Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens · 5:16pm Dec 27th, 2015
Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens
by JJ Abrams
Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope fanfic
135 minutes40 years after A New Hope, the New Order, led by a mysterious dark man in a mask with a red light saber, battles the Resistance. New faces meet old ones as they work together to destroy a super weapon even worse than the Death Star.
This is my first Star Wars fanfic. Don't like? Don't watch!!!
Why I watched it: My brother was nice enough to buy the whole family tickets to go see Star Wars: The Force Awakens for Christmas. Also, it is Star Wars.
Review
If this hadn't had "Star Wars" attached to it, it would have been panned. Frankly, I thought it was bad. I got bored while watching it. And worst of all, I'd seen this movie as a kid.
Seriously, this movie is a rehash of Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope. Star destroyer at start? Check. Attack on rebels resulting in capture of one rebel while droid escapes with important data on it? Check. Droid finds force-sensitive person (who is likely the child of another character) on a desert planet, who shows remarkable piloting ability? Check (heck, hasn't this happened three times now?). Rebel escapes from bad guys with help of reluctant ally? Check. Force sensitive person escapes desert planet literally on the freaking Millenium Falcon just ahead of the Empire after their home is destroyed? Check.
The list goes on. And none of this is even a spoiler, really, because YOU'VE ALREADY SEEN STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE. And if you haven’t, well, go watch it. It will save you the cost of admission.
Literally, the entire movie is a rehash of A New Hope.
Seriously, that's how bad this movie is. Literally everything in it, from the new not-Death Star to the death of an old mentor, is just a rehash of the original. Yes, there are some differences... but the ways in which it differs actually makes it worse, with the movie written much less tightly.
The original cast returns, and Han, Leia, and Chewbacca are highlights of the movie. Han and Chewie play a major role and are main characters, even. I was kind of disappointed that Han was randomly off on his own again, as it was very jarring when he showed up and seemed to show little interest in the Resistance, but it made sense after a while. Well, a marginal amount of sense. Chewie was Chewie, and he worked just fine. Leia is okay, but something of a bit part, which is true of C3PO and R2D2 as well, both of whom play very marginal roles but get to show off their character.
However, the new characters essentially all suck.
Finn, the rebel stormtrooper, is inconsistently characterized, and while him being terrified and something of a coward is reasonable, he suggests that the reason he fled was that he wasn't willing to kill people... and then he instantly turns around and kills a ton of his former friends without any hesitation. He alternates between cowardice and killing lots of people for much of the movie, and it is terrible. He has no real depth of character, no particularly interesting speech patterns, nothing. He's just boring.
Rey, the movie's Luke expy, is a worse character than Luke in every way. She more closely resembles Anakin Skywalker from The Phantom Menace, including in her bizarre ability to instantly do a ton of things that it took other characters a lot of training to learn how to do. This sucks and it makes no sense - Luke spent three movies learning how to become a Jedi, and was wary of the light saber, while Rey gets in a lightsaber duel the first time she picks it up (and Finn also uses it effectively, which seems questionable - how did a storm trooper learn how to use a light saber?). She is a whiner who is waiting for her parents to come back, even though it is obvious to everyone that she has been abandoned by her parents, and it seems likely she is Luke’s daughter.
Thing is, she has no real personality. She’s bland as heck. She cries a bit and doesn’t seem eager for adventure, unlike Luke, and yet masters the Force vastly faster than Luke did, who didn’t use the Force for much in the first movie (and when he did, it was awesome). She has no interesting speech patterns and no positive character traits to really latch onto. She tries to run away from the adventure (as does Finn), which feels redundant as both of the major characters we follow for the first half of the film actually end up trying to run away at the same time, which just feels annoying. We KNOW that these characters are going to end up winning the war for the Resistance (which is totally the Rebel Alliance) against The New Order (which is totally the Empire), and her running away consisted of her literally running off into the woods on a random planet without a spaceship. How was that supposed to help? A lot of what she did made little sense, and she was just kind of a boring person to follow around, and she and Finn felt rather redundant with each other.
Poe is a resistance fighter who is the Rebel Alliance’s best pilot and who flies around an x-wing. He disappears for a good chunk of the film and seems very generic – he’s just a generic rebel pilot. I wasn’t surprised when he was killed off, I didn’t even recognize him when he showed back up again because he was so forgettable, and his personality, like the others’, was very bland and generic. He was no reluctant hero, but I am forced to wonder why he wasn’t with the other two characters for most of the movie – he could have served as a logical pilot versus Rey’s sudden ability to fly the Millenium Falcon, he could have gotten more characterization, and he could have served as more of a core to the team. His death didn’t incite any feelings in me, and when he doesn’t die after all, I didn’t care either.
BB-8, the new droid, is, quite sadly, the most well-characterized of the new characters. This is sad because he has no actual ability to speak at all, and has to rely purely on body language like R2-D2 did, along with beeps. He’s a bit of comic relief and serves that role well enough, but he also interacts with the other characters in generally positive ways and serves as a bit of a conscience for them at times. Unfortunately, that’s really all there is, and by the end, there’s him, R2-D2, and C3PO, making him feel a little bit redundant.
And then there is the new villain, Kylo Ren, AKA Ben, a helmeted Darth Vader expy with a red lightsaber (with a hilt of sorts), a deep, menacing voice, and a Jedi who turned to the Dark Side of the Force. In the world’s most shocking moment, he turns out to be related to one of the heroes as well.
Seriously.
While there is some logic here – the character idolizes Darth Vader, and wants to be like him – the sad thing is that greatly damages him as a person. Darth Vader was awesome, but Kylo Ren ends up coming off as a wannabe. He’s violent and deadly, to be sure, but he’s more like a manchild than a cold, dark general. Darth Vader has a dry sense of humor, murders his own minions when they fail him with cold dispassion, shows cold anger at times, and does not like to be questioned. Kylo Ren does all of these things, but comes off as a little kid instead, someone who is trying to pretend to be Darth Vader – more like Anakin Skywalker of Episodes II-III than the menacing figure of Episodes IV-VI. He comes off as petty and incompetent, relies too heavily on the force and on his lightsaber, and is just generally kind of lame. Indeed, the entire First Order comes off this way – a bunch of kids playing at being the Empire, rather than being a cold, methodical, heartless organization driven by control. No, the New Order is a bunch of angry kids, most of their leadership is very young and comes off as being petty manchildren, and rather than being menacing, they come off more like terrorists – angry at the world and wanting to control it, instead of being brutal dictators.
This just feels bizarre, and it robs the bad guys of the gravitas they had in the original trilogy. Even in the prequel trilogy, the bad guys were at least a competent organization, but here, they didn’t even feel like they were even that.
The only new character who I took any liking to at all was Maz Kanata, a friendly, wise, short, thousand-year-old CG character who is a slightly mentor – oh, who am I kidding, she’s totally orange Yoda. That said, she’s actually a decent character, has her own speech patterns, exhibits strong body language… but she doesn’t really make much sense in the context of the universe, given that we’ve never seen her before but she seems kind of important. And why doesn’t she go along with the main cast? We don’t really know, but she stays behind on her planet. She’s fun while she’s around, but her odd decision to just kind of stick around some ruins makes no sense in context, and after she’s gone, it is back to blandsville.
The movie lacks the epic feel of the original series, and doesn’t feel lived-in, but rather tremendously contrived. There is a Republic, a Galactic Senate, and then there is a Resistance, which is… apparently the military of the Republic. What the heck? Why not just call them the army of the Republic? Why are they “The Resistance” when they have a freaking army, apparently work for the official government (or at least, a official government, even if it gets blown up by the not-Death Star), are lead by the leader of the people who beat the Empire… the list goes on. Why not keep calling them the Rebel alliance (even though they won), or why not call them the Army of the Republic, when that is the country they founded? This is just dumb.
The New Order itself is the Empire all over again, but it makes me wonder why they don’t just call them the Empire or the Imperial Remnants or the Old Empire or whatever. What is new about them? They use all the Empire’s toys. Are they a rebellion against the Republic? Are they what is left of the Empire, the parts that the Rebels couldn’t subdue/conquer? Is it just part of the same long civil war that started six movies ago? What is the freaking point? They even have a new Emperor of sorts.
Everyone can instantly do anything. Finn can instantly learn how to shoot stuff on a Tie Fighter (despite his previous reluctance at killing people, literally his only character trait and indeed, his cited reason for running AWAY from the New Order) and picks up a light saber and uses it competently on the spot, despite a great deal of time and effort going into showing Luke struggling to use the light saber in Episode IV. Rey can instantly pilot a spaceship, despite having never left the planet, as well as instantly fight competently with a light saber, even defeating a trained Jedi/Sith, using Jedi mind tricks, using telekinesis to retrieve her light saber from the snow to fight an enemy (at least that was ripping off The Empire Strikes back instead, I guess?)…
The galaxy feels tiny, as jumps between planets take no apparent time, and we literally get the situation where an intergalactic battle involves a bunch of X-wings going from one planet to another in 15 minutes – where they actually say ON SCREEN that it takes 15 minutes. Nothing that exists feels like it was naturally there, instead feeling like it is stuck there for the sole purpose of serving the plot. Plot details are brought up (like the ability to track the Millenium Falcon, which seems significant) and then discarded, as the Falcon is somehow later able to sneak onto a planet, despite the fact that apparently it has some device on it which gives it away to everyone. There’s no real sense of consistency, and the HUGE INTERPLANETARY WEAPON can apparently be seen from all over the galaxy, which makes no sense – in the original series, we had the disturbance in the Force, and that would have worked just fine here. Instead, they actually can see a planet in what seems to be another solar system being blown up, and a shot flying between star systems. It makes the whole universe feel tiny, and it makes you wonder why they can’t just look at the hyperspace weapon’s line of sight and figure out where it came from.
All in all, this movie relies very heavily on visuals and nostalgia. The plot is poor, characterization inconsistent, the new characters all bland, and at times, stuff happens which makes little sense. The only bright spots are Maz and the return of the old cast, but they spend too little time on-screen to save the film. I got bored at several points, the fact that I already knew everything that was going to happen because I watched episode 4 grated on me after a while, the obvious plot rehashing got too obvious, and by the end of it, I felt like I’d wasted two plus hours watching a CG spectacle that didn’t touch me at all, like someone had written a Star Wars fanfic starring a new cast but with some of the original characters thrown in and expected me to care. I never engaged with it, and that is a death knell for any form of fiction.
JJ Abrams, you are now officially Jar Jar Abrams to me.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Thanks to TheJediMasterEd for coming up with that final line. I would hope he shows up in the next movie, but I'm afraid that would consign him to die of old age by Episode 9.
WARNING: Major plot spoilers in the comments. You've been warned.
About time someone on here called this movie out for what it is, a cash grab.
All it is, is a modern action movie with a Star Wars paintjob, nothing more.
The only reason that Star Wars is involved at all is for this:
bestanimations.com/Money/money-animated-gif-4.gif
Hey now, we don't want to tie into the old Star Wars, that'd be confusing for a newer audience who's never seen the older movies before.
3646004
Yep, better also delete 25+ years of books while you're at it as well. We don't want the confused public to start frothing at the mouth and forget where their wallets are. Disney knew exactly what they were doing when they bought Star Wars and all the fixings.
Wow, someone else who is not fawning over the movie. I agree it followed the New Hope close enough that if someone else had put up this movie, Lucas would be suing them for infringement. It was an okay film, (at least the characters were likable unlike the prequel movies) but it wasn't something I want to see more than once.
And that ending if you can call it an ending was a huge letdown.
3646035 Yep, because their canon is so much better and more thought out than that confusing EU, that's for sure.
metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/sana.png?w=748&h=538&crop=1
So much better, see?
Too much like the originals and it feels like plagiarism of the plot. Not enough like the originals and it wouldn't have felt like Star Wars. I think JJ Abrams did a good job of setting up the arc for the next set of films.
3646039
It was tremendously ironic that the man who has spent the last 25 years being an excellent VA didn't have a single line in the movie.
I really liked this movie and I'm eagerly awaiting Episode VIII.
However, you do bring up valid points; they just weren't deal breakers for me.
So I'm not going to get into a debate on the movie's pros and cons and instead explain why this movie is the way it is.
Really, there was only one way for Disney to make this move: a soft reboot. They had to play it safe in order to bring back fans that are still terribly bitter about the prequels but still cater to new fans. This was the apology, a movie to try to sooth open wounds and make promises that things are back on track. And what better way to do that than to give audiences a movie that worked once before. Yeah, it's a rehash, but I felt they did it so well that I'm willing to overlook it.
Had Episode VII come out shortly after Return of the Jedi or Revenge of the Sith, it would have been a completely different movie. Perhaps more fresh and original. However, since so much time has passed after those movies were made, the only option the film makers had to set things up for a new trilogy was to give us this one.
I personally think they made the right move. Yeah, it's a rather cold and calculated move, but rather that then them bungling it up and further damaging the Star Wars brand. Like it or not, we're in store for a whole new round of Star Wars in the years to come. I suppose it's the way I felt when Twilight was big and I found that series insufferable to get through. I guess you can try to ignore it if it's not your thing and I wish you luck with that.
Peace!
Thank god, of all my friends and family I was the only one that was disappointed.
I AM NOT ALONE!
3646076
100% agree.
This was a gimme, and while I haven't seen it, and am not much of a Star Wars fan, my husband saw it at our first local showing and loved it. He's been a Star Wars fanboy since he was a kid, Return of the Jedi was the first movie he saw in a theater, and is one of those rare people who likes Luke more than Han-- he thinks Rey is great. His feeling was that this movie was pulpy fun in the same way the original was, even if the plot beats were ripped off point for point, and he feels like this is a movie for our daughter to grow up with like he grew up with A New Hope.
It was a soft reboot, and we agree we'll be disappointed if the next movies turn out to be point for point remakes, but as a first outing, with so much time passed (and the original trilogy showing its age) it was important to make sure this movie was Star Wars for a new audience and the original fans.
3646123
I guess Jensaarai1 was right after all.
Sometimes I wonder if everyone else saw the same movie I did, or they're just really upset that they saw a Star Wars movie when they paid to see a Star Wars movie, which seems like a really stupid thing to complain about.
The movie is a rehash... As was Return of the Jedi. In fact, it's fairly normal for sequels to rehash elements from previous movies, such as characters and worldbuilding elements. Or perhaps the fact that it was hero's journey (sort of) feels a little unoriginal? And yet all the other complaints are about how the characters are different from the characters in the original movies.
Finn was pretty clear to me - he has more than one motivation, (get away from FO and get with Rey) which I guess makes him 'inconsistent." Heaven forbid people be two-dimensional. While he changes his mind a few times, he never makes a decision out of nowhere - he does not want to fight the FO, but will when he sees Rey in *direct* distress.
He's also much better trained than OT stormtroopers - FO stormtroopers are overall a lot better at stuff. The TIE fighters fly as well as Mary-Sue Rey does, and nearly as well as Poe - not one crashes into the Star Destroyer wreckage, something that would have taken out a squadron of OT TIE fighters. Rey was actually the worst pilot in the scene - it's Finn's gunnery that get's them out pf the mess. He's also (Like spinny-club guy) trained in melee weapons - he obviously knows how to hold a sword (unlike Rey) and holds his own for a little while with a poorly-trained and recently de-kidneyed Kylo Ren for a few minutes, before he loses anyway. He's the hero of this movie, and goes through all the phases - call, mentor (two of them, really, but mostly Poe) F/A/E, guardian at the threshold (twice - TR-8R and Phasma, who really got shafted in the editing room) underworld and facing the monster - the twist here is that he personally loses but still brings the light back.
Rey was a little bland, but she's a secondary character for the most part - and her history is well-established for a first act. With one exception, her abilities are in-line with the in-universe description of how the force works. You don't need training to *use* the Force - even an eight-year-old can figure it out, and Luke developed several abilities on his own. (such as lightsaber-grabbing) You need training to not fall to the dark side. That's why age matters so much - to have no attachments you need to never really form bonds in the first place.
Kylo was an all-new concept. People seem to take exception to the fact that he's not a rehash of Darth Vader. (Because apparently they're supposed to make an all-new movie without actually changing anything?) The whole point of Kylo is that he is a cheap rip-off of Vader - he's weaker, lamer, and less powerful overall, because he lacks the depth of anger Anakin possessed and the training Vader possessed. That's why he's not as powerful, that's why he's not as good with a lightsaber, that's why his arc is going in a totally different direction than Anakin's did. Hence the different silhouette, the simpler mask, the sloppily-built lightsaber, the helmet and the emo-ness of the whole thing. He interesting, but not because he's dangerous - he's interesting because he's not the same kind of villain that Vader (or even Palpatine) was.
And then there's Hux - he's the stand-out here. Brilliantly Fuhrer-tastic in his mannerisms, his repartee with Kylo, and his tactical decisions. No stupid mistakes - they knew full well the weaknesses of the superweapon they built, and they covered all of them as much as possible. They had several redundancies in the security of the thermal oscillator (which is some terrible technobabble) - but they needed to take out the shields (which involved capturing a ranking ST), then blow a hole in the wall of a fortress that had proven bomb-resistant, then fly a fighter INSIDE tho fortress to finish the job. Luke couldn't pull that off with his piloting skills - that's something only Poe or Anakin Skywalker has been shown to be capable of.
And if the FO didn't build a weapon way larger than practically feasable but terrifying in the scale of it's power, they wouldn't be space Nazis. And the decision that TFA would feature more space Nazis was made a long time ago, and was a valid one. Not necessarily *the* right one, but *a* right one.
All leading up to two excellent climaxes - the spoiler-y one which I think stands on it's own, and the final lightsaber battle - which was beautifully shot, made some of the best use of color and visual storytelling in the entire damn franchise (beating out Steven Spielberg's contribution) and choreographed brilliantly - Kylo is good but not great and wounded (and confused - remember, he's not good at using the Dark Side either), Finn is trained but outmatched, and Rey is completely unaware of how to use the tool in her hand - all of her attacks are the worst forms for a weapon like a lightsaber. (but the right forms for a spear, not coincidentally).
The movie isn't perfect, of course - aside from little stuff: Space beholders were a bit out-of-place (though that's a very SW mistake to make), Poe is definitely underused (though at least they *showed* us how good a pilot he is) as is Hux (seriously, Domhnall Gleeson is amazing in this film) - and the last scene should have been cut entirely. But it was a good action movie, entertaining, exciting, and still surprising while not puling any changes out of nowhere (cough STID cough).
But it's easily one of the best-made movies in the franchise, and possibly the best-directed. (I have to re-watch ESB to be sure), and is largely being criticized for being a Star Wars movie - and if that bothers you, I don't know what you were expecting.
3646076
I agree Star Wars isn't like the original Star Trek that only became popular after it went off the air. Besides as its name saids the Force Awakens, the Empire in Episodes IV-VI were hunting down any surviving Jedi as well as anyone else who were force sensitive along with persecuting countless non-human species. So naturally you had a lot of force sensitive individuals (even if they weren't Jedi) suppressing their force abilities (or passing it off as something completely different) in order to stay alive and its probably taken that 30 years for those feelings and memories of fear and distrust to disappear and in that time period an entire generation of force sensitive people has been born and grown up in a galaxy where they don't have to spend every moment of their lives in fear and distrust like their parents and grandparents did or a force-detecting monsters like Palpatine and his personal lapdog Darth Vader on the search.
As for the First Order empire it sounds like it's the only stable piece of the original empire since Palpatine expected to rule the galaxy for as long as he saw fit and so didn't chose a successor, as a result when he died there was most likely political strife as all these moffs and imperial appointed governors turned on each other to replace him, while the republic took advantage of it by liberating vital or strategic planets from the grip of the crumbling empire. Many of the Empire's most talented and brilliant people were on board both Death Stars and the Executor when they were destroyed.
But we'll need to see episodes VIII and IX before any real call should be made on the trilogy as a whole.
3646128
Well, I think that attitude comes down to "who is Star Wars for?"
Is it for six-year-olds watching movies and cartoons and playing with plastic light sabers, or is it for 35-year-old guys reading Timothy Zahn and keeping their 1978 Luke Skywalker figure mint in box?
I mean, it's going to be a lot longer before Trixie can play Battlefront than it is until she'll be the right age to watch The Clone Wars or The Force Awakens and jump around with a plastic light saber.
Hey Titanium Dragon
SOME OF US HAVEN'T EVEN WATCHED THE MOVIE YET!!!! So please, STOP SPOILING!!! or at least put a spoiler alert in the blog title please!
3646150 Not really, the Clone Wars animated show is just a little over 2 hours, and not really too graphic for kids:
I'm with 3646076. This was an attempt to show that they were still capable of making Episode 4 after having made the relative garbage of Episodes 1-3.
This movie made me interested to see Episode 8, and I think that was its entire job. It's the opening of a trilogy. The ending scene wasn't supposed to close the movie, it was supposed to cliffhanger us on whether they were able to throw enough cash at Mark Hamill to give us another full movie of Luke again.
The movie had to satisfy the crowd swarming the theaters for the sole purpose of nostalgia AND the crowd who needs their own idols because Star Wars is literally the adventure movie their parents grew up on, and you could see in almost every scene how they were stage-managing that handoff. They did balance the moments of epic badassery between the older and younger generation very well. (Note also that this generation's heroes are a woman and a black man.)
... come to think of it, there's probably a rich post in there about Star Wars and American national politics.
Anyway, let's face it, JJ Abrams is famous for his reboots. I don't think it was coincidence that they picked him. I think the back-room discussion was "Do for Star Wars what you did to Star Trek." And he did.
Another point that got me was how everyone seemed so mystified by the 'legend' of the Force, as if it was some sort of mystical thing handed down in folklore suddenly come to life, when the Republic—spiritually led by a council of Jedi masters—existed not even two full generations beforehand. In the entirety of the galaxy, with such technology, there is no plausible way all history of the Republic from Episodes I-III could have been eradicated.
Also, why didn't the Rath-whatever thing not just chomp Finn to bits right when it grabbed him?
Also also, Wookie blasters are supposed to shoot green lasers, not red.
I do have to admit, though, when Finn accidentally activated the rancor chessboard thing, I lost it. That was a great callback.
3646153 Gee, the title of "Star Wars Episode VII The Force Awakens" wasn't a clue?
Darnit, TD, I've been putting this off until the crowds died down to something below get-your-elbow-out-of-my-coke-and-down-in-front, but now you're going to make me go fight the mob just so I can comment with some sort of authority.
May the Horse be with you. One, please. Yes, I'd like some popcorn.
3646159
James has watched both, and prefers the CG one. He likes the way Anakin was developed in it, and I personally think Ahsoka is awesome.
3646076
Everything else could have been forgiven if the new characters had been compelling. But they weren't. Finn was an interesting idea for a character, and I had hope during the intro sequence that the Storm Trooper with the blood claw mark over one eye had some real potential - turning someone who is faceless into a person is interesting. Him freaking out because one of his friends died - portraying the storm troopers as actual, individual people rather than just faceless goons - is a powerful idea. Suddenly, those faceless people that get mowed down have lives and families, hopes and dreams and friends. They care about each other.
And then... he just mows them down like anyone else without any sign of concern or care about the fact that he was previously one of them, and his explicit reason for quitting was that he didn't want to kill.
Finn would have been MUCH better had he not attacked ANYONE until the attack on Maz's base. Freeze up in the Tie Fighter, not be able to shoot anyone down, and them getting shot down themselves as a result, resulting in the apparent death of the person who got him out. Not be able to bring himself to shoot at the tie fighters on the Millenium Falcon, instead sitting there like a coward while his new friend's flying saved him again. Basically, have him be The Load until the attack on Maz's place, when he realizes that he HAS to make the choice to fight, because sometimes, not fighting isn't an option, but now, at least, he is fighting for the right cause, and to protect other people, rather than because he was told to.
It would have made him a much more compelling character.
That was really the problem with the movie - the characters weren't compelling. The plot could have worked if the characters were more interesting, but the story didn't present them very well. Kylo Ren just is not Darth Vader - he is a petulant manchild. And yet the movie tried so hard to make him Darth Vader at times, while it was so obvious that he wasn't. While yes, him being a wannabe Darth Vader was a potentially interesting character angle, it just never worked. Him taking off his helmet was a terrible mistake, as it highlighted his nature as a petulant manchild - it would have been better if he had only had it come off at the end when he started desperately lashing out at people, highlighting that he was no Darth Vader but a skinhead who was pretending to be him.
The New Order didn't make much internal sense - they were a bunch of wannabes who had a super powerful military. These two things don't work well together. If they had been just a small group of people who had stolen a bunch of bad stuff, I could have believed it. But the stormtrooper aspect made little sense with their general incompetence and petulance, and their leadership all being kids other than Snoke, who only appeared in hologram form.
The movie fundamentally had major issues with its tone and emotional engagement. And that isn't a soft reboot issue; that's bad writing.
3646169 The only good thing to come out of tcw was Abeloth, and that's it.
Can't imagine you even know who that is, so I'll provide an image for you:
vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/1/18/Abeloth_EGTW.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120407170507
She's the abomination in the middle.
3646197
I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it.
3646123
I'm a Star Wars fan and I was pretty disappointed myself. I've always liked the original trilogy, and am one of those people who likes the first film the best, but the original trilogy was quite good.
I've never liked popcorn flicks as much as most people, and the original Star Wars trilogy had action interspersed with other things. The scene between Luke and Obi Wan, where Obi Wan teaches him about the Force and using the light saber, was a great scene for me, and this movie lacked anything comparable. Everyone was instantly competent at everything, and it felt more like a video game than a movie to me.
3646205
There's no doubt in my mind that there will be some things that are better in the original-- it was coming out in a different era, and as much as Star Wars kicked off the blockbuster franchise system, Lucas was an auteur with an art film and a drama under his belt (which is not to say he could direct, but he was clearly bringing film making ideas to the table.)
This is a Star Wars that has to compete with video games, a hundred other action movies, and support a multi-billion dollar franchise for Disney. That being said, it remained Star Wars-- pulp space opera melodrama-- just Star Wars for the current climate.
I can't speak to the characters, I got the full rundown of the plot but characterization is something I'd have to see to judge, but then I was never impressed with the characterization in the originals (I always felt like, except for Han, they were pretty stock
cardboard cutoutsarchetypes.) So maybe I'll hate that too, who knows.3646132
It is bad writing when people do this. It is what makes a lot of sequels shitty.
The Empire Strikes Back was not a rehash. And it is widely regarded as the best of the original trilogy. The Return of the Jedi rehashed one plot element - it brought back the Death Star - but the battle around the Death Star was entirely different. The Rebels were on the attack, not on the defensive; they had a fleet-to-fleet battle; the Death Star had a shield that had to be disabled; they had to fly down into the core of an unfinished thing rather than hit the weak point. Sure, there was a battle around a Death Star, but the battle played out completely differently, and it felt fresh. You'd never mistake it for the intense feeling of the original battle, where a tiny group of people in shitty little ships are running a Hail Mary attack on a battlestation, desperately trying to exploit a tiny weak spot which even their targeting computers only give them a small chance of hitting, while getting gunned down, man after man, every loss being irreplacable and making their situation all the more desperate, as if they fail, they're going to end the Rebellion in one swift stroke.
The Return of the Jedi splits up its actions between the shield station on the surface, the fight between the fleets, and the intense confrontation between Luke, Darth Vader, and the Emperor. It isn't the same sort of scene, and the really tense bit is the confrontation between the Jedi - the battle is an exciting action sequence to break up the intensely psychological battle between the three representatives of the Force.
And frankly, the Empire rebuilding the Death Star made perfect sense, and it didn't feel out of place at all. They were still the Empire - why would they give up just because the first one got blown up? The only reason the Rebels pulled it off was because the new Death Star wasn't finished.
Return of the Jedi isn't as good as the other two movies, but I don't think its weakness comes from the rehash but from the fact that the sequences on Endor just weren't very good, and felt kind of cartoony. Some of it was pretty cool - the speeder battle in the forest was a fun action sequence - but the Ewoks were silly and their battle with the Empire felt tonally dissonant with the other battles we'd seen (and indeed, with the battle happening in space, and the confrontation between the Jedi).
Or you know, when he was escaping and just mowed down his former comrades casually in his Tie Fighter.
The problem is that Finn didn't work at all emotionally. In the opening sequence, what we see is the storm troopers fighting, and then... one of them bends over to help his comrade who was wounded, and subsequently is marked by blood on his helmet. Suddenly, the stormtroopers go from faceless goons to PEOPLE - they have friends, they have families, they care about each other and themselves. We see some hesitation in the storm troopers there, some obvious concern, and indeed, there are a few bits throughout the film where we see stormtroopers being less than stoic and showing their underlying humanity.
This was a great idea. And then it is promptly forgotten, as Finn goes from "I don't want to kill people" to "murdering tons of his former comrades with the gun on his Tie Fighter" in under two minutes, while the stormtroopers go back to being faceless cannon fodder, save for the odd human moment when the movie remembers, oh, wait, that's right, they're not.
What?
This just... doesn't work. It is emotionally jarring. He gives us this terrible sob story/backstory, he freaks out over someone he knows dying, but then he just casually starts killing people for the rest of the movie without seeming to think about the people he's killing as people, despite the opening scene with him establishing both that he saw the humanity of his fellow stormtroopers AND of the people they were fighting against.
He doesn't act like a real person. He acts like a video game character.
No. The problem with Kylo Ren is not that he's not Darth Vader.
The problem with Kylo Ren is that he isn't Darth Vader but the movie acts like he is half the time.
Darth Vader is powerful, competent, determined, and intimidating. He has anger, but he doesn't just lash out at random - he seeks out the source of his anger and crushes it.
Kylo Ren is an angry manchild who went and joined the skinheads to piss off his parents.
There's nothing wrong with having an angry manchild type bad guy. But angry manchildren are adversaries, not villains. The movie tries to treat him as if he is as scary as Darth Vader, as intimidating as Darth Vader, but he's not. He's a wannabe. He's pathetic. He might be dangerous, but he's dangerous like a wild animal, not like Stalin.
That's a problem that plagues the New Order in general. When you look at the Empire, they're a bunch of older people - there are lots of older officers, and they look like what you'd expect higher-level command staff to look like. They're calculating, some of them are egotistical, but they act like a proper military force.
The New Order is a bunch of punk kids. Their leadership is young and they seem to act out and be very emotional.
I mean, had they been presented like Al Qaeda or a bunch of skinheads who managed to take over an old Imperial base and now were playing at being the Empire, with Snoke as their Bin Laden, that would have worked. But the movie doesn't treat them that way tonally. It acts as if they're this huge competent military force, and treats them as such... while none of the people we see on-screen make that believable. In Star Wars, the leaders are Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin. Both are older, competent general-type people. You can believe that the Empire is this vast machine of men and advanced technology.
The leadership of the New Order was young. They don't make me believe that they could have built this superweapon, because they don't seem capable of it. They're impatient and bratty, and Kylo Ren takes out his anger on random stuff all the time like an angry child. He throws temper tantrums. And while Hux was more competent-seeming, he didn't seem like he was the sort of guy who could lead them in building a gigantic superweapon. He looks too young, too inexperienced, and he doesn't have an air of gravitas around him. He can't even keep Kylo Ren under control, while Grand Moff Tarkin could bring Vader to heel. Hux spends the whole movie intimidated by Kylo Ren. It just doesn't work.
They came off as a bunch of brats, frankly.
And that undercuts any feeling of menace I'd get out of them. The movie tries to treat him emotionally like Darth Vader half the time, being this fierce, intimidating figure, but it is hard to feel intimidated by a violent manchild. You might be worried about him acting out, you might be wary of him, but it isn't the same feeling you get out of Darth Vader.
There's nothing wrong with doing something new. But the problem was that they didn't shit or get off the pot - they made him not be Darth Vader, but expected us to treat him emotionally like one.
The New Order is not the Empire, and you just can't take them as seriously; they feel incongrous and internally inconsistent.
3646153
I put the [page_break] up front for a reason. I tried to avoid major spoilers, but, well, once you know that the movie is basically Episode IV (something which becomes evident very early on in the film), it kind of spoils itself.
If you're trying to avoid spoilers, reading the comments is very bad idea
3646160
I have more doubts that they can make episode 4 after watching that movie than before it, as they tried to make episode 4 and failed.
The problem with the prequel trilogy was always the fact that the new protagonists - Anakin and Padme (and Jar Jar) - were of questionable quality. Jar Jar had character, but people hated him. Padme was incredibly bland, the romantic scenes between Anakin and Padme were painful, and Anakin just did not convince me that he was going to become Darth Vader.
And frankly, that's just what this new series told me - that they can't make protagonists who aren't all kinds of bland. Luke may have been an everyman hero, but we saw personality out of him - he wanted to leave the moisture farm, he wanted to see the galaxy, he had a sense of humor, he was curious about stuff (but also cautious), he wasn't a fighter but some dude on a farm - but he became much greater and grew as a person over the course of the film and series. He was interesting, even if he was an everyman hero.
Anakin, when he went from "Oh god, what have I done" to "Yes, I will murder children for you" in 30 seconds flat, was not behaving like a person. And that was the feeling I got throughout the movie - that people were characterized inconsistently, that they weren't people, but just things being pushed around. Han, Leia, Chewie - they were all people.
Kylo Ren was a person, but he was not a particularly interesting one the way he was portrayed.
Finn and Rey were bland and did not behave consistently. They didn't have strong speech patterns. They felt very much like empty spaces. I couldn't really empathize with them as people because the movie didn't treat them like people. Finn's actions in the opening sequence just did not feel congruent with him gunning down hordes of stormtroopers a few minutes later. Rey was just bland all around.
The thing was, the characters I cared about were the original series characters, plus Maz. I cared about Finn at the start of the movie, when he was the stormtrooper in the bloody helmet, but after he did other things I cared for him progressively less and less. Same went for the rebel pilot at the start - after he "died", I stopped caring, and he was just bland after he reappeared and didn't really do anything for me or the movie.
Episode 4 had a lot of more thoughtful moments. Obi Wan was a power in that movie, and several of his scenes with Luke, demonstrating what a Jedi was supposed to be and explaining stuff to him, was powerful. There was no scene where Luke was in a helmet he couldn't see out of and practicing with a dangerous lightsaber. That sort of thing just was absent from the movie. There was a brief sequence where Maz looked like she was going that way, but it got aborted.
One of the problems with the movie for me was that, even after reviewing the opening text crawl afterwards, I'm not really sure about the relative positions of the New Order and the Republic at the start. That it made no substantive difference in the plot is not a good thing either.
Kylo Ren (as I side note, I dislike this name and hope it's something he subsequently received/chose for himself rather than his given name, as it doesn't strike me as something that sounds like it comes from a tradition yielding either Leia Organa/Skywalker or Han Solo) worrying about never being as powerful as Vader struck me as another sticking point. It seems to me he's already stronger than Vader was ever presented in IV-VI and more so than Anakin in I-III in pretty much every aspect but light saber use. Maybe that's a case of never really seeing Vader's full abilities, maybe it's Ren having an inflated sense of who and what he was; I would offer simple effects inflation, but that doesn't explain him seeming to have better Force interrogation powers, stopping the blaster shot in its tracks, or likely some other things I'm forgetting now. Really, the main area he was surpassed by Vader was as a leader/planner and, simply, in being a grown-up (applies only to IV-VI, obviously). Also maybe the distance at which he could Force-choke someone.
I will ignore your recommendation, but appreciate the time you took to write a review while forgetting the critic's mantra of not giving away spoilers. A good reviewer does not give spoilers. Your opinion is fine, but you must control your anger, or to the Dark Side you will fall.
3646267
Kylo Ren's real name is Ben. They mention it a few times in the movie. Presumably, he is named after "Ben" Kenobi, though they never actually say so.
I agree about the status of the universe; how powerful the two sides are relative to each other is very unclear.
Thank you, TD, for putting into words so much better than I could be bothered to. It has been really annoying me that it seems to be scoring consistently high ratings. I spent most of the movie scratching my head, going "...how?" and "...what?" and "...why?"
I liked a couple of the characters, but most of them, and that plot, were absolutely terrible and, as you said, inconsistent. I don't think I'll bother seeing it again. The Force Awakens is the Final Fantasy 13 of Star Wars, IMO.
3646270 I thought that might have been a nickname, kind of like how it was a pseudonym for Kenobi.
3646267
Watch 11:40-19:08, 23:46-25:35, and 31:50-37:48 of this video to see his full abilities.
3646270
Of course it is, that's totally original don't you know, not ripped off of anything else at all.
Huh, that's odd, looks like someone else already had the same idea.
But that's just an old EU boo- I mean fanfiction, so it doesn't matter.
3646312 Allow me to outsource this to someone who captures my feelings on the matter. Mr. Plinkett, do your thing:
This is a movie in a franchise mainly defined to the largest segment of the audience by the movies, and thus shouldn't be relying on anything but the core canon, the other movies, for something as important as a major aspect of the motivations of the primary antagonist.
3646334 Your choice, just don't whine about missing out on excellent writing and storytelling then.
3646269
I was trying to avoid major spoilers not seen in the trailer (which ironically gives away Poe's central plot twist, as we see him in the trailer in later scenes in the movie :\ ), but given that one of the two major problems is intrinsically that the movie spoils itself by being a rehash of episode IV, I'm not sure what exactly can be done about that.
Salon.com went to pretty much the same place with their review:
Knowing that it is a rehash of Episode IV is intrinsically a spoiler for the movie. But the movie itself gives this away quite early on, and the feeling of sameiness sets in early. Is it fair to try and avoid this as a spoiler, when it is a major issue with the movie?
It is hard to criticize the characters without pointing out the things they do that make them inconsistent and dull, and I don't think I gave away any major spoilers in those sections other than the relative thing, and even that is hardly a spoiler given that you've seen the original trilogy and it is immediately obvious that JJ Abrams is going full hog on with the villain emulating Darth Vader (and the movie itself mentions what is going on relatively early, and doesn't treat it like a huge revelation - it is not a "Luke, I am your father" moment, it is not a climactic thing, which itself is arguably bad but it is hard to see how they could have avoided it given that all of the original cast knows who Kylo Ren is and have no reason to pretend not to).
3646336 Okay, and at some point I may even see some of this stuff. I've had some vague interest in checking out more of the Clone Wars cartoon for a while. But that doesn't change the fact that, based on what the filmmakers could reasonably expect most of the audience to be familiar with, that line and the fear and lack of confidence it reflected didn't make sense. And that's bad writing and storytelling.
Let me put it this way: if in an episode of the MLP cartoon show the motivations of a character only make sense if you have the background of one of the children's books or comics, that's bad storytelling. This is the same thing.
3646329
To be fair, the EU has always been exactly that - I always expected that if they ever made more movies, they'd feel free to violate it as much as they wanted. They might use it as a resource for stuff, but it isn't the mainline movies, and you can't expect the audience to be familiar with stuff from the EU. Anything they wanted to use from the EU would have to be introduced in the movie itself for people to get it, unless it was a passing, unimportant reference.
Same applies to the comics and books of My Little Pony - they might reference them in passing, but if Chrysalis ever shows up again, she's not going to reference the incident in the comics at all, and they feel free to contradict them about stuff like Moondancer.
The EU is basically an AU. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it means you don't have to try and figure out how this and that would fit together.
They made Full Metal Alchemist twice, and the first series was basically an AU of the second series/the comics.
3646352
You mean like the Daring Do books?
3646405 You've lost me. I can't think offhand of anything in any of the episodes related to Daring Do that required outside knowledge to make sense. If you could help me out here . . .
3646366
Apparently that was what the manga creator wanted.
It was the manga fans who wanted the second series.
EDIT: Sorry, misread your post. I can't think of anything you need outside knowledge of to understand in MLP either that was a major plot point.
3646259
A week before this movie came out, I got in an bitter nerd-rage argument with a friend of mine, he contended that Jedi were basically invincible, I contended that they were not. After the new movie came out, and we saw what Rey can accomplish with a body full of Mary Sue-chlorions, I was forced to apologize to him and admit he was right.
The only substantially original and interesting part of the movie to me was Finn, because a defecting Stormtrooper is a fairly new idea for the series. But the fact that he guns down 20 of his "brothers" half an hour after he decides to quit, after learning he was raised by the Stormtrooper military from birth, seems really implausible.
Oh, and this is more minor, but they really should have taken off the helmet of Brianne of Tarth, or whatever the official name of Captain Stormtrooper was.
I'm happy not to be the only one for whom the idiocy of that particular moment didn't pass by unnoticed. When it happened, I said to myself, "Obviously this is only happening so she can be separated from the rest of the group during the inevitable attack."
Saw this posted earlier today, got back in from a showing, read the review.
Nailed it.
Some of the jokes and sight gags were good, Harrison Ford was good, and everything else was amateur hour at the Star Wars cosplay convention, too wrapped up in references and too scared to deviate from the script to produce anything of value that could stand on its own.
Makes me wonder what Lucas's idea for 7 was.
After Stino (Star Trek In Name Only) Swino (Star Wars In Name Only) does not surprise me. Abrams just does not give a flying buck.
3647454
Yeah, there were a few funny moments in the movie. I liked the droid's reaction to Finn totally being a Resistance fighter, and the scene with him totally knowing where the Resistance base was. Harrison Ford got a few lines, and the scene patching up Chewie was amusing, as was C3PO interrupting Han and Leia's moment. There was something else that was definitely amusing as well, but I can't remember what it was for the life of me.
I have to wonder if the original trilogy was good in part because the actors adapted the script at times (such as "I love you." "I know.") and just the fact that people weren't afraid to know better, whereas now, it is STAR WARS - you can't say no to that!
I was dragged to see this movie against my own will yesterday.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the worst part of the movie, by leaps and bounds beyond your criticisms here: the dialogue.
I think my favorite scene has to be the part where Finn tells Rey his life story. Because it wasn't enough to show it to the audience, then hear him reminisce about it and tell every character he meets, we also need to hear him retell the entire story one last time for about thirty seconds. Yes, it's bad that Finn's story makes little sense and his characterization is littered with flaws. It's worse that we have to hear that awful story come out of the mouths of the characters again and again.
In case you weren't clear that Kylo Ren was Han and Leia's son, they make sure to tell the audience that one half a dozen times too. I was cringing in the theater.
I originally said the new main characters were okay, but on reflection, TD's right. I think I had just wanted to say something not-awful about the movie.
3646123 3646076 The idea of a "soft reboot" makes no sense. You can't do a reboot AND still keep the original material in the timeline, except by using a time-travel trick like that guy JJ Abrams did with Star Trek. I mean, literally, you cannot; it's asking the audience to believe A and not A at the same time. This wasn't a reboot; it was a story plagiarizing itself.
Unless later movies reveal that the Force works to cause the same scenarios to repeat themselves endlessly... which would still suck as a movie series, but would be logically consistent.
3648216 Oh, yeah, the dialogue sucked, too. Especially the dialogue filling us in on important background material.