Anyone else think VII should have been VIII? (Spoilers)

[JirinPanthosa]

I saw Force Awakens yesterday, and I thought it was a good movie, in general, not spectacular. A lot of people seem to have the same impression. But my biggest criticism is that the events referred to that happened in between movies seem more interesting than the things that happened in the movie.

I get why they started the movie at the place they started it. The desperate need for everything to be action and to make the plot as similar to New Hope as possible. But they could have made a better movie if they had started with Kylo Ren's seduction to the dark side and the origin of the First Order. I don't know if their intent is for that to be one of the side projects in between numbered movies, but I think it should have been VII.

 

[Ithekro]

A Prequel to the Sequels?


Of course they have the Anthology films...they could always use those to fill in the gaps.

Or another cartoon show after Rebels is over.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

They had to start somewhere. And unless it's almost immediately after ROTJ, there are going to be significant gaps.

I happen to like that, though. Provides a bit of mystery to be revealed.

 

[tomalak301]

I'm sure this will be covered in books and the like, but one of my big questions of the film was how did we go from banging on Stormtrooper helmets and celebrating the fall of the empire to having yet a new resistance and the First Order basically having all the power.

 

[{ Emilia }]

I prefer jumping right into it instead of getting too much exposition. ANH was similar in that regard. We just jumped right into the rebellion and it worked out just fine.

 

[tomalak301]

I prefer jumping right into it instead of getting too much exposition. ANH was similar in that regard. We just jumped right into the rebellion and it worked out just fine.

But during the time of ANH. this was such a new movie franchise we just accepted it. I guess in this era of Arc based storytelling, I care more about backstory than I probably should.

 

[{ Emilia }]

I prefer jumping right into it instead of getting too much exposition. ANH was similar in that regard. We just jumped right into the rebellion and it worked out just fine.

But during the time of ANH. this was such a new movie franchise we just accepted it. I guess in this era of Arc based storytelling, I care more about backstory than I probably should.

I asked myself that question for a few seconds about 20 minutes into the movie and just decided that I don't care. It was fun to jump into it and enjoy the ride. We'll get to know more about the state of the galaxy in the next two movies, I'm sure.
And if we're really curious there's always the EU.

The Original Trilogy didn't have much exposition either. You were thrown right into it with many things not explained and that actually made you more curious about the world. It made it feel real.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Since when is anything that isn't action 'Exposition'? Character development. You remember character development. It was the first part of the film back when having an attention span was a thing. You remember character development, that thing that resulted in payoff? Back when the first three minutes of the films didn't have explosions, but the explosions later on had even more impact as a result.

Back in the 80s, we had this thing called 'Deferred gratification'. It basically means, instead of taking a mild payoff now, we waited, and then had a much better payoff later.

 

[{ Emilia }]

Since when is anything that isn't action 'Exposition'? Character development. You remember character development. It was the first part of the film back when having an attention span was a thing. You remember character development, that thing that resulted in payoff? Back when the first three minutes of the films didn't have explosions, but the explosions later on had even more impact.

I feel like we've seen quite some character development for both Rey and Finn so I'm not sure what your point is.

 

[davejames]

I agree it does feel like we missed an awful lot between ROTJ and TFA, but given the ages of Hamill, Ford, and Fisher it seems kind of unavoidable to me. And you do still need to have a major threat in the movie, and a very early First Order that's barely even established itself yet hardly seems like it would do the trick.

For me the only thing that really required more setup and explanation was the relationship between Han, Leia, and Kylo, and what the heck promoted things to go so terribly wrong in the first place. I mean we've barely even wrapped our heads around the idea that this wacko villain is their son before Han is having his fateful final encounter with him on the catwalk. And it's all just a LOT to process over the course of two hours.

In fact I think I might have preferred if Kylo ended up being Luke's son instead. Somehow I think that would have been a whole lot easier to swallow in the limited time we had.

 

[DarKush]

I don't know if we needed another Episode VII than this one, but I wish maybe a better job could've been done with the multimedia material giving us more leading up to Episode VII. Granted they wouldn't reveal Luke and Ben Solo. But perhaps more information about the political situation. The rise of both the New Republic and First Order. Books or comics set on Hosnian Prime so it means more when the planet is destroyed. Granted we didn't know anything about Alderaan in Episode 4, but we had a personal connection through that planet through Leia and also Obi Wan's reaction to the planet's destruction.

From my inkling of the pre-TFA material out there that a lot of it isn't that far removed from the end of ROTJ. I think Disney played it too cautiously. And if they didn't want to release that stuff before the film, now is a good time to do it.

 

[Turtletrekker]

They have to leave some stuff for the novel and comic lines to cover.

 

[EnsignRicky]

I agree that Episode VII is structured much like Episode IV. The only problem is that Episode IV had Episodes I, II and III to explain how the galaxy got so screwed up. With the route they decided to go in this film, perhaps they should have just jumped ahead and titled it Episode X.

 

[Ithekro]

Episode IV didn't have that backstory trilogy at all until 22 years later.

Now they have the option of an Anthology movie to tell the tale of what went down between VI and VII. Or even a TV series if things are really involved and would take more than a single film or set of films to tell.

 

[Mage]

Like Ithekro said, A New Hope didn't have any backstory at all when we first saw it, so it doesn't matter that we don't have all the details here (yet). We knew enough to understand. The details remaining are interesting to know, but not needed for the plot.

 

[Spot's Meow]

I felt the same way when I watched the film, that I would have liked it to be episode VIII, and had episode VII start just a few years earlier with the fall of Ben Solo to the dark side. I don't think we necessarily needed to go back and see what's been happening the past 30 years, but at least seeing what happened to turn Kylo Ren would have been a good start. It seems unlikely to me that we are going to have a future trilogy to explain that turn like we did with Anakin/Vader, so I would have liked them to start with it in this trilogy instead.

 

[DonIago]

Perhaps we'll get flashbacks in the sequels.

 

[Ithekro]

I don't think the fall of Ben Solo will be as interesting as the fall of Anakin Skywalker. It might rate a movie, but not a trilogy prior to this one.

Ben has too much of his grandfather in him. Leia sent him off to be taught by Luke in hopes they might overcome that problem. It didn't work thanks to the efforts of Snoke and the Knights of Ren. Ben falls to the Dark Side, and kills his fellow students, but leaves Luke alive. Ben takes the name Kylo Ren and starts to work for the First Order under Snoke. But he remains conflicted and having trouble with his rage. He can't focus properly all the time and has issues with the light. He tries to be like his legendary grandfather, but isn't measuring up to the awesomeness that was Darth Vader (or Anakin Skywalker during the Clone Wars for that matter). We see that part of his journey up to attempted to rid himself of his light side by killing his father.

He doesn't seem all that skilled in lightsaber dueling. He has a very crude lightsaber. He spins it around a little like Obi-wan and Anakin use to do between taking swings. His swinging seems brutish and wild as oppose to having a style with any skill. He's hacking and slashing almost like a barbarian with a broadsword. He doesn't seem to have even the kendo stylings of Luke and Vader.

 

[shapeshifter]

Perhaps we'll get flashbacks in the sequels.

Or tie-ins like novels, comics and/or new animated series will fill in the blanks.

 

[DonIago]

Yeah. I can't imagine that it's not going to be filled in.