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The Force Awakens: Official Review Thread - ** SPOILERS ** — Page 41

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Yoda Is Your Father said:

And you know what?.. I would NEVER pipe up about how terrible the editing was on a Star Wars movie. Sure, I might say I don’t like it, or this and that bit sucked, but real, granular filmmaking critique?.. I’m simply not qualified, and I know how amazingly hard it is to balance every voice in the room and still end up with a finished product that makes sense and entertains people.

The director of every film you’ve ever seen, even the bad ones, deserves respect simply for getting a movie made and released in the first place. That doesn’t mean we can’t critique it (that’s part of the fun), but it always amazes me how easy people think it is, and how everybody thinks they can do better.

Yes, thank you.

As for Leia’s face. Honestly the level of overlapping sexism and ageism in nerd circles is a bloody disgrace. It makes me feel ashamed to own small plastic dolls in the shape of aliens and robots it really does.

Yes, thank you.

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Yoda Is Your Father said:

John Doom said:

consequence of a not-so-good writing, to me.

Lawrence Kasdan… what a hack…

Kasdan is an artist, but brainstorming at Lucasfilm must’ve not gone very well, if the best villain they decided to make him write was Ren. No villain, not a good movie, to me.

Lord Haseo said:
I don’t think you understand what the character of Kylo Ren is supposed to be . Kylo Ren is not supposed to be a good villain yet. He is a mentally unstable kid who masquerades as someone who has power like Vader but has yet to be fully trained.

Also not so good writing has nothing to do with it. The writer’s made him a would be Darksider because part of his arc will be him becoming exponentially stronger in the sequels.

Let’s say he’s flawed for the sake of the next movies, I’m ok with it. But the problem is still the same: there’s no actual threat I felt in TFA.

btw, happy New Year from Italy!

The Original Trilogy’s Timeline Reconstruction: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Implied-starting-date-of-the-Empire-from-OT-dialogue/post/786201/#TopicPost786201

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SilverWook said:

Star Wars itself is a retro movie, which sprung out of his thwarted plans to make a Flash Gordon film. Even Raiders is a glorious throwback to cliffhanger serials.

I think seller’s remorse is kicking in.

And not every space movie that came out in Star Wars’ wake was a bomb either.

It’s funny because Lucas says he tried hard to make every film “different” but TPM is as much an ANH rehash as TFA.

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Bosk said:

TV’s Frink said:

Let’s be real, Lucas also directed ROTJ.

Are you on crack?

It’s commonly believed Lucas backseat directed much of the film, due to Richard Marquand’s shortcomings handling such a large complex FX laden production. IIRC, Lucas directing some second unit sequences is documented. He was definitely on the set much more than he was on Empire.

Where were you in '77?

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Lord Haseo said:

I don’t think you understand what the character of Kylo Ren is supposed to be . Kylo Ren is not supposed to be a good villain yet. He is a mentally unstable kid who masquerades as someone who has power like Vader but has yet to be fully trained.

I don’t think you understand that we don’t care “what he’s supposed to be”. The character doesn’t resonate because he is poorly constructed. He’s no longer a threat. It was implied in TFA that he was a badass, I mean he stopped blaster bolts in mid air and telekinetically froze people and threw them through the air. Then suddenly he forgets he has these powers at the end of the movie and gets wasted by someone who has no training. It’s just bad storytelling.

If he were supposed to be a weak villain, he should have been made a weak villain from the start of the film. Let him get stronger and stronger in the dark side as the movie progresses, not weaker and weaker.

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SilverWook said:

Bosk said:

TV’s Frink said:

Let’s be real, Lucas also directed ROTJ.

Are you on crack?

It’s commonly believed Lucas backseat directed much of the film, due to Richard Marquand’s shortcomings handling such a large cpmplex FX laden production. IIRC, Lucas directing some second unit sequences is documented. He was definitely on the set much more than he was on Empire.

He executively produced a number of films which I assume he had a lot of input into but he is not credited as the director for them either

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Bosk said:

SilverWook said:

Bosk said:

TV’s Frink said:

Let’s be real, Lucas also directed ROTJ.

Are you on crack?

It’s commonly believed Lucas backseat directed much of the film, due to Richard Marquand’s shortcomings handling such a large cpmplex FX laden production. IIRC, Lucas directing some second unit sequences is documented. He was definitely on the set much more than he was on Empire.

He executively produced a number of films which I assume he had a lot of input into but he is not credited as the director for them either

The Wizard of Oz had five directors, but only one got screen credit. Gone With The Wind had three. And then there’s Poltergeist…

Where were you in '77?

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SilverWook said:

Bosk said:

SilverWook said:

Bosk said:

TV’s Frink said:

Let’s be real, Lucas also directed ROTJ.

Are you on crack?

It’s commonly believed Lucas backseat directed much of the film, due to Richard Marquand’s shortcomings handling such a large cpmplex FX laden production. IIRC, Lucas directing some second unit sequences is documented. He was definitely on the set much more than he was on Empire.

He executively produced a number of films which I assume he had a lot of input into but he is not credited as the director for them either

The Wizard of Oz had five directors, but only one got screen credit. Gone With The Wind had three. And then there’s Poltergeist…

There must be a valid reason why only one person ever receives the acreditation, perhaps they input more than the others? One would assume.

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TV’s Frink said:

Mithrandir said:

Mixed feelings for TFA. Like paying a visit to old elementary school classrooms, where you remembered things to be different than they actually are when you come back as an adult. There were more things I didn’t like, than the ones I liked; I think this film was a missed oportunity to actually having done something different. But in the end it’s star wars, and better this than nothing.

I find it funny how people will complain that the film didn’t do anything different, and then go on to complain about the things that JJ did that were actually different.

Well, funny or not, that’s exactly how I felt after watching the movie. In my opinion they changed things that shouldn’t have been changed (visual code, music approach, camera style, composition of the frames, etc) while got needlessly attached to other things that could have been changed (like the designs) or should have been different (like the plot).

To me it’s not a generic versus between innovation and preservation, but more of a disagreement on where did this movie innovate, where it did not, and where and what did it preservate or not.

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Mithrandir said:

TV’s Frink said:

Mithrandir said:

Mixed feelings for TFA. Like paying a visit to old elementary school classrooms, where you remembered things to be different than they actually are when you come back as an adult. There were more things I didn’t like, than the ones I liked; I think this film was a missed oportunity to actually having done something different. But in the end it’s star wars, and better this than nothing.

I find it funny how people will complain that the film didn’t do anything different, and then go on to complain about the things that JJ did that were actually different.

Well, funny or not, that’s exactly how I felt after watching the movie. In my opinion they changed things that shouldn’t have been changed (visual code, music approach, camera style, composition of the frames, etc) while got needlessly attached to other things that could have been changed (like the designs) or should have been different (like the plot).

To me it’s not a generic versus between innovation and preservation, but more of a disagreement on where did this movie innovate, where it did not, and where and what did it preservate or not.

You missed regurgitate

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I’m going to say that this is probably half of why I didn’t enjoy TFA:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/31/theres-a-scientific-reason-new-years-eve-is-generally-terrible/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_1_na

I didn’t find the movie really absorbing. I spent too much time thinking about it while in the theatre. Whether this is TFA’s fault, or my own, or the fact that the movie wasn’t focused properly on the screen, or some combination thereof, I’m not sure. I think I would have enjoyed the film more had I not been analyzing it while watching it, simply because I wouldn’t have noticed the flaws so much.

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Alderaan said:

Lord Haseo said:

I don’t think you understand what the character of Kylo Ren is supposed to be . Kylo Ren is not supposed to be a good villain yet. He is a mentally unstable kid who masquerades as someone who has power like Vader but has yet to be fully trained.

I don’t think you understand that we don’t care “what he’s supposed to be”.

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Bosk said:

SilverWook said:

Bosk said:

SilverWook said:

Bosk said:

TV’s Frink said:

Let’s be real, Lucas also directed ROTJ.

Are you on crack?

It’s commonly believed Lucas backseat directed much of the film, due to Richard Marquand’s shortcomings handling such a large cpmplex FX laden production. IIRC, Lucas directing some second unit sequences is documented. He was definitely on the set much more than he was on Empire.

He executively produced a number of films which I assume he had a lot of input into but he is not credited as the director for them either

The Wizard of Oz had five directors, but only one got screen credit. Gone With The Wind had three. And then there’s Poltergeist…

There must be a valid reason why only one person ever receives the acreditation, perhaps they input more than the others? One would assume.

Studio politics, and the desire to avoid bad publicity. Nobody wants stories about trouble on the set.

Where were you in '77?

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Alderaan said:

It was implied in TFA that he was a badass, I mean he stopped blaster bolts in mid air and telekinetically froze people and threw them through the air. Then suddenly he forgets he has these powers at the end of the movie and gets wasted by someone who has no training.

This is true. He was way more badass at the start of the movie than any previous SW villain (even Vader) and got progressively less badass (but in my opinion no less threatening) as the movie went on.

Rather than bad storytelling, I guess I saw his subsequent ‘weakening’ as a young, potentially super badass dude cracking under the weight of events and his emotions towards those events, and I found that quite fresh and interesting in a SW movie.

He wants to be a badass, and he has the power to be a badass, but when it comes to the crunch he’s not quite there yet. The intro set him up for what he could/should be, while the rest of the movie explored what he really is beneath the surface.

In a way, the OT actually did a similar thing with Vader, but spread it over 3 movies. In the first film, he was pure evil, a black and white comic book villain. In the second, events and revelations caused him to crack a little, and in the third he gave into the cracks. We don’t yet know how Kylo will deal with his own cracks, but killing his Father will either destabilise him further, or cement him into the dark side and turn him fully into the black and white villain some viewers (and indeed Kylo Ren himself) wanted him to be all along.

War does not make one great.

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RicOlie_2 said:

I’m going to say that this is probably half of why I didn’t enjoy TFA:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/31/theres-a-scientific-reason-new-years-eve-is-generally-terrible/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_1_na

I didn’t find the movie really absorbing. I spent too much time thinking about it while in the theatre. Whether this is TFA’s fault, or my own, or the fact that the movie wasn’t focused properly on the screen, or some combination thereof, I’m not sure. I think I would have enjoyed the film more had I not been analyzing it while watching it, simply because I wouldn’t have noticed the flaws so much.

I think you’d enjoy it a lot more if you saw it again.

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Alderaan said:
[…] It was implied in TFA that he was a badass, I mean he stopped blaster bolts in mid air and telekinetically froze people and threw them through the air. […]

You know, if you think about it, he wasn’t that badass, considering Poe had no problem making fun of him since the very first scene 😄

The Original Trilogy’s Timeline Reconstruction: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Implied-starting-date-of-the-Empire-from-OT-dialogue/post/786201/#TopicPost786201

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One of my favorite ways to waste time the last week or so has been to share with my wife some of the more ridiculous complaints about TFA I’ve seen here. She’s really enjoyed classics such as “why does Han suddenly believe in the Force?” and “why does Ren wear a mask?”