In what ways did TFA completely nail it, either in terms of filmmaking or in terms of continuity? — Page 3

John Doom said:
1st

For the record Doom, my response wasn’t so much jumping down your through yelling “how dare you” as it was honestly trying to understand how you could like one small part of the score and none of the rest of it.

I too find the new themes (other than Rey’s which is rather like something out of John Ford Western) a bit uninspired.

All the films 1-6 had memorable themes you could hum or whistle after leaving the cinema.

I didn’t have one this time.

BB8’s vocalisations were really good though, different from Artoo but as emotive.
The whole performance of BB8 was up with the droids in the first 2.5 movies and made me almost forget the indignities thrown at the true saga heroes in the prequels.

Bingowings said:

I too find the new themes (other than Rey’s which is rather like something out of John Ford Western) a bit uninspired.

All the films 1-6 had memorable themes you could hum or whistle after leaving the cinema.

I didn’t have one this time.

You’re probably right on immediate hummability, but for me that’s not the barometer of a good score. For me a good score has themes that develop and intertwine throughout the film and support what’s on screen. There’s a coherence and sophistication to the music in TFA that hasn’t been there in a SW score since, I would argue, 1980.

And I found the themes quite hummable after a couple good listens to the soundtrack.

My wife has been playing it in the car when she is driving our two girls wherever, and they both have been humming it around the house all the time.

TavorX said:

Edit: I should make it clear that I’ve only seen TFA once.

Well there’s your problem.

DominicCobb said:

TavorX said:

Edit: I should make it clear that I’ve only seen TFA once.

Well there’s your problem.

That’s definitely a problem. There is so much I have picked up on in my 3 other viewings of TFA that completely eluded me in my first viewing. Also every time I watched it again I liked the soundtrack a bit more.

I hope TavorX at least got to see it in IMAX.

I’m basking in the positivity in this thread, please keep it up!

For my part, something that TFA gets absolutely right goes back to a strength of the originals - it keeps moving forwards. In Star Wars the action constantly moved on from planet (to station) to planet, never looking back; this constant sense of ‘but wait, there’s more’ enthralled me as a young viewer. The initial sequels pretty much followed this trend (barring Jedi’s stopovers on Tatooine and Dagobah), but that momentum pretty much stalled in the prequels, which hit a mundane cycle of Tatooine, Naboo and Coruscant (indeed, I distinctly remember my dismay when it became apparent that the climax of TPM would occur on a planet we’d already spent half an hour on at the start).

TFA hops from one environment to another at considerable speed, but never feels like it’s rushing around - no mean feat when a brand new location is even introduced in the closing minutes. I can but hope this giddying sense of an endless universe is maintained in VIII and IX.

It felt like it was jumping around a lot to me, at least at the beginning. I’ve only seen it once, though, so my second impression might be different.

eiyosus said:

The Falcon’s targeting computer.

THE FALCON’S TARGETING COMPUTER!!!

Yes! I was really happy to see that it hadn’t been changed to look “cooler.”

Doom: yeah things get heated. It’s annoying but predictable. Just sidestep it or start new/other threads. Also, you don’t have to leave! Just don’t stray from the topic to far/long.

TV’s Frink said:

I don’t see any reason you have to only talk about things you love in this thread. That’s as silly as only talking about things you hate in the other thread.

What you shouldn’t do is come in and randomly drop something in one thread that belongs in the other. However, I don’t see anything wrong with responding to something someone loves with a rebuttal…especially if the original comment doesn’t make sense.

Yep.

eiyosus said:

THE FALCON’S TARGETING COMPUTER!!!

SO impressed with that. Not to be extreme, but it blew me away - it was one of the moments where I realized what they were doing with this movie. Integrity.

Anchorhead said:

Jesus, is there any topic you guys can’t devolve into an argument about further discussing the thought of accepting weather or not to weigh the pros and cons of debating opinions?

lol

John Doom said:

P.S.: So much better using old-school links instead of quotes, to avoid building a wall of text 😄

I tend to prefer cut-and-paste (used in this post), though this can be tricky as you don’t want to misrepresent what was said. But I figure if someone needs to see the full context they can just page back.

TV’s Frink said:

NeverarGreat said:

We briefly see food in all 3 OT films. Obviously in the dinner scene of ANH, then Luke eats some food out of a tin on Dagobah and later at Yoda’s hut, and there is some food on the table at Cloud City. After that we get Jabba eating a frog thing and the crackers Leia gives to Wikket. That’s all that I can think of.

Is this the “food in the ot” thread?

That kind of little frog thing Jabba is eating after OOla’s death in ROTJ looks yummy.
(of course maybe it’s because I’m french) 😉

^ ewww

More things I liked about TFA:

-Lightsaber/snow interaction
-Chewbacca doing something that actually had a pivotal effect on the plot, which is a series first (shooting Kylo Ren in the stomach)
-Real creature effects, as opposed to CG (I think that giant boar/rhino creature drinking out of the trough with Finn was puppetry not CG) (look at its weird butt) (no, really look at its butt LOOK AT IT)
-New stormtrooper classes, stormtroopers aren’t exclusively disposable henchmen anymore
-Onscreen representation of espionage networks
-Depiction of force sensitives that are non-jedi/sith
-New x-wings are super cool

I think Maz’s place is a red herring as far as the similarities go. The accusations are reasonable, but if you think about it both the existence of such a place and Han+Chewie’s haunting of it makes too much sense universe and character-wise to write off as a Mos Eisley cantina stand-in.

Starkiller base is indeed more of a stretch to justify, but why wouldn’t galactic smugglers frequent seedy space bars? Really there should be dozens of such places (at least). How many can you count in LA or NYC? Are they all ripping one another off? Was there some primordial progenitor bar that every subsequent one is derivative of?

suspiciouscoffee said:

Many people have complained about it being SW/ANH all over again. Looking back, I suppose they’re right about that. However, it’s just so much fun and the characters are so great that I don’t care. As I watched the film, I wasn’t thinking about the similarities and I didn’t even notice them at all at first.

Except Starkiller and Maz’s place, which did take me out of the movie a bit.

If you boil it down to it’s smallest of points then sure I guess but when you analyze the film you see just how different they are. Also it feels different which is just as important.

Yeah, I didn’t think Maz’ castle was at all a rip-off of the cantina in ANH. Starkiller Base didn’t have to be a ripoff of the Death Star either. If they had found a more creative way of blowing it up instead of with the stupid “thermal oscillator” thing, I wouldn’t have had much of a problem with that either.