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.