Star Wars Spoilers Thread [Spoilers]

So here's my review: 100% a Star Wars film which belongs with the original trilogy.

It's a transitional film, but it does it well. The new generation is really good.

I think the major death was kinda signposted a bit. You knew it was coming long before it happened. I felt worse for Chewie, but he, Rey, and BB8 make a great team.

Is this the first Star Wars film where nobody gets their hand cut off?

Luke lives in Ireland, eh?

Question: WHY was there a map to Luke, and why was it split into two? I feel like I missed something. For that matter, why a map and not just some coordinates? Seems like a random puzzle set up for the sake of it.

 

[Umbran]

The effect is the same: small fighter + planetoid megaweapon = explosion

Yah. Such is the point of heroic fiction: One person *can* make a difference.

 

[Umbran]

I'm still parsing through this. I snipped the quote for brievity sake.

What you say makes sense now. So they were trying to add focus to Hans & Snoke.

No, not add focus. Do not conflate "this is the sensible statement of what's likely going on" with "this is what the audience is supposed to focus upon".

Consider that the real main characters here are Rey, Finn, and Kylo Ren. All three of them are young, inexperienced, scared, and confused. And, they are your viewpoint characters. Do you expect to come out with a clean vision of what's going on if your viewpoint comes from characters like that? No! If you need to sit down and think out exactly what's going on, then the movie did its job of giving you the view from someone who doesn't really understand what's going on, yet!

We were led to believe the movie was about Rey, Fynn, and escaping the Order.

It is about them, and Kylo Ren. Finn, for example, doesn't give a rat's butt about Snoke's larger plan. He cares about the only people who have recognized him and respected him as an individual - Poe and Rey. So, yeah, Finn's story won't really show you Snoke's larger plan. But, Finn's story *can't happen* unless Snoke has a larger plan in motion.

And, since the movie is about those smaller stories, and not directly about that larger picture, you don't come away automatically understanding that larger picture until you sit down and really think about it for a few minutes, and work through the implicatiosn fo what we see.

Heaven's forefend, did Abrams give us a movie we have to *think* about!?!

 

[Jester David]

Yah. Such is the point of heroic fiction: One person *can* make a difference.

The one person isn't the problem. Had it been sabotage inside by reversing the polarity or setting off bombs that'd have worked. Or any of a dozen handwavy explanations for how the plucky band of rebels (sorry, resistance fighters) stop the big weapon.
That'd be fine. And, since they had charges, that was even in the story. Han and Chewie set the bombs, blow up something importanty, and the weapon misfires. Everyone goes home. Medals all around.

The problem comes when the superweapon is destroyed in the exact same method we've seen before. I already saw that movie already. Twice. Copying what I've seen before and liked doesn't make me automatically enjoy something. Otherwise I'd have liked the retread of Into Darkness.


The best justification I saw for the copying is that Disney is trying to set up the franchise, and is doing so through emulation. They're showing they're connected to the past and history of the franchise. Beholden to it. So that when the future movies go off and do their own thing and get different, we'll accept that it's tied to the universe. They didn't want to start off completely new, because that would seem like they're ignoring what came before and aren't really Star Wars.
That all makes great sense from a business perspective. And a lot of the stuff in Force Awakens might work well in Episode VIII, with the new Republic in disarray with their capital gone. This movie might just be setting up the new status quo, and doing so wrapped in familiar tropes.
I understand that, and might even agree with that, but that doesn't make me like the story any more.
And we end up with a situation similar to after Episode I, where we're waiting on the next film to see if that justifies the problems with the previous film. "Episode II/VIII will fix things!"

Well... at least Rogue One will likely do something different...

 

[Umbran]

Copying what I've seen before and liked doesn't make me automatically enjoy something.

That's not a critique unless there exists a plot structure that *will* make you automatically like it. I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist, so this isn't really an argument against it. No *single* thing about it will make you like the whole. They are banking on the entire package. I daresay that structure was chosen not because it will make you like it, but because it is familiar, and therefore stays out of the way of the real meat of the thing - and the meat of it is where they *differ* from the previous movies, not where they are similar.

 

[trappedslider]

You know...26 pages and no one mentions that Starkiller was going to be Skywalker's original last name.....what kind of fans are you people?!?

 

[smiteworks]

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, but there was something I couldn't quite put my finger on that I didn't like about it. The new characters were all likable and the acting was much better than the prequels. Even when Kylo Ren was throwing a temper tantrum, it didn't grate on my nerves like Jar Jar did. I think for me the biggest part that I didn't like was just the idea that Han and Leia would have a kid that turned to the dark side. The history of the series seems to show that this happens all the time, but when it was first discussed in the original trilogy, you had the sense that it was a rare and unfortunate thing that happened to Anakin and the results of this were so bad that it basically shaped the entire galaxy. Then the prequels came out and it showed it happening not just to Anakin but also to Count Dooku. Repeating it yet again makes you want to simply warn everyone you know and love away from ever using or learning about The Force. The force is bad, mkay.

I thought the acting was great with a few small exceptions. I didn't like the beginning where FIN was in storm trooper armor. For me, it felt like he had to overact to convey his conflicted emotions while wearing armor. I thought Vader did a better job of this within ROTJ while still wearing a helmet. Outside of the armor, he was excellent. Rey was awesome. Han was good, as usual. Leia doesn't seem like her face can move anymore and I found her hard to watch this time around.

The blending of the CGI and the special effects was very well done. The story didn't try to explain everything in one go and there were no horrendous exposition like they did with midichlorians in Phantom.

 

[MarkB]

And whoever said she put the TIE into the gunsights wasn't watching. The guns were locked forward rather than unable to move at all - so she did what she needed to, which was a sharp turn so she could get behind the TIE rather than the other way round.

Sorry, but you're misremembering there, or misinterpreting - the gun was locked straight down (which is "forward" from Finn's viewpoint because the Falcon's internal gravity orients perpendicular to the rest of the ship in the turrets so that "forward" is up for the top turret and down for the bottom turret - watch the spacefight in Episode IV when they escape the Death Star to see this explicitly).

When Finn is finally given a straight shot at the TIE Fighter, it's because Rey flips the ship up on its side so that its belly is directly facing the fighter.

 

[Umbran]

I think for me the biggest part that I didn't like was just the idea that Han and Leia would have a kid that turned to the dark side.

I saw one essay that had an interesting point. We had the original three movies, and they gave us heroes who won... and until now, we presumed they lived happily ever after (at least, most people did - barring the comparatively small number who read the EU books). These movies make canon the idea that, quite frankly, rather than live happily ever after, they had major misery, and everything they fought and suffered for got torn down within their own lifetimes - Luke manages to help beat the Emperor, but his own apprentices all die or turn, and set him alone on the run. Han and Leia's love turns to pain and separation when their own son becomes a murderer and joins up with the First Order that's just like the Empire they worked so hard to defeat, and Han's on son kills him.

They could very well ask what the point of it all was.

The history of the series seems to show that this happens all the time, but when it was first discussed in the original trilogy, you had the sense that it was a rare and unfortunate thing that happened to Anakin and the results of this were so bad that it basically shaped the entire galaxy. Then the prequels came out and it showed it happening not just to Anakin but also to Count Dooku. Repeating it yet again makes you want to simply warn everyone you know and love away from ever using or learning about The Force. The force is bad, mkay.

With great power comes great responsibility... and risk. Note that in all the cases where we see someone turn, it is under the influence of someone who is already on the Dark Side. Specifically, we don't see in the films anyone trained by the Jedi turn spontaneously. What they do seems to work, and requires a full-on Sith master to break asunder.

 

[dd.stevenson]

Yeah the more I think about TFA, the less happy I am.

--Why don't they tell us who Rey is waiting for at Jaku? She's (apparently) the protagonist, since she's the one with agency during the climax--why isn't her motivation made clear?
--Why does she run away from the lightsaber? Why did the vision scare her? It didn't scare me. Again, I need to know the protaganist's motivation.
--How did Rey beat Kylo Ren? How did his offer inspire her to use the force and beat him?

I mean, I think I get it: Rey was one of the students in Luke's ill-fated academy, and whoever killed the other students wasn't willing/able to kill her, so she was dropped off at Jaku (means "weakness" in japanese, btw,) and she's waiting for whomever and then remembers her training because of what Kylo says. But you can't leave me guessing at the protagonist's motivations and arc--not in a Star Wars movie.

There's more:

--Why does Han's death carry no consequences for the plot? The scene could be omitted, and nothing would change. Compare that to Ben's death in A New Hope--take that scene out, and the entire movie would fall apart.
--Why was it originally important to find Luke? I need to understand the motivations of the key players--that's not an optional piece of exposition.
--Why did he leave a map to his location in two separate pieces? Less important, but it's a weird choice to leave the mcguffin completely unexplained.

None of the above are plot holes; they're evidence that the plot is not self-contained. Compare that to the originals, which were each Hollywood trendsetters for their tight plot and dense storytelling.

It's a good movie, and better in some ways than any star wars movie to date; but I completely understand why it will never stand shoulder to shoulder with the originals in the eyes of many fans.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Yeah the more I think about TFA, the less happy I am.

--Why don't they tell us who Rey is waiting for at Jaku? She's (apparently) the protagonist, since she's the one with agency during the climax--why isn't her motivation made clear?
--Why does she run away from the lightsaber? Why did the vision scare her? It didn't scare me. Again, I need to know the protaganist's motivation.
--How did Rey beat Kylo Ren? How did his offer inspire her to use the force and beat him?

I mean, I think I get it: Rey was one of the students in Luke's ill-fated academy, and whoever killed the other students wasn't willing/able to kill her, so she was dropped off at Jaku (means "weakness" in japanese, btw,) and she's waiting for whomever and then remembers her training because of what Kylo says. But you can't leave me guessing at the protagonist's motivations and arc--not in a Star Wars movie.

There's more:

--Why does Han's death carry no consequences for the plot? The scene could be omitted, and nothing would change. Compare that to Ben's death in A New Hope--take that scene out, and the entire movie would fall apart.
--Why was it originally important to find Luke? I need to understand the motivations of the key players--that's not an optional piece of exposition.
--Why did he leave a map to his location in two separate pieces? Less important, but it's a weird choice to leave the mcguffin completely unexplained.

None of the above are plot holes; they're evidence that the plot is not self-contained. Compare that to the originals, which were each Hollywood trendsetters for their tight plot and dense storytelling.

It's a good movie, and better in some ways than any star wars movie to date; but I completely understand why it will never stand shoulder to shoulder with the originals in the eyes of many fans.

There are other movies. I wouldn't say things had nothing to do with the plot yet until we see those other movies. For example, if Kylo's big plan is to kill Darth Pagious (sp) with a jedi (Rey) at his side when he does so (because he's fulfilling Vader's goal--to have a sith and jedi work together), then killing his father is the thing he's talking about when he says he doesn't know if he has the strength to do what is necessary (go full dark side). Also, Rey was waiting for Han Solo (only she didn't know it). When they get to the new planet and she says, "I've never seen this much green in the galaxy", Han looks at her with a lot of regret in his eyes. Regret for dropping her off on a desert wasteland planet with no green.


Really, my only really big issue was with the Starkiller weapon in general. The projectiles don't travel at light speed, so how do they take out planets in completely different systems? If the resistance fighters had to go into light speed to get to starkiller, and the weapon fires at a speed much slower than light speed (they watch it slowly go across the screen), then it makes no sense.

"Well General Organa, they fired on us. It will take approximately 5984 years to hit our planet at that distance...."

And how did they see Corasaunt blow up from the planet they were on? I'm guessing this is one of those issue like in Empire, when Luke is only on Degobah for less than 8 hours total (because the time from when Han flees the star destroyer and gets captured on Bespin isn't very long, and the distance from Degobah to Bespin is MUCH farther than Hoth is).