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Post #933478

Author
Scott109
Parent topic
The Force Awakens: Official Review Thread - ** SPOILERS **
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/933478/action/topic#933478
Date created
22-Apr-2016, 8:23 PM

JediExile said:

Didn’t like The Force Awakens at all.

Finn was a ridiculous character. Raised from birth as a Stormtrooper, “programmed” to be obedient (General Hux’s words), and he absolutely loses it on his first mission. I wouldn’t have a problem with this if he wasn’t programmed from birth and the First Order recruited like the Empire did, but it is an issue and leads to his character feeling forced. I would have greatly preferred if Finn slowly broke his brainwashing over the course of the movie instead of at the beginning. It would have led to a much more believable character.
Finn also has a kind of odd personality for a Stormtrooper. He’s pretty much the comic relief of the movie which was really confusing to me as I don’t really see that going well with the First Order.

Rey was just poorly developed. She’s the only Force user that I’ve really seen in the canon series that picks up her Force abilities that fast with absolutely zero training. Aside from that, I found her hard to relate to because I didn’t really get a sense of who she was throughout the movie. Luke in ANH was a good-hearted kid who wants to get off Tatooine and live his life. Anakin in TPM was also a good-hearted little boy who wanted to become a Jedi and strived to help others. I don’t really know who Rey is. She misses her parents and wants to get off Jakku, but she acts like an ass to Finn when she meets him and to BB-8 when all he wants to do is really stick around her. She doesn’t seem very social and appears to have no friends at all and I’m just not sure about her though. This is mostly how I feel about her subjectively though, she just kind of bored me.

Finn and Rey also lack chemistry despite caring about each other(???). They’ve known each other for such a small amount of time, yet Finn seems to really be attracted and attached to her in the Cantina scene. Why ask this girl you just met to come with you? Why bother asking this guy you met to stick with you? Why does Finn even care that he lied to her? Just very confusing match.

Kylo Ren is just confusing to me. He worships Vader, a Sith Lord who turned to the light. Not only that, he prays(?) to Vader’s helmet (how did he get that?) to help him stay on the dark side? Is the First Order unaware of Vader turning back to the light and redeeming himself? Kylo was a student of Luke right, shouldn’t he know this too? Does the First Order not acknowledge this happened?

Speaking of Return of the Jedi, this movie is a horrible continuation of the OT. Return of the Jedi has Vader redeem himself, Leia is revealed to be Force sensitive like her brother, the Empire is in shambles, the New Republic is probably going to rule over the galaxy, and Luke is going to rebuild the Jedi Order. So why is there a resistance group in TFA instead of a formal army? Why is Vader being worshipped as a Sith instead of a redeemed Jedi? How did Kylo Ren manage to kill all of Luke’s students? Why did Luke run away from his friends and duty as a Jedi? Why didn’t Luke tell Leia where he was? What is the state of the Republic right now? I did some googling on the state of the Republic and why it had no military and you know what I found? They fucking disarmed 90% of their military in a treaty with (if I can remember properly) the remnants of the Empire. For what purpose? Why wasn’t this in the movie? Why drop the audience back inside Star Wars 30 years after RotJ and not explain ANYTHING?

Then there’s Starkiller. Another Death Star really bothered me, especially the way Starkiller was designed. What’s the point of the huge recharging planet instead of just 5 Death Stars 2.0s? Can Starkiller move? How does one aim a planet? Why waste resources on making a planet into a superweapon? I thought the First Order was a remnants group of the Empire, how did they get these resources? Wouldn’t sucking out all the energy from the Sun literally kill everyone on Starkiller? I’m not a scientist and I don’t know much about our own Sun, but I can’t imagine something like that going out and being good.

The final fight annoyed me a little too. Kylo Ren quite literally teleports from the inside of Starkiller, far away from Rey and Finn right to the middle of the forest where Rey and Finn ran to. Ahead of them. Kylo slams Rey against a tree and knocks her unconscious for a while and Finn picks up Anakin/Luke’s lightsaber to defend himself and Rey. Now I’d like to point out that in a previous scene, Finn got his ass completely demolished by a random Stormtrooper. He was almost killed until Han saved him. In this scene, Finn is suddenly a lot more skilled with the lightsaber despite never using it again after getting his ass kicked. He does a decent job of holding off Ren and even manages to land a hit on him (had a chuckle when this happened, can’t imagine any other Sith getting hit by a lowly Stormtrooper). Kylo gets pissed and disarms Finn and slices his back open after this. Now Kylo’s arm should probably be disabled from Finn’s hit and Finn should probably be dead from Ren’s hit, but the fight must go on so whatever. So Ren suddenly turns his attention to the lightsaber stuck in the snow and struggles to Force Pull it from the ground. I’d like to take a moment to remind you that Ren not even 5-6 minutes ago lifted a ~100 pound girl into the air and sent her flying and dragged a much heavier man towards him in an earlier scene where he throws a temper tantrum. So he obviously fails and Rey proves to be more skilled in pulling small objects with the Force than Kylo. They fight and Rey understandably holds up better than Finn. It’s easy to assume she’s trained with melee weapons before as seen when she beats those thugs on Jakku to a pulp. But Kylo is more skilled with the Force than Rey and more skilled with a lightsaber too, so the tides start turning towards him. Once again, makes sense. And here’s where the final scene really bothers me. Ren mentions taking her as his apprentice and training her in the ways of the Force. She suddenly remembers she has the Force, mentions the Force OUT LOUD in front of Kylo, and closes her eyes. Kylo stares at her like a dumb brick, completely unaware that Rey is trying to use the Force to support her. Rey then suddenly turns the battle and whoops the trained Sith’s ass hard. Somehow. Then the grounds splits and Kylo is left in the middle of nowhere on a dying planet (He’ll be back in the sequel though somehow just because).

So my ranking of SW movies after seeing TFA three times is 4 > 5 > 6 = 1 > 3 > 7 > 2. Just a pretty mediocre movie that I didn’t really have fun watching at all.
Apologize if this is too long and poorly formatted, but I’m not used to this bare bones kind of forum.

I think that a lot of the questions are probably explained in the novelization. The First Order believes Darth Vader slaying the emperor was a moment of weakness and did not diminish his legacy.

I now believe Luke trained Rey before Kylo saved her from the knights of Ren, wiped her memory, and set her on Jakku. That would explain why she subconsciously knows how to perform a Jedi mind trick.

I agree with you on Finn. The idea of a black stormtrooper was cool. John Boyega was a good actor, but J. J. Abrams made Finn too likeable to seem like an authentic renegade stormtrooper. Others may disagree with me on this, but that is just my opinion.

I am surprised you would rate Episode I over Episode III.