I’m back to share a few more thoughts on the movie!
About the main characters, I think they lack strong developments:
-Finn: we know from the beginning that he wants to leave the FO. He soon befriends a member of the resistence and then, until the 3rd part of the movie, does his best to escape the FO. After this, I honestly don’t remember why he decided to take part of the attack to the Starkiller Base. I guess they wanted him to finally face the FO, but a few more lines about his thoughts might’ve helped fleshing out his character more than all those explosions in the final battle.
He wanted to save Rey. He even lied to the Resistance, claiming knowledge of how to take the Base out, so they’d let him tag along. Which led to him admitting to Han he didn’t know what to do, which led to him suggesting “using the Force” to do it, which led to Han’s “That’s not how the Force works!” A great exchange.
-Rey: she is mostly fleshed out, with even a few insights on her past. Her knowledge of the Force, on the other hand, is completely out of control: she begins with having no idea of what the Force is, to using mind tricks, to moving objects and suddenly she’s able to take on a trained dark Jedi. Her supposedly being the one “awakening” is no excuse for this, because no one questions her skills at all in the movie, so to me they definitely feel like deus-ex-machinas with no character progression in the Force.
That’s fine but there’s been plenty of discussion in this thread of how and why her progression makes plenty of sense, you should read back through it.
-Kylo Ren: in the beginning he seems to be a strong Force-user, in the end he’s just a guy with a lightsaber being defeated. Why is this, what happened in the middle? His decision to kill his father is a wasted opportunity, as it should’ve had a greater inpact on his development (also possibly moving the scene earlier in the movie), making him either regret his decision or making him more determined in his actions.
Same as previous, plenty of discussion why this also makes sense.
On the PT vs TFA comparison, I think that while the PT is definitely technically flawed, it still followed less the OT’s structure than TFA, while also at least trying to add a few new concepts (with some not being necessarily bad ideas in the SW universe).
I’ve pointed out plenty of new things this movie introduced and risks it took. I completely disagree that nothing new was done here.
With that said, it’s not like I think the PT is better than TFA: they’re all terribly flawed one way or another, with TFA not being an exception.
Rating the PT + TFA in order of release, as you did in the rankings thread, is still crazy talk.