Alderaan

Lord Haseo said:
Kylo Ren masquerades as a badass and even though he has shown great potential the truth is is that he hasn’t completed his training and compared to any Lord of The Sith he is Bantha Poodoo. So him not being as powerful as our first impressions is part of the reason as to why he’s complex

If Kylo were masquerading as a badass (masquerading being the key word) then he would just be a wuss playing cosplay in his outfit. The fact that he did the powerful things he did in the first 90% of the movie means that he wasn’t masquerading. He was actually that powerful by definition.

“Complete his training” is relative. If he’s already enough of a badass to freeze someone in mid-air with his mind at will, or stop blaster bolts in mid-air at will, or telekinetically fling people through the air at will, then you would assume “complete his training” would give him some powers even greater than those, not just help him remember he has those powers instead of forgetting about them when the plot conveniently calls for it.

Lord Haseo said:
STAR WARS had a lot of plot conveniences

1. R2 and C3P0 happen to land somewhere conveniently on the side of the planet where Luke is

The plot was well-constructed. Obi-Wan was on Tatooine. Leia was on a mission to find him on Tattoine. It wasn’t a chance encounter. Since Leia couldn’t reach him, she uploaded the Death Star plans into R2’s memory and sent the droids onto the planet. Yes, they could have landed anywhere, but it’s possible they had knowledge of Obi-Wan’s general location, and in any case, it would be a whole other movie to watch them search the planet for 5 years. At least there were scenes that indicated the passage of time. They didn’t just land at Obi-Wan or Luke’s doorstep in the next scene – THAT would have been contrived.

Lord Haseo said:

2. Then later when they’re separated they somehow conveniently meet up on the sandcrawler so they can be sold to Owen and Beru

Convenient? The Jawas were droid flippers. They came across R2 and grabbed him. Then they came across 3PO and grabbed him. There were many others too.

Lord Haseo said:

3. Then the other Astromech poops out conveniently so that R2 can be purchased

This isn’t a plot convenience, it was dramatic intent. Owen could have purchased both R2 and 3PO and the scene would have been over, but it would have been less effective. After the droids went through so much and were separated and then reunited, the possibility they might be separated again pulls on your heart strings a little bit.

Lord Haseo said:

4. Then Luke somehow conveniently finds part of Leia’s message while cleaning R2

Of your complaints, this is the only one that is a plot convenience. Having one or two of these at the beginning of a story is very standard. The audience usually has no problem with it as long as the storyteller doesn’t make it obviously absurd. The idea to have Luke clean dirt out of R2 and then jar the message out of his memory is a very subtle way to get the story started.

TV’s Frink said:
Yep. He’s a complex character, rather than the Vader clone some of you wanted (and would have complained about if you had gotten).

You’re confusing inconsistent with complex.

adywan said:
Slow frame rate? there was no slow frame rate in that scene.

Are you sure? I thought there was. The scene took forever and just died on the screen. But I haven’t seen it in 2 weeks, so maybe I’m not remembering the details correctly.

TV’s Frink said:
That’s fair, but it doesn’t have to be on-screen to be effective. The effect that Kylo’s turn had on Han and Leia is obvious and we don’t need to see scenes between them and Kylo to understand it.

Plus, the scene with Han and Kylo features two good actors doing some good acting. It doesn’t work for you, but it worked for me.

That’s fair that it worked for you, to each their own. I thought it was a clunker of a scene because the director and the actors tried to force emotion between two characters who had no history together. Yes, on-screen does matter, that’s the difference between showing and not telling.

Lord Haseo said:
There were cutaway shots to Leia, Chew, and Rey, but they all failed for various reasons.

I can understand Finn and Rey’s reaction because they just met the man but Chewie’s and Leia’s are what make the scene to me. We’ve never seen Chewie let out such a tormented yell and Leia feeling Han’s death through The Force was especially heartfelt because this is probably the first time she touched The Force for anything other than tactical foresight in a decade or two. Also you might have well said “These reactions all failed because not OT” because you know that’s what you wanted to say.

The cutaway shots to the other characters are what could have mattered, but didn’t for various reasons.

One might be tempted to think Leia and Chewie’s reactions would be the most important – because of their relation to Han – but in reality Rey’s reaction was the most important. She’s the main character. She’s the one who looked up to Han Solo as a mentor-type. So why did I not feel any emotional connection between her and Han? The two had very little chemistry together, mostly because Han’s role in the film was very poorly thought out. In the original Star Wars, he was the skeptic. His character had a very specific and effectively designed storytelling purpose. In TFA, he’s just inserted into the film for nostalgia reasons. I like Han, and I thought Harrison did a good job with him. But he was out of place in the movie. It seemed everything was a gratuitous 2 hour 16 minute setup just to kill off his character.

Chewie’s reaction was the one I felt the most, but it lasted 1 second and then he disappeared off screen. What was Chewie doing while Rey and Finn fought Kylo? We’ll never know, because the filmmakers never showed us. He just disappeared, and then the next time we see him, he’s carrying Finn onto the Falcon at the end. Gee, thanks Chewie. Couldn’t they at least let you hug Leia in the denouement? Nope, I guess not, that spot had to be saved for Rey and Leia, who had probably never met each other before that scene.

TV’s Frink said:
My least favorite scene in ANH was when Vader kills Obi-Wan. That scene totally blows because it forced unnecessary emotion on us, because Obi dies with someone he’s only in one scene with.

The scene wasn’t emotional because of Vader/Obi-Wan, it was emotional because of Luke/Obi-Wan. They had a lot of history together, on-screen, and Obi-Wan was Luke’s mentor. As soon as Vader strikes Obi-Wan down, which happens very quickly, there is a quick cut to Luke’s reaction. The director understood that the most important aspect of the scene was Luke’s reaction to his mentor’s death.

In TFA, on the other hand, the director focused almost all of the attention on the interaction between Han and Kylo. The slow frame rate killed the scene. Just brutal. There were cutaway shots to Leia, Chew, and Rey, but they all failed for various reasons.

BB-8 was great. Can’t see why anyone would hate on that little guy.

moviefreakedmind said:

They have two prints of Star Wars, I don’t know about Empire though. Either way, Lucasfilm will likely use the scan of Star Wars as a reference.

They probably still have the negatives (unaltered) in the vault at Skywalker Ranch.

That’s ok, the feeling is mutual. It’s like watching someone eat Taco Bell and call it one of the best meals they’ve ever had. I like Taco Bell once in awhile, but let’s be real.

TV’s Frink said:

My favorite part in ANH is when Han Solo dies.

That was my favorite part in ANH too. I love that scene because we can see it coming from a mile away, and it doesn’t force unnecessary emotion on us, because he dies with someone he’s only in one scene with. It’s trivial, but that’s the beauty of it? I mean think of how terrible the carbon freezing scene was, it was probably the worst scene in Empire Strikes Back, because of how connected the characters were, and everything they had gone through and then they are forced to watch Han suffer.

But in ANH, the writers came up with a brilliant idea. If they just call this person Han’s son, despite the two never appearing in any scenes together, it will sap all the emotion and meaning out of his death. That was brilliant wasn’t it?

The Wampa scene is one of the first scenes in the film. It’s not a plot complication device in the middle of Act II and serves a different purpose storytelling-wise. It’s all about showing how Luke’s use of the Force has grown stronger in between Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back.

Not that any of that is really important. It doesn’t matter if the rathtar scene rips off the trash compactor scene or not. What matters is the universe of these stories and the tone that is set. Luke gets dragged under water. He nearly drowns. He comes up all wet, spitting from his mouth. He had to physically hold his breath under water, so when he resurfaces, you can hear in his breathing and speech that he just physically did what he did on the screen. It can’t be replicated in front of green screen.

In the Wampa scene, Luke is bloodied. He nearly dies. Even when he frees himself, he goes out and mindlessly wanders into a blizzard until he collapses in the snow. These are all very real and atmosphere-centric.

The rathtar scene was just a gag however. It belonged in a different kind of movie. But it feels like I’m beating a dead horse preaching that argument to some of you who may never get it.

TV’s Frink said:
Don’t know where you get that from. These two scenes have nothing in common. Complain about TFA recycling ANH all you want, but this is a real stretch.

A monster snatches one of the heroes and drags him under water/throughout the ship, putting his life in danger.

No similarities obviously.

The Rancor still looks great to this day. It will always look real. It’s the composited shots with Luke that have aged and will now always look fake for the rest of time. The original VFX in Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back will never age. Some of the background shots and the unfreezing in Jedi will always have that 1980s look to them. Another reason why ROTJ is the weakest of the OT.

As for the rathtars, Tavor I think it was(?) hit on some excellent points. A lot of the monsters in the OT didn’t call attention to themselves. They were only shown partially and the sense of mystery and not knowing what the rest of them looks like allows the human mind to fill in the blanks. The filmmaker only has to give an outline of a monster, and let you, the viewer, make the rest of it look real in your mind.

I’m not opposed to CGI on principle…sometimes its done very well. But it’s rare. Usually it has that fake look to it, either the look or the movement, and it takes me out of the movie every time. Rathtars were horrible for that reason.

Second, and definitely the bigger reason why they sucked, was because it had that Men In Black gag feel to them. Whoever said that, wow, that’s a great analogy. The tone of that scene is not Star Wars. It’s wrong. The scene was a ripoff of the trash compactor scene in Star Wars, but think of the differences. The trash compactor scene looked and felt real. Luke nearly drowned. He came up from the water soaking wet, his hair a mess, spitting water and grime from his mouth. Then they all almost get smashed to death in a very tense moment.

The rathtar scene on the other hand, felt like a joke. A monster eats all the bad guys, but only drags around the good guy. It drags him around all over the ship, where he should be banging his head into metal at high speeds over and over again, but he doesn’t get hurt, he’s fine. There’s nothing real about it. No grit. It’s just a gag that belongs in a different kind of movie. The way Finn gets freed is similarly stupid and not Star Wars. It all has the look and feel of being fake, something that was created with computers and animations, and posed no real threat to our heroes. The whole scene only existed because it was a beat on a “copy Star Wars” check list that the filmmakers were trying to replicate.

One of the very few things in TFA which looked and felt bad. Most of the film looked great. My problems and criticisms had more to do with the plot.

SilverWook said:

Feel bad about what? Having an opinion that’s the opposite of yours?

No. Having an opinion that is the opposite of the right one. 😉

None of that stuff is plot holes.

Yeah, just stay out of the threads then. 😃

I’m coming from the opposite end of the spectrum. I can see how fans think TFA is a fun movie, and they like it, problems be damned. The second time I saw it, after I already knew the plot was junk, I enjoyed it for what it was … a cheap but fun ripoff.

People who say TFA is a good movie, on the other hand, I think they are bad critics and should feel bad.

StarChewyWar said:
Dude, you really need to do your research. The vision of the Force Awakens? To bring back the magic of Star Wars when the cynicism of the prequels and special editions scared it off. JJ Abrams is just like us. A fan. He loves Star Wars, and wants nothing more than replicate the magic of the original trilogy. So he used practical effects, shot it on 35mm film, wrote it with Lawrence Kasdan(writer of Empire Strikes Back and Indiana Jones), composed it with John Williams, used the aethstetics of Ralph McQuarrie, and made sure George Lucas was not involved at all. He didn’t have to do these things. Its similarities with the original Star Wars is not because lack of imagination but love.

That’s great. Those were all great choices. But all of those choices should have been a means, not an end.

StarChewyWar said:
Plotholes don’t matter.

You started a screenwriting thread to say this? Sorry for wasting my time in here.

StarChewyWar said:
The Dark Knight trilogy has billions of plotholes, yet it is one of the most critically acclaimed sagas of all time, up there with the original Star Wars trilogy.

lol

Yoda Is Your Father said:

TV’s Frink said:

But complaints about “lighting” are silly IMO.

Short of going back in time and shooting the movie in the late 70s, TFA was never going to sit perfectly alongside the OT visually.

If you take out garbage like the rathtars and Snoke, the look of the film was actually one of the very best parts.

TFA looked like a modern Star Wars movie to me.

Smoking Lizard said:
but the idea of being able to pull an X-wing out of a bog was too much.

Dude, it was Yoda.

Smoking Lizard said:
Why couldn’t Vader have caught Luke in his fall?
Why couldn’t the Emperor have floated back up to the platform?
Why couldn’t Luke have thrown the Rancor across the dungeon?
Why couldn’t Luke have bent the bars to let himself out of the Rancor’s dungeon?
Why couldn’t Luke levitate Lando out of the Sarlaac pit?
Why couldn’t Luke push all of Jabba’s bad guys into the Sarlaac pit?

All of the examples of telekinesis used stationary objects.

So anyway, picking up where I left off … having a vision. My philosophy is that you can’t write a script without an outline, you can’t write an outline without a treatment, you can’t write a treatment without a story, and you can’t write a story without a vision.

What should The Force Awakens have really been about?

I was struck by the first trailer I saw in early 2015:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCc2v7izk8w

Prior to seeing that trailer, I had no interest in the new Disney trilogy. I thought the story was over, it had already been told, and all I cared about was “just give me the damn OOT”.

But then I saw that trailer (it was awesome), and I thought, you know what? Yeah, a new generation of young people should have their own Star Wars too. I was sold on the idea of passing the torch to the next generation.

So what gives with the story we got? I think Luke Skywalker should have played the mentor role and not Han Solo. Harrison Ford was terrific in this movie, no question. He wasn’t old Harrison Ford; he was Han Solo, just like old times. But what was his role in the film? Why have him (instead of Luke) act as a father figure for Rey? Especially since it seems like Luke is going to teach her in the next movie anyway.

And so, I think, that makes TFA look like a pointless 2 hour 16 minute setup just to kill off Han Solo.

Gratuitous. A freakin’ waste of time.

Look, I know Harrison took down $25 million, and everyone else only made $400k - $1.5 million, so this was his show. Maybe he told Disney that he would only come back if they granted him his decades long wish and killed off his character, I don’t know, but it was just bad storytelling. An actor’s salary and prestige, mandates from studio execs … these things should never conspire to ruin what otherwise could have been a fantastic story.

So that’s the first thing I would have changed … I would have sidelined Han, and made Luke the mentor to Rey.

Why would I have done that? Because Han was the skeptic in the OT, that was the nature of his character. By the conclusion of ROTJ, he was no longer a skeptic. His arc had been completed. He missed out on his chance to martyr. After everything he went through in three films, on screen over and over again with Luke, Leia, and Chewie, the people he (and we) loved the most … how could any death with someone he was in one scene with yield any emotional impact whatsoever?

Han just hogged screen time in TFA, and the idea of Kylo being his son was terrible and a monumental waste of time.

So now that we’ve established that Luke should have been the mentor and father figure in TFA, what about the new cast of characters? Here’s what I would have done …

First, Rey should’ve been and was the main character in the story. I would have written her as a brave young woman, strong in the force, but untrained, and unrelated to any other character in the story. She needs a teacher, and until she’s fully trained, she needs someone to keep her safe from the First Order.

Finn’s character is more problematic, but I think I could’ve still worked with the idea that he was a mutinous stormtrooper stranded on Jakku. One thing I would have changed though is that I would NOT have had him fleeing Kylo’s and Captain Phasma’s unit. The nature of his desertion did not need to be shown on screen. Rey just meets him on Jakku and that’s the first time we see him (we’ll get to that in my synopsis), and I would have made his character more mysterious, harder to trust and pin down. He should have been the morally gray character, the skeptic, the Han Solo of this movie. That kind of characterization would have been more believable (given his background), and it would have made his good deeds all that more heroic later on down the line.

Poe Dameron, meanwhile, was billed as a main character, but he was absent from most of the film. As a result, the writers and director turned him into a cartoon. Instead of giving him screen time and scenes to show him bonding and evolving with the rest of the cast in a believable way, they tried to tell us over and over again how awesome he was. Out of all the good characters we’ve ever had in Star Wars, Poe Dameron is my least favorite by far.

So…how to fix him? Well, I would have introduced him later in the film. The opening sequence was completely unnecessary. Somewhere later in the film, maybe around the midpoint, I would have had him join the team. Dameron’s character should also have been more downplayed (at least until he’s more important in future films), and I would have liked to see him suspicious of Finn, you know, kind of like how Luke and Han were frenemies throughout much of the first movie. That dynamic could have paid off in spades.

Last you have the villains: Kylo Ren, Captain Phasma, General Hux, and Snoke. First of all, I would have completely cut Snoke and General Hux out of the story. Those two characters are worse than useless. Kylo should’ve been unrelated to any of the legacy cast members, and I like the idea of Kylo and Phasma operating as teammates and co-villains. That would have given Phasma more presence, and not turned her into a total joke in the film.

Finally, what about the setting? The world of the story, in my opinion, really completes the idea of the vision.

I loved the opening shot in that trailer, with Rey speeding past the hazy wreckage of the Star Destroyer and the X-wing lying in the background. What a fantastic shot. The war between the Empire and the Rebellion has long since passed, but has the galaxy been at peace for the last thirty years? No!

Power vacuums don’t lead to peace and prosperity – they lead to more conflict. That’s good, because we need conflict for stories. In my world for TFA, the New Republic is in the process of installing peace and order throughout the galaxy, but there are still dangerous elements out there – terrorists, gangsters / criminals, evil breakaway organizations, etc.

And TFA seems to have been going in that direction with The First Order. Well done.

But what’s the angle here? What’s the last piece of the puzzle that makes the First Order’s antagonism so compelling? This is where we come back to the idea of the vision.

If Skywalker and the rest of our legacy heroes are trying to pass the torch to the next generation, then the antagonists, The First Order, have to be doing the opposite. They should be preying on people’s fears of chaos and disorder, and trying to bring back the days of The Empire. General Leia Organa, General Solo, Admiral Ackbar, Lando Calrissian(?) … these people should all be leading the forces of the New Republic, not something called “The Resistance”.

Luke should not be hiding somewhere like a coward – he should be looking to find and train any new potential Jedi (Rey, hint hint). The First Order should be trying to rewrite history. Discredit heroes. Prevent new ones from rising.

In my next and hopefully final post, I’ll offer a synopsis for my TFA-Revised story. Stay tuned.

Lord Haseo said:

Alderaan said:

OK that sounds like a pro-prequel argument. Reminds me of the RLM review of Attack of the Clones, where everyone has a health bar next to them on the screen and the story and the fights are all about whose force trick is the coolest.

Well this time we have good plot and characters so why shouldn’t we up the anti while we’re at it? Keeps The Force from becoming stale and after 6 movies of seeing the same shit I want to see something new.

Ain’t nobody going to be as powerful in the force as Yoda and the Emperor and Vader were. Otherwise, that’s just stupid. The fights get their meaning by what else is going on. Remember Obi-Wan wasn’t trying to kill Vader, he was just trying to give the others time to escape. Vader wasn’t trying to kill Luke, he was trying to get Luke to join him. And the Emperor wanted Luke to kill Vader, but neither of them wanted to kill each other. But without saying those things, it still looked like each combatant was trying to win. That’s good filmmaking.

The prequel fights were garbage because it was just good guy vs. bad guy trying to outfight each other. Who cares.

OK that sounds like a pro-prequel argument. Reminds me of the RLM review of Attack of the Clones, where everyone has a health bar next to them on the screen and the story and the fights are all about whose force trick is the coolest.

Wingree’s voice acting was so much better than Morrison’s. Not even close. RIP

I pictured Anakin as a masculine, grown man, age 30 or so, with a beard, much shorter hair than someone like Hayden, already a fully trained Jedi, noble, respected, perhaps a bit more on the quiet side and hard to get to know. Obviously trained by Obi-Wan and the two must have been close.

In my Star Wars universe, that is still younger Anakin, and the prequels don’t exist.

StarChewyWar said:
All things considered, The Force Awakens did a good job with the story.

I disagree with this. I think the overall look of the film – the designs, the non-CGI-monster effects, etc. – was tremendous. The acting was hit or miss. The film’s biggest problem was the story. What was the film’s vision? What did it want to accomplish?

Sometimes you get a film and the filmmaker(s) vision is to tell such-and-such story in such-and-such way. Sometimes their vision is to push a political message. Sometimes you get a snob whose vision is simply to create the most artsy film ever. Sometimes you get a film where the filmmaker just wants to entertain people. And on and on we can think of countless examples.

My takeaway from TFA was that the vision of this film had nothing to do with story, or innovation, or anything that has been traditionally Star Wars’ forte. The vision of this film seemed to be simply to make another Star Wars movie, have it be good enough to not piss people off, and make a lot of money. Introduce some interesting new characters, bring back old and beloved characters, and just have fun and a good time.

Was the film a success? Certainly. By all measures, it seems to have accomplished its goals. Those goals started with the studio execs who chose the director, and JJ Abrams is someone who – I’ve heard this from a lot of people – is a safe bet. He’s unlikely to make anything really good, but he’s also unlikely to make anything bad. If you want to take a franchise like Star Wars and make a safe ripoff, he’s a steady choice. He more or less accomplished what was expected of him, the film is making a record amount of money, and he additionally, to his credit, he had the right approach in several areas to gain extra goodwill with the fans.

But what about the story?

It’s actually terrible and the weakest part of the film. There are a million plot holes. There are a million coincidences. It’s derivative. It’s poorly paced and chaotic. It just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

I’ve offered criticism in the review threads (and I’ve also praised a lot of things I thought the film did really well), but in my next post I will offer some ideas on how I might have written it differently, just for fun.

SilverWook said:
It’s a safe bet Rey had some training when she was very young, but does not consciously remember it, hence her ability to do the mind trick. And we saw toddlers training with sabers in the prequels.

It’s lazy and uninteresting writing to set up obstacles in front of a protagonist, and then they remember some secret powers whenever they need them to get out of jam.

Arguably a better idea, if Rey were trained when she was younger, would have been to make her not want those powers that she suddenly remembers. She mentally fights against it, and wonders where those forces are coming from, and who taught her … and there’s a real story there.

You actually see that one time in TFA, after the vision. She runs away and says she wants no part.

Unfortunately, that’s the only time she did anything like that. Any other time her forgotten, unnatural powers came to her, she was eager to jump into Wonderland and find out where the road went.