Of course not; that was just his holographic projection, just like how the Emperor in the OT wasn't a ginormous floating head.
Kor
Star Wars: The Force Awakens Discussion (HERE THERE BE SPOILERS)
- Thread starter sttngfan1701d
- Start date
Of course not; that was just his holographic projection, just like how the Emperor in the OT wasn't a ginormous floating head.
Kor
The character himself was hardly distinguishable from (OT) Palpatine, though. And, size aside, I didn't particularly care for the character design and CGI rendering.
On the plus side of character design and execution, I thought BB-8 was a true joy to watch on screen.
On the plus side of character design and execution, I thought BB-8 was a true joy to watch on screen.
I got the impression that Snoke will turn out to be really small in the flesh. Like, Yoda-tiny. The scale of the wrinkles and pores on his skin in combination with his very translucent flesh suggested small creature of some sort. Plus there was something of a Wizard of Oz vibe about his hologram, wasn't there?
Calling it now: Snoke is the Dark Side equivalent of Yoda for the new trilogy
Calling it now: Snoke is the Dark Side equivalent of Yoda for the new trilogy
I can see that. He's certainly not to the scale of the hologram.
That'd be an amusing twist.
Well it's already broken the UK Box Office for takings on opening day £9.64m. With a quarter of that (£2.4m) from the midnight screenings.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-35136378
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-35136378
From ROTJ
Han: "I'm sure Luke wasn't on that thing when it blew."
Leia: "He wasn't. I can feel it."
They both should have got that feeling during the kiss in ESB. And the Force should'nt be required.
I predict that, in an even more amusing twist, Snoke will turn out to be about two inches tall. When he is finally revealed in person and it's time for the fateful duel between Snoke and Luke Skywalker, Snoke accidentally gets trampled underfoot by some random character, perhaps BB-8.
Kor
The poll is loaded. I wanted to vote that the Force has opened strong, but having been around for the summers of '77 and '80 I know that one to be the only correct choice given.
This film is phenomenal and a worthy addition to the saga; But better than Empire or A New Hope? As slight as it may be, that's probably still a little bit of a stretch.
This film is phenomenal and a worthy addition to the saga; But better than Empire or A New Hope? As slight as it may be, that's probably still a little bit of a stretch.
This is a very poor film buried under piles of nostalgia nuggets meant to pander and sell toys. These are all strung together by a mess of a plot that asked way more questions than it answered, is wholly derivative, and is punctuated by one eye-rolly contrivance after another.
There is no suspense.
There is very little drama.
There is no sense of wonder or awe due to very poor world-building.
It’s really predictable.
It’s neither artistically nor technically ambitious.
And it really emphasises why it’s usually best to not let the fans make the art.
Overall Grade: C
**tl;dr**
PLOT/STORY
This is the biggy for me. It’s a disaster and doesn’t make a lot of sense. While it does have its own narrative, I suppose, it tries so hard to weave itself into the plot of the first film that it seems to completely drown at times, only to come up for the occasional breath of air to remind the audience Rose and Jack are still with us. However, it seems like its only purpose is to be a spring-board for old tropes. Any new ideas it presents only obfuscate.
I think the biggest problem is the total lack of exposition. There is such an obvious push-back against the PT and all its talky-talky scenes, that seems Abrams basically said don’t bother with them at all. But there's so much here dangling to be explained.
It's not like the first one where there's and evil Empire and the motley band of good guys trying to stop it. Any other real background information is totally immaterial.
But by intestinally tethering itself to the old franchise all these nibblets are just setting there waiting for an answer. What the hell happened the last 20 years?! Why is #NotTheEmpire even a thing? Why is #NotTheRebels not apart of the new Republic? Who the fuck is that old guy at the beginning who possesses one half of the the Schwartz, is emphasised in the crawl, and is killed five minutes into the film never to be heard from again? Et cetera. Et cetera.
I also thought the two main characters weren’t developed nearly as much as they should have been. Rey has a good arc, but it was stretched way too thin and everything is back-loaded. There wasn’t a lot of there there, as they say. And, once again, her whole past is another question. Had Rey’s existence been the one and only dangling mystery for the next film, that would have been fine. But, instead, it was just another log on the fire.
And her “evolution” feels really forced. She comes a long way in such a short time. Her progression at the end of the film is equal to that of Luke’s at the end of Empire, without any kind of training. I guess girls mature faster than boys?
I get that there’s some kind of natural ability at play, but it really just seems like she turned-on a switch and suddenly “Look, Ma, no hands!”
And Finn really needed more development. I predicted months ago that Finn-as-a-Jedi was just a red herring for Rey. And it seems as though that is his primary purpose in the film. Even as a plot catalyst, his role could have been better served (at various points) by others. I really wanted to know what drove him and what made him go AWOL. Joining #NotTheEmpire only to find out it’s the evil and asking for a refund just doesn’t work for me. Of course, this wouldn’t be a problem if there was some explanation on what the fuck #NotTheEmpire even was or how people became nuStorm Troopers to begin with. Since it’s clearly not the prevailing government anymore, they surely aren’t mandatory conscripts. The have a Bond, Blofeld random henchmen No. One-Five-Eight feel to them, and that’s just silly.
My next biggest problem is the new story elements the film does introduce represent everything I hate about the EU. It’s just goofy fanwank garbage. Ben Solo? Seriously? There aren’t enough rolly eyes in the universe.
And the whole Dr. Philesque family drama crap really makes Luke and Han come off in a bad light. Basically, at the first sign of family strife, they both wash their hands of the whole affair and run off to parts unknown to bury their heads in the sand. Way to go, Han. Your kid gets tricked into the darkside-offender-down-the-street’s van by force candy, and instead of searching for him (even if he doesn’t want to be found) like any decent father would, you leave his grieving mother and “go do what you know best.”
Good going. /Golfclap.
Frankly, Deadbeat-Dad Solo deserved the glowstick to the gut. Completely ruined the character for me.
Luke more or less does the same. Except he makes a game of hide and seek of if. The stuff of legend. And whole plots to movies? I guess? I really wish Luke was the one on #NotTatooine. (More on that later.) He could’ve then literally buried his head in the sand. Because symbolism.
And last is the contrivances. I could have been fine with a few, but there were just so many. But I’m going to only focus on two:
The first is the Falcon being on #NotTatooine because reasons. This was clearly one of those things simply there to pander and tug at nostalgia strings. And it almost works. Except it really needed a “Of all the cantinas on all the planets of the galaxy…” moment to really bind the emotional impact and slip past the obvious plot hole. Instead, they do the exact opposite and bring the plot hole to focus with this really bizarre and clunky tale of events that only makes the whole thing seem even more contrived and ridiculous.
The other is R2 randomly kicking his droid depression stupar and remembering he has the other half of the Schwartz. Seriously. If R2 isn’t in the back cutting himself with his welding torch for the feels and says he’s got half the map all along, it completely changes the narrative of the film.
As droids go, he’s proven himself to be really, really resourceful. But instead of out actively
trying to find Luke, he just sits in the back on “low” mode and jams to Bith Emo.
Oh yeah. And then there was the time Poe just magically appears out of nowhere because reasons. Zoinks!
Grade: D
ACTING/CAST
For the most part, it’s just okay. The one stand-out is, of course, Ridley. She has some really great moments. And some not so great. You can tell the Jakku scenes were filmed early, because she’s really wooden in a lot of them.
I guess Boyega was also pretty good for the most part. I just found Finn to be a mostly uninteresting character (for reasons stated above), so he really didn’t do much for me. He has so much potential, though, so I hope this gets turned around in the next one.
Driver was nothing special. Really don’t understand what people see here. With the mask, he wasn’t menacing like the Jones/Prowse combo. He didn’t ooze awesome like Park. And he wasn’t charmingly absurd like McDairmid. He’s just banal and boring like Lee.
Without the mask, he was just your basic eight year old who has temper tantrums because daddy issues. But he has tears feels! Boo-hoo. So did Christensen.
I’m not sure what the hell Isaac, Gleeson, and Christie were doing in this film, especially given how much they were put on display during pressers.
Poe didn’t need to be in the film at all. The opening would have worked so much better if he wasn’t in it. #NotTheEmpire goes down to the planet looking for the first half of the Schwartz. Ren kills Lor San Whatever and tasks the nuTroopers to cleanse the village. Finn snatches BB-8 and takes off for the dunes in defiance.
So I guess he was just there to magically appear at the end? Zoinks!? And lead #RedSquadronButNotRedSquadron.
*As a side note, I’d just like to say I found the Red Squad stand-ins to be completely forgettable. They were just set-pieces, completely unlike Porkins, Biggs, Wedge, etc. who all had their own personalities and were totally life-like.
I thought Christie and Gleeson were totally interchangeable and could have easily been condensed down to one person. Going in, I really expected a lot from Christie, but she was just another faceless (literally) drone--with shinier armor. I think she could have just as easily filled the whole sibling rivalry and #NotTarkin roles, leaving some of Gleeson’s heavier stuff for Driver--especially the rally speech. This would have given him some much-needed depth.
As for the oldies:
Hamill has no lines.
Fisher and Daniels have hardly any lines.
And Ford has just enough lines to phone it in like he did with Jedi.
Serkis is too terrible to even warrant comment. (Even though I commented.)
Grade: B
WRITING/DIALOG
Another miss for me. It’s not bad, mind you--or at least, not Sandy midi-chlorians bad. And there’s certainly some good humor to be had here and there. It’s just very by the numbers plain.
It lacks that cumbersome yet unique allure concealed within nerf herders, mistaken droids, and the random foul stench. None of that whispy, haughty speak of Jedi. Or little green dudes talking backwards.
There’s always been a sort of classic stage cadence and parlance to Star Wars dialog, and it’s totally absent here.
Granted, Lucas went way overboard with it in the prequels, and that didn’t work either. But, what’s odd, is Kasdan found such a perfect balance of emulation-but-not to the point of silliness before. Yet he didn’t even try here.
But, then again. No sand. And I do hate sand.
Grade: B-
MUSIC
This was probably the one thing I found most disappointing. For a Williams [Star Wars] score, it’s so pedestrian and mediocre. It’s not bad, the new melodies are pleasing enough. I like Rey’s theme and all. But it just lacks that John Williams magical hook. Really, the new music just sounds like it could have been composed by 100 different people for 100 different films.
The old stuff is just there to be there. At times, it seems like certain cues are plopped in predetermined spaces. Leia is on screen? Cue her theme. That sort of thing. It’s really mechanical and not organic. (Organa?)
And the score as a whole it’s not at all operatic. This is a big oops for me. Abrams just cues it as a movie and its score instead of an actual opera. The best Star Wars music and narrate the scene and, ultimately, make the dialog completely complimentary. I can’t think of a single scene in the film that's like that.
Grade: B-
TECHNICAL STUFF
The second weakest bit for me, and really where Abrams fails most as a director. This whole world he creates is just so lifeless and drab and--this is a biggy--totally terrestrial. Not once during the film did I feel like I was absorbed into a galaxy far, far away.
I think the first problem was this silly need to cling so desperately to practical effects. Yet another backlash against the prequels. Yes. They used way too much CGI. But that doesn’t mean they needed to do away with it almost completely. And, in an almost ironic twist, what CGI he did use was really poor.
So while each of the creatures are novel and quaint on an individual level, their collective sum doesn’t amount to much. It’s like the exact opposite of Lucas and the prequels who spent way too much time building these large elaborate worlds, and didn’t focus enough on the minutia.
And, honestly, I’ve always seen the whole concept of “practical effects” to be a bit of a placebo. They can be neat and quirky in their own right. But at the end of the day, props are props and actors are actors; it doesn’t matter if Yorick is a real human head or a flabby mass of photons as long as the Dane can play.
Some well placed CGI could have gone a long way in making some of these worlds feel more alien.
But the practical effects alone would have been fine, had he actually used them practically instead of just having them there for the sake of it. Aside from a few shots at the Jakku outpost and a few seconds in the cantina, they seem to just be there. All together, there were probably more creatures and other props than there were on the original Tatooine. But instead of intermixing like Lucas did with the Jawas, and the architecture, and Banthas/Tuskans, and the two suns to establish it as an alien planet, Abrams just threw everything into the pot at once then sent Rey off into the desert.
Even cramped sound stage Dagobah felt more alien than any of the planets here.
The other planet and #NotASpaceStationIt’sAPlant?Maybe? Didn’t really have anything alien about them at all. The second planet felt about as extraterrestrial as anything on SG-1, and the space station base was just a generic alpine setting. There was hardly any architecture or alien flora or fauna. Pine trees look alien I suppose?
I mean, the second planet looked mostly on par with Yavin, but Yavin had that fat-ass gas giant filling up half the sky. And Endor, was also just woodlands. But you still had the silhouette of the Death Star in the sky to set the atmosphere, exclimated by the walkers marching through the forest towards the Ewok settlements. It really makes a difference.
What’s the real kicker here is he did such a masterful job with Nibiru. It was this lush, beautiful planet that, even those it was only on screen a few minutes, inspired wonder and awe. I got none of that here.
And I was really expecting he’d bring in a new planet of Nibiru’s quality, but all I saw was stuff that could have been filmed a few miles from here.
I hated Ren’s electronic voice. It wasn’t annoying in the sense that Bale-voice was annoying, I found it annoying to the point it was actually starting to hurt my ears and give me a headache.
I don’t know if it was a problem with the theatre, but it sounded like someone on an old touch-tone phone with their mouth right up to the receiver shouting as loud as they can.
Nor did I care for the lens filtering. I thought it sucked the life right out of everything. The color was all washed out and it made everything feel drab and sterile. It's more or less the same filters he used for Trek, but, ultimately, Trek is of Earth.
Star Wars style, however, has always been about colors to me: The Yavin sky, the clouds on Bespin, even, as computer generated as they may be, Naboo, Mustafar, Coruscant, etc. were all teeming with color. They had this sort of ethereal--almost fairytale--quality to them, much like the illustrations one might find in a collection of HCA or Grimm works. This really accentuates the fantasy, otherworldly aspect of it all. Washing that all out just totally kills the ambiance.
As I said up-top, I think they should have had Luke be stranded on the #NotTatoonie planet. I guess they needed to have a third desert planet (Seventh visit!) because reasons. Parallelism? I really don't know. But if it is symmetry they're going for here I think Luke works better, anyway.
A desert planet would be perfect for him. It's desolate and out of the way. It's totally inhospitable to most people, but he knows how to work a moister vap and otherwise survive there.
On the other hand, Jakku would have been great as the ocean planet. The colony would instead be scattered about the archipelago and could be a sort of mix between SW and PotC. The scavengers could wear Imperial inspired scuba gear, picking over wrecked Imperial ships scattered about the ocean floor.
It just would have been really nice to open someplace other than a desert.
Sand.
Grade: C-
All in all, it was a really bad experience for me. It didn’t help that I’ve been really sick the last week. I had a really terrible but overpriced meal before the show, and it was late. (Between the trailers and ads, it was almost 1am before the movie actually started.) And, as I said, I started getting a bad headache halfway through the film. And I started getting bored. By the start of the third act, I was constantly checking my phone for the time, just hoping the damn thing would hurry up and finish so I could go home.
I wasn’t having any fun, and amidst my misery I couldn’t help but focus on the flaws. And there are a lot of them.
There is no suspense.
There is very little drama.
There is no sense of wonder or awe due to very poor world-building.
It’s really predictable.
It’s neither artistically nor technically ambitious.
And it really emphasises why it’s usually best to not let the fans make the art.
Overall Grade: C
**tl;dr**
PLOT/STORY
This is the biggy for me. It’s a disaster and doesn’t make a lot of sense. While it does have its own narrative, I suppose, it tries so hard to weave itself into the plot of the first film that it seems to completely drown at times, only to come up for the occasional breath of air to remind the audience Rose and Jack are still with us. However, it seems like its only purpose is to be a spring-board for old tropes. Any new ideas it presents only obfuscate.
I think the biggest problem is the total lack of exposition. There is such an obvious push-back against the PT and all its talky-talky scenes, that seems Abrams basically said don’t bother with them at all. But there's so much here dangling to be explained.
It's not like the first one where there's and evil Empire and the motley band of good guys trying to stop it. Any other real background information is totally immaterial.
But by intestinally tethering itself to the old franchise all these nibblets are just setting there waiting for an answer. What the hell happened the last 20 years?! Why is #NotTheEmpire even a thing? Why is #NotTheRebels not apart of the new Republic? Who the fuck is that old guy at the beginning who possesses one half of the the Schwartz, is emphasised in the crawl, and is killed five minutes into the film never to be heard from again? Et cetera. Et cetera.
I also thought the two main characters weren’t developed nearly as much as they should have been. Rey has a good arc, but it was stretched way too thin and everything is back-loaded. There wasn’t a lot of there there, as they say. And, once again, her whole past is another question. Had Rey’s existence been the one and only dangling mystery for the next film, that would have been fine. But, instead, it was just another log on the fire.
And her “evolution” feels really forced. She comes a long way in such a short time. Her progression at the end of the film is equal to that of Luke’s at the end of Empire, without any kind of training. I guess girls mature faster than boys?
I get that there’s some kind of natural ability at play, but it really just seems like she turned-on a switch and suddenly “Look, Ma, no hands!”
And Finn really needed more development. I predicted months ago that Finn-as-a-Jedi was just a red herring for Rey. And it seems as though that is his primary purpose in the film. Even as a plot catalyst, his role could have been better served (at various points) by others. I really wanted to know what drove him and what made him go AWOL. Joining #NotTheEmpire only to find out it’s the evil and asking for a refund just doesn’t work for me. Of course, this wouldn’t be a problem if there was some explanation on what the fuck #NotTheEmpire even was or how people became nuStorm Troopers to begin with. Since it’s clearly not the prevailing government anymore, they surely aren’t mandatory conscripts. The have a Bond, Blofeld random henchmen No. One-Five-Eight feel to them, and that’s just silly.
My next biggest problem is the new story elements the film does introduce represent everything I hate about the EU. It’s just goofy fanwank garbage. Ben Solo? Seriously? There aren’t enough rolly eyes in the universe.
And the whole Dr. Philesque family drama crap really makes Luke and Han come off in a bad light. Basically, at the first sign of family strife, they both wash their hands of the whole affair and run off to parts unknown to bury their heads in the sand. Way to go, Han. Your kid gets tricked into the darkside-offender-down-the-street’s van by force candy, and instead of searching for him (even if he doesn’t want to be found) like any decent father would, you leave his grieving mother and “go do what you know best.”
Good going. /Golfclap.
Frankly, Deadbeat-Dad Solo deserved the glowstick to the gut. Completely ruined the character for me.
Luke more or less does the same. Except he makes a game of hide and seek of if. The stuff of legend. And whole plots to movies? I guess? I really wish Luke was the one on #NotTatooine. (More on that later.) He could’ve then literally buried his head in the sand. Because symbolism.
And last is the contrivances. I could have been fine with a few, but there were just so many. But I’m going to only focus on two:
The first is the Falcon being on #NotTatooine because reasons. This was clearly one of those things simply there to pander and tug at nostalgia strings. And it almost works. Except it really needed a “Of all the cantinas on all the planets of the galaxy…” moment to really bind the emotional impact and slip past the obvious plot hole. Instead, they do the exact opposite and bring the plot hole to focus with this really bizarre and clunky tale of events that only makes the whole thing seem even more contrived and ridiculous.
The other is R2 randomly kicking his droid depression stupar and remembering he has the other half of the Schwartz. Seriously. If R2 isn’t in the back cutting himself with his welding torch for the feels and says he’s got half the map all along, it completely changes the narrative of the film.
As droids go, he’s proven himself to be really, really resourceful. But instead of out actively
trying to find Luke, he just sits in the back on “low” mode and jams to Bith Emo.
Oh yeah. And then there was the time Poe just magically appears out of nowhere because reasons. Zoinks!
Grade: D
ACTING/CAST
For the most part, it’s just okay. The one stand-out is, of course, Ridley. She has some really great moments. And some not so great. You can tell the Jakku scenes were filmed early, because she’s really wooden in a lot of them.
I guess Boyega was also pretty good for the most part. I just found Finn to be a mostly uninteresting character (for reasons stated above), so he really didn’t do much for me. He has so much potential, though, so I hope this gets turned around in the next one.
Driver was nothing special. Really don’t understand what people see here. With the mask, he wasn’t menacing like the Jones/Prowse combo. He didn’t ooze awesome like Park. And he wasn’t charmingly absurd like McDairmid. He’s just banal and boring like Lee.
Without the mask, he was just your basic eight year old who has temper tantrums because daddy issues. But he has tears feels! Boo-hoo. So did Christensen.
I’m not sure what the hell Isaac, Gleeson, and Christie were doing in this film, especially given how much they were put on display during pressers.
Poe didn’t need to be in the film at all. The opening would have worked so much better if he wasn’t in it. #NotTheEmpire goes down to the planet looking for the first half of the Schwartz. Ren kills Lor San Whatever and tasks the nuTroopers to cleanse the village. Finn snatches BB-8 and takes off for the dunes in defiance.
So I guess he was just there to magically appear at the end? Zoinks!? And lead #RedSquadronButNotRedSquadron.
*As a side note, I’d just like to say I found the Red Squad stand-ins to be completely forgettable. They were just set-pieces, completely unlike Porkins, Biggs, Wedge, etc. who all had their own personalities and were totally life-like.
I thought Christie and Gleeson were totally interchangeable and could have easily been condensed down to one person. Going in, I really expected a lot from Christie, but she was just another faceless (literally) drone--with shinier armor. I think she could have just as easily filled the whole sibling rivalry and #NotTarkin roles, leaving some of Gleeson’s heavier stuff for Driver--especially the rally speech. This would have given him some much-needed depth.
As for the oldies:
Hamill has no lines.
Fisher and Daniels have hardly any lines.
And Ford has just enough lines to phone it in like he did with Jedi.
Serkis is too terrible to even warrant comment. (Even though I commented.)
Grade: B
WRITING/DIALOG
Another miss for me. It’s not bad, mind you--or at least, not Sandy midi-chlorians bad. And there’s certainly some good humor to be had here and there. It’s just very by the numbers plain.
It lacks that cumbersome yet unique allure concealed within nerf herders, mistaken droids, and the random foul stench. None of that whispy, haughty speak of Jedi. Or little green dudes talking backwards.
There’s always been a sort of classic stage cadence and parlance to Star Wars dialog, and it’s totally absent here.
Granted, Lucas went way overboard with it in the prequels, and that didn’t work either. But, what’s odd, is Kasdan found such a perfect balance of emulation-but-not to the point of silliness before. Yet he didn’t even try here.
But, then again. No sand. And I do hate sand.
Grade: B-
MUSIC
This was probably the one thing I found most disappointing. For a Williams [Star Wars] score, it’s so pedestrian and mediocre. It’s not bad, the new melodies are pleasing enough. I like Rey’s theme and all. But it just lacks that John Williams magical hook. Really, the new music just sounds like it could have been composed by 100 different people for 100 different films.
The old stuff is just there to be there. At times, it seems like certain cues are plopped in predetermined spaces. Leia is on screen? Cue her theme. That sort of thing. It’s really mechanical and not organic. (Organa?)
And the score as a whole it’s not at all operatic. This is a big oops for me. Abrams just cues it as a movie and its score instead of an actual opera. The best Star Wars music and narrate the scene and, ultimately, make the dialog completely complimentary. I can’t think of a single scene in the film that's like that.
Grade: B-
TECHNICAL STUFF
The second weakest bit for me, and really where Abrams fails most as a director. This whole world he creates is just so lifeless and drab and--this is a biggy--totally terrestrial. Not once during the film did I feel like I was absorbed into a galaxy far, far away.
I think the first problem was this silly need to cling so desperately to practical effects. Yet another backlash against the prequels. Yes. They used way too much CGI. But that doesn’t mean they needed to do away with it almost completely. And, in an almost ironic twist, what CGI he did use was really poor.
So while each of the creatures are novel and quaint on an individual level, their collective sum doesn’t amount to much. It’s like the exact opposite of Lucas and the prequels who spent way too much time building these large elaborate worlds, and didn’t focus enough on the minutia.
And, honestly, I’ve always seen the whole concept of “practical effects” to be a bit of a placebo. They can be neat and quirky in their own right. But at the end of the day, props are props and actors are actors; it doesn’t matter if Yorick is a real human head or a flabby mass of photons as long as the Dane can play.
Some well placed CGI could have gone a long way in making some of these worlds feel more alien.
But the practical effects alone would have been fine, had he actually used them practically instead of just having them there for the sake of it. Aside from a few shots at the Jakku outpost and a few seconds in the cantina, they seem to just be there. All together, there were probably more creatures and other props than there were on the original Tatooine. But instead of intermixing like Lucas did with the Jawas, and the architecture, and Banthas/Tuskans, and the two suns to establish it as an alien planet, Abrams just threw everything into the pot at once then sent Rey off into the desert.
Even cramped sound stage Dagobah felt more alien than any of the planets here.
The other planet and #NotASpaceStationIt’sAPlant?Maybe? Didn’t really have anything alien about them at all. The second planet felt about as extraterrestrial as anything on SG-1, and the space station base was just a generic alpine setting. There was hardly any architecture or alien flora or fauna. Pine trees look alien I suppose?
I mean, the second planet looked mostly on par with Yavin, but Yavin had that fat-ass gas giant filling up half the sky. And Endor, was also just woodlands. But you still had the silhouette of the Death Star in the sky to set the atmosphere, exclimated by the walkers marching through the forest towards the Ewok settlements. It really makes a difference.
What’s the real kicker here is he did such a masterful job with Nibiru. It was this lush, beautiful planet that, even those it was only on screen a few minutes, inspired wonder and awe. I got none of that here.
And I was really expecting he’d bring in a new planet of Nibiru’s quality, but all I saw was stuff that could have been filmed a few miles from here.
I hated Ren’s electronic voice. It wasn’t annoying in the sense that Bale-voice was annoying, I found it annoying to the point it was actually starting to hurt my ears and give me a headache.
I don’t know if it was a problem with the theatre, but it sounded like someone on an old touch-tone phone with their mouth right up to the receiver shouting as loud as they can.
Nor did I care for the lens filtering. I thought it sucked the life right out of everything. The color was all washed out and it made everything feel drab and sterile. It's more or less the same filters he used for Trek, but, ultimately, Trek is of Earth.
Star Wars style, however, has always been about colors to me: The Yavin sky, the clouds on Bespin, even, as computer generated as they may be, Naboo, Mustafar, Coruscant, etc. were all teeming with color. They had this sort of ethereal--almost fairytale--quality to them, much like the illustrations one might find in a collection of HCA or Grimm works. This really accentuates the fantasy, otherworldly aspect of it all. Washing that all out just totally kills the ambiance.
As I said up-top, I think they should have had Luke be stranded on the #NotTatoonie planet. I guess they needed to have a third desert planet (Seventh visit!) because reasons. Parallelism? I really don't know. But if it is symmetry they're going for here I think Luke works better, anyway.
A desert planet would be perfect for him. It's desolate and out of the way. It's totally inhospitable to most people, but he knows how to work a moister vap and otherwise survive there.
On the other hand, Jakku would have been great as the ocean planet. The colony would instead be scattered about the archipelago and could be a sort of mix between SW and PotC. The scavengers could wear Imperial inspired scuba gear, picking over wrecked Imperial ships scattered about the ocean floor.
It just would have been really nice to open someplace other than a desert.
Sand.
Grade: C-
All in all, it was a really bad experience for me. It didn’t help that I’ve been really sick the last week. I had a really terrible but overpriced meal before the show, and it was late. (Between the trailers and ads, it was almost 1am before the movie actually started.) And, as I said, I started getting a bad headache halfway through the film. And I started getting bored. By the start of the third act, I was constantly checking my phone for the time, just hoping the damn thing would hurry up and finish so I could go home.
I wasn’t having any fun, and amidst my misery I couldn’t help but focus on the flaws. And there are a lot of them.
I would assume that the Force abilities she has are one of the reasons she's such a formidable General now. Hopefully canon fiction will explain further between the films.
Re: Star Wars: The Force Awakens REVIEWS/DISCUSSION
You do know that by this time, all knowledge of the Force like that is (most likely) gone? FWIW, I liked the idea of the midochlorians and how they tell you about the Force, and how to use it and not abuse it. I never had a problem with the prequels, and accept them for the great films they are.
Somebody's written a great defense of the midichlorians and what they do:
Why I Love The Phantom Meance, Part V-I Am Ready to Face the Trials: The Midichlorians
You do know that by this time, all knowledge of the Force like that is (most likely) gone? FWIW, I liked the idea of the midochlorians and how they tell you about the Force, and how to use it and not abuse it. I never had a problem with the prequels, and accept them for the great films they are.
Somebody's written a great defense of the midichlorians and what they do:
Why I Love The Phantom Meance, Part V-I Am Ready to Face the Trials: The Midichlorians
I never really had a problem with the Midchlorians. why wouldn't someone who could manipulate the Force have a slightly different body chemistry to regular folk?
