Lord Haseo said:
You’re still boiling down to it’s barest essentials and omit details. If you actually watch the film it feels completely different. A decent percentage of the similarities are reworked/repackaged to give a different feel to the film
Of course I am.
That’s what plot is.
The only differences come from the new characters doing the things the old characters did.
Ben sacrificing himself to set Luke on a collision course with his father isn’t the same as Han sacrificing himself to try to help his spiritually conflicted murderous son.
There are however other plots they could have used that would have introduced those characters in a more engaging way and I could have handled more Death Stars.
The issue wasn’t that there was a planet smashing weapon but it’s used in exactly the same way at the same point of the plot in the film I’ve already seen hundreds of times.
The initial set up of the film tells us that the Galaxy has divided into the New Republic and the First Order and there is a kind of Cold War situation where the First Order has built up it’s military and the Republic is lending deniable support to insurgents in First Order territory.
A way to use Death Star tech in this situation would have been to mirror the proliferation of Nukes in our cold war. The Republic has had to build it’s own superweapons to balance those of the First Order. This creates an moral and ethical conflict with the old guard who fought to keep the galaxy safe from such things and maybe lost their whole home planet to one. The Republic would have lost the higher moral ground and the line between the good guys and the bad guys would be blurred. Possibly why Ben becomes Ren.
That would be using using a bit of story from the old films and developing to the new setting.
It would be different enough to draw me into the new situation and then into the new characters.
Instead we have essentially the same movie with different characters which is half way to being a classic movie but not a classic movie. It’s another cynical corporate marketing exercise, not a story.
In my view.
I appreciate the film will continue to make loads of cash and will have fans.
Just not me.
Same with the prequels.