Indy 4 or Pirates of the Caribbean. The characters would stop the whole fucking movie so they could turn and look at each other across a battlefield or up in the sky. Look at these two scenes for instance:
#1
Kylo in the opening scene was fantastic. Adam Driver and JJ gave him a new, distinct personality from other villains without turning him into a cartoon. This wasn’t Darth Maul in over the top makeup. It wasn’t General Hux twirling his evil mustache with an evil grin on his face and doing evil bad guy things. This was a low key but intimidating villain demonstrating immense power. In a burst of violent anger, he cuts an old man in half, but then, he deals with Poe Dameron in succinct, business-like fashion. I don’t remember the lines, but I do remember specifically liking Kylo’s delivery when he ordered Poe Dameron to be put on board.
Unfortunately, brilliant efforts like these would be quickly ruined by a filmmaker who decided to strip the film of its realness and patronize the audience. Just moments later, the whole fucking movie stops in mid-sequence, so Kylo and Finn can look across the battlefield at each other for no reason at all. Could you ever imagine Vader stopping in his tracks to give a random stromtrooper two fucks of time? Is Finn really such a poorly fleshed out character that we need artificial moments like these to spotlight his importance?
#2
The fight at Maz’s castle. I’m not even going to go on about the fight between Finn and the stormtrooper, which was one of the film’s incredible lowlights and even further discredited the final lightsaber battle later on.
No … I want to focus on the moment Finn stops everything he’s doing and looks up into the sky. There are all kinds of blaster bolts and explosions going on around him. There are untold numbers of aircraft in the sky. But he stops everything he’s doing so he can look up and go “yippee” and laud Poe Dameron’s piloting skills. He essentially breaks the fourth wall to stop the whole fucking movie and tell the audience:
“Hey guys, Poe and I are supposed to be besties, but the writers didn’t give us enough scenes together. So instead we’re just going to give you dumb fucking moments like these so you’ll believe we are more buddies than we otherwise should be.”
Do you remember Red Letter Media’s review of Revenge of the Sith? Plinkett criticizes the scene where Hayden stops the whole fucking movie so he can go back and save some random X-wing pilot, just because the films hadn’t done enough to show that Anakin was once a good guy. So hey, let’s insert this random totally illogical and out of place scene into the movie to rewrite the character we did a poor job of designing in the first place.
Well, this exact same shit happens in TFA and apparently some of you didn’t notice.
Also, why does the Resistance not treat Finn with any suspicion whatsoever? Poe and Finn are friends immediately? Nobody ever has the idea that he might be a spy? I think Finn’s character is poorly designed, but I don’t hate him. I love Daisy/Rey, I’m indifferent to Boyega/Finn, but I really, really hate the fake fucking persona of Poe Dameron and the cartoonish, travesty of an “acting” performance given by Oscar Isaacson. His character is arguably the fakest, most over the top in any Star Wars film, including the prequels.
In short, I think the film has a lot of strengths and is mostly fun, but fell short of its potential. There’s no gritty realness like the originals. There’s no magic. I thought it was a rushed, kind of chaotic mess that was just way too self conscious.
