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The Force Awakens: Official Review Thread - ** SPOILERS ** — Page 31

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TV’s Frink said:
No, it’s a terrible post, because Jay has been defending TPM. I don’t even know where that post came from.

Sorry I was talking about some of the other things in that post.

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RU.08 said:

When using CGI it’s best practise not to zoom it to fill the frame, but with Snoke JJ just puts it right in the frame to pull us out of the suspension of disbelief.

Unless I missed something, we never see Snoke. We just see a holographic projection Kylo is speaking with.

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Anchorhead said:

RU.08 said:

When using CGI it’s best practise not to zoom it to fill the frame, but with Snoke JJ just puts it right in the frame to pull us out of the suspension of disbelief.

Unless I missed something, we never see Snoke. We just see a holographic projection Kylo is speaking with.

Good point. He might look different in a photo-realistic environment.

War does not make one great.

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Yoda Is Your Father said:
But my point is Imperial stormtroopers, gunners, pilots and even officers have proven themselves to be a bit, shall we say ‘less than amazing at their jobs’ time and time again throughout the OT, so claiming that everybody in Ren’s unit would have been the ‘best of the best’ is a stretch.

Here’s how I see it. We can start with the stormtroopers in the OT. They are notoriously bad at aiming their blasters when they are shooting at our heroes. If it’s Jawas or disposable Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, sure they are deadly. But if it’s Luke or Han or Chewie, OK their aim is not good and they can’t hit ****. Is that slightly silly? Sure, but it’s part of the Star Wars world and it’s a consistent tone throughout the OT. Unlike the battle droids in the prequels, at least they provide enough of a threat that our heroes still have to take care around them if they want to survive.

In TFA, however, Finn defies that consistency and the film moves from “slightly unrealistic” to “who cares it’s a movie” territory. Unlike the officer you cited at the beginning of Star Wars, or the stormtrooper who can’t aim, who are doing what you would expect them to (even if they are not doing it well enough) … Finn does something that is not expected of him. He does the opposite of what is expected of him. The reason is probably because someone decided in a script meeting that it would be a novel idea to have one of the Han/Leia/Luke characters be a stormtrooper, and everyone else said “oh yeah that’s brilliant let’s do it”. There doesn’t seem to be any effort to justify it in the rest of the script. It just happens and then the story moves on. Like I said, it feels like the story was written and directed by ten different people, and all their different pet ideas got into the movie, and everything was just pieced together with flim-flam one liners written back into the final draft.

Yoda Is Your Father said:
Besides, when we see Finn in action later in the film he is kinda badass - he knows how to hit a target (which is more than most stormtroopers), has no problem killing enemies when they pose an actual threat (i.e. they’re not unarmed villagers) and he’s pretty brave going up against Kylo Ren (when he’s just seen Rey get force-thrown against a tree and knows he’ll probably be beaten). He has clearly been well-trained. His desertion is, in my opinion, a moral choice, and a believable one at that. The First Order’s brain-washing of children can’t overcome the natural good in them… and isn’t that in line with the whole ‘light vs dark’ theme of the whole saga?

My problem with Finn is that he’s not a real character. He’s a plot device. In one scene he’s scared, and then without going through any kind of arc, he’ll randomly be brave and heroic in another scene just because the plot calls for it. One moment he might be reckless, and then another moment he’s calculating. When the plot calls for him to be selfish, he is selfish. And when the plot calls for him to be compassionate, he is compassionate. He wields a lightsaber and gets his butt kicked by a random stormtrooper, but then he wields a lightsaber and injures an experienced force user.

In short, Finn is just whatever the plot needs him to be at that moment. He’s a paper thin character, poorly thought out and unnecessarily inserted into the film.

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Yoda Is Your Father said:

Anchorhead said:

RU.08 said:

When using CGI it’s best practise not to zoom it to fill the frame, but with Snoke JJ just puts it right in the frame to pull us out of the suspension of disbelief.

Unless I missed something, we never see Snoke. We just see a holographic projection Kylo is speaking with.

Goodpoint. He might look different in a photo-realistic environment.

Yeah, I’ve got a feeling he’s going to be tiny. And how Leia spoke of him he was probably or still part of the new republic. Maybe a bit of Palpatine miss direction/ cloak and dagger thing going on.
I presume Luke is going to fill us in on some of the details. I have a feeling were going to see flashbacks of a proper form or maybe a Vulcan mind meld type thing for Rey. If GL had made episode 7 back in the day we wouldnt need them but I think the audience of today will expect them.
I wont mind, I wanna see!

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While watching TFA, I was wondering how comes Rey can pilot ships. I understand she’s a scavenger, and she might’ve learned about mechanics in her work (though unlikely in real life), but when did she learn how to fly too? I mean, Luke has been in the Academy for some time before ANH, but what about Rey? She seems so poor she can only afford buying food, nevermind going to the Academy.
Without a proper answer from the movie, I’d say it’s too convinient to the writers that she’s got all those skills to show off just at the right time 😄

The Original Trilogy’s Timeline Reconstruction: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Implied-starting-date-of-the-Empire-from-OT-dialogue/post/786201/#TopicPost786201

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Alderaan said:

Great post RU! I also liked the jerky gunner seat in TFA. Little details like that are so important in a film; it’s too bad there weren’t nearly enough of them.

Many thanks!

Yoda Is Your Father said:

Maybe your friend should direct Episode VIII. Or at least be on set to keep the director, special effects team and editor in line. He sounds like he really has a handle on this whole filmmaking thing. Disney are missing a trick.

I was just giving an example bro. I’m the one who said Robocop was done well, not him. What my friend said was “I still can’t believe that’s done with a man in a suit!!” Like I said that’s a credit to everyone involved in suspending disbelief. But I see no suspension of disbelief with Snoke - he looks like a rendered graphic.

But look at ESB- Yoda was a puppet! And the last thing that Lucas, or for that matter Kershner, wanted was to make it look like a muppets moive!

TV’s Frink said:

No, it’s a terrible post, because Jay has been defending TPM. I don’t even know where that post came from.

Um OK. Like I said I think it’s better than AOTC or (shudder…) ROTS. Jay said IIRC that he thinks TFA is better than TPM, but I don’t. I think it’s at the level of the prequels and a good movie in its own right, but unnecessary in the SW canon. TFA may not have had a silly character just for kids like Jar Jar, but it had little to no originality and didn’t expand the SW universe. In TPM everything was original, even Tatooine was shown in a new context. In TFA when we see Jakku it may as well be Tatooine, minus the second sun.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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John Doom said:

While watching TFA, I was wondering how comes Rey can pilot ships. I understand she’s a scavenger, and she might’ve learned about mechanics in her work (though unlikely in real life), but when did she learn how to fly too? I mean, Luke has been in the Academy for some time before ANH, but what about Rey? She seems so poor she can only afford buying food, nevermind going to the Academy.
Without a proper answer from the movie, I’d say it’s too convinient to the writers that she’s got all those skills to show off just at the right time 😄

Here we enter into the realm of fan theory but such weight was placed on the survival of death in PT and in the form of Force Ghosts in the OT that maybe Rey and Ren are somehow a Jedi/Sith experiment (maybe gone wrong). Rey could have the memories of someone who knew the ship, knew how to use a lightsaber and knew how do the mind trick (lets call this person Kenobi for the sake of discussion) and Ren could have the memories of the dark lord that drove a Jedi too close to the dark side until he became Darth Vader. They whisper to them what they need to know to continue their conflict from beyond the grave.
Just a thought.
These films seem to be using not just the main films but rejected or unused concepts from earlier drafts. In an earlier script for ROTJ Yoda and Ben physically resurrected to help in the fight against the Emperor. From the little we know about the next films they are supposed to be weird.
Maybe some of these things have an in universe explanation which we haven’t seen yet. Rey could just be absorbing skills from the minds of people around her. She knows the Falcon because Han and Chewie do, She knows how to fight with a lightsaber because Ren has been trained to do so. She understands Chewie and BB8 too so she can draw skills from non-humans and robots. It could be a new Force skill where connective nature of the Force is being used as a tool.

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😄 Whaaaat!? I hope they’re not going for this explaination: unlike Luke’s lightsaber’s fate and the Starkiller being “just bigger” than the Death Star, nobody questioned Rey’s skills in TFA, as if they were fine, if slightly unexpected for her age. If they go for the “forgotten memories” thing in the sequels, they’ll make TFA not stand on its own, which is a poor solution to the moview, while if there’s no explenation at all, it’s a deus-ex-machina :\

The Original Trilogy’s Timeline Reconstruction: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Implied-starting-date-of-the-Empire-from-OT-dialogue/post/786201/#TopicPost786201

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John Doom said:

While watching TFA, I was wondering how comes Rey can pilot ships. I understand she’s a scavenger, and she might’ve learned about mechanics in her work (though unlikely in real life), but when did she learn how to fly too? I mean, Luke has been in the Academy for some time before ANH, but what about Rey? She seems so poor she can only afford buying food, nevermind going to the Academy.
Without a proper answer from the movie, I’d say it’s too convinient to the writers that she’s got all those skills to show off just at the right time 😄

Wait, where was it said Luke had already been in the Imperial Academy before ANH? I thought the whole issue with Luke/Lars was that he wanted to join the Academy but Lars denied him over and over again (Luke: “Yeah, that’s what you said last time too”.) Luke from what I understand had the natural talent just like his father of piloting (I’m pretty sure Luke mentioned he piloted a T-16 through Beggar’s Canyon).

Also, Rey’s piloting isn’t exactly flawless. That Falcon took some dings and nicks during that sequence. The reason she could pull off those maneuvers and escape was because of the Force. Remember Obi-Wan’s line? “In my experience, there is no such thing as luck.”

On top of that, I’m pretty sure Rey had plenty of opportunities flying ships. She, however, chose to stay on Jakku simply because she feared if she left, then she might miss her chance to see her parents again. Rey in her spare time could had learned over the years to learn how ships work, learn to fix them, and eventually learn how to fly them in her spare time.

The Rise of Failures

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Bingowings said:
Maybe some of these things have an in universe explanation which we haven’t seen yet. Rey could just be absorbing skills from the minds of people around her. She knows the Falcon because Han and Chewie do, She knows how to fight with a lightsaber because Ren has been train to do so. She understands Chewie and BB8 too so she can draw skills from non-humans and robots. It could be a new Force skill where connective nature of the Force is being used as a tool.

I like that idea. She has to be drawing the knowledge from somewhere and clearly it’s being kept from us for a couple of years. I also really like the cryptic exchange between Luke and Rey. He doesn’t appear to be glad to see her, but really it’s hard to tell if they even know each other.

Again, I’m happy about all that was left unsaid in the end scene and elsewhere. There were all manner of things left unexplained in Star Wars and Empire. They worked for me in that regard. The universe stayed vast and mysterious. It was the last four Lucas films (at least the two I’ve seen) where he started with the leave your imaginations at the door direction of the story. Taking the mask off of Vader in Return was where Lucas took the mask off the franchise. It’s where I knew I’d be making my exit.

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TavorX said:
Wait, where was it said Luke had already been in the Imperial Academy before ANH? I thought the whole issue with Luke/Lars was that he wanted to join the Academy but Lars denied him over and over again (Luke: “Yeah, that’s what you said last time too”.) Luke from what I understand had the natural talent just like his father of piloting (I’m pretty sure Luke mentioned he piloted a T-16 through Beggar’s Canyon).

Also, Rey’s piloting isn’t exactly flawless. That Falcon took some dings and nicks during that sequence. The reason she could pull off those maneuvers and escape was because of the Force. Remember Obi-Wan’s line? “In my experience, there is no such thing as luck.”

On top of that, I’m pretty sure Rey had plenty of opportunities flying ships. She, however, chose to stay on Jakku simply because she feared if she left, then she might miss her chance to see her parents again. Rey in her spare time could had learned over the years to learn how ships work, learn to fix them, and eventually learn how to fly them in her spare time.

You’re right, I guess I misinterpreted Owen’s line in Italian. I thought he said “Andrai all’accademia un altro anno” (you’ll go to the academy FOR ANOTHER year), while he maybe said “Andrai all’accademia l’altro anno” 😄
Anyway, according to Biggs, “Luke is the best bushpilot in the outer rim territories”, which probably means he had a LOT of practice on Tatooine, and it was clearly stated for Luke, unlike in TFA for Rey (only in the SE, unfortunately, because they had to originally cut Biggs’ introduction…)

Rey’s piloting may not been flawless, but she outdid two or three tie-fighters (or whatever they’re called now) while doing a lot of rolls, which don’t seem to be very easy to put off, especially with a ship so big flying inside small tunnels. She knows how to fly pretty well!

I agree that she’s stayed on Jakku mainly hoping she would see her parents again, but still, when did she learn how to fly? It’s never stated, not once, as far as I remember.

Bingowings said:
Rey could just be absorbing skills from the minds of people around her. She knows the Falcon because Han and Chewie do […]

I doubt this one, because Han and Chewie weren’t on the Falcon when she escaped from Jakku, so she couldn’t learn how it works. Also, whenever she learned from someone (Kylo Ren) or something (Luke’s lightsaber), it was always clearly shown through pauses and closeups.
Anyway even if she could absorb knowledge, nobody questioned her skills in the movie, so it still feels like a deus-ex-machina, especially during the her fight against Kylo Ren.

The Original Trilogy’s Timeline Reconstruction: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Implied-starting-date-of-the-Empire-from-OT-dialogue/post/786201/#TopicPost786201

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John Doom said:

While watching TFA, I was wondering how comes Rey can pilot ships. I understand she’s a scavenger, and she might’ve learned about mechanics in her work (though unlikely in real life), but when did she learn how to fly too? I mean, Luke has been in the Academy for some time before ANH, but what about Rey? She seems so poor she can only afford buying food, nevermind going to the Academy.
Without a proper answer from the movie, I’d say it’s too convinient to the writers that she’s got all those skills to show off just at the right time 😄

When did Luke ever go to the Academy? Certainly wasn’t in the film i watched 😉

All we ever knew of Luke piloting anything was his Skyhopper. Yet he was suddenly able to pilot an X-wing. We had never seen Leia pilot anything, yet she was suddenly able to fly the Falcon. It’s obvious that Rey had been working on the Falcon as she was knowledgeable about the modifications that Unkar Plutt had done to the ship. She isn’t exactly great at flying the falcon at first either. She almost destroys it trying to take off. So why is this so unrealistic to some, yet are fine with Luke being able to perfectly fly a ship he had never had any experience with before and Leia flying a ship when she had never piloted anything up until that point? Luke’s piloting skills were never even mentioned by anyone else until the Special Editions, yet we were all fine with it before then.

ANH:REVISITED
ESB:REVISITED

DONATIONS TOWARDS MATERIALS FOR THE REVISITED SAGA

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😄 Hold on, read my last post first: it was a misunderstanding!
But still, it’s unbelievable that both the original ANH and TFA never state how Luke/Rey know to pilot ships. I mean, in TFA they bothered explaining or questioning quickstorms, Luke’s lightsaber, The Starkiller’s size… and they didn’t explain something major like Rey’s own abilities?

The Original Trilogy’s Timeline Reconstruction: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Implied-starting-date-of-the-Empire-from-OT-dialogue/post/786201/#TopicPost786201

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I really enjoyed the movie - unlike the prequels, it felt like Star Wars from beginning to end. And for all its flaws, I liked the characters SO much more than the characters in the prequels.

One thing that I don’t think anyone has yet mentioned, is that the lightsaber battles in TFA are a return to the OT style - less choreographed and more “gritty” than the comicbook-style sequences from the PT.

"Close the blast doors!"
Puggo’s website | Rescuing Star Wars

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Anchorhead said:

RU.08 said:

When using CGI it’s best practise not to zoom it to fill the frame, but with Snoke JJ just puts it right in the frame to pull us out of the suspension of disbelief.

Unless I missed something, we never see Snoke. We just see a holographic projection Kylo is speaking with.

And he could look completely different in real life. He could be Mace Windu or Leia or anyone.

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adywan said:
Luke’s piloting skills were never even mentioned by anyone else until the Special Editions, yet we were all fine with it before then.

His piloting skills were mentioned by Obiwan in his home: “I understand you’ve become quite a good pilot yourself…”

"Close the blast doors!"
Puggo’s website | Rescuing Star Wars

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Alderaan said:
The reason is probably because someone decided in a script meeting that it would be a novel idea to have one of the Han/Leia/Luke characters be a stormtrooper, and everyone else said “oh yeah that’s brilliant let’s do it”.

To be honest, that probably is exactly what happened.

Alderaan said:
It feels like the story was written and directed by ten different people, and all their different pet ideas got into the movie.

Considering all the various stakeholders at Disney, Bad Robot, toy manufacturers, marketeers, artist agents, etc etc involved, I’m sure this is a pretty accurate statement. I very much doubt JJ had free reign. I don’t think any director does these days unless they are low budget indie auteurs.

War does not make one great.

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RU.08 said:

Yoda Is Your Father said:

Maybe your friend should direct Episode VIII. Or at least be on set to keep the director, special effects team and editor in line. He sounds like he really has a handle on this whole filmmaking thing. Disney are missing a trick.

I was just giving an example bro. I’m the one who said Robocop was done well, not him. What my friend said was “I still can’t believe that’s done with a man in a suit!!” Like I said that’s a credit to everyone involved in suspending disbelief. But I see no suspension of disbelief with Snoke - he looks like a rendered graphic.

But look at ESB- Yoda was a puppet! And the last thing that Lucas, or for that matter Kershner, wanted was to make it look like a muppets moive!

I agree that Snoke took me right out of the movie. And if you’re suggesting that they would have been better off going down the puppet route, I agree with that too. Yoda was so good they tried to get Frank Oz nominated for an Oscar but the academy wouldn’t have it.

War does not make one great.

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Bingowings said:

Maybe some of these things have an in universe explanation which we haven’t seen yet. Rey could just be absorbing skills from the minds of people around her. She knows the Falcon because Han and Chewie do, She knows how to fight with a lightsaber because Ren has been trained to do so. She understands Chewie and BB8 too so she can draw skills from non-humans and robots. It could be a new Force skill where connective nature of the Force is being used as a tool.

That’s actually a really interesting theory.

War does not make one great.

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Smoking Lizard said:

hydrospanner said:

I don’t see why some don’t find the idea of Finn working sanitation while stationed at the base to be so unbelievable. Aren’t new recruits in real world militaries often tasked with menial jobs before they can rise through the ranks?

Do the Green Berets complete their Green Beret training and then get assigned to the Pentagon to take out the garbage?

Answer: No.

Also…sanitation in Star Wars…that’s what droids are for.

You must not be familiar with Military etiquette and protocol. As a U.S. Army veteran I can tell you that if it is part of your assignment or your told to, you do it no matter what rank you are. It’s part of the gig.

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Bingowings said:

Anchorhead said:

RU.08 said:

When using CGI it’s best practise not to zoom it to fill the frame, but with Snoke JJ just puts it right in the frame to pull us out of the suspension of disbelief.

Unless I missed something, we never see Snoke. We just see a holographic projection Kylo is speaking with.

And he could look completely different in real life. He could be Mace Windu or Leia or anyone.

I swear to God if they even mention Mace Windu in any of the new trilogy I’m disowning them.

War does not make one great.

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While watching TFA, I was wondering how comes Rey can pilot ships.

As I understand it, there’s a “now canonical” short storybook called “Before the Awakening” or something along that line that “explains” this.

Turns out Rey found a flight simulator in the Star Destroyer while scavenging. She was bored with nothing to do, so she started practicing on the flight simulator, which, um, taught her how to fly the Millenium Falcon.

Sure. Because Imperials would certainly have a flight simulator for Han Solo’s YT-1300.