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The Force Awakens: Official Review Thread - ** SPOILERS ** — Page 57

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CrazyH said:

I think it’s fairly well established that use of the Force is not a game of top trumps.

Conjecture like “if Rey is awakened why couldn’t she stop the force push on to the tree” this isn’t a video game where you have force levels and you automatically stop Force Push attacks. She’s not really expecting Kylo Ren to suddenly throw her against a tree and is not making any concerted effort to combat that.

Excellent point and possibly reveals something about some of the complaints…if you play video games all day, you would be upset if the movie isn’t written like one…and you’d prefer the prequels as well.

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Bosk said:

The fundamental flaw with tfa is that it was rushed. From the moment Disney purchased I bet the pressure was on to get a film out ASAP and it shows.

I don’t think that was the main cause. I think they had to make something that would work for sure since it was their first product. The played it safe, went with proven concepts and rehashed stuff from OT. Actually, I expect more from stand-alone films since they will be able to experiment more. We will see.

真実

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Err, I play a lot of video games, especially Star Wars ones where you gradually gain “epic lulz farce powah!!”

Yet I had no issue with Kylo/Rey in TFA and instead loved it. I don’t see the correlation :p

The Rise of Failures

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TavorX said:

Err, I play a lot of video games, especially Star Wars ones where you gradually gain “epic lulz farce powah!!”

Yet I had no issue with Kylo/Rey in TFA and instead loved it. I don’t see the correlation :p

I said if you play “all day.”

:p

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TV’s Frink said:

TavorX said:

Err, I play a lot of video games, especially Star Wars ones where you gradually gain “epic lulz farce powah!!”

Yet I had no issue with Kylo/Rey in TFA and instead loved it. I don’t see the correlation :p

I said if you play “all day.”

:p

Well, some days…

The Rise of Failures

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Ok sorry, should have said “if you play during every walking hour, minus the time you spend here calling a house a cave and conveniently ignoring how you fell asleep in the theater and missed several important parts of the movie.”

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Fair enough then Frink lol

The Rise of Failures

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imperialscum said:

Bosk said:

The fundamental flaw with tfa is that it was rushed. From the moment Disney purchased I bet the pressure was on to get a film out ASAP and it shows.

I don’t think that was the main cause. I think they had to make something that would work for sure since it was their first product. The played it safe, went with proven concepts and rehashed stuff from OT. Actually, I expect more from stand-alone films since they will be able to experiment more. We will see.

And some how even though they had a blue print of how to make a good film, they still managed to fuck it up royally

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What’s lazier than ‘lazy scriptwriting’?

Dissing other people’s scripts instead of writing your own.

War does not make one great.

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Bosk said:

imperialscum said:

Bosk said:

The fundamental flaw with tfa is that it was rushed. From the moment Disney purchased I bet the pressure was on to get a film out ASAP and it shows.

I don’t think that was the main cause. I think they had to make something that would work for sure since it was their first product. The played it safe, went with proven concepts and rehashed stuff from OT. Actually, I expect more from stand-alone films since they will be able to experiment more. We will see.

And some how even though they had a blue print of how to make a good film, they still managed to fuck it up royally

So the blue print how to make a good movie is the OT? And they “fucked it up royally” by following the plot of Star Wars too closely? I know it has been said before, but I say it again: You don’t make any sense at all.

And how is 1.5 billion $ in 3 weeks a “royal fuck up”?

Ceci n’est pas une signature.

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Frank your Majesty said:

Bosk said:

imperialscum said:

Bosk said:

The fundamental flaw with tfa is that it was rushed. From the moment Disney purchased I bet the pressure was on to get a film out ASAP and it shows.

I don’t think that was the main cause. I think they had to make something that would work for sure since it was their first product. The played it safe, went with proven concepts and rehashed stuff from OT. Actually, I expect more from stand-alone films since they will be able to experiment more. We will see.

And some how even though they had a blue print of how to make a good film, they still managed to fuck it up royally

So the blue print how to make a good movie is the OT? And they “fucked it up royally” by following the plot of Star Wars too closely? I know it has been said before, but I say it again: You don’t make any sense at all.

And how is 1.5 billion $ in 3 weeks a “royal fuck up”?

Numerous crap films make lots of money at the box office, this has no relation to the structure of this film. They fucked it up by trying to pay homage to the OT, all they had to do is look at what constitutes a ‘good’ star wars film and write a new script with a different plot but no lets rehash anh and introduce a few empty characters.

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Well, even adjusted for inflation, TFA has by far overtaken AOTC and ROTS and is only slightly behind TPM, which had 15 years and a rerelease in 3D. And yes, you can’t always measure quality by profit, but it’s usually a rather good indication.

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Frank your Majesty said:

Well, even adjusted for inflation, TFA has by far overtaken AOTC and ROTS and is only slightly behind TPM, which had 15 years and a rerelease in 3D. And yes, you can’t always measure quality by profit, but it’s usually a rather good indication.

Or decent marketing strategy, I know why they didn’t show much on the trailers now.

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Frank your Majesty said:

Well, even adjusted for inflation, TFA has by far overtaken AOTC and ROTS and is only slightly behind TPM, which had 15 years and a rerelease in 3D. And yes, you can’t always measure quality by profit, but it’s usually a rather good indication.

Jurassic world did well, that’s a great film…

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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.

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Bosk said:

Frank your Majesty said:

Well, even adjusted for inflation, TFA has by far overtaken AOTC and ROTS and is only slightly behind TPM, which had 15 years and a rerelease in 3D. And yes, you can’t always measure quality by profit, but it’s usually a rather good indication.

Jurassic world did well, that’s a great film…

Jurassic World did what it wanted to achieve, presenting a visual spectacle. TFA did what it wanted to achieve, going back to the roots of Star Wars. After fans have been shouting “give us more like the OT” for 15 years, that doesn’t come unexpected. Death Star 3 may have been a bit too much going in that direction, but it’s still a fun movie.

You can’t say that TFN’s story (or plot or whatever you want to call it) is bad because it’s too close to the story of Star Wars, since the story of Star Wars is just great. You can say that you don’t like the movie because it is not original enough, but that doesn’t affect the quality of the story. TFA didn’t ruin the force with midichlorians or bored it’s audience with political talk and shot-reverse-shot-while sitting-on-a-sofa-scenes. It didn’t have idiotic cameos of Greedo’s cousin or the ice cream maker guy, there was no retconning of OT events. So how is that a “royal fuck up”?

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BECAUSE HAN WAS IDIOTIC CAMEO FANSERVICE AND HAD NO REASON TO BE IN THE MOVIE AND OFFERED REY NOTHING AND LUKE’S LIGHTSABER BURNED UP WHEN IT FELL TO THE SURFACE OF BESPIN WHICH TFA RETCONNED AND FOOFARAW

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Bingowings said:
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.

Those were completely different scenes with completely different character motivations. If you want to boil it down to “Baddie kills old man at the end of the film” sure…but the scene is a lot more than that. Also Han doesn’t sacrifice himself; he only wanted to bring his son home. He didn’t go out there knowing with absolute certainty he would be killed.

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 have been a lot better, but this story would be better for the sequel. They can introduce it early and will have sufficient runtime to develop it.

But as it pertains to the Starkiller Base there’s nothing anyone can say in it’s defense really. It’s a beefed up Death Star and in my opinion it’s lazy from a movie writing perspective. But from just a story perspective it makes sense because the Death Star was the ultimate symbol of power in the Universe. Someone was going to try to build another one…just didn’t have to be in TFA. It’s kind of being a teraformed planet was a cool idea though.

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.
I appreciate the film will continue to make loads of cash and will have fans.

Just not me.

Still yperbole but if that’s how you feel then that’s how you feel. At least you’re not acting like it’s a shot for shot remake. I’ve seen the film 3 times and every time I see it the ride feels fresh. When Poe gives BB-8 the map and when The Starkiller Base are introduced the only times in which I say that that’s directly ripped from ANH. Of course there are repackaged stuff but stuff like that doesn’t bother me unless it feels new

Same with the prequels.

The difference is that most people liked TFA. Even core fans…OT indoctrination be damned.

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They aren’t different scenes.
They come at the same part of the same plot and are framed the same way.
ANH Our heroes have just escaped a rescue attempt on the main female character and are in the process of making their last moves in order to escape the planet smashing villain fortress when the older mentor is intercepted by the masked lead villain who has a past with him.
Our other heroes are divided from their confrontation by a pit and the older mentor is killed.
The lead hero reacts violently to his noble sacrifice and make their escape.
TFA Our heroes have just escaped a rescue attempt on the main female character and are in the process of making their last moves in order to escape the planet smashing villain fortress when the older mentor is intercepted by the masked lead villain who has a past with him.
Our other heroes are divided from their confrontation by a pit and the older mentor is killed.
The heroes react violently to his noble sacrifice and make their escape.
The only difference comes from the characters and I like the new characters and the old characters but the new ones are just repeating the actions of the old ones so I can’t engage with them.

I have seen this scene in the prequels too. Qui-Gon killed while Obi-Wan is trapped behind a force field.
At least they mixed it up a bit by having the Luke character kill the Vader replacement.

If they had subtitles for Chewie I bet he called out “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” at the same point too.

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One of the biggest complaints I consistently hear about TPM though (aside from its general crapness) is that Maul didn’t survive to be a recurring villain, so it’s another case of the screenwriter being damned either way…

Do it differently, and the fans complain it’s wrong, do it the same and they complain it’s a rehash.

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brash_stryker said:

One of the biggest complaints I consistently hear about TPM though (aside from its general crapness) is that Maul didn’t survive to be a recurring villain, so it’s another case of the screenwriter being damned either way…

I said at least they mixed it up.
I didn’t say mirroring the scene again and again was a good idea, far from it.

They could have had a completely different fight.
Instead we had the Maul fight mirror the Obi-Wan/Vader fight in ANH
The Dooku fight in AOTC with some new (largely goofy) elements but the main character loosing his arm as a parallel ESB and then the Dooku/Anakin fight being a mirror of the Luke/Vader fight of ROTJ

There are other situations to be had where people hit each other with swords.
The nearest we have to that in TFA can’t help but throw in a nod to Luke in the Wampa cave.
It’s just a jumbled up bag of references.
Write a story FFS.

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Bingowings said:

ANH the older mentor is intercepted by the masked lead villain

TFA the masked lead villain is intercepted by the older mentor

At least tell it the right way.

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Random tidbit/thought on the opening scene

Lor San Tekka: You may try. But you cannot deny the truth that is your family.
Kylo Ren: You’re so right.
[Ren draws his lightsaber and kills San Tekka]

for Lor Ren’s family is Luke and Leia. For Ren, family = Vader.

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Frank your Majesty said:

Bingowings said:

ANH the older mentor is intercepted by the masked lead villain

TFA the masked lead villain is intercepted by the older mentor

At least tell it the right way.

As a sometimes annoying pedant I appreciate your valuable input here 😄