ST Episode VII Apologetics: addressing the criticisms one by one

Yeah I'm just all confused how everyone is completely glossing over the whole "TFA copied ANH". I guess the answer is "as long as you have new characters" you can totally overlook that.

I feel just a little bit cheated. All these great minds lead by JJ and Lucasfilm, with NO Lucas involvement at all, and the only story they could come up is ANH, with updated special effects and a bigger Death Star, that was pretty much blown up the same way. I mean for goodness sake, Chewie and Han go down to shut down the shield generator and then Poe blows it up. Call it what it is, a JJ Abrams reboot to satisfy the fans that like the OT. Yes Daisy Ridley is ADORABLE! Boyega is funny and cool. Han and Chewie are classics. No ones arguing that, but the story is the same.

A lot of people were invested in this film. The film to "redeem" Star Wars (not that it needed it) and I think a lot of people are feeling this way, but don't want to admit it either because of ego or they are just in denial. Again I say, it was a good movie. But to it's core it is just a reboot of the OT. I'm hoping 8 and 9 will help put this film in perspective.

 

The problem with the movie isn't that it rehashes a lot of OT elements for the sake of it. KOTOR also did this, taking the standard "really powerful guy/gal in the Force cruising around the universe in a cool ass ship to defeat an evil Sith Lord with an all powerful super-weapon" idea.

The difference is, KOTOR took that basic premise and looked at things from a different angle from before and didn't blatantly copy & paste the characters with shallow inversions to barely differentiate them. Revan wasn't Luke, Carth wasn't Han, Malak wasn't Vader,... And its not just KOTOR either, the Knights comic, Ostrander's Legacy comic and bunch of other material took a lot of these same elements without feeling pandering or completely derivative.

Its a shame too, because everything else in the movie had the makings of a really great SW movie. The actors, the effects, its all there, but JJ and Kasdan went with the fan-wanky, superficial, thinly veiled rehash direction and it kind of undermines everything for me. Its a shame too because I've been enjoying basically everything from Disney's output so far and its a shame that the creativity in story-telling is being left to the material not many people will see while generic bull**** gets pushed out to the masses.

 

Yes! This ^^^ exactly!

I agree! The acting, the NEW characters were all so great (well Kylo needed work) everything else was there but the took the safe road, and just rehashed..

 

Keep in mind one of the "styles" of a SW movie is the lack of dialogue in the closing scene. All the films (like the opening crawl) follow that style that George set, so It made sense that the last scene with Rey finding Skywalker had no spoken words. Which, for me, made it epic. Mark Hamill brought back Luke Skywalker without uttering a single word. That was awesome.

 

He was only visible for a few moments, but the look on his face made it all clear. Luke is older and sadder, but there's a glint in his eye that reminds us he's a very dangerous opponent. More proof that Mark Hamill's work in the series has been criminally underrated by some.

 

Wonder if it will be explained in a spin-off (another story).


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