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

Seein it in just over two hours (10am Mpls. time). Seeing it again right after at 1pm, so excited.

 

I saw it last night at 2AM so my mind is still a little groggy, so I may need to see it again to collect all my thoughts. I will say this, I feel that the first 2/3 of the movie were very strong, however going into the third act I feel the movie had a lot of problems and there were a lot of logical jumps you had to take to get from point A to point B. The pacing felt off, a major character death felt like a convenient plot point just meant to startle etc.

In that sense, I would say that the movie falls into the good but flawed category for me.

 

I liked it. Somehow it felt kind of "by the numbers," though... Maybe a little too derivative, maybe not quite enough risk-taking with the story.

I'm glad there was no "cutesy" crud like Ewoks or Jar-Jar.

Kylo Ren's use of the Force to read people's thoughts was interesting.

Was Coruscant the futuristic planet that was destroyed?

What exactly is the deal with the New Republic? Not much seems to have changed in thirty years.

Why can't the Republic wage a bigger, more direct fight against such a huge threat as the First Order, instead of just sitting in the background and making a rag-tag "resistance" do everything? And aren't there any capital ships in the good guys' fleet?

Kor

 

Do they say why Luke did not hunt down Kylo/Ben after he murdered the other students? I'm guessing the same reason Obi Wan and Luke couldn't bring themselves to finish Vader.

 

You succinctly spoke to my biggest gripe with the movie. I felt in some ways it was a paint by the numbers star wars movie. Someone took a hard look at the formula for ANH and essentially updated it. Need a Darth Vader, ok we will add Kylo Ren, we need a Death Star lite weapon, enter the Star Killer Base, need a cantina scene, check, a heroic death, an epic space battle, yes lets add all of this. I mean hell at the end of the movie Skywalker is wearing the exact same garb as Ben Kenobi from ANH. It all felt very generic in some sense.

Also I'm no expert on the new canon after the reboot, but the planet that was destroyed was not Coruscant, it was Chandrila, the homeworld of Mon Mothma and the capital of the New Republic.

As for the state of the Rebellion, after ROTJ, the Rebels and the Imperials fought one last major battle at Jakku. The Imperials got trounced and a peace treaty was signed. Shortly after this Mon Mothma got rid of the emergency powers that existed under Palpatine and decentralized the Republic's armed forces. Basically, each homeworld has their own fleet for protection, and the Resistance(why are they still called this after 30 years, another gripe) basically was just about taking the fight to the holdouts of the Empire to make sure they didn't rise again. A major flaw in the movie for me was not explaining or giving us update on the state of the galaxy after 30 years.

Someone please come in and correct me if I am wrong.

Edit: Nevermind, this link does a better job explaining everything than I did. http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/12...he-resistance-in-star-wars-the-force-awakens/

 

I didn't like it. It didn't spoil the movie or anything but it didn't add anything either. The fighter planes and whatnot had that pop-up book look and I had to take off the glasses a few times to relax my eyes.

 

What is it with JJ leaving out important information which must be filled by other sources like comics or novels? It's annoying. With Star Wars, couldn't he at least cover that in the opening crawl?

 

Just a few impressions I wanted to comment on…

I got to see the movie last night twice. The first showing was in 2D, unfortunately I can’t really give too much of an opinion on it since I was smashed up against the screen in the second row. Not any fault of the movie, just couldn’t get better seats at the time. The second showing was in 3D and I had prime seats for that one. While I’m not going to say it was “Avatar” good as far as a 3D film, it was firmly in the second tier and definitely worth the price of admission if you’re undecided on which to see.

As much as we were all anticipating the return of the original “big three” (Luke, Leia and Han), the real standout of this film was the triad of Rey, Fin and BB-8. I knew going into this that we were thankfully not getting the green screen “spectacle” that was the prequel trilogy, but I was still nervous about what we would be seeing out of the new cast members and was dreading the second coming of Hayden Christensen. I can safely say my worries have been nullified… Daisy Ridley and John Boyega really knocked it out of the park. The dialogue never felt stilted and I wasn’t taken out of the movie during the comedic moments, which is a real testament to the skill that these two displayed in spite of the pressure on them and lack of experience going into a movie as hugely anticipated as this one. Congrats to them and kudos to J.J. Abrams and the rest of the powers that be for giving a couple of relative unknowns a chance to shine in what may turn out to be one of the biggest movies of the 21st century.

The only parts of the movie I was really disappointed by were the ones involving the two CGI motion capture characters, Supreme Leader Snoke and Maz Kanata. Let me be clear in saying that my criticisms are purely technical and by no means should detract from their importance to the story and the work that their actors put into them. Andy Serkis as always was top notch and Lupita Nyong'o was excellent, especially considering this was probably way outside of what she’s used to working on. However Maz felt really out of place surrounded by so many practical effect aliens and could probably have been incorporated just as easily if portrayed practically. Snoke on the other hand, is the bigger let down to me. Despite being a literal giant who stood stories over any character he shared the screen with, I felt that his character design was pretty bland and overly humanoid. Especially when factoring in the mystery about his character leading up the release. Considering you have a motion capture actor of Serkis’ magnitude and knowing what we can get out of CGI technology today. Why not go a little more outlandish with how you want the character to act and look? But, when taken as a whole, these are small problems that I can easily get passed with time.

Overall, I would say this movie well exceeded my expectations and I wouldn't hesitate to recommended it to any of my die hard star wars friends. I can't wait to see where the story takes us.

 

I thought Snoke was a giant too. Then it was revealed that he appeared as a hologram so he's probably regular sized or even smaller and just projected himself as bigger to be more intimidating.

 

Wasn't that the whole Empire thing, build big to intimidate.

 

Maybe the name Snoke is a play on 'smoke & mirrors'.

 

Find it kinda funny that some don't like the movie explaining everything, when people complained about the prequels explaining too much. Seems like a catch 22 situation.

 

For a minute I did think after it ended "who the hell was that Snoke guy, why didn't it explain it etc etc" but then you could say the same about when people saw the Emperor in Empire Strikes Back for the first time and so on.


Some positives- I thought John Boyega owned the movie and really enjoyed his performance and character. The biggest laugh in my cinema was definitely the moment between him and the BB8 with the thumbsup


Because I avoided so much of the pre-publicity of the movie I actually forgot Adam Driver was even in it, and playing Kylo Ren, so I spent the first half wondering what he looked like underneath that mask and whether we'd even see his face/head

As such how much info was actually known? I had no idea he was Han's son for example. In fact knowing very little about the movie I'd just half assumed the Daisy Ridley character was gonna be Han & Leia's daughter.



Annoyingly though someone at work casually told me last week they'd heard Han Solo maybe died in it, so when it came to it that point in the movie that spoiled it a little. Although given the setup of that scene with them so close on that bridge it was kinda obvious what was gonna happen, no? Ha, I wasn't really expecting at that point in the movie for Kylo Ren to give Han a slap on the back and be like "ok, sorry for everything, come on Dad let's go for a beer."

 

Saw it last night, thought it was crap.

I'd spoiled myself thoroughly beforehand so I thought I was prepared for the....weaker...aspects of the story, but what I wasn't prepared for was the relentless and often inappropriate jocularity, the masturbatory congratulatory tone, and the way the potentially interesting story about Rey and Finn sort of faded into the background as the story wandered through a perfunctory and unconvincing rehash of the ANH Death Star plot.

At no point did I believe that any of the characters were in any real danger. I never felt like Starkiller Base was a real location that posed a real threat. The Republic and Resistance and First Order never felt like plausible organizations staffed by actual people. And I never got the sense that I was watching real people do real things; instead, I saw actors winking at the camera while role-playing all their favorite original trilogy moments. I get that they and Abrams were having fun, but I found it very grating.

It's the first $200 million fan film, with all the shortcomings that implies.

What a disappointment.

 

I think that was a lesson that was "overlearned" from the prequels. I think they took the ball too far in the other direction.

 

When Han went down to that catwalk, I knew what was going to happen.

I was really hoping that Kylo would basically say "leave me alone old man, go away while you still can" and turn his back on him, and they would part ways. Alas, that was not meant to be.

Kor

 

I think the biggest laugh at my showing when the two troopers decided to walk in the other direction when they can Ren in one of his rages.

 

I personally thought that that death was a cheap one. It felt more like a contrived plot point to show how far Kylo had fallen rather than have any real emotional impact for me.

 

Ahh, rise of the Sequel Haters; This is going to be a fun era in Star Wars history.

For my part, I loved it and found it to be an excellent and well crafted addition to the Star Wars saga. Fifteen months is going to seem like a very long time.