Considering the subject of this thread, I am going to assume I can post what I do not like about TFA without being accused of being a “troll.” I just caved and saw the movie yesterday. Here’s what I did not like:
Von Sydow’s character required someone to travel IN PERSON to Jakku to receive the map, rather than just transmit it encrypted to Leia.
Instead of covertly sending an intelligence officer under deep cover to retrieve the map, Leia sends a pilot. In uniform. In an X-Wing.
On Jakku, Kylo Ren and the rest of the First Order round up the villagers. Instead of saying to Poe, “Tell us where the map is or we’ll kill these villagers,” Ren orders Poe onto his ship and then orders the villagers murdered for the sport of it.
The blaster bolt suspended midflight and hanging in the air until Ren “coolly” released it.
Kylo Ren and the First Order round up the innocent villagers and are setting the village on fire. When Kylo comes to question Poe, Poe deems it appropriate to crack jokes at Ren. No, Poe, don’t, you know, maybe BEG for mercy for the villagers and insist that they’re innocent. Nah. Crack jokes instead.
So Kylo Ren is Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader’s grandson? Kylo Ren, in private, “prays” to his grandfather to “show him the way” to resist the pull of the light side of the Force. Um, hello? Anakin Skywalker is probably the WORST person to ask for advice on how to resist the light side?
Anakin Skywalker is Kylo Ren’s grandfather, yes? So Anakin, a redeemed Jedi, couldn’t appear as a Force ghost to Ren years earlier as Ren was turning to the dark side and, you know, maybe try to talk him out of it? You know, appear to Ren as a ghost the way Obi Wan did multiple times to Luke?
If you’re saying right now, “Well, maybe he did and Ren resisted him!” Why, then, is Ren asking Vader for advice on how to resist the light?
So Finn helps Poe escape. Finn, by the way, is a janitor (yes…JANITOR!) stormtrooper who was abducted as an infant by the First Order and raised to be a stormtrooper. Because raising soldiers for your evil cause from infancy is easier than just using recruits. I mean, yeah, recruits worked for the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, imperial Japan, Al Qaeda, Stalin, and ISIS but they would NEVER work for the First Order. Abducting babies is much easier.
OK, so we escape. Suddenly the new and improved First Order TIE fighters are two seaters.
The TIE fighter gets shot and then crash lands on Jakku. CONVENIENTLY close to Rey’s settlement.
The TIE fighter CONVENIENTLY gets eaten up by the desert. Because, yeah, the desert eats stuff all the time.
But there’s other crashed junk all over the place that hasn’t been swallowed up by the desert.
Finn runs to the settlement, where he conveniently bumps into Rey who conveniently has found BB-8.
So BB-8 tells Rey that that random dude is wearing my master’s jacket – or, well, a jacket that looks just like my master’s jacket. So Rey runs over and smashes him in the face with a blunt weapon.
Hey! Now we’re friends!
Oh no! The First Order is on to us! They’re chasing us!
Let’s run for that “Quad Jumper”! But we need a pilot? Don’t worry! I can PILOT ANYTHING! Including the Millenium Falcon!
How did you learn to fly the Millenium Falcon? I found a flight simulator! And the flight simulator taught me how to fly that type of craft!
Oh, no! The Quad Jumper was blown up by the First Order! Don’t worry! The Millenium Falcon is right over there! Yes, in this entire wide galaxy, how entirely fortunate that Kylo Ren’s father’s ship just happens to be right here!
And the door is open! Gee, I wonder why the pawn broker had enough sense to throw a tarp over the MF but not bother to close the door?
Ah, well! Let’s run inside! Won’t the First Order blow this ship up, too? Nah.
OK, I just started up the Millenium Falcon! Wait! Doesn’t it have some kind of security on the starter? After all, even my 1977 Ford Pinto required a KEY TO START! Nah! I just started it up!
Damn! Look at me! I can fly the MF at least as well as Han Solo…even though I never had before. IT’S THE FORCE! Yes, every other Jedi alive – including Anakin – had to be TRAINED to use the Force, but NOT REY! SHE’S SPECIAL!
OK, we’re in space now! We ditched the First Order somehow…but oh no! We’re captured…by Han Solo!
Who just so happened to be in the neighborhood, actively looking for the Millenium Falcon…at the age of 70 something years old. Sure he was a general once who led the Rebellion to maybe the greatest victory in the history of the galaxy, but now, at the age of 70, he’s back to being a smuggler.
OK, now Han is going to take Rey to his Force-sensitive mentor. But Han! Back in the 1977 movie, you insisted you didn’t believe in the Force! Um, oh yeah. Forgot about that.
Gotta love the trite, “I can see who you are by looking into your eyes,” bullsh*t. I mean, because that’s SOOOOOOO original.
Also gotta love that crawling across the table and switching the lenses in the goggles to amp up the magnification or whatever. Yeah, that wasn’t contrived.
Oh, hey! By the way, I’m Maz and I somehow have Luke Skywalker’s lighsaber in a wooden box downstairs in my dungeon! How did I get it, you ask? Oh, that’s a story for another time (TRANSLATION: The writers don’t know yet, either).
Somehow Rey just stumbles on the box with the lightsaber. I know, I know – the Force. Uh huh.
So now Finn has the lightsaber and Rey is randomly running around the woods because she’s upset or something.
Oh, hey! Look at that! We can see the blast rays from the Starkiller base, which is light years away!
The Starkiller base is able to blow up planets many light years away because, wait for it, its blasts travel through hyperspace to arrive at their targets! Not making this up.
Oh no! The First Order found us here on Maz’s planet! Oh no! Rey is captured and Ren doesn’t give a rat’s butt about BB-8 and the ACTUAL MAP anymore because he can torture the map out of Rey’s brain. Because, yeah, her cursory look at the map somehow enabled it to be perfectly imprinted on her brain.
Oh, yeah! What about Poe Dameron? Why did he just leave Jakku without finding BB-8 first? It was a critical mission AND HE JUST LEFT?! When he got back to the Resistance planet did Leia come up and say, “Well?” and he said, “Well, what?” and she said, “Did you get the message I sent you to retrieve?” and he said, “Oh, snap!”?!
So Rey is captured. She hasn’t figured out that she can already use the Force yet. Give it about 10 minutes and she’ll have it figured out.
So Ren’s secret darkest fear is that he will never be as powerful as Darth Vader? Puh-lease.
Han and Leia repeatedly refer to Ren stiltedly as “our son” and not simply his name.
Leia’s stilted dialog: “It was Snoke who seduced our son to the Dark Side of the Force.” Ugh.
Oh, yeah…and Snoke is a laughably bad CGI character. One that looks a hell of a lot like the trite old “big head alien” from alien abduction movies.
Yeah. Snoke is a bad CGI character. And he’s, like, one of the two main villains. Read that again. A main villain is a CGI character. Jar Jar, anyone?
And the command center of the First Order doesn’t look very military. Looked more like a Comcast customer care call center. In TESB, Lucas hired very experienced British stage actors to play the roles of the key imperials – Ozzel, Piett, Needa, and Veers – and they delivered a very “professional military” performance. These guys? Not so scary.
Temper tantrums make someone a bad guy! Get bad news? Tear sht up with your stupid lightsaber! A key prisoner escaped? Tear sht up with your stupid lightsaber!
Why the hell is Ren wearing a mask, anyway? Because it’s cool? Does he sleep with it, too?
So the galaxy has gone to hell in a hand basket…and Luke has gone into hiding? Never mind, you know, maybe helping the Resistance, you know, RESIST?
So in 30 years Luke trained ZERO new Jedis? Ren somehow killed them ALL?!
But failed to kill Luke?
Hey, we have to blow up the Starkiller base! No problem. We’ll just land on the planet and blow up the shields! But how will we get through the shields to begin with? We’ll just come out of hyperspace inside the shields? Why hadn’t we ever done that before? Um…because!
How many times is the MF going to scrape along the ground, scrape across rocks, and fly through trees without, you know, blowing up?
Oh, hey, now we’re going to crash. No, not really. We’ll just skid along the snowy surface. And…wait for it…wait for it! Yep! Here comes a cliff! And wait for it…wait for it…errrt! We stopped just at the edge of the cliff! Never saw that before!
We have X-Wing pilots who don’t look like military pilots. The female pilot especially…not because she’s female, but because she carries herself as a college student enjoying a theme park ride.
Rey kills Han. Thank God. Not because it was a good story element, but because at least it spares us from having to see an 80 year old Han Solo in the future.
We have C3PO literally calling play-by-play during the battle!
Hurray! We blew up the Starkiller base! How? Who cares?! An oscillator or something. Who cares?! It’s blown up! Yay!
And even better! Somehow all the main characters somehow manage to escape the planet blowing up! Sure is a good thing the First Order was somehow able to pick up Ren from the surface and get him off the planet before the planet blew up! How wonderfully convenient!
Oh, by the way, Ren got his butt kicked by Rey…who just suddenly, out of nowhere, learned how to use the Force and a lightsaber. How convenient!
Oh! And why didn’t Rey just kill him?! Because a rift in the planet formed just at the right second! Phew! That was CLOSE! We almost lost our super “cool” villain!
Hey look at that! R2-D2 just woke up somehow. Maybe Luke woke him up or something. Because “Now is the right time. The time was not right before now…” Since when did Luke become so melodramatic?
We land on a planet…
…and bring Luke his lightsaber.
Roll credits. Thank God.
This X 1,000