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Post #974138

Author
MalàStrana
Parent topic
TFA: A Gentle Restructure (Released)
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/974138/action/topic#974138
Date created
23-Jul-2016, 6:07 PM

Don’t need that, his text is sufficient (and here as well: https://humaniterations.net/2016/03/26/how-to-fix-the-force-awakens/)

How does this restructuring help the film?

• The second act centers around the events of Maz’s castle and remains focused on the characters and their struggle to keep the First Order from finding the map to Luke. The First Order catching up to Han and Rey is sufficient motivation for Finn to decide not to leave, without the Hosnian system being destroyed.
• Starkiller Base firing upon the Hosnian system in the third act links it very closely to Kylo Ren’s resolution toward the dark side as he kills Han. Pairing these events magnifies each.
• Han taking a risk motivated by love for his son which brings about costly failure is a dark mirror of Vader doing the same in Return of the Jedi and ending up helping to save the galaxy.
• It alleviates the plot’s very close parallel with the original Star Wars.
• Starkiller Base is depicted as functioning in an intuitive way: it drains the nearby star (or “the Sun,” as Finn describes it), which covers it in darkness, and then fires on the Republic Capitol. Gone are the awkward questions about why the planet was still in daylight when it fired the first time during the second act, and whether the base is mobile.
• It avoids depicting the Hosnian system clearly visible to the naked eye, very large in the sky, from lightyears away. The official Lucasfilm canon answer is that Starkiller Base created a “space-time disruption,” an obvious bandaid answer to apologize for a wanton move on the filmmakers’ part. One wonders whether such intersystem spectacles are common in this world, because no one who witnessed the destruction had the slightest trouble identifying what was happening.
• It avoids raising the question of why the Resistance did not begin evacuating their base during the third act when they know they are the target. In the original Star Wars, the Death Star was looming overhead; here, there’s no obvious reason why they could not have fled.