Star Wars: The Force Awakens Discussion (HERE THERE BE SPOILERS)
- Thread starter sttngfan1701d
- Start date
Luke gets to pilot an x-wing at the end of the movie, after the audience has been on an adventure with him. Again, there's no logical reason why anyone can't have any skill you want them to have, it's just a matter of narrative flow to build up to something like that. imo Abrams movies tend to be a series of cool pay-offs that were never set up clearly.
they just have a few lines where people tell us he is.
Where is the narrative flow where we see Luke is a crackshot and also on first attempt knows there is a grapplehook in a stolen belt and can use it like an expert with first toss?
Be honest with yourself - it's just a double-standard.
I think Abrams is just not as good at making things feel natural. It's not a double standard, it's an aspect of his style that I dislike. It's not a catastrophic failing, but it annoys me. Like I said, this would have been easy to build up to. Abrams decided he needed an action scene there but wanted an unnecessary extra step between getting the Falcon & meeting Han. We spend plenty of time with Rey, seeing her routine. Then WHAM we're in the middle of the adventure suddenly.
With Luke, he lost the driods like a dumbass, got his ass kicked by a random sand person, got to talk to ObiWan, chickens out of joining ObiWan until his aunt/uncle die, bumbled about in the cantina & got saved by ObiWan, did some force training with ObiWan, tried to take charge on the Death Star & bumbled them into a garbage pit, THEN he starts to get his shit together & I actually give a damn because at that point he had earned a victory. If you hand a bunch of victories to the main characters at the very start of the movie it's not good dramatic storytelling imo. I think Abrams likes to skip to the cool stuff as it were. It's not necessarily 'unrealistic' per se, but it deprives the rest of the movie of a sense of urgency for the main characters to get it together & save the day. This is most strongly highlighted by the assault on the STB later on. Han is literally like "Oh a death star you say? Pfft whatever let's blow it up already." It's like a joke to him.
Why does everything have to be EXPLAINED?
Sometimes, things just ARE.
Sometimes, things just ARE.
The last time Star Trek adhered to that philosophy was TOS. Maybe the movies in the '80s. Since then it's been technobabble out the plasma conduit wazoo.
How much you want explained is up to you. In the opening scene of STiD McCoy & Kirk do a 200 foot cliff jump into the ocean & I never quite stopped face-palming after that scene. Some people may have not even blinked. I still like STiD too overall - though I complain about its flaws quite a bit. Don't mistake my nitpicking for outright condemnation.
We're nerds! Nitpicking is our birthright.
Last edited:
One thing that's been a problem with both JJ's Star Trek and Star Wars is that you get the sense he doesn't really understand how *big* a galaxy is. The sense of scale isn't there.
The idea that the Republic can be destroyed by taking out one solar system is a bit silly. That may be the seat of government, but surely it's not the whole thing? The movie didn't make this clear. And why wasn't it on Coruscant, anyway?
And again, like ST09, we have people staring into the sky as planets are destroyed, "seeing" things that must be too far away to actually see. Vulcans and Jedi you can explain away with mental connection stuff, but what about the others?
Other than that, fun movie.
The idea that the Republic can be destroyed by taking out one solar system is a bit silly. That may be the seat of government, but surely it's not the whole thing? The movie didn't make this clear. And why wasn't it on Coruscant, anyway?
And again, like ST09, we have people staring into the sky as planets are destroyed, "seeing" things that must be too far away to actually see. Vulcans and Jedi you can explain away with mental connection stuff, but what about the others?
Other than that, fun movie.
As for why it's not on Coruscant, the new book/comic/whatever universe explains that the senate rotates among different Republic planets. At this particular time, the Hosnian (or whatever it's called) system was the seat of the Republic government. But it isn't always.
Kor
Besides, Coruscant is an Inner Core planet near the center of that galaxy and Jakku, the Hosnian system and Starkiller Base were located much farther away in entirely different sectors weren't they? I know the Outer Rim was mentioned at least once in the new film but I got the impression those worlds weren't anywhere near the edge of the galaxy or explored space, so you couldn't have seen Coruscant from that distance even if it had been the target.
The same goes for whatever other system they chose to target. Stars are generally really far away from each other. Like, really really far. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly far away from each other they are.
That was a deliberate homage to an era of film that was in more recent memory then. It was an applause point in the theaters, IIRC.
The garbage pit was on Leia.
I don't know if anyone has seen this, but I imagine some people here have read the novel. Minor explanations for the most part but there is some interesting backstory about the First Order and the Republic.
http://mashable.com/2015/12/29/force-awakens-novel/#AhD8K32f3Pq4
http://mashable.com/2015/12/29/force-awakens-novel/#AhD8K32f3Pq4
Yeah, but the lack of an exit strategy was the real problem there.
Tattoine's second sun in ANH is actually Coruscant. Just act JJ...
Seriously, in ST09, Vulcan is larger than the Sun in Spock's field of vision on Delta Vega. You suppose Abrams ever actually looked up in our own sky and wondered "hey, where are the planets? This pollution is really bad!"
