Alderaan

joefavs said:

Why are you still here? I thought you were back to only caring about the OOT.

You’ll have to read more carefully next time.

I liked most of the characters in TFA. Daisy was a star. I thought John Boyega was fine, my only problems with his character were with the writing and not his acting. Harrison gave his best performance in years. I really don’t get the hate on Carrie. And I thought Adam Driver was good until he took off the mask.

Oscar Isaac and Domnhall Gleeson were absolutely terrible though. Snoke was another pathetic incarnation, but that was a CGI fail.

Personally I’d like to see Oscar Isaac get Boba Fetted into a Sarlacc pit in the next movie. Preferably one of the cartoonish over the top special edition ones.

I’m not sure why people keep saying there were no politics in the OT. Sure it wasn’t overbearing like in the prequels, but Leia and Vader had a political exchange in the opening scene, and Tarkin and Togge briefly discussed politics on the Death Star. It was just enough, the bare minimum amount of exposition to convey the political atmosphere of the world of the story.

Do you even know what subtext is bro?

hydrospanner said:
What about when Luke pulled his saber with the force in the wampa cave? We hadn’t seen the force used like that yet and no on screen explanation is ever given to tell us how he knows how to do it.

I love, love, love talking about Empire, so I’m glad you brought it up, hydrospanner.

You’re right, at the time of the Wampa cave, we haven’t seen anyone do anything like that in the OT. It’s a big moment, and the film really takes its time with that scene and developing Luke’s ability. First he reaches like anyone might reach for a weapon nearby that they can’t quite get to. He’s fucked. But then he reaches again, and the thing starts to move. What is going on? Can he actually use the force to summon his lightsaber to him? He keeps trying and trying, and the Wampa gets closer and closer, the tension of the moment builds, and then boom he does it!

But it’s just a small object. We see his Force power skills tested over and over again throughout the rest of the movie, with the stakes getting bigger and bigger each time.

When Luke is on Dagobah, Yoda has him move not just one small object … but now he’s having to move many rocks and balance them on top of each other, all while standing upside down on his head.

Then later, Yoda instructs Luke to use the same force skill to lift the giant X-wing out of the swamp. Luke fails, and tells Yoda it’s impossible. Yoda shows him otherwise.

Then later, Vader uses the same skill to fling objects at Luke during their battle at Bespin.

Finally, Luke is hanging from the antennae underneath Cloud City, and he uses the Force to telepathically communicate with Leia.

See how well the use of his force skills was paced? And how he succeeded sometimes, and failed other times, and Yoda and Vader were foils who showed how much further he still had to go?

There is nothing like that in TFA. Rey’s force powers were all backloaded toward the end of the film. She doesn’t really struggle much or earn her successes. She fails at the Jedi mind trick once, but it’s more of a gag for the audience, because she immediately succeeds on her next try two seconds later. She summons the lightsaber past Kylo without any effort in the final duel, which is fine because I think it worked best cinematically that way, but there should have been earlier scene(s) to establish it.

SilverWook said:

Where was it ever said JJ was going to do anything past TFA?

That’s not what I was getting at. The important bit from the article is that the story was not set in stone from the beginning. JJ and Kasdan write a chapter, and then Rian Johnson writes whatever he wants to write. And then the next person after him will make up whatever they want to make up. Where does Rey come from? A lot of the unanswered questions that people have from TFA aren’t even known by the people making the movies when they make them. They are just going to retcon over and over again later.

The editing in this film was seriously the worst. People rarely talk about editing when they discuss movies, but if I ever criticize anything in this film, the editing surely has to be at the top of the list.

So I just found out that Rian Johnson is writing the scripts for Episodes 8 and 9.

Apparently, JJ and Larry Kasdan said they have washed their hands of the story after TFA, because it’s the Star Wars tradition for new people to come along and do their own thing with the series.

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/12/star-wars-force-awakens-who-are-reys-parents

This is exactly what I was afraid of when Disney took over and said they would be releasing X amount of movies in the upcoming years. Star Wars is turning into the mindless serial that George Lucas always wanted; wandering episodic plot, villain of the week, etc.

I don’t even know why I bother paying attention to anything anymore except getting the OOT.

I liked the battle of the minds between Rey and Kylo. I thought that scene was very well done.

The Jedi mind trick scene was not successful with me, because it took me out of the film to think to myself, “wait? how does she know that? she doesn’t know that…”

It felt like Rey was reaching into the audience and using our film knowledge from previous movies to teach herself something she otherwise didn’t know and had no way of knowing. I’m sure they will retcon this in the next film and say she was trained as a little girl and had her memory erased, but that’s just so lazy that I find it offensive.

ZkinandBonez said:
Luke lost yes, but he still gave Vader a run for his money, even to the point of wounding him slightly.

What? No. Vader trolled him the entire fight. As soon as Vader’s shoulder was hit by the lightsaber, he dispensed with the pretense and cut off Luke’s hand within seconds. He could have killed Luke immediately after he walked into the freezing chamber if he had wanted to.

ZkinandBonez said:
Also, there’s two-ish years between ANH and ESB, in which he only had himself to train with. He had no practical fighting experience until he faced Vader. And there were only a few months that passed between ESB and ROTJ.

Three years between Empire and Jedi.

And regardless of the time interval, the exposition was clear that Luke’s power had grown immensely between the two films.

Cyclista, that was an opus that could have benefited from some editing, but I’m often guilty of that too. I always enjoy reading someone’s heartfelt feelings on this forum.

Anyway, I agree about Han’s death being handled very poorly. I said the same thing to my family about Chewie, that it was like he screamed for a couple of seconds and then whoops, guess life goes on and he’s back in the copilot seat taking off with Rey.

I also wondered why on earth Leia and Rey were hugging each other at the end. The two didn’t even know each other. I failed to notice as you did, however, that Leia and Chewie should have been together. You’re absolutely right. They should have been. Remember Han telling Chewie to take care of her after he was gone in Empire? How the fuck did that get missed?! That’s just another bullshit example of Disney trying to force new characters on us. They want to pass the torch from Leia to Rey, and that’s fine. I’m all down for that. But make it happen naturally in the fucking story universe. Don’t give us a lazy, incompetent plot, and then just put two characters together at the end who don’t even know each other.

The Buzzfeed article was good and seemed genuine. That Slate article was hyperbolic.

ZkinandBonez said:

As for the whole thing about Rey defeating Kylo in a lightsaber suel. Aren’t we forgetting that Luke never had any lightsaber sparring training what-so-ever. He learned to block some laser-bolts from a small harmless droid by Obi-Wan, and then he ran around in a swamp with Yoda on his back learning mostly levitation and some Jedi philosophy. Even if you count the novelization or the deleted scenes as canon all the lightsaber training he did with Yoda was cutting a few metal rods throws into the air. I also seem to recall that he didn’t do that well on that test.
Aren’t we kind of judging this film by PT logic? That it’s the moves that count, not the use of the Force. Pre-PT material often put a lot more of a focus on the importance of channeling the Force and fining inner peace and control, which is exactly what Rey did in TFA. A lot of the mystical elements of the lightsaber was lost in the PT, but Kasdan and Abrams seem to have brought it back here.

Luke got his ass kicked by Vader. Then he trained for three more years to finally become a Jedi. Where and how he trained nobody knows, but it’s nice to have movies that don’t spoon feed you everything, and allow you to fill in the blanks yourself. The only relevant exposition needed at the start of Jedi was that Luke’s powers had grown immensely since the previous film.

Even then, Luke wasn’t able to defeat Vader until he used the dark side of the force in their last battle.

I think the dialogue in TFA was really on the nose. It’s hard to tell only seeing the film twice in theaters, not being able to watch at home, not having the script in front of me, but I recall little if any subtext to anything that was said. In that regard, the dialogue mimicked the prequels much more than the OT.

Harrison Ford was the exception. We know his history of throwing out the script and improving his character’s lines.

There are some things in TFA that are modern and look like nothing in the OT but they are still Star Wars to me. Other things, not so much.

I’m not talking about her gender, DominicCobb. I think it’s great she’s a woman and kicking butt in the movie, as long as it’s natural within the world of the story (which it was) and not some didactic stuff being shoved at us from the director (which it wasn’t). Rey being a strong and independent character was great as far I’m concerned. I loved her in the movie.

As far as her being a Mary Sue … what flaws or limitations did she have? And even if you give her flaws and limitations, but you come up with the excuse that she has some innate ability to overcome those limitations at the whim of the writer, then what is she exactly? This all gets back to how poorly thought out the plot was. Instead of creating a genuine, original story, we had JJ and Kathleen sitting in a room listening to some Disney execs tell them that THIS, and THIS, and THAT, and THAT, and these other 50 things all have to be in the movie to make the most money. That was a recipe for disaster. The plot wound up as an incoherent mess, and that’s really the only criticism I have of Rey’s character. She was basically given “liquid luck” (Harry Potter reference) for any scene in the movie the plot could use it.

You need a pilot? Here’s Rey. You need someone who can understand a droid? Here’s Rey. Finn is being dragged around the freighter by a CGI monster? Here’s Rey who happens to be standing next to video monitors and can instantly locate the button that will snap a door shut and cut off the tentacles of the monster to free Finn without killing him. You need to get Rey out of captivity? She’ll suddenly discover she has the ability to do a Jedi mind trick on her guard. You need this … well even if Rey doesn’t know how to do it, she must have been trained to do it by Luke and she’ll suddenly remember at the exact moment she needs to … ahh fuck it I hate this shit.

I loved her character but I would have certainly liked to see more vulnerability, more humanity. We saw that on Jakku but as the film moved along, she started to lose her individuality and assimilate more and more into whatever the plot needed. And this is all without getting into how absurd it was for her to nearly kill Kylo at the end.

DominicCobb said:

Plenty of superheroes get magic powers and suddenly have the ability to do incredible things

I’m a huge fan of Rey/Daisy, but Star Wars is not a super hero movie. This isn’t Batman or Superman. I thought she was by far the most compelling character in TFA, loved most of the scenes with her, but it’s a valid criticism that she was too much of a Mary Sue. Her force powers were not paced and developed properly. Being able to talk to BB-8 and Chewie was stupid.

I feel they should have limited her general badass skills to combat, technical skills, and piloting. The combat ability, even for a woman, needs no explanation. Her technical prowess was sufficiently conveyed, in my opinion, for her to eventually do the technical things she did in the film. However, I do think her ability to pilot the Falcon needed more explanation.

TavorX said:
However, I assume you saw ANH in theaters and I can understand the nuanced experience you had over me.

I was born in the early 80’s and like Luke and his mother, I have no memory of the first time I watched the OT. I had seen the movies dozens of times at a very young age, before I was old enough to remember. From there I grew up on them in the 80’s and 90’s and the “Faces” box set in '95 was the first thing I ever bought for myself.

My favorite as a boy was always Return of the Jedi. It had nothing to do with the Ewoks, I just wanted to be like Luke Skywalker. Then I started getting older, and Empire became my new favorite. As a teenager I was drawn to its darkness. As an adult I started to appreciate the seemingly near-perfection of its design and execution. I’m happy to say that even to this day, it’s my favorite film ever, and hardly a viewing goes by that I don’t discover something new that I hadn’t previously discovered and appreciated.

The original Star Wars was always my least favorite of the OT, for some of the reasons you and I both mentioned. The pace is slower. It’s more of an introduction to the world and characters that I was already an expert on since birth. When I was very young it just didn’t have enough whirling and beeping and buzzing and flashing lights to distract my limited attention span the same way Return of the Jedi did. As a teenager it didn’t have the darkness that Empire did. So it was always the one I tolerated because it was still Star Wars and still pretty good after all.

I think as I’ve gotten older and I’m now sitting here in my early 30’s, I can say that I appreciate ANH more and more over time. You reach an age, or at least I hope you are fortunate enough to reach a point, where you are simply not just viewing movies as a popcorn eating schlock in a theater chair. Besides the entertainment and the action and the witty jokes, there is a certain beauty in the way a film is put together and presented. Binary sunset, the Cantina, the trench run on the Death Star, the throne room celebration … these are things that make the original movie stand out for me. The editing in the OOT version of Star Wars is a masterpiece. The combination of the score and editing in the assault on the death star are unequaled in film history. I can honestly say that at this point and for a long time, I’ve elevated ANH into 2nd place on my rankings, where it will safely sit behind Empire for the rest of time.

SilverWook said:
And lest we forget, the original film dropped us into the middle of a conflict we knew little about.

It was structured though to slowly introduce the audience to the Force and nuances of the Star Wars world.

That’s another reason the prequel fanboys like ANH even less. They like to start watching “The Saga” from Episode I and by the time you get to Episode IV, all of that slow-paced, introductory stuff seems out of place.

Bosk said:

I stand by what I said prior to viewing…for me there will only ever be three…it’s just not working! Some things need to be left well alone. I’d hate to see a sequel/prequel of any other classic films which takes everything away from the ‘originals’.

To be fair, at least TFA didn’t try to alter or ruin the originals like the Prequels tried to do.

I do agree with the rest of your post however. There is the OT, and then this was the first “Disney-fied” movie.

I can’t imagine why anyone would want to watch TFA without seeing the OT. The Force, Jedi, etc. would all be unexplained. The very first scene of the film has Kylo stopping a blaster bolt in mid-air, surely that would take people out of the movie.

No. Even without hating on the prequels, it can be said they are not needed to watch The Force Awakens. You should however watch the original trilogy, as this is not a standalone movie.

Add:
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you watch the De-specialized editions of the OT you can find online. The original versions are no longer available commercially, and the ones that you can buy have so many changes that make the movies worse and borderline unwatchable.

That’s a fair post YIYF. When I went back and watched it a second time on Saturday night, after I already knew most of the criticisms, it was easier to just enjoy the fun parts. Pretty much Daisy and the pursuit of the Falcon on Jakku were the highlights for me. That sequence is up there among the best in the franchise as far as I’m concerned. Just wish the rest of the film could have held up as well. Always disappointing for me any time I see a Star Wars movie fail to live up to the originals.

DominicCobb said:
Oscar Isaac is an incredible actor and manages to leave a lasting impression with Poe despite his small screen time.

The lasting impression was that he sucked.

Yoda Is Your Father said:

Much anger I sense in you.

If you don’t like the ROTJ flaws I mentioned how about the fact that of all the planets in all the Galaxy, R2 and the Death Star plans ended up on Tattooine, a couple of blocks from where Luke Skywalker (who happens to be the long lost brother of the princess who gave R2 the plans) lives, and he just happens to be pretty much neighbours with Ben Kenobi (who, in his wisdom, decided NOT to change Luke’s surname - or his own for that matter - when he hid him from his evil Father… Or his own for that matter), and all because one Imperial gunner decided NOT to fire on an escape pod that launched from a rebel ship they had just captured. Sure it had no life signs on board, but I’m assuming a trained imperial gunner would be aware of the existence of droids and their ability to carry data (secret data being the reason they captured the rebel ship in the first place).

I’m just saying try to enjoy it for what it is. It’s common knowledge that the original Star Wars was based on cheesy 1940s space operas like Flash Gordon. It’s more about adventure than solid plot and military strategy. I agree with everybody on here about TFA’s flaws (and the fact that everybody is pointing out the same flaws shows that it does indeed have it’s problems) but, y’know, it was fun and I enjoyed it and it felt good in all the right places. I guess I love Star Wars for different reasons to some of you guys (and as I’ve said before, that’s cool, each to their own… but as Frink has pointed out, I’d rather be one of the guys who enjoyed it and just got a great Christmas gift from JJ and co).

Maybe you are confusing me with someone who hated TFA. I did not. It was a fun film with a lot of parts to like. Unfortunately, it was also a very uneven film with a lot to criticize. I genuinely feel sorry for anyone who thinks this movie approached anything close to the quality of Star Wars or Empire. Most people I’ve seen would rank it somewhere around Jedi, which is probably more fair. I like Jedi more just because of the Luke/Vader/Emperor scenes that bring a close to the previous two stories, but to each their own.

Also with regards to coincidence … stories can and usually do begin with coincidence. Out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, it was a coincidence that Elsa walked into Rick’s cafe in Casablanca. It was a coincidence that R2 happened to crash land on Luke’s planet and wind up in his hands. These things are what get stories started, but you can’t have the rest of the plot proceed forward by coincidence alone. There needs to be solid logic and motivation behind everything that happens in a story, and that’s one of the things that I love about the original Star Wars movies – everything seemed real. They were gritty. You could immerse yourself in the story and never feel like you were being patronized or lied to.

On the other hand, TFA would follow up great scenes with moments that came straight out of Indy 4 or Pirates of the Caribbean. The characters would stop the whole fucking movie so they could turn and look at each other across a battlefield or up in the sky. Look at these two scenes for instance:

#1
Kylo in the opening scene was fantastic. Adam Driver and JJ gave him a new, distinct personality from other villains without turning him into a cartoon. This wasn’t Darth Maul in over the top makeup. It wasn’t General Hux twirling his evil mustache with an evil grin on his face and doing evil bad guy things. This was a low key but intimidating villain demonstrating immense power. In a burst of violent anger, he cuts an old man in half, but then, he deals with Poe Dameron in succinct, business-like fashion. I don’t remember the lines, but I do remember specifically liking Kylo’s delivery when he ordered Poe Dameron to be put on board.

Unfortunately, brilliant efforts like these would be quickly ruined by a filmmaker who decided to strip the film of its realness and patronize the audience. Just moments later, the whole fucking movie stops in mid-sequence, so Kylo and Finn can look across the battlefield at each other for no reason at all. Could you ever imagine Vader stopping in his tracks to give a random stromtrooper two fucks of time? Is Finn really such a poorly fleshed out character that we need artificial moments like these to spotlight his importance?

#2
The fight at Maz’s castle. I’m not even going to go on about the fight between Finn and the stormtrooper, which was one of the film’s incredible lowlights and even further discredited the final lightsaber battle later on.

No … I want to focus on the moment Finn stops everything he’s doing and looks up into the sky. There are all kinds of blaster bolts and explosions going on around him. There are untold numbers of aircraft in the sky. But he stops everything he’s doing so he can look up and go “yippee” and laud Poe Dameron’s piloting skills. He essentially breaks the fourth wall to stop the whole fucking movie and tell the audience:

“Hey guys, Poe and I are supposed to be besties, but the writers didn’t give us enough scenes together. So instead we’re just going to give you dumb fucking moments like these so you’ll believe we are more buddies than we otherwise should be.”

Do you remember Red Letter Media’s review of Revenge of the Sith? Plinkett criticizes the scene where Hayden stops the whole fucking movie so he can go back and save some random X-wing pilot, just because the films hadn’t done enough to show that Anakin was once a good guy. So hey, let’s insert this random totally illogical and out of place scene into the movie to rewrite the character we did a poor job of designing in the first place.

Well, this exact same shit happens in TFA and apparently some of you didn’t notice.

Also, why does the Resistance not treat Finn with any suspicion whatsoever? Poe and Finn are friends immediately? Nobody ever has the idea that he might be a spy? I think Finn’s character is poorly designed, but I don’t hate him. I love Daisy/Rey, I’m indifferent to Boyega/Finn, but I really, really hate the fake fucking persona of Poe Dameron and the cartoonish, travesty of an “acting” performance given by Oscar Isaacson. His character is arguably the fakest, most over the top in any Star Wars film, including the prequels.

In short, I think the film has a lot of strengths and is mostly fun, but fell short of its potential. There’s no gritty realness like the originals. There’s no magic. I thought it was a rushed, kind of chaotic mess that was just way too self conscious.