ST Mourning of a partner

There is no explanation that could justify Leia and Chewie not exchanging anything upon Falcon's return. Nothing. It was Han who died there, for God's sake, and he passes by her! She looks at a girl she never met before!
We know they like each other, they hugged on Takodana, so what happened on D'Qar?
The OT deaths were handled differently. The Lars' deaths were not mentioned after, but Luke's face was quite enough. Leia, who lost a planet, consoled Luke whose mentor joined the Force... That wasn't that good. And Anakin's death was handled good. Luke's reaction and the funeral pyre... The PT deaths were really meaningful, Qui-Gon's and Shmi's death were shown, as well as mourning of those who left behind.
J. J. and the others... Well, failed. Instead of the OT characters having a moment for themselves, Leia's looking at Rey. For what? Who knows.

 

That's a pain to do that sometimes. Especially when you only want to quote a small portion of the post — and doing all that on a freakin cellphone.

 

Agreed, and preaching to choir.

 

Well yes, it comes down to the somewhat subjective interpretation of the material, and how one rationalises the intent of the filmmaker and the technical implementation... and for me, that Abrams makes the choices he does is what undermines the film in terms of quality... be it story, characterisation, world building, or the over reliance on tropes/iconography. I also accept that Abrams going for the 'lowest hanging fruit' is in part what makes the film widely accessible and hugely profitable... but of course popularity/profitability does not always equate to quality or craft. Ultimately my view is that in an attempt to make it popular, it misses much of the creative/cinematic intelligence that sets good/very good movies apart from the average.

 

And in my opinion, he made a really good film that DID have quite a bit of deeper meaning, subtext, themes, etc. And stuff like this, is just pure nitpicking. I'm not even bashing people for doing that, but it's not all that important in the grand scheme of things.

Leia completely forgets about Alderaan's destruction for the rest of the OT after her initial sad face. The Lars's deaths are never mentioned again either. Luke gets over Obi Wan's death pretty darn quick as well. And as for "well there was emotion in the moment," there was that in TFA as well.

-We SAW Chewie's roar of anguish, and his grief-filled rampage, and his weeping afterward.
-We SAW Leia's reaction to Han's death, in the moment. And we SAW her consoling someone, just not the person that some people wanted.
-We even SAW Rey's reaction to it multiple times.

So yeah, if anything, this film gives us more in that regard than the OT did. Sorry, just disagree on this.

BTW, I consider the battle of Takonada, and the duel in the snow on SKB, to be "set pieces of merit." Also Finn and Poe's escape from the SD, etc.

 

What you call "nitpicking", others would view as beng able to critically evaluate the technical and creative merits of a film. Some don't let those elements get in the way of their enjoyment, some are not cognisant of those elements, and some see those elements as being fundamental to their experience and interpretation.

 

While I don't like some of the things JJ did with my favorite couple, this is on the bottom of my list. But it is still there. I think that having watched his best friend get killed by his own son, and shooting at some one who he has literally know since birth he was probably seriously shell shocked. It was evident by Chewie's reaction when it happened. The guilt afterwards had to be heart breaking for both him and Leia, a lot of very confusing emotions to process.

Leia was lost in grief, she just lost her true love to their son after begging him to bring their son back. Talk about conflicting emotions and gulit. She hadn't seen her husband in a sometime, but did have a least one last moment to know they he was still quite in love with her, but her request got him killed Having not seen and been with him for some time, I'm sure she is also regretting all the time apart. It's clear she is still totally in love with him, but torn because of what happened to Ben (The kid needs a serious deprogramming, Snoke treats him like crap, yet he will do anything to please him. It totally reminds me of someone brainwashed by a cult. Nobody normally talks about someone the way he refers to Snoke, but that's another discussion.) I doubt she was thinking all that clearly either, she appears totally shell shocked also. I think both her and Chewie were still in the fighting off denial stage. The only times we really see her in grief and total shell shock is one something has happened to Han, ie Cloud City (both the carbon freeze and again when they are too late to reach Boba's ship.)

My head canon has them together with a private memorial later.

The hug was more of Rey comforting the widow of a man she had grown to think of as a father. I agree that while I know longer see Rey as a Solo (too many plot holes to fill in), they both know who she is. I hope they do have a least a mention of Han. But right now I think they are both trying to process, and deal privately with their feelings in their own way.