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

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

https://lightsaber.withgoogle.com/

Who wants to try out to escape from a star destroyer using nothing but a lightsaber.

Turn your phone into one and may the force be with you.

This is a chrome browser based game, however for me it worked just fine using Safari on my iPhone and Firefox on my PC.

beat the minigame on my first try

 

[David.Blue]

I liked it very much, especially the fact we are seeing the story of two apprentices in the Force--Rey for the Light, Kylo Ren for the Dark. The relationships between characters are very cool, and while echoing those of the first trilogy do not attempt to copy them slavishly. Read/saw a review that saw each of the new characters--Kylo, Po, Rey, BB8 and Fin--only in terms of whose place they were were supposedly taking. Cannot say how wrong I believe that viewpoint to be. Yes, some of the roles replicate themselves but not at all on a one-on-basis. For example, Fin doesn't really match up with any character from SW IV (despite some comments he is Leia because he "needs to be rescued" which shows a fundamental misunderstanding of both characters). At most I would say Rey's story arc rather closely resembles that of Luke in some ways, and Po's personality reminds one of Han in some ways. Kylo Ren is frankly what we all hoped to see in Anakin Skywalker, or at least what I'd hoped for.

My own theory--Rey is the daughter of one of Luke's students.

 

[Mach5]

Seeing it again tonight.

 

[BigJake]

I liked it very much, especially the fact we are seeing the story of two apprentices in the Force--Rey for the Light, Kylo Ren for the Dark. The relationships between characters are very cool, and while echoing those of the first trilogy do not attempt to copy them slavishly . . . Kylo Ren is frankly what we all hoped to see in Anakin Skywalker, or at least what I'd hoped for.

I totally agree with all of this.

 

[Kor]

... If I recall correctly, in the Dark Nest Trilogy Luke even used Force Lightning, and he started prematurely aging, and he realized he was heading down the wrong path and stopped.

I've heard convincing arguments that Luke just uses the Dark side of the force (for good reasons). In TESB, Luke force chokes a Gamorrean as he enters Jaba's palace.

That's in ROTJ.

Kor

 

[JD]

Finn was good and had funny lines. It is a bit weird that he's supposedly a stormtrooper conditioned from birth to serve the First Order but never once seemed conflicted in the film. And I don't know why they released two posters with him holding a lightsaber giving the impression that he's a Jedi. It's not like him being a stormtrooper was a huge plot point that had to be protected.

They never tried to hide the fact that he was a Stormtrooper, one of the first bits of footage we ever saw was with him in his armor, and every description of the character said he was a Stormtrooper. They were trying to hide the fact that Rey was a force user, and since Finn was the only other good guy who used the lightsaber they showed him. I wouldn't be surprised if they purposefully tried to make it look like he as the force user so people would be even more surprised when it was Rey and not him.

Kylo Ren was interesting because he clearly wasn't meant to be a new ultimate badass Sith guy. I liked the idea of him being conflicted and tempted by the light side. It's a shame they didn't really play up the conflict more as it was only in the one scene he had with Han that it seemed like he might turn good. And they could have explored why he actually wants to be evil. At least Anakin had the whole "wanting to stop death" thing but Ben just wants to be evil because...it's cool?

I never really got the impression he was really that conflicted until he saw his father again. I think they purposefully avoided getting into to much of why he fell to the Dark Side since they were trying to hide his real identity until the big reveal, and at that point so much was already going on the probably didn't want to slow things down to much by getting into his backstory more than they did. I have a feeling we'll be learning a lot more about him and how and why he turned to the Dark Side in VIII and IX. This is the first of three movies, so this one was more about introducing characters and the current state of the galaxy, so they aren't going to tell us everything yet.

Harrison Ford! He was good! He definitely felt like an old Han Solo would. Chewie! Some good Chewie humour and he got to shoot lots of people. 3PO was...there. His voice felt off but I guess that's just Anthony Daniels being old. R2 being asleep for most of the movie and just waking up because it was time for him to wake up was lame.

I do kind of agree about C-3PO and R2, I was hoping we'd get more of them. I do agree it was a little annoying that R2 just happened to wake up when he did, but that kind of stuff happens in these kinds of all the time, so I'm not that bothered by it.

Carrie Fisher...wasn't very good? I mean she couldn't move her face anymore and her voice was completely different (really noticable since I'd just watched the original movies) and while it was nice they got her in the movie but it really didn't feel like we were watching Leia.

Well, she aged, it happens to everybody.

Supreme Leader Felicity Smoak was terrible. I don't care if he isn't really a giant and just used a big hologra to scare people, it still looked like something that belonged in Harry Potter.

I don't think Snoke was really that much worse than any of the other stuff we've gotten in the franchise over the years.

Commander Hux was meh. He felt like a kid playing dress up as an imperial. Kind of like Kylo, so I guess that was on purpose and the First Order are supposed to feel like stupid young people trying to be evil? But that could have been expanded on a lot.

I thought General Hux was pretty good. He was young to be a General, but I didn't really see where it need that much of an explanation. He was such minor part of the movie, that it would have been a waste to delve to much into his backstory.

I liked Poe Dameron a lot at the start and then he just disappeared for most of the movie and showed up again in an action scene which was confusing because it made you think "wait, isn't that the guy who died?" and then he just says "oh, I didn't die, I just left my jacket behind for no reason!" to explain it.

Him disappearing for so much of the movie and then popping back up was kind of annoying, but I think that might come from the fact that he was originally supposed to die. I think some kind of a hint that he was still alive before that would have been helpful.

Maz's voice acting was good but she didn't seem like someone who was a thousand years old?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. How should she have seemed?

BB-8 was cute af.

ANYWAY, I liked the start a lot and then the stuff with Rey alone on Jakku was actually the best part of the movie. Even though it was kind of just another Tatooine at least it had all the older Imperial stuff lying around to make it look different. And she looked cute in that helmet. Then Han shows up and there's some really funny interactions but also some monsters that look like they belong in Men In Black and I don't know why they were in there.

Then about halfway through the movie the story changes from "where is Luke Skywalker?" to "oh there's another Death Star." Seriously Starkiller Base was so poorly set up. It appears for the first time out of nowhere then destroys a whole system of planets(?) and we don't know what those planets are other than that one looks like Coruscant. Oh and you can see them from Maz's planet but if that was a planet in the same system how the fuck was it not destroyed too? Or is this just JJ not understanding how space works.

They made several references to that fact that the planet was the (current) home of the Republic Senate, that was really all we needed to know. As for seeing from it from Maz's planet, I thought they pretty much just saw the shot, and then a couple of distant flashes or something. At least it wasn't quite as bad as the destruction of the planet in Abrams first Star Trek movie.

Yeah the whole political situation was SO POORLY EXPLAINED. Like they didn't want to talk about politics at all because THE PREQUELS HAD POLITICS OMG so we don't really find out what the Republic is, how it relates to "The Resistance" (which is a stupid name) and what The First Order actually want. It was just "some planets have been destroyed, let's move on to the next bit!"

We were told the Republic existed and that it was willing to help the Resistance, and that was really all needed to know for this story. I think we were told all we needed to know about The Resistance and The First Order for this story. There is some suplemental material, like the Database on the Star Wars website, and the Visual Dictionary that covers a little more of the background. I wouldn't be surprised if we got a bit more stuff in the books and comics that dealt with stuff from the movie now that it is out.
Beisdes, we never learned that much about the Empire or the Rebellion in the first movie.

The attack on Starkiller Base felt like something out of a Star Wars video game where they just redo the story from the original movies except this is actually a new movie.

Han died and it wasn't really a big deal and Leia runs up and hugs a girl she doesn't know instead of Chewie!?

I thought everybody seemed pretty upset by Han's death. I honestly didn't give that much thought to who Leia hugged.

I liked how the lightsabers looked against the snow.

It was a bit disappointing how the Resistence ONLY had X-Wings and the First Order ONLY had TIE fighters. Did they think people would be confused by new spaceships?

The Resistance and FO didn't seem to be quite at the same level as the Rebellion and the Empire in the OT, so it makes sense they wouldn't have as many ships. We also did see Kylo Ren's shuttle, the FO troop tansport, a Star Destroyer, and the ship Leia showed up in, so we did see more than just X-Wings and TIE-Fighters.

So about Rey...I don't mind her beating Kylo in the duel because he was hurt and she was already showng to be a good fighter. And she used the Force to be a better fighter the same way Anakin used the Force to be a better podracer and Luke used it to destroy the Death Star, so that's fine (though she was so aggressive at the end it was almost like she wa using the Dark Side but that didn't come up in the movie.) And I know there's some people who are just sexist and don't want a female Jedi in THEIR Star Wars. BUT by the end of the movie she's already really great at Jedi stuff, she's the new captain of the Millennium Falcoln, she's best friends with the coolest dude (Chewie) AND she can understand droids and Wookiees...you don't have to be sexist to think that's a bit much. It reminded me of Kirk going from Cadet to Captain of the Enterprise within a few days in the first JJ Trek. But Daisy was so great that Rey never annoyed me.

Sure Rey did a lot, but I thought there was enough build up for that by the end she had earned all of that.

 

[Unicron]

So did anyone have specific "small touches" that they liked? On a visual level, I think J. J. did a pretty good job overall, and I think my personal favorite was Rey's "magic" bread. It's a tiny few seconds but it's a great effect.

 

[davejames]

Yeah even though most of us already assumed Rey would end up being the Jedi, it was still a really cool surprise to see her wielding the lightsaber for the first time in the actual movie. And that it wasn't something we were already completely used to seeing by that point.

And as for Kylo, I thought his tantrums and outbursts did more than enough to suggest the conflict within him.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

So did anyone have specific "small touches" that they liked? On a visual level, I think J. J. did a pretty good job overall, and I think my personal favorite was Rey's "magic" bread. It's a tiny few seconds but it's a great effect.

I thought the Rebel Fighter Pilot doll in her "apartment" was a nice touch.

 

[Admiral2]

So did anyone have specific "small touches" that they liked? On a visual level, I think J. J. did a pretty good job overall, and I think my personal favorite was Rey's "magic" bread. It's a tiny few seconds but it's a great effect.

I mentioned the Alka Seltzer bread a while back. That was one of my favorites too.

 

[BigJake]

And as for Kylo, I thought his tantrums and outbursts did more than enough to suggest the conflict within him.

The scene where he's trashing the cell Rey just escaped from, and a pair of troopers come marching up, hear what's going on and discreetly turn and march back the way they came. Gold.

 

[Mr Light]

I just saw it a third time, and it's still hugely entertaining. It's so fast paced it never gets boring and I'm still pondering things unexplained.

The thing that strikes me more and more is that the Starkiller weapon story line is completely superfluous to the story. It should just been about the map for Luke, and the big battle at the end is the Resistance striking the First Order stronghold so that our heroes can escape with the map. With that one change, there is no need for a super weapon story line.

The other weird thing I noticed that the Starkiller weapon just appears halfway through the movie without any set up. It's not in the opening crawl and nobody talks about it before that.

Also, there's NO WAY Rey isn't Luke's kid. The mother was killed in the Kylo Uprising and that's part of why Luke grief stricken fled known space.

 

[SeerSGB]

Loved the movie. It did suffer, IMO, from JJ's style towards compressed storytelling and not really picking a story and running with it, but still it's a great movie.

Wasn't a big fan of Finn. Felt like they were going for a Will Smith vibe early in the movie, but the character never settled into one I could really like or hate. He was just sort of there.

Like Poe a lot more than I thought. Reminded me a lot of Wedge from the X-Wing novel series, so that was a big plus.

And best scene, for me, was seeing the T-70s coming in low and fast over the water.

 

[Trekkin]

The thing that strikes me more and more is that the Starkiller weapon story line is completely superfluous to the story. It should just been about the map for Luke, and the big battle at the end is the Resistance striking the First Order stronghold so that our heroes can escape with the map. With that one change, there is no need for a super weapon story line.

The other weird thing I noticed that the Starkiller weapon just appears halfway through the movie without any set up. It's not in the opening crawl and nobody talks about it before that.

It is a little. Snoke and the Admiral mention it (obviously) and Finn alludes to it when he's explaining to Maz why they should just run ("You don't know what they're capable of. You haven't seen the what I've seen." Turns out he'd been stationed there.)

In terms of on-screen events there's not much in between that stuff and it's use, but in terms of run-time that was about 10-15 minutes before Starkiller actually appeared.

 

[RunawayStarShip]

I just saw it a third time, and it's still hugely entertaining. It's so fast paced it never gets boring and I'm still pondering things unexplained.

The thing that strikes me more and more is that the Starkiller weapon story line is completely superfluous to the story. It should just been about the map for Luke, and the big battle at the end is the Resistance striking the First Order stronghold so that our heroes can escape with the map. With that one change, there is no need for a super weapon story line.

The other weird thing I noticed that the Starkiller weapon just appears halfway through the movie without any set up. It's not in the opening crawl and nobody talks about it before that.

Also, there's NO WAY Rey isn't Luke's kid. The mother was killed in the Kylo Uprising and that's part of why Luke grief stricken fled known space.

Perhaps they thought that it would have been making Luke too much of a MacGuffin? Although I suppose that in some ways this makes Luke even more of a MacGuffin. "We have a weapon that can destroy planets anywhere in the galaxy! ... Just make sure the Resistance can't find Skywalker or we're screwed..." The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force, indeed...

I know TFA is heavily implying that Rey is Luke's child, but there are other reasons why Luke became a hermit.

Firstly, he tried to resurrect the Jedi Order, a task that likely took more than a decade of his life's work, but it's basically all destroyed in one fell swoop. The net result of his efforts? One burgeoning Sith lord, who's trying his best to replace Darth Vader, and the "Knights of Ren".

As for the Galactic Civil War, that was apparently over for a while. The New Republic co-existed peacefully with the Imperial remnant/First Order for years (until the surprise Starkiller Base attack in TFA... credit to Leia for anticipating the backstabbing by setting up the unsanctioned Resistance). A lone Jedi knight probably wasn't needed in a time of peace. At that point in his life, searching for the first Jedi temple in the hopes of learning more was probably the best choice.

 

[JarodRussell]

My take:

• excellent production value
• Han Solos part was awesome
• there were way too many contrivances
• the characters showed way too many skills without training (like using a lightsaber)
• the lightsaber plot was badly done. Why not let Rey find it in the desert, and start the movie from that, and have that whole "the Force/Saber calls you" thing drive the plot?
• the plot was way too close to ANH
• the Falcon took way too much damage. Trees, rocks, ice?
• Super Gollum was not something I hoped for

 

[Ithekro]

That piece of junk keeps flying though.

 

[davejames]

After all the talk beforehand, I was kinda bummed we didn't see more of those Knights of Ren than a brief glimpse in a a vision. In fact I think they might have made for a much more interesting and original threat to our heroes than Starkiller Base.

Here's hoping they have plans to do more with them in the sequels...

 

[johnjm22]

The movie feels strangely small at times. Abrams likes to advance the story so quickly, that you don't get a sense of travel time. It makes what's supposed to be a vast galaxy feel smaller than it should be.

I still enjoyed it overall, but I'm glad Abrams won't be directing any more of these (hopefully).

 

[kirk55555]

I just got to see it today. It was great. My Dad, younger brother and I went to a 12:30pm screening and got there early. That was lucky, because it ended up selling out. It was was great. Like others have said it took a lot from Episode IV, but that didn't bother me at all. Rey was amazing, she's a great character and I can't wait to see more with her. Easily my favorite character in the movie. Her fight with Kylo Ren was intense, and the setting for it was really cool. The final scene of the movie with her and Luke really got me pumped for a sequel.

Finn was also very good, although I liked Rey a bit better. It kind of felt like his story was rushed a bit, but he was still a good character and it will be interesting to see where he goes from here. Poe was fine, although he didn't do as much as I thought he would. Han Solo was Han Solo, Ford nailed the role like he had never left. His death, while I'd already been spoiled to it, was intense, and didn't feel like a bad way for the character to go out. We didn't get much of Leia, but what we got was fine.

Kylo Ren, to me, was a bit weak. He wasn't bad, and he definitely kept my attention, but he's not as good as I thought he'd be. His issues didn't really feel like they made me more interested in him, although his final confrontation with Han was very good. He was definitely more threatening in the mask then without it, though. Not a bad villain by any stretch, but a bit underwhelming. I wish we'd seen more of Phasma, she didn't really do enough to leave a big impression on me. Snoke was kind of lame, especially his design. But, he filled his role fine, and there is plenty of time to develop him more in the next movies.

The movie also looked great, and the action was done well. Besides the already mentioned Rey/Kylo fight, the flight from Jakku was even better then I expected, and the fight on the jungle planet was intense. I also liked the music, although I get why people have said its just ok compared to some of the other films. Still, the SW logo appeared and the song started to play with the crawl, I got goosebumps.

Overall, this is easily in the top 3 SW movies for me. I can't quite say where it fits in the top 3 with Episode IV and V yet, but even with some reused story elements I still loved it and left the theater with a huge smile on my face.