😄 Don’t worry, no one is saying TFA isn’t popular based on which score, it’s fine.
My “monologue” was only about my point of view on RT and how TFA might’ve get its 93% score.
Frink has become an anti-TFA extremist :\
While reading about TFA’s nomination, I found this. It seems like TFA is in a way “more equal than other” movies 😄
That was pretty silly but it’s their own fault for giving out awards before the year is even over and every movie’s been seen.
Are you saying it’s fine to change the rules just for one single movie in 21 years? O.o
Another wall of text coming… sigh, I guess we should all try to be more concise.
your first reply - you ignored the crashing the Falcon bit, she didn’t outdo 2/3 Ties - Finn shot 2 down, yes? A bit of teamwork wouldn’t you say.
Well, I was only referring to the fact she was able to fly the Falcon good enough to not get destroyed by the Tie-Fighters, but anyway, it’s just part of the list of things she is able to do in the movie, not a real issue.
your second reply - holding a lightsabre and having a small knowledge of using the Force does not make her an ‘almost fully trained Jedi’.
Small knowledge? Luke, right after its brief training in TESB, doesn’t do mind tricks and can barely pull or throw stuff.
your third reply - ‘just that some of her skills are unexplained, so it feels like she always knows exactly what is needed when is needed’ - makes little sense.
That sometimes she doesn’t seem a true character fully enstablished, but more like a deus-ex-machina.
your fourth reply - ‘sudden knowledge of the Force’ - we’ve established she has knowledge of The Force beforehand - but not how to use it before the interrogation scene with Ren. During the interrogation she gains that knowledge from Ren himself, no?
And how can she gain such knowledge without using the Force? And yet she barely knows what it is, nevermind how to use it.
your fifth reply - you’re reaching a lot there in claiming being shot by a powerful bowcaster made him more powerful?
Not the would itself, but that hurting it could enrage him, drawing power from the dark side. That’s something which was suggested by another user (I don’t remeber who) and may actually be the only reason he uses this “emo practice” 😄
and Rey still only had the upper hand when she let the Force in.
Which, again, is something she does but never explained how or even hinted.
Yeah she still had to get a feel for using the lightsaber so she wouldn’t be winning the fight from the start but again if you know the first thing about swords then you know that going on the offense with one takes a lot more energy then being on the defense. In other words the whole time Ren is fighting ray he is wounded and he is not trying to kill her, but he is using more energy then she is when he is wounded so when she gets a feel for the weapon and she gets mad he is in trouble. Really he lost control for less then thirty seconds and that cost him the fight, even the best sword fighters can have this happen to them. Also again what proof do we see in the film that Ren is really good with a lightsaber, do we see him defeat anyone who is trained with a lightsaber in the movie, if the movie is supposed to stand on it’s own then what proof are we given that he knows what he is doing with a lightsaber. All we know is that he killed some other Jedi, but we are never told it is in a lightsaber fight.
You’re saying that he can fight with no problem for like 2 minutes and suddenly (and I repeat, suddenly) is powerless? Because he has no problem fighting Rey until she says “Woah the Force! I’m going to take a nap” “letting the Force in”, and he’s suddenly defeated. Does it make sense to you? Am I just nitpicking?
Ren does knock down Finn and corners Rey, so he’s at least more skilled than them, which means the problem remains.
Oh and as for Rey knowing about the gas and how the controls work, if she had to interact with those systems at all while doing the installs for that big guy on the planet then she would need to know how those systems worked. Now she may not remember every detail every second of her life because it was not the center of her existence but have you ever tried to make repairs or upgrades to a car or a computer without knowing the basics of how the systems work? It can’t be done because you will end up wrecking the thing.
This could be an explaination, but was never officially stated, if right. It wouldn’t have hurted, I guess 😄
Oh and here are just a few skills/ powers/ plot points that are in the original Star Wars that were not explained before they showed up in the theatrical cut and seem to come out of nowhere.
Obiwan being able to use the Jedi mind trick on the Stormtroopers.
Obi-wan is a master in the Force. No problem here.
Leia being able to understands Chewbaca when she takes over for Han during the tie fighter attack.
Obi-wan is able to talk with him too in the Cantina. Considering we’re in an alien society, it’s pretty obvious some people need to learn alien languages, especially Leia who is a royal (and a spy).
Leia knowing how to help Chewbaca pilot the Falcon during said attack, to the point where she is even able to give damage reports.
She doesn’t pilot the Falcon herself (I don’t remember seeing her actually piloting it) and the Falcon’s panel is probably self-explaining for the damages. If not, I agree with you that it wasn’t explained.
Luke being able to use the force. He trains once for about thirty seconds with Obiwan.
It does learn the lesson that he can “let go to his feelings”. He’s still guided by Obi-wan during his “perfect shot” which, anyway, he said it could’ve actually be done even back on Tatooine (before learning about the Force). Still more believable than anything Rey does with zero training in TFA.
The hidden storage compartments on the Falcon. They come completely out of nowhere and are only there to advance the plot, their existence is never even hinted at before hand.
But it’s explained they used it for smuggling, it is actually explained and was in the Falcon all along.
Luke being able to out fly trained pilots and hit a target even a computer can’t. Remember the line about him being a great pilot was cut from the theatrical cut and it wasn’t until I heard the radio version that I knew the T-16 was a ship and not the type of speeder he was driving around. In the movie it is not made clear and we never hear about him piloting a ship before this, except for him saying “I am not such a bad pilot myself” but this seems like him bragging to Han and Obiwan rolls his eyes at this claim, so the movie it’s self up to that point leads us to believe that Luke knows nothing about piloting. The only way a new viewer to the film could know where Luke’s skills comes from is if they somehow knew about the deleted scenes, but that assumes they read a novel or youtube existed back in 77.
Wrong, I already said it: Obi-wan says Luke is quite a good pilot too, like his father.
Also it still doesn’t make much sense since Luke doesn’t seem to know how hyperspace works and the flashing lights on the Falcon’s controls seem to puzzle him and he needs Han to explain both of these things to him, and yet they must be some for of standardized controls that most ships use or how else do we explain Leia knowing how to use the Falcon later in the same movie? Unless there is some untold story that she and Han are keeping under wraps where she was on the ship before and Han taught her how to fly it. This is a massive plot hole that makes no sense to this day and makes bot Luke and Leia Marry Sues.
Well, no one said fighters and merchant ships work and control the same. About Leia, read what I said before.
Even if this one were an actual plot hole, it would be one actual plot hole (which is still bad) against I can’t even remember how many plot holes in TFA just for Rey.
I have to wonder why the people attacking this movie for being worthless garbage are not doing the same to Star Wars. If Rey is a Marry Sue then Luke is one too and that means Star Wars has been a piece of worthless garbage that should be burnt from day one.
Who are you talking to? :\ I never said this movie is “worthless garbage”.
At last! 😄
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I disagree with a lot of that JD - for one she hasn’t acquired more skills than Luke has (has she?)
She has, indeed:
-she has extensive mechanics knowledge (thankfully, it’s at least hinted that it may be because of her work as a scavenger;
-she’s a good enough pilot that she can outdo two (or three?) Tie-Fighters; Specifically, she knows how to pilot the Falcon AND also knows how to fix specific Falcon’s issues;
-she’s a skilled fighter in both close-quarter and range combat;
-in the end, she knows how to use the Force to push, pull, trick.
and she is clearly not a skilled Jedi or even ‘just’ a Jedi (that may come in the later films?), her first knowledge of the Force is when Han tells her and Finn about it on the Falcon, no?
Well not as a “status”, but in the end she does both know how to use Force and the handle a lightsaber fight, almost like a “fully trained” Jedi.
She is too perfect? Adapting to her environment in which she has grown up… she has clearly struggled to irk out a living as a scavenger and had to learn to fend for herself - but is quite tidy with the staff and bit and kicked her way through a fight (none of which not really Jedi skills). She also knows how to fix things - probably from her life as a scavenger - and has past experience of flying ships - though not leaving the planet atmosphere).
I’m not saying she shouldn’t know this much because Luke didn’t, just that some of her skills are unexplained, so it feels like she always knows exactly what is needed when is needed. If she can do almost anything, I wonder how they’ll ever be able to put her in a dangerous situation 😄
She then nearly crashes the Falcon, later plans to return to Jakku to await a return of family she deep down knows aren’t coming back, runs from Maz’s castle away from where she has the Force Visions after touching Luke’s old sabre - which is her first real introduction to the Force.
The first time she displays abilities with the Force is when she is being interrogated by Ren - she resists his mind probe and is actually able to probe him back from seemingly learns some abilities or skills from this event to help make she escape via the help of a weak minded stormtrooper. This is being a Mary Sue? It may well be a clue for what is to come in her development, or establishing her character as having the ability to use the Force… or a sign of Ren’s over-confidence, arrogance, or even untrained skills - maybe both?
There’s no enstablishment. Had they at least questioned her sudden knowledge of the Force (like they actually did with Luke’s lightsaber’s finding), it would’ve been fine, though.
The next time she displays abilities with the Force is where she ‘let’s the Force in’ towards the end of her fight with Ren - a fight she was clearly losing to an injured, yet experienced sabre wielder - though hasn’t finished his own training.
Ren keeps hurting himself: if anything, his wound almost seem to make him more powerful. In any case, trained or untrained, wounded or not, Rey suddenly has the upper hand.
And that seemed to me to be the Force guiding her - rather than her having Jedi powers or having more skills than Luke, or being ‘too perfect’… no?
It didn’t seem to me that way :\
Couldn’t it be that -GASP- the character is supposed to be more powerful than Luke? Everyone’s treating this like they failed to portray a character on roughly ANH-era Luke’s level believably, but since when is that the cap on Force aptitude in this universe? Maybe Rey just does better than Luke because she is better than Luke.
Yeah not to mention Luke had never flown an X Wing before
Luke was entablished as “an already great pilot” since his meeting with Obi-wan.
he had all of one day of training in the ways of the force and yet Darth Vader who in that movie takes out most of the other rebel pilots and according to that movie killed all the Jedi senses that the force is strong with Luke and Vader has a lot of trouble getting a beat on Luke. So clearly the force works that way.
Being strong in the Force doesn’t mean one can handle it, just that he can “potentially” use it. After his brief training on the Falcon, he’s only able to make the “perfect shot”, something he said before was possible anyway, and still he was under Obi-wan’s guidance while making that shot.
Rey, on the other hand, is more like Luke in ROTJ, a fully trained Jedi, with absolutely zero training.
Also there is the name of the movie, maybe it isn’t just a name like Attack of the clones, maybe it means something, you know like film titles are supposed to. Maybe the name The Force Awakens means that the force is coming back from a long sleep and it is going to be a more active part in this trilogy then it ever has been up to this point. Maybe it has something to do with whatever “The First Jedi Temple” that Luke has been looking for is.
A title could mean anything, especially in this case. The movie should tell you about the plot, not the title. Nobody in the movie refer to the “awakening” as a person. It could very well be that something in the Force has changed or that it’s the dawn of a new Era, and so on…
It seems to me a lot of people are judging this film and the characters when we only have one third of the story.
Every movie is supposed to technically stand on its own, making sure nothing seems like a plot hole.
If you judge Star Wars on it’s own there are a lot of plot holes and unanswered questions in that movie too, after all if all the questions and issues had been dealt with in that movie then the other two movies would have just been retreads.
Star Wars on its own has no characters’ plot holes that I remember, unlike Rey’s skills in TFA. It stands on its own. We know just everything we need to know about them to understand the plot.
Also there is no such thing as a movie without a single plot hole, even Citizen Kane has at least one plot hole in it, and that is my favorite movie.
Perfection is hard if impossible to obtain, of course! 😄
What does it have to do with Rey being considered a “Mary Sue”?
Oh and because I know someone is going to bring up these two points I will just answer them right now. First Rey knows about the Falcon and it’s upgrades because she was the one who installed them, the guy who had the Falcon was the same guy who she was selling stuff to in exchange for food. She says she has been on the ship before so it is logical to assume that she was the one doing the grunt work of installing the upgrades for that guy.
This sattles the issue with the hyperdrive, but what about how she recognized and handled the problem with the leaking gas?
Second when it comes to her defeating Ren if you know anything about the way swords work or the history of warfare then it makes perfect sense. One of the reasons the upper classes in ancient times were the only ones who used swords was that they cost a lot of money and if you want to be any good with them you have to practice every day and you have to do that just to keep your skills sharp and the only people who had the time to do that were the upper classes who didn’t have to worry about spending 99% of their time growing their own food so they wouldn’t starve. Now Ren is so full of himself I don’t see him as being the type who would keep practicing after he had killed everyone who used Lightsabers in the galaxy, we don’t see him use his saber in real combat before that point in the movie. Now him being full of himself also means that he isn’t going to see Finn or Rey as a threat and he wants to turn Rey so he really isn’t trying to kill her. Now add to that the fact that it must have been at least a decade since he was last in a fight and he has not really been practicing and you have the perfect conditions for him to be surprised for a few seconds and get one of his arms chopped off. That is all that happens, Rey strikes back in rage for less then thirty seconds and he loses a limb and can’t fight. Honestly for someone who I can’t see practicing every day and was described as not having completed his training, it really wasn’t that surprising an outcome
If Ren’s defeat was just because of his arrogance, how comes Rey isn’t able to defeat him from the beginning?
As I said since Rey seems to be tapping into what the OT described as the Dark Side of the force in order to win, it doesn’t make her perfect, if anything it makes her more flawed then Luke ever was and it explains why Luke doesn’t want to take the Saber from her in the end, he can sense that she has given into the dark side of the force already.
Well, she didn’t look in rage, to me.
Better than Luke and any other character in the SW universe at her same age, “because reasons”, without explaination […]
A.) We’ve got two more of these. I am absolutely sure we’ll get an explanation in the coming installments. I think when these are on video sitting next to each other of everyone’s shelves and you can watch one right after the other, people aren’t going to be bothered by the ambiguity here.
Now, I know people’ve speculated that there might be a reason for her sudden knowledge of the Force (like some sort of training at young age), but it wasn’t even hinted or questioned by anyone in this movie, so even if this were true for the sequels, saying Rey is a deus-ex-machina or “Mary Sue” in TFA it’s still understandable. After all, even with a shared plot, every movie should be able to technically stand on its own.
B.) We never get any explicit indication of how far along in his training Kylo Ren is. The only reasons I’ve come across for assuming he’s the man are 1.) he did that trick with the blaster bolt, and that kicked ass, so he must be amazing, and 2.) he wiped out Luke’s other students. That’s not a great indicator either because we have no idea how far along in the training they were, and in fact I have a theory that Kylo was able to off them all so easily because he was the only one with a lightsaber (I think Luke hadn’t yet taught his students to build them and that Snoke showed Kylo as part of his seduction, but this is all speculation). Anyway, other than that, he doesn’t face another Force user until Rey shows up. Yeah, he’s comes off as powerful in the first half of the film, but he’s essentially just bullying non-Force users. He’s a medium-sized fish in a small pond and he’s been that way for years. I have no trouble believing that when the shit truly hits the fan he kind of sucks at Jedi stuff.
He had at least some basic training, seeing he IS able to outdo both Finn and Rey. It doesn’t change the fact that Rey suddenly becomes more skilled than him.
Side note, it’s nice to get a chance to actually talk about things that happened in the movie without it getting bogged down by sweeping hyperbolic statements about the film’s overall quality. Let’s try to keep this up.
Sure, I’m all for good discussions!
Well I’m obviously out. :p
See you tomorrow or in a near thread 😄
Better than Luke and any other character in the SW universe at her same age, “because reasons”, without explaination. I would accept all of this had the movie gave me a logical in-universe explaination, even just some hint.
Considering she defeated an almost complete dark Jedi on her own, with no enstablished training at all, she probably doesn’t even need to train with Luke anymore 😄
P.S.: It’s like seeing James Bond suddenly being able to fly, and in no way you could’ve known that he’s just using some kind of jetpack or magnets technology hidden inside his jacket.
She’s too perfect in that she not only has acquired more skills than ANH’s Luke in less than 20 years or so and in poor economic conditions, but she learns all she needs to know about the Force exactly at the right time.
It seems to me it is a lazy criticism - not understanding the characters in the SW universe, or not thinking through the events in the film itself as a whole (her environment, how she struggles initially to the events occurring around her, the decisions she makes, then how she evolves and adapts through those situations she encounters etc - ultimately ending with her ‘Letting The Force In’, as it were, to not be defeated by Ren in the lightsabre fight at the end of the film).
And here’s the thing: it’s not about adaptating to the environment, because it’s been enstablished with 6 movies that nobody in the SW universe can become a skilled Jedi without training, patience, diligence. Rey, on the other hand… Now, I know people’ve speculated that there might be a reason for her sudden knowledge of the Force (like some sort of training at young age), but it wasn’t even hinted or questioned by anyone in this movie, so even if this were true for the sequels, saying Rey is a deus-ex-machina or “Mary Sue” in TFA it’s still understandable. After all, even with a shared plot, every movie should be able to technically stand on its own.
While reading about TFA’s nomination, I found this. It seems like TFA is in a way “more equal than other” movies 😄
A film with a 90-93% score on RT from hundreds of thousands of people could be validly described as “Popular at best”, or “Crowd-pleasing at best” without fear of succumbing to hyperbole.
I don’t think you should take RT too seriously, anyway. Let me explain you why.
As I said, I don’t think TFA is a bad movie. More than 90%, though? Maybe 60%-80% would’ve been more correct. Considering half of RT’s Top Critics work one way or another for “the cartel” (the Motion Picture Association of America), including RT (which belongs to Warner Bros.), I think it’s pretty obvious how it got more than 90%. Specifically, RT allowed for TFA something which is instead unheard-of for indipendent movies: on top of the usual Top Critics, they carefully decided to include specific other reviews they knew would’ve boosted TFA’s score, but not so much that it would’ve got a full 100% (after it initially got 98%, in fact, rotten reviews have recently been added usually every 9-10 fresh reviews to tone its score down a bit, look by yourself). Think of how indipendent movies like Survivor, definitely on par with most AAA action-packed thrillers, (rightfully) got a 7% instead of the usual 80% like its bigger brothers produced by the cartel.
RT is completely unreliable, to me.
I’m “anti-TFA” and I personally don’t think TFA is shit, just flawed and uninspired. In fact, had LF just came up with a more original story and background, to me it would’ve been almost on par with ROTJ quality-wise, because it’s of course a fine movie from a technical standpoint. Had its more dramatic scenes (like that planet’s destruction) been handled so that we would’ve actually cared, it would’ve even been on par with ANH.
“Anti TFA people”… C’mon, we’re just discussing together about something we all like, Star Wars, sharing each other’s point of view on its last movie. I’d say arguments are mostly “decent” from both sides, but what else is to say on TFA that we haven’t covered yet? 😄
I think here we have like at least two people who have actually worked in Hollywood, an ex-ILM (right?), good writers, a professional composer, good editors, a few commercial directors…
“Yeah, I think you’re right. Full rewind! Chewie, cut the VCR’s power!”
Basically, he didn’t answer about his personal opinions on the petition. Typical :\
Same here, I’m Italian 😄
I may be wrong, but as far as I know it was in fact never officially referenced, not even in English documentaries.
The fight was pretty static, though, even compared to other fights in movies like the one in Robin Hood. I guess they had no choice but to do that spin to make it more dynamic.
Yes, it was filmed and it’s in fact in the comic (ignore the editing and voice over)
Luke was to give his lightsaber to Vader so he couldn’t fight him. When later Vader threatens to make Leia fall into the dark side, Luke uses the Force to take his lightsaber back and kill him.
In the end, they decided to edit it out.
Delicieuxz said:
I expect that TFA is quite palatable to millennials, who it seems that the movie was made for.There are many examples in this thread showing this was not the case.
😄 I may be an exception, though: my friends absolutely loved TFA, just like they loved the OT and the PT.
Regardless of what you feel about TFA you should try to make time to watch this video.
I’ll watch it as soon as possible, thanks!
Directing no, except for his framing skill (Kershner himself prised him for this, and he’s definitely better than “J.J. Closer-to-the-camera Abrams” in this regard), I’d like him to contribute to the plot, one way or another (unless he wants to turn Star Wars into a “soap opera”). I remember that in a very early interview he said he wanted each Star Wars’ episode to be directed by other directors, except for the first and last movie which he wanted to personally direct, but I doubt he’ll ever be back now.
I just remembered about something I wanted to ask.
Do you remember when Ren felt Han on the Starkiller Base? I was wondering if, when his father later approaches him, he’s still aware of his presence but keeps walking away because he can’t face him, or he really couldn’t feel him from that close? He gasps when Han calls him, like if he were [or was?] actually surprised to see him.
Roughly this:
1 TESB
2 ANH
3 ROTJ
4 ROTS
5-7 TPM, AOTC and TFA (in release order)[…] I don’t have a problem if you didn’t like TFA, but equating them with the PT makes me wonder how well you remember the PT.
Will you already stop attacking people because they think TFA is shit?
The phrase “that’s my opinion” is pretty insufficient when TFA is superior to the PT in pretty much every way. […]
Yep, this one: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax
For images, you just need to enter 
You can’t resize them, though.
I didn’t like how the MF went to lightspeed inside the freighter. Now there’s something inconsistent with the internal logic of the SW universe, and it could have easily been avoided as well.
I thought so too, what was the reasoning for them not just taking off first?
Actually, the problem is they didn’t need to make the calculations for the jump to light speed. But my only guess is that technology has improved since ROTJ, and it now takes a matter of a few seconds to get into light speed… Maybe…