Star Wars: The Force Awakens Discussion (HERE THERE BE SPOILERS)

Even then, "Obi-Wan" makes more sense.

"Ben" was just a meaningless moniker to anyone except Luke.

 

^
I agree with you. Though Han might have known him as Ben, Leia knew of him as Obi Wan, likely because of her adoptive father. I could see Leia wanting to keep some aspect of Bail's name alive-and honoring his sacrifice as well-by naming her son after him. But they've named him Anakin too.

 

If they never saw the OT, they don't have much of a point of reference for this "Han Solo" character either...

 

Indeed - it was that low key and bad (save for the call backs and Rey's theme, which is great and really fits her), I CANNOT believe it's Williams and would DEFINITELY fit a hack like Giachhinno (sp - whatever).

The only thing it's missing is Giacchinno's signature five - six note motiff that he thinks is SO wonderful and clever and plays over and OVER again ad infinitum in EVERY film he scores!

 

LOL - No, it's NOT.

Those things were NEVER canon and, now, never even happened.

So, no confusion.

THIS is the story.

 

Good point. However they would get introduced to Han and spend time with him in TFA, enough so that what happens could have an emotional impact for them. However there might be no real connection to the name Ben. It would just be another name. Not as bad as Cumberbatch announcing Khan to me but along that line. It means nothing if you don't have that previous knowledge. Plus after they build up to the name, not calling him by name until Han finally does. I think that was done because the revelation of the name was supposed to be special. Was a call back to the fans.

 

Well I think the EU was canon, from a certain point of view, unless overruled by live-action or Clone Wars. Before the Disney edict. To me there appeared to be quite an effort to sync the EU with the live-action Star Wars and Clone Wars. It wasn't perfect of course but I think they did a pretty decent job with a large, unwieldy multimedia beast like the Star Wars franchise.

 

So does anyone else think it highly unlikely that, in all their adventures and years spent together, that Han never had reason to pick up and use Chewie's bowcaster before? Or was never even curious to try it out?

It was a funny moment in the film, but at the same time did strike me as a bit odd.

 

Because he outranks them ?

He's just not a very good film maker. Having said that, SWVII gets a lot right as well as wrong. He certainly gets the tone and feel. There's always gaping holes and stupidity in there too.

I think the mass celebrations of this one boils down to a mass 'ITS NOT SH1T !'.

It's relief...

 

<<Ben sacrificed himself to save their asses on the Death Star and in doing so set the Rebellion on a path to defeat the Empire. It doesn't matter how well they knew him, though Luke may well have planted that seed. >>

I just hope Luke planted his seed in Han and not Leia...

 

I thought TFA was a pretty good but not great movie. By far my biggest gripe is that it's such a blatant remake of A New Hope with all of J.J.'s usual missteps. The pacing is needlessly breakneck for the most part, with too much shouted dialogue and some gaping plot holes. The plot as a whole feels like it was constructed as an afterthought to pull nostalgic strings and string together a bunch of action sequences. But Ridley's performance made the film worthwhile to me along with Ford and to a lesser extent Boyega. Finn acts a lot like the rebooted Kirk, which I mostly don't mind. It was great to see the full interrogation scene with Rey and reminded me of Leia's interrogation scene from the radio dramas. I saw the film twice, and the second time it became glaringly obvious that the cantina scene is such a pale imitation of the original. Like the Starkiller base attack, it really would've benefited from better music. The tunes played a significant part in the charm of the original scene. Still, I liked the film more than this paragraph would indicate. It's better than Into Darkness and quite a bit of fun. It's just not great.

 

Just got back from watching it. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

It's not a great "film" film, but it's a bloody good Star Wars film: plenty of rip-roaring action, derring-do, rubbery sense of time and space and plotting and schlocky Death Ray villains but animated with real heart, characters you connect with and care about (even if they're a bit thinly drawn), suffused by a real feeling of awe and magic. It's classic Republic-serial spacey-schlock adventure and that's as it should be, and you can feel in every frame that this was a project Abrams connected with and was born for; he's at home here in a way that he never was in... well, That Other Franchise.

I think it could have been just as good with a completely different MacGuffin and with no call-backs to the original cast and characters -- but it would've been a very different movie, and overall those call-backs and the original cast were done well and used wisely. The through-line of family drama (which frankly I think Abrams "gets" just fine, Lucas' kvetching notwithstanding) brought some real weight to the proceedings. Not just for Han and Leia and Kylo "Ben" Ren but also for Rey and Finn, both of whom are tragic orphan characters in their own ways, in search of families to belong to [and whose immediately intense connection actually therefore makes better sense than most of the character relationships in ANH].

And Rey and Finn (and Poe Dameron and Kylo Ren, too) were great, the real core of the film as was fitting. I smiled to see Han come back onto the Millennium Falcon but it was Rey's flashback, and her having to face that her family was never coming back, that brought a tear to my eye. Finn is a darned fun flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants accidental hero almost in the best Harrison Ford tradition (I say "almost" because Boyega makes it entirely his own). Poe Dameron as a secondary character feels much more like I always thought Wedge Antilles was meant to be -- a fly-boy accessory to the group but still a vital part of the team.

I see some mixed reviews for Adam Driver but I thought he was excellent: satisfyingly sinister in his armour, but his frightening mantrums marked him out as still having much to learn and he delivered exactly the kind of birth-of-a-monster arc, in minimal strokes as part of a single film, that the prequels tried and failed to deliver for Anakin. He was convincingly still-slightly-conflicted but committed to the dark path in such a way that -- without having been spoiled about Han's death, thankfully -- I knew from the moment Han shouted "Ben!" and stepped onto that bridge that he was a dead man. I'm already looking forward to he and Rey opposite each other as the parallel apprentices of Light and Dark in this next movie. And that final set-up of those parallel arcs with Rey and Luke staring at each other on the wind-blown heights of Planet Scotland... pure magic.

Other things I enjoyed:

- Little touches with the First Order, like the way even most of its top brass are strikingly young and the mention of its stormtroopers being janissaries stolen from their families and re-educated. They came together to give a nice feeling of a resurgent, Galactically regional warlord power racing to assert it dominance. There's a pervasive sense of the movement's fragility and insecurity in every thing it does -- they're "thugs," as Dameron calls them, trying to give the impression of power -- and the overreaching Empire-envy of its even more super-colossal Death Ray strikes an apposite chord as part of that.

- Supreme Leader Snoke was actually quite creepy and intriguing, and I'm looking forward to learning more about him.

- I was bracing myself to dislike BB8 but instead found myself thoroughly liking the little guy. He was plucky comic relief that was actually funny, they brought some genuine pathos to him too (like his Droid-heartbreak when he learns of Dameron's "death"), and that wasn't gratingly over-used and over-done. I liked that C3P0 and Artoo had cameos... and that they were cameos, not attempts to make them the story's Greek chorus yet again.

- Jakku the garbage planet was spectacular and haunting. I also enjoyed Maz Kanata's "Malaysia in space" wretched-hive-of-scum-and-villainy (though that role seemed a waste of Lupita Nyong'o). All the other interstellar settings were impressive, too. The much-ballyhooed return to a focus on practical effects paid dividends in making the settings feel solid and lived-in.

- Brilliant little touches in the lightsaber duels (like the use of steam as a secondary weapon, or Ren's use of his cross-guard) and the use of Force powers.

My only minor gripes were a) the Order's death ray revealing again that Abrams has trouble with conveying the scale of space (less of a problem in a deliberately schlocky franchise like this, but still a bit meh) and b) that Rey and Finn, sans Jedi trainer, apparently learn how to use a lightsaber by... osmosis or Force instinct or something?

Honestly if it weren't directly built out of the raw materials of the Original Trilogy I would have rated it better than ANH and possibly better than ROTJ. It still stands worthily in the same league with the original films at least. Good to feel just uncomplicated pleasure watching a Star Wars movie again.

 

So, I'd rank this below TESB and ANH but above ROTJ and the prequels.

Two things:

Snoke? Really? THAT'S the best name they could come up with for the Supreme Leader? Sounds like the name of a fucking Harry Potter villain or something. Jesus.

Was Coruscant one of the planets destroyed by the Starkiller? Wasn't sure if that cityscape was supposed to be it or not. They just said "The Republic" when the planets blew up.

 

It's a testament to JJ and crew that the one moment that took me out of the movie the most was towards the end there's a black woman with curly hair and her hair just seemed very not-Star Wars. For such a little thing to be my biggest grievance as far as that goes is a good thing.

Speaking of hair, knowing him from Girls I wasn't expecting Adam Driver's nice coif.

I had a good time seeing this, my first viewing was just nostalgic great, maybe my critical faculties will kick in on further viewings but I enjoyed it.

Without the Fox fanfare that completely silent build to the big opening Star Wars "DIIINNH" works really well.

Fun story about the new "cantina" music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z09yMczy2k

Didn't catch that myself, nice touch.

Saw it in Real 3D on a faux Imax screen, it was very nice. I usually see 3D at a different theater and this was noticeably nicer, no strain or discoloration, so I think not all 3D methods are equal. There's a shot with the Star Destroyer extending all across the virtual space which was particular cool.

He reminded me of a commander in a recent Rebels episode. I liked that he was always trying to put himself over Kylo Ren, probably breaking him down that much more.

 

They called it the Hosnian system in the movie. (sp?)

I just realized something. Han and Luke can never reconcile about "Ben" now :-( Also, we'll never get another scene between Hamill and Ford unless it's a flashback.

 

Oh and I see Greg Grunberg as somehow related to the Porkins lineage despite supposedly being named Snap(!) Wexley.

 

Unless it was a recently aquired replacement. I don't remember Chewie's bowcaster having such an explosive impact in the old trilogy.

 

I thought it was good but nothing amazing. Most points have already been raised but the one thing I want to bring up is Luke's Lightsaber.

Where did it come from? The thing about "Luke's and his father before him" is ok but he LOST that one when Vader chopped his hand off on cloud city, and made a brand new one in ROTJ. Did someone find it and give it back to him, only for him to abandon it when he went AWOL?

I guess they recovered Vader's mask so they probably did find the sabre too...

 

The saber fell down the ventilation shaft of cloud city. It was most likely collected by someone in the maintenance crew and then made its way through the black market and underworld until it reached Maz who recognized its significance.

 

I saw Return of the Jedi. 'From a certain point of view' means 'A complete and total untruth.'

In the trailers, we saw somone handing over the saber to a woman (assumed to be Leia) during the 'my sister has it' voice over. Did that end up in the actual movie?